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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

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MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO

EEMINISCENCES

REMINISCENCES

GOLDWIN SMITH, D.C.L.

EDITED BY

AENOLD EAULTAIN, M.A.

|i[atit

THE S4A.CMILLAN COMPANY
1911

T, 1WO,

BT THE 8. 8. McCLURE COMPANY,
BT THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY,
BT THE ONTARIO PUBLISHING COMPANY,

AND

BT THE 8TO PBINTING AND PUBLISHING- ASSOCIATION.

Set upandclectrotyped. Published November, 1910. Reprinted
January, 19x1.

Notfncotf

J. 8, Cttflhlngr Co. — Berwick <fc Smith Co,
Norwood, Mass,, TT.S.A.

PREFACE

BY THE EDITOR

I HAVE ventured to put my name on the title-
page of this book because its author assigned to
me the task of preparing it for the press.

That task has been a difficult one. The bulk
of the book was not composed till the writer had
passed his seventy-fifth year; and although the
manuscript was first written out by the author's
own hand, then dictated to me, twice type-written,
and constantly revised, yet not only is a septuagen-
arian's memory apt to slip, but a septuagenarian's
solicitude foiv accuracy is apt to be labile also. I
have corrected many errors; probably many still
remain uncorrected. If so, I must plead that the
work of editing was done in haste, and done some
three thousand miles from the British Museum or
the Bodleian.

Again, much of the manuscript was in a chaotic
state; some of the chapters, indeed, consisted

vi PREFACE

merely of fragmentary and inconsequent para-
graphs. With these I have dealt as best I could.

My own pen has hardly anywhere intruded
itself: it is not for me to despoil the book of its
peculiarities — even of its repetitions.

Elderly (and erudite) readers, however3 must
forgive my footnotes. They are for a younger
generation. Besides, I have tried to remember
that names and events which may be quite famil-
iar to readers on one side of the Atlantic may be
very unfamiliar to readers on the other.

For the greater number of these notes, Messrs.
Smith, Elder, and Company's " Dictionary of
National Biography" was invaluable.

I have sought information from many sources,
and amongst the many to whom I owe thanks are
the Reverend the Master of University College,
Oxford (for notes on the bust of King Alfred);
the Eight Honourable Sir Eoland L. B. Vaughan
Williams, Lord Justice of the Court of Appeal;
the Editor of The Spectator; Sir J. Gardner D,
Engleheart, K.C.B. ; the Reverend Professor Wil-
liam Clark, of Toronto; Mr. Mansfeldt de Car-
donnel Findlay, C.M.G-. ; Herr Franz H. Bassenge,

PREFACE vii

British Vice-Consul at Dresden; Mr. Arthur W.
Kaye Miller, Assistant Keeper of Printed Books
at the British Museum; Mrs. Place, of Skelton
Grange, Yorkshire (a cousin of Mr* Goldwin
Smith); Mr. Frederic Harrison; the Lady Frances
Bushby; Constance Lady Bussell, of Swallowfield ;
the Right Honourable Gk W. E. Bussell; Mr, Wil-
liam Prideaux Courtney; Mr. W. George Eakins,
Librarian of the Law Society of Upper Canada,
Osgoode Hall, Toronto ; Mr. George William Harris,
Ph.B., Librarian of Cornell University.

I wish also here to thank Dr. J. Gk Schurman,
President of Cornell University, and the Executive
Committee of his "Board of Trustees, for a gener-
osity which has enabled me to edit these Remi-
niscences in the room in which they were written;
in the room in which, side by side, iheir writer
and I worked for more than seventeen years; the
room in which I watched that writer breathe his
last.

THE LIBRARY, THE GRANGE,

TORONTO, CANADA, November, 1910.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
BOYHOOD, 1823-1834

Heading— Social Life— My Father and Family— Our House
—Old Customs 1-11

CHAPTER II
MORTIMER. 1848-1867

The Parish— Rural Society— Fox-hunting— The Duke of Wel-
lington—Miss Mitford— Sir Henry Russell— John Walter
— Sir John Mowbray — Lord Lyon — Sir Roderick and
Lady Murchison 12-31

CHAPTER III
SCHOOL. 1881-1840

School— Schoolmates— Eton— Dr. Goodall, the Provost— The
Head Master, Hawtrey— William IV— Queen Victoria-
Schoolmates 32-49

CHAPTER IV
OXFORD. 1841-1845

Dean Gaisf ord — Magdalen — Magdalen Demys — Martin Routh
— Fellows of Magdalen— The Tractarian Movement — The
Curriculum — Oxford Life — Contemporaries . . 50-74

CHAPTER V

OXFORD TUTORSHIP. 1851-1854

Fellows — Arthur Penrhyn Stanley — Benjamin Jowett — Thor-
old Rogers — Mark Pattison — Sir Travers Twiss . 75-87
ir

X CONTENTS

CHAPTER VI

TRAVELS. 1847

PAGES

The Tyrol — Dresden — Prague — Normandy — Guizot — Italy

— Italian Exiles— Louis Blanc 88-£7

CHAPTER VII

UNIVERSITY COMMISSIONS. 1854-1858

The Unreformed University — The Commissioners — Dr. Jeune
— Liddell— Tait — Johnson — The Report — The Bill—-
The Executive Commission — The Executive Commission-
ers— Richard Bethell, Lord Westbury — The Commissioners*
Report 98-115

CHAPTER VIII
EDUCATION COMMISSION. 1858-1861

The Commissioners — William Charles Lake — Nassau Senior

— James Eraser — Popular Education . . . . 116-120

CHAPTER IX
LAW. 1846

Lincoln's Inn — On Circuit — English and American Courts of
Justice — Criminal Law — Judges — The Bar — Sir Gardner
Engleheart— Briton Riviere 121-131

CHAPTER X
LONDON. 1845-1861

Macaulay — Samuel Rogers — Lord Houghton — Henry Hallam
— Milman — Thackeray — Croker — TyndaU— Herbert
Spencer— "The Grange"— Lady Asnburton— Carlyle—
Tennyson — Bishop WILberforce — Lady Waldegrave — Par-
liamentary Debates — The Theatre — Louis Blanc —
Brougham— Lady Dukinfield 132-160

CONTENTS xi

CHAPTER XI

JOURNALISM. 1855-1858

PAGES

Peel — The Saturday Review — Members of the Staff — Fronde

— Letters on the Empire 161-173

CHAPTER XII
CONNECTION WITH PUBLIC MEN

Peel— Disraeli— "Lothair"— Bentincfc —The Bute of New-
castle — Cardwell — « Welbeck " — Gladstone — The Peel-
ites — Sidney Herbert — Canning — Dalhousie — Sir James
Graham — Lord Aberdeen — Russell — Granville — Godley
—Joseph Chamberlain — Earl Grey .... 174-214:

CHAPTER XIII
THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL

Objects of the School — Peace Policy — Anti-Imperialism —
Bright and Cobden — Socialism — Property — The Irish
Question 215-237

CHAPTER XIV
BRIGHT AND COBDEN

Bright's Oratory— Cobden— His Polities— Peel— Disraeli-
Peel as a Party Leader 238-271

CHAPTER XV
OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP. 1858-1866

Settling at Oxford — Telepathy — llalford Vanghan — Henry
Smith — Max MtOler — Monier Williams — Thorold Rogers
— Rolleston — Waring — Coxe — Fronde — Cradock — The
Great Western Railway— King Edward VII— Prince
Leopold— Dr. Acland— Gladstone .... 272-286

xii CONTENTS

CHAPTER XVI
PUBLIC EVENTS

PAGES

Crimean War — The War Passion — The War Policy — Napo-
leon HI — The Chartist Procession .... 287-293

CHAPTER XVII
ELECTIONS

Anthony John Mundella. — Sheffield — Trades-Unionism —
Nursing a Constituency — Election Tactics — The Party
System 294r-300

CHAPTER XVIII
IRELAND. 1862; 1881

Cardwell as Irish Secretary — The Irish People — Irish Liberals

— Crime in Ireland — Education — Social Life — Robert
Lowe — Second Visit to Ireland — Lord O'Hagan — Royal
Visits to Ireland — W. E. Forster — Gladstone's Irish
Policy 301-318

CHAPTER XIX

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. 1861-1865

Secession — Its True Character — Lincoln's View — The Alabama
Claim — Attitude of the British Government — British Lib-
erals— Visits to the United States — Friends in the United
States — J. M. Forbes — Emerson — Lowell — Bancroft —
The Attitude of the North — Finance — General Butler —
The Opposing Forces — General Grant — Sherman — Gen-
eral Meade — Lee — General Butler Again — Washington

— Seward — Abraham Lincoln ..... 319-356

CHAPTER XX
JAMAICA. 1866

Conflict of Races — Outbreak — Governor Eyre's Action — The
Jamaica Committee — Chief Justice Cockburn's Charge —

CONTENTS Xlii

PAGES

John Stuart Mill — Woman Suffrage — Thomas Hughes —
Frederick Denison Maurice — Manchester Liberals . 357-364

CHAPTER XXI

CORNELL. 1868-1871

Resignation of Oxford Professorship — Invitation to Cornell —
Ezra Cornell — The University — Cornell's Ideas — Arrival
at Ithaca — Fellow Lecturers — Life at Ithaca — The Oneida
Community— Friends at Cornell 365-379

CHAPTER XXII

VISITS TO EUROPE

Reading — Magdalen — Oxford — Spiritualism — Ignorance of
Canada — Knaresborough — Curious Crimes — Italy — Flor-
ence— Venice — Ravenna — Second Visit to Italy — Sicily
— The Mafia — Pizzo — Italian Cruelty -— Amalfi — The
Papacy— Capua— Rome — Florence Again . . 380-398

CHAPTER XXIII
VISITS TO WASHINGTON

Settling in Canada — Washington — Bancroft — Bayard — The
Pensions Bill — The Capitol — American Oratory — Ameri-
can Statesmanship — Washington Society — The Party
System — Newspaper Reporters — E. L. Godkin . . 399-413

CHAPTER XXIV

VISITS TO THE NORTH-WEST. 1870; 1887; 1889

The North- West — Winnipeg — Skye Crofters — Immigration —
Annexation — The Canadian Pacific Railway — The Rocky
Mountains — British Columbia 414^423

xiv CONTENTS

CHAPTER XXV
CANADIAN POLITICS

PAGB8

The Relation of Canada to the Imperial Country — Confedera-
tion^— Quebec — Titles for Colonists — Political Parties —
Sir John Macdonald — George Brown — Alexander Mac-
kenzie — Edward Blake — John Sandfield Macdonald —
Joseph Howe — Francis Hincks — Sir Richard Cartwright
— Sir Charles Tapper — The Destiny of the Colonies — An-
nexation— "Canada First" — The Irish Question — Free
Trade — Reciprocity — The Temperance Question — The
Patrons of Industry — The Weekly Sun . . . 424-449

CHAPTER XXVI

MY LIFE IN CANADA. 1871-1910

Marriage — " The Grange " — Our Household — General Mid-
dleton — Civic Charities — The Governor-Generalship —
The Athletic Club — Literary Opportunities — The Uni-
versity Question — Sports — Last Days . . . 450-465

LIST OF ILLFSTKATIONS

GOLDWIN SMITH Frontispiece

Photograph by Elliott and Fry.

PAOIN5 PAGES

DR. RICHARD PRITCHARD SMITH 12

Goldwin Smith's Father.

FACSIMILE OP LAST PARAGRAPH ON PAGE 25 . . . .25

GOLDWIN SMITH AT ABOUT FORTY YEARS OF AGE . . 75
Photograph by J. H. Guggenheim, Oxford.

GOLDWIN SMITH AT ABOUT FORTY YEARS OF AGE . . 132

Copy of a photograph by Mayall, of Brighton. (The original
hangs in the Common Room of University College, Oxford.)

FACSIMILE OF PARAGRAPH ON PAGE 183 183

Showing (i) original manuscript (as dictated to me); (ii) an
addition in pencil, and (iii) an emendation in ink, by the

author.

PHOTOGRAPH OF A BUST OF GOLDWIN SMITH . . . 272
Made at Oxford about 1866, by Alexander Munro.

GOLDWIN SMITH AT ABOUT FORTY-FIVE YEARS OF AGE . 365
Photograph by C. H. Howes, of Ithaca, N.Y.

GOLDWIN SMITH AT SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS OF AGE . . 399
Photograph by Dixon, of Toronto.

GOLDWIN SMITH AT SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS OF AGE , . 424
Photograph by Dixon, of Toronto.

THE GRANGE . „ 450

Mr. Goldwin Smith's hcfose at Toronto.

PHOTOGRAPH OF A DEATH-MASK OF GOLDWIN SMITH . . 464
Made by Mr. Walter S. Allward, of Toronto, on June the ninth,
1910.

REMfflSOENOES

CHAPTER I

BOYHOOD
1823-1834

Reading— Social Life— My Father and Family— Our House —
Old Customs.

THE old town of Reading, with its still quaint-looking
streets, its ruined abbey and friary; its memories of
medieval Congresses and Roundhead sieges, sleeps, as
my memory paints it, in the summer sun. It is a very
quiet place. The mail-coaches travelling on the Bath
road at the marvellous rate of twelve miles an hour
change horses at The Crown and the Bear. So do the
travelling carriages and post-chaises of the wealthier
wayfarer. The watchman calls the hour of the night.
From the tower of old St. Lawrence's Church the curfew
is tolled. My nurse lights the fire with the tinder-box.
Over at Caversham 1 a man is sitting in the stocks. In
the streets are figures o£ a generation now bygone.
Mrs. Atkins Wright, the great lady of the neighbour-
hood, comes in with her carriage-and-four, postillions

P A parish IE Oxfordshire, a mile from Reading.]
B 1

2 REMINISCENCES

in gorgeous liveries, and an out-rider, Mr. Fyshe
Palmer/ the Radical Member for the borough, is known
by his Whig costume of blue coat and buff waistcoat,
with a curious little hat stuck on his powdered head.
The Quaker dress abounds. It is worn by Huntley
and Palmer, who keep a little biscuit-shop in London
Street, where a little boy buys cakes, and from which
has since sprung the biscuit factory of the universe.
The shop of the principal draper is the ladies' Club.

Into old St. Lawrence's Church, not yet restored, the
Mayor and Aldermen march, robed, with the mace
borne before them. In the pulpit, orthodoxy drones
undisturbed by Ritualism or the Higher Criticism. The
clerk below gives out the Christmas Hymn, saying at
the end of each line "Hal ! " in which he does not recog-
nize an abbreviation of " Hallelujah." On a high seat
in a high-backed pew sits a little boy, wishing the ser-
mon would end, staring at the effigy of St. Lawrence on
the capital of a pillar overhead, and wondering what
the man could have been doing on the gridiron. Now
and then his ear catches the sound of the Beadle's
cane waking up a slumbering charity-boy to the ortho-
dox excellence of the sermon. Compulsory Chapel
at Eton and Oxford confirmed the impression compul-
sory Church at Reading had made.

The clergyman, the docto?, the splicitor, the banker,

[l diaries Fyshe Palmer, seven times elected Member for Read-
ing, was born in 1769 and died in 1843. — See "The Town of Read-
ing." By W. M. Childs. Reading: University College. 1910.
Page 62.]

BOYHOOD 3

the brewer, the retired general and admiral who has
served under Wellington or Nelson, the retired mer-
chant, the widower or spinster with a good income,
form a social circle the members of which meet in each
other's houses, play whist, the old game of long whist
as played by Sarah Battle, and end with the temperate
tray of sandwiches and negus. For the young people
there are county balls, archery meetings, and other
suitable diversions. There is no globe-trotting, hardly
any departure from home, unless it be for health.
Life, if it is not very lively, is calm ; free from its present
restlessness, if it lacks its present interest. The young
are now, perhaps, by pastimes and summer gatherings,
brought more together than they were in those days
and provided with more pleasure. It may be doubted
whether the life of the elders is so social. A friend
with whom many years afterwards I was staying at
Sydenham pointed out to me from a hill the suburban
villas, from the number of which it would be supposed
there must be a good deal of society in the place.
"Yet," said he, "there is none. You cannot bring
those people together for any purpose whatever. The
man goes up to town by the morning train, spends the
day in business, comes back to dinner, reads the paper,
and falls asleep. For two months each year the pair
go into lodgings by fchemselves at the seaside." The
society of such a place as Reading, in my early days
stationary, so that people passed their lives together,
is now shifting. Those who have made their fortune

4 REMINISCENCES

in business are nowadays always changing their abode
in quest of an Eden, and some of them chase the vision
till they die.

In the pulpit of the adjoining parish of St. Mary's
the Higher Criticism had just dawned. Milman/ who
was the Vicar, read German theology and gave
his congregation a slight taste of it, which was not
much relished. He also, being a poet, introduced new
hymns, to the disparagement of Brady and Tate.2
Orthodoxy confronted him in the person of a retired
East Indian, whose .objections were sometimes aud-
ible in the Church. One Sunday afternoon the adver-
sary inarched out of Church. It was supposed, as
a theological protest. But it afterwards transpired
that he had found the key of the curry-powder in his
pocket.

From this state of things I have lived into an age of'
express-trains, ocean greyhounds, electricity, bicycles,
globe-trotting, Evolution, the Higher Criticism, and
general excitement and restlessness. Reading has
shared the progress. The Reading of my boyhood
has disappeared almost over the horizon of memory.
Whither is the train rushing, and where will the ter-
minus be?

In that quiet town one of the quietest streets was

P Henry Hart Milman, afterwards Etean of St. Paul's; author
of "History of Christianity under the Empire"; " Latin Chris-
tianity "; etc. 1791-1868.]

p Nicholas Brady and Nahum Tate wrote a metrical version of
the Psalms.]

BOYHOOD 5

Friar Street, in which my father lived. He was a
physician in very good practice, personally much
respected, and very kind to the poor. He was the son
of the Rector of Long Marston in Yorkshire, and grand-
son of the Rector of Wellington. The family, I believe,
came from Wyburnbury in Cheshire, in the church of
which parish there is a tomb with armorial bearings
the same as ours. The little mansion-house of the
family at Wyburnbury has disappeared; but its out-
line is preserved by the shape of the modern house
built upon its site. I never attempted to trace the
pedigree. A genealogy composed by my brother-in-
law, Mr. Homer Dixon,1 is, I fear, totally unauthentic.
Our coat of arms denotes connection with the Prit-
chards, a Welsh family.

My mother's maiden name was Breton, a mark of
Huguenot descent. She was one of a numerous family
of brothers and sisters. She was the niece and almost
the adopted daughter of Mr. Goldwin of Vicar's Hill
near Leamington, a West India merchant, whose name
I bear.

One day I was suddenly called home from school.

P His wife's brother, Benjamin Homer Dixon, Knight of the
Order of the Netherlands Lion, Consul-General of the Netherlands
in Canada. — See "The Border or Riding Clans; Followed by a
History of the Clan Diokson, and a Brief Account of the Family
of the Author, B. Homer Dixon, K.L.N." Albany: Joel MunselTs
Sons. 1889. Page 213. —Also "Brief Account of the Family of
Homer or de Homere of fittingshall, Co. Stafford, Eng., and Boston,
Mass." (Same publishers and date.) Page 23. — Also "The
Scotch Border Clan Dickson, the Family of B. Homer Dixon, and
the Family of De Homere or Homer." Toronto. 1884. Page 35.]

6 EEMINISCENCES

I found the house in gloom. I was taken to my
mother's bedside ; she spoke to me very tenderly, then
told me to go and have my supper, and she would see
me again. I saw her no more. The loss of her was the
great misfortune of my life.1

Already, before my mother's death, three little
coffins had left the door. It is hard to be born only to
suffer and die. Seventy years afterwards, when I
was living in Canada, a drawer which I had not before
noticed, in a desk which had belonged to my mother,
being opened, revealed the relics of a little sister;
her hair, her silver knife,, fork and spoon, the stones
which were to form her necklace, the double guinea
given her on her birthday. One boy remained beside
myself.3 A brave boy he was, and a good soldier he
would have made. He went with me to Eton, and had
just got his commission 8 in the army when he died.
His disease I have no doubt was appendicitis, the exist-
ence of which was unknown in those days and for which
there could have been no operation, as there were no
anaesthetics in those days.

Our house in Friar Street stood on ground which
had once belonged to the Abbey. In the garden, an
apparent wreck, its limbs held together by chains, yet
bearing fruit abundantly, stood a mulberry tree,

P She died on the nineteenth of November, 1833, when Goldwin
Smith was ten years old.]

P Arthur Smith. Born 1827 ; died 1845.]

[» The Commission is dated the 6th and 7th of November,
1843.]

BOYHOOD 7

believed to be one of those planted in the time of Eliza-
beth to introduce the silk trade. The garden was full
of the old-fashioned flowers which horticulturists have
now discarded, though those old flowers, the moss-rose,
the lily-of-the-valley, and the columbine, inferior in
size and brilliancy to the new, were perhaps superior
in form. In an adjoining garden rose the stately sum-
mer-house, with gilded ball, of Dr. Ring, a leader of
the Evangelical party in those days. I see the old
man now playfully shaking his cane at me when he was
on his way to a sermon and I was galloping off on my
pony. That scene the Great Western Railway has
swept away.

We children in those days at Christmastide looked
joyously forward to three festivals, — Christmas Eve
and Day, Twelfth Night, and New Year's Day. At
Christmas there was in every household a feast with
turkey, plum pudding, and mince pie.

At midnight on Christmas Eve the child as he lay in
bed lieard with ravishment mixed with awe the music
of the Waits in the street. The Mummers, lineal repre-
sentatives perhaps of the Miracle Plays in the Middle
Ages, went in their fantastic disguises from house to
house, singing the hymn, "Christ is Born in Bethlehem.''
All houses were decked with the evergreen holly and its
bright berries, a piece of which, by the way, was sent
the other day to The Grange from England by an old
servant who had left us thirty years before. At Christ-
mas the children looked for gifts, though I do not

8 REMINISCENCES

remember any Santa Glaus. The poor were feasted,
and I think there was something like an opening of all
hearts. We in Canada — the Anglicans among us,
at all events — have preserved all this in some measure,
though perhaps with some abatement from the feelings
of the old time in the old land. Perhaps the feeling
about the sacredness of the season and belief in the
historical certainty of that birth in Bethlehem may
have somewhat declined. On Twelfth Night, the Feast
of the Epiphany, twelve days after Christmas, we had
parties for the children, with feasting on iced cakes
decked with little sugar figures, and playing at snap-
dragon, that is, plucking raisins out of a dish of blazing
brandy. There was also drawing for King and Queen,
a custom of which I never knew the origin or the con-
nection with the ecclesiastical festival. New Year's
Day again brought feastings and gifts, with good wishes
for the New Year. Both on Christmas Day and on
New Year's Day there were family gatherings, more
easily brought about in the tight little island than they
are here. I do not remember that New Year's Day
in England was a special day for paying calls, or that
it was supposed that by it enmities were buried.

Carnival in Protestant England, of course, there was
none, except among the Catholics. To the Protestant
child in England Good Friday was, in fact, a feast,
since it brought him hot cross buns. Cries of "One a
penny, two a penny, hot cross buns ! " were heard in
all the streets.

BOYHOOD 9

The next festival, if it could be called one, was May
Day, the observance of which was connected with no
religious ordinance or event, with no Christian ordi-
nance at least, but with the revival of nature at the
coming of spring, which could nowhere be more fitly
celebrated than in England, with her verdant beauty,
her green lanes, and hedgerows white with blossoms
of May, her meadows full of cowslips and primroses,
her woods full of purple and white hyacinths and vocal
with the song of birds. In the days of Henry VIII
and Elizabeth, May Day had been celebrated with
sylvan pageantry and sports under the greenwood tree.
In later days the decoration of the house with branches
of May was about the only form of celebration generally
left.

May Day was the one day of happiness in the sad
year for the poor chimney-sweeps, children of misery,
parish orphans for the most part, but not seldom kid-
napped for that most cruel trade. They came fantas-
tically arrayed in rags of many colours and danced
round a portable bower with a boy in it, clattering their
shovels and brooms. They were repaid by a good
dinner, the only one probably that they tasted in the
year. Among many advances of humanity this hideous
calling has now been long extinct. The legend was that
a child, the son of a wealthy mother, living in a great
mansion where now* the British Museum stands, had
been kidnapped and made a sweep; that on May Day
his master unconsciously brought him to sweep the

10 REMINISCENCES

chimneys in Ms mother's house; that he recognized
his old room, crept into the bed, and was found there
by his mother. The day of his recovery was made the
Feast of Sweeps.

On the Fifth of November, when I was young, the
boys chaired about the streets a stuffed figure of gro-
tesque appearance, which was afterwards burned with
much shouting. Squibs and crackers were being
everywhere let off through the day, and at night there
were fireworks. The grotesque figure was Guy Fawkes,
and the squibs and fireworks were in memory of the
Gunpowder Plot. Though the privileges of childhood,
especially a mischievous privilege, such as letting off
fireworks in the streets, are tenacious of life, I should
not expect, if I were now to visit England, to see the
Fifth of November generally kept in the old style.
The memory of the Gunpowder Plot is offensive to
Catholics, the feeling against whom has died away.

Boyhood has other gala days. There is a great
cheese fair, a relic of medieval commerce, when the
Forbury is paved with cheese and filled with enchanting
booths and shows. There is election time, delightful
to the boy, the polling lasting for a week, the town
being all the time paraded by the rival processions with
banners and music and the whole winding up with
the chairing of the successful candidate. We had the
greatest day of all when the Reform Bill of 1832 was
carried, and the opening of an era of perfect govern-
ment and popular bliss was celebrated in the Forbury

BOYHOOD 11

with races, games, running in sacks, climbing greasy
poles, chasing pigs with greased tails, and bobbing for
cherries, winding up with fireworks in the evening.

Between that state of things and the present there
is only a single lifetime ; yet I feel as if I were writing
of antiquity.

CHAPTER II

MORTIMER
1848-

The Parish— Rural Society— Fox-hunting — The Duke of Well-
ington—Miss Mitford— Sir Henry Russell— John Walter
—Sir John Mowbray — Lord Lyons— Sir Roderick and Lady
Murchison,

MY father married again.1 His second wife was
Katherine, daughter of Sir Nathaniel Dukinfield,2
Baronet. She was an excellent woman, managed her
household admirably, and was very good to the poor,
who thronged to her funeral when she died. She
was a relic of the old style, saying 'goold/ 'Room/
(for Rome), 'sennight ' (for week), ' dish of tea.' About
1848, my father, having independent means, gave up

P "November 13, 1839. — At Heckfield, R. P. Smith, esq.
M.D., to Katherine, daughter of the late Sir. Nath. Dulrinfield,
Bart." — Gentleman's Magazine for January, 1839: new series,
vol. ri, p. 89.]

[2 Sir Nathaniel DukMeld was the fifth Baronet. His wife
Katherine was a sister of John Warde, the noted fox-hunter, of
Squerries in Kent. Sir Nathaniel died October the 20th, 1824*
He was succeeded by Ms second son, John Lloyd DuHnfield; he,
again, in 1837, by his brother, the Rev. Henry Robert DukMeld,
(fourth son of Nathaniel) Vicar of St. Martin's-in-the-Pields — at
whose house Mr. Goldwin Smith often stayed. — See the close of
Chapter X.]

DR. RICHARD PRITCHARD SMITH.

Goldwin Smith's Father.

MORTIMBB 13

his profession, in which, however, he had been very
successful, and retired to a country house at Mortimer,
eight miles from Reading. The country there, though
unrenowned, was lovely, with a rich view of English
landscape from every eminence. The parish, while it
was thoroughly rural, was social, containing several
mansions. A new curate, when asked by the Bishop
whether his cure was not very interesting, could reply,
"Very interesting indeed, my Lord; I have seven
parishioners who give fish and soup." Still, even here
the lot of the labourer was hard, and his life of toil was
too apt to end in the grim Workhouse which marred
the beauty of the landscape. There was deep pathos
in the melancholy complacency with which he looked
forward to a decent funeral. I am glad that I stood on
the platform with Joseph Arch,1 who had a good work
to do and did it honestly, with simplicity, and well;
though, like other agitators, he may have found it
difficult to end the campaign when his battle had been
won.

The jaeighbourhood was not unhistoric. Hard by
was Silchester City, with its .massive walls, a monument
of Imperial Rome. Our windows looked on a rising
ground with trees which in their disposition still bore

P Joseph Arch, the founder of the National Agricultural La-
bourers' Union, and the strenuous advocate for the amelioration
of the agricultural labourer's condition, was born at Barford, in
Warwickshire, in 1826, the son of a shepherd : he visited Canada in
1873; was President of the Birmingham Radical Union in 1883;
entered Parliament in 1885.]

14 REMINISCENCES

the trace of a Plantagenet hunting-lodge. Old Upton
Manor House, with its hiding-places for the hunted
Jesuit or priest, recalled the religious struggles of the
Tudor times.

The farmers in those days were conservative. They
ploughed with four horses, they voted with the Squire.
They attended the Parish Church, from neighbourly
feeling fully as much as on religious grounds. The
labourer went to Church rather under pressure, prefer-
ring the little Methodist Chapel in a sly corner of the
Parish, the eyesore of the Parson and the Squire,
though he looked to his Parish Church for christening,
marriage, and burial. A change was fast coming over
the relation between the farmer and the labourer.
They now no longer eat at the same board. The farm-
er's wife has become a lady with a piano, looking
down on the farm-hands. What has wrought the
change ?

The Parson was the social, as well as the spiritual
guide, and the almoner of the Parish. Much depended
on him, especially where the Squire was not regularly
resident. Our Parson, Harper, afterwards Bishop of
Christ Church, New Zealand, was excellent. But in
some neighbouring Parishes, especially where the
Living was in the gift of very close Colleges, and the
Incumbent, truly so called, was an old Fellow of the
College who had spent half his life boozing in Common
Room while he was waiting for preferment, things
were not so well. One of these spiritual Pastors going

MORTIMER 15

up to a College festival and taking his Churchwarden
with him was by the Churchwarden put to bed in his
boots. I fancy that though the peasantry could not
fail to be grateful for the services of such a Parson as
Harper or Fraser,1 there was always in their minds a
lurking suspicion of the black police.

Squires differed as much as Parsons. On the average
they were not so good; for a man must be made of
fine clay if he will conscientiously perform his duty
when he is not obliged. Some Squires were agricul-
tural improvers, builders of model cottages, just to
the poor. Most of them, in those days, at all events,
were resident; globe-trotting had not come in; the
passion for life in pleasure-cities was not so strong as
it is now. Nor had agricultural depression and loss
of rents begun to drive the lord of the mansion from
his home. Some years ago, revisiting England, I
was the guest of an old friend in an historic house to
which it was evident he had difficulty in clinging. In
walking we came to a point where we looked across a
valley to the new palace of a Jewish financier, and I
could read my old friend's thoughts in his face.

Rural society in England has been changing, and so
have its outward features. Some years ago I com-
missioned an artist in England to paint for me a series
of drawings representing things as they had been in
our neighbourhood when I was young. It was with

P James Fraser (181&-1885), Bishop of Manchester. See page
20 infra.]

16 REMINISCENCES

difficulty that an old homestead and thatched cottage
were found. The Churches, all but one, had been
restored by Ritualism, which, though a change back-
ward, was a change.

Country houses were beautiful; but in country
society there was no enchantment. You rolled eight
or ten miles to a large dinner party; you talked horses
and roads, heard perhaps after dinner some lady play
her grand piece on the piano ; and rolled home again.
There were county balls and, in Summer, archery
meetings. Garden parties were not yet. For the
men the cover-side was the Club. Next to the Lord-
Lieutenant in importance was the Master of the Hounds.
Our Master of the Hounds, when I was first at Mortimer,
was Sir John Cope.1 He lived at Bramshill, a palace
built by James I on the skirt of what was then a forest
country as a hunting-box for his son, Prince Henry,
whose guest Archbishop Abbot was when he acciden-
tally killed the Keeper. Sir John was a type of his class.
He hunted a wide country. In Winter his life was
spent in the saddle; in Summer in training horses.
He swore in good old style. "Sir John's pretty well
in his swearing, sir," was his groom's answer to my
father's inquiry after his health. Having no wife or
child, he lived alone in that vast pile. At length he
became "paralyzed, and could only sit on the terrace to
see the hounds meet. His last solace was to have them

[l Eleventh Baronet, second son of Sir John Cope, the sixth
Baronet. He died jn 1851.]

MORTIMER 17

called over by the Huntsman at his bedside. The
end of the fox-hunter's life was apt to be dreary. I
remember another of them who, having outlived his
Melton set, living, like Cope, alone in a great mansion,
and, like him, paralyzed, had no solace but shooting
rabbits, which he did sitting in a cart on a music-stool,
the stool enabling him to turn his paralyzed side enough
for a shot. The rabbits, which he preserved, probably
ate up a quarter of his rents.

Not far off was the country of Assheton Smith,1
paragon and pride of all fox-hunters, who hunted his
own hounds when he was past seventy and performed
marvellous feats of horsemanship, clearing a canal by
leaping on and off a barge, leaping up hill a rail over
which, when he had carried away the top bar, nobody
could follow. His horses were so thoroughly trained
to take everything at which he put them that one of
them, when the rider was looking back after a lag
hound, jumped with him into the middle of a pond.
Assheton Smith went to hunt with old John Warde,2
a relative of my stepmother, called the Father of Fox-
hunting, at Squerries, Wardens place in Kent. There

P Thomas Assheton Smith, born 1776 ; educated at Eton and
Oxford ; member of the Marylebone cricket club ; M.P. for Andover,
1821-1832; and for Carnarvonshire, 1832-1834 ; master of the Quorn
hounds, of the Burton hounds, the Penton hounds, and the Ted-
worth hounds. Died in 1858.]

P John Warde, of Squerries, in Kent, "one of the most celebrated
men who was ever known in the hunting world." He was an
M.F.H. for more than half a century. Hunted the Pytchley
country from 1794 till 1808.1

18 REMINISCENCES

was a frost. But Warde had the hounds out to show
them to his guest. Smith desired to see them find a fox,
Warde consented, but said he must whip off at the
edge of the cover. Smith gave a look which Warde
understood, and said, ' ' If that's what you mean, get upon
Blue Ruin " — Wardens favourite horse. Smith got upon
Blue Ruin, had a run of twenty minutes over a frozen
country, and killed. Warde deserved his sobriquet.
Winter after winter he left his beautiful mansion to
hunt some distant county, lodging where he could,
and telling his wife that any room was large enough
for a gentleman in which he could put on his stockings
without opening the door. He would take at once into
his service, without inquiry into character, any bold
rider or good driver, sometimes to the dismay of his
wife, a worthy woman, who tried to civilize these waifs.
Looking out of window at Hatchett's in Piccadilly, he
saw an urchin drive a four-in-hand coach up to the
door in good style. He went down at once and took
the urchin into his service. They were sitting in the
drawing-room at Squerries one Sunday evening when
the urchin was announced to say his Collect. Mrs.
Warde, who was rather deaf, went into the next room
to hear him. The door between the rooms being left
ajar, they heard the urchin, instead of his Collect,
repeat "Dickory, Dickory Dock," etc., at the end of
which he was praised for saying his Collect so well and
rewarded with a shilling.
There was a fellow-feeling among fox-hunters, at

MORTIMEB 19

least among the veterans. My father found himself
on his travels, in a city where he was not known, short
of cash. He went to a Bank and tendered a cheque,
saying that as he was unknown to them, he would call
in a day or two for the money. But the Banker cashed
the cheque at once, saying, "I saw you cross the street;
I knew from your gait that you were a fox-hunter;
you are sure to be honest." I had myself once to meet
in conference a Tory Peer, who evidently regarded me,
as a Liberal, with some suspicion; but it happening to
come out that I followed the hounds, his brow seemed
to clear, and our conference proceeded happily. He
probably thought that in any man who followed the
hounds there must be a remnant of good.

There were still hunting parsons. We had one in
our parish, who, however, had given up his profession
and was said only to put on a white tie when he was
going to deal for a horse. There was another near us
who, when sentiment grew stricter, was called to ac-
count by the Bishop. "Mr. Blank, I have not a word
to say against your ministrations. But this is a tat-
tling world, and they tell me that you hunt." "It is
indeed a tattling world, my Lord. They say your
Lordship goes to the Queen's balls." "It is true that
when I am invited by Her Majesty I do not think it
proper to decline. But I am never in the room in
which the dancing is going on." "That is just my case,
my Lord. I have only one old mare, and I am never
in the field in which the hounds are."

20 REMINISCENCES

James Eraser,1 afterwards Bishop of Manchester,
was rector of the next parish. He was no less first-
rate as a horseman than he was afterwards as Bishop,
the firm seat and light hand perhaps still coming into
play. Kingsley 2 was to be met in the hunting-field.
Perhaps this helped him with Sir John Cope, who was
patron of the good living of Eversley.

The farmers in those days could afford to share the
sport, and, provided you kept clear of young wheat
and beans, had no objection to your riding over their
fields. This will hardly continue. Fox-hunting will
share the general change. Already it has become rather
artificial, and more like a steeplechase than a hunt,
little notice being taken of the working of the hounds,
which had been the great point with the fox-hunters
of old. However, it gave me some merry days, and
an addition to my rather scanty stock of health. As
Freeman,3 the scourge of fox-hunters, is gone, I may
venture to say that few pleasures can equal a good run.
To shooting I did not so much take. If I enjoyed a
season in the Highlands, it was more for the air, the
scenery, the heather, and the lunch when the ladies
came out to meet us by the burn's side, than for the
grouse. Not in Scotland, but in America, I once shot

P Bishop of Manchester from 1870 till Ms death in 1885. Born
in 1818.]

[2 Charles Kingsley, Canon of Westminster, author of "Alton
Locke," "Westward Ho!" etc.]

P Professor B. A. Freeman, the historian of the Norman Con-
quest.]

MORTIMER 21

a deer. I did not kill it and they had to cut its throat.
I shall never forget the pitiful look of its soft eyes.
Never would I have shot at another deer.

Not being a smoker — for they would not let us
smoke at Eton and nobody smoked in my College —
I have often wondered in what the pleasure of smoking
consists. Is it an anodyne for the overwrought brain?
Whenever there was a long check, out came the cigars.
But those brains were not overwrought.

We were in the next parish to Strathfieldsaye, the
country-seat of the Duke of Wellington. The old
Duke performed all the duties of lif e, and among them,
when he could, that of country gentleman. When his
work in town permitted, he came down, called on bis
neighbours, entertained them, and showed himself to
his people. I turned up one of his ample visiting-cards
with his "F.M." the other day. There was a farm
which ran into his estate and which he wished to buy;
but it was held at too high a price. One day on his
arrival at Strathfieldsaye he was greeted by his bailiff
with the glad tidings that the owner of the farm was
in difficulties and was forced to sell at a low price.
"I don't want to take advantage of any man's diffi-
culties," he replied; "go and give him the fair price
for his land." He rode with hounds, but had a loose
military seat, and was sometimes thrown. He did
not like this to be noticed, and was far from pleased
when a farmer said to him, "I see your Grace often
parted from your saddle. Ye should tak oop your

22 REMINISCENCES

stirrups and ride as I do." He was tenacious of his
character as sportsman, and was greatly hurt when,
on account of his age, he ceased to be invited to the
Prince Consort's shooting parties. He kept a hunting
stud to the last, though he could ride no farther than
the cover-side. He had not much taste, and when a
Roman villa was opened on his estate and drew visitors
he had it covered up, saying that if people wanted to
see curiosities they must go to Italy. The Church at
Strathfieldsaye was in the park and was an uneccle-
siastical structure in a cruciform shape, with a cupola,
bespeaking the fantastic taste of the last Lord of
Strathfieldsaye. Gerald Wellesley, the Duke's nephew,
who was Rector of Strathfieldsaye, had often begged
the Duke in vain to build something more like a Church.
One day, however, the Duke said, " Gerald, I begin to
think you are right. That building is not like a Church.
I'll tell you what I'll do ; I'll put a steeple on it." The
last time I saw the Duke was at the door of that Church.
He was told that one of his old generals had just died.
He looked grave for a moment as if he felt it to be a
warning. Then he said, "He was a very old man,
though"; put his arm in that of Lady Douro; and
trudged sturdily away. The Duke was cold and
aristocratic, or rather undemocratic, for he did not think
much of titular rank. His soldiers trusted rather than
loved him. He took too little thought for their claims
or for their comfort, and spoke of them with too little
feeling. But he was a noble model of simple devotion

MORTIMER 23

to duty, perfectly free from vanity, at least while his
mind remained unimpaired. A worshipper, it was said,
went up to him and begged to be allowed to take the
hand of the victor of Waterloo. " Don't make a
damned fool of yourself," was the hero's reply.

The second Duke I knew well, and was his guest at
Strathfieldsaye. He had something of his father's
features, though without the forehead, and a spark of
the intellect, but nothing of the character. He was
a mere sybarite. He was married to a beautiful woman,
and neglected her. It was said that when she com-
plained to the old Duke, who was very fond of her,
the answer was, "My dear, the Wellesleys have always
been bad husbands." Of the history of the old Duke's
marriage there were different versions, but no version
was happy. The common one was that he had formed
the engagement when the lady was in her beauty and
had kept it as a point of honour when she was pitted
with smallpox. This certainly was not true. The
fact, I believe, was that she rejected him; that he
went abroad, and on his return, when his love had
cooled, was persuaded by a friend of the lady to offer
himself again. But Wellington, the soul of duty, was
not warm-hearted, or likely to be a very loving mate.

Punctual in the performance of all the duties of life,
the old Duke of Strathfieldsaye went regularly to
Church. He had a gallery to himself, with a fireplace,
the fire in which, growing deaf, he was apt to poke
rather loud.

24 BEMINISCENCES

In a paddock at Strathfieldsaye, "Copenhagen,"
Wellington's charger at Waterloo, ended his days. "A
low-shouldered brute," the second Duke irreverently
called "Mm to my father. He was a half Arab, and the
breed, I believe, is apt to be low in the shoulder. The
formation, I fancied, was perceptible in the Equestrian
Statue which stood over the arch on Constitution Hill,
and which, grotesque as its position was, the old Duke
did not like to have removed.

The second Duke showed me a collection of likenesses
of Napoleon; I told him there was one he had not;
a bust taken at the time of the Egyptian expedition,
differing from the rest, as I thought, by showing some-
tiling more of enthusiasm and less of the hard look of
settled ambition. It was in possession of J6r6me
Bonaparte at Baltimore. The Duke asked me when
I returned to America to get him a photograph. The
first attempt was a failure. But afterwards J6r6me
showed himself a genuine Bonaparte by the develop-
ment of a cancerous tumour, of which he died. A
photograph of the tumour was taken for submission to
physicians at Paris. The photographer then got a good
impression of the bust, which I suppose is still at Strath-
fieldsaye.

It was difficult to find any one who had seen Napo-
leon. I made that remark at a dinner party, when a
voice near me said, "I saw Napoleon.37 It was Lord
Russell,1 who had paid Napoleon a visit at Elba, ac-

p Lord John Russell, first Earl Russell.]

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MORTIMER 25

counts of which are already in print. I asked Lord
Russell whether the common portraits were like. He
said they were. I asked him whether there was not
in the face that hard look of selfish ambition. This he
had not noticed; but he said, and repeated with em-
phasis, that there was something very evil in the eye.
When Lord Russell spoke of war, Napoleon's eye flashed,
showing, what was certainly the fact, that the lust of
war was with him in itself a ruling passion. It is diffi-
cult to divine what else could have led him to invade
Russia. He evidently had no intention of restoring
Poland. He was immensely fat, Lord Russell said, and
this might account for his fatal lack of activity in his
last campaign.

Guizot told me that he had seen Napoleon at a win-
dow in the Tuileries. Brougham used to tell an anec-
dote of him which he said he had at first hand. In his
flight from Waterloo he showed his depression. The
member of his staff who was riding by his side thought
he might be sorrowing over his loss of so many old
companions-in-arms, and tried to comfort him by saying
that Wellington also must have lost many old com-
panions-in-arms. "He has not lost the battle," was
the only reply.

At Three-Mile-Oross, not far off, dwelt Miss Mitf ord,1
the authoress whose "Self ord Regis/7 portraying under
feigned names the characters of Reading, amused in

pMary Russell Mitford, author of "Our Village," etc. 1707-
1855.]

26 REMINISCENCES

its day. She had won a large sum in a lottery. It
was squandered by a worthless father, to whom she
remained a most devoted daughter. Her great friend
and literary ally was Talfourd,1 whose "Ion," though
now forgotten, is not without classical merit.

Another notable neighbour at Mortimer was Sir
Henry Russell 2 of Swallowfield, a retired Anglo-Indian
of distinction who had long been the Resident at Hyder-
abad. He was a fine specimen of the old Anglo-Indian
school* It being in his days a six months' voyage from
England to India, he had passed his life in Hindostan
and had learned to identify himself with the people.
No such word as "Nigger" ever passed his lips. He
seemed to regard a Hindoo gentleman as his equal,
though of a different race and religion. Missionaries
he abhorred. "No gentleman," he said, "ever changed
his politics or his religion." He was a man of refined
tastes, a good writer, and a model of urbanity. When
he was dying his medical man pressed on him a useless
draught, telling him it would do him good. "I am sure
it will," he said, "if it comes from your hand." He
had brought away from India a healthy frame, as he
said anyone might who would be temperate and careful.
He was an active local improver and a practical pioneer
of the reform of the Poor Law.

At Bearwood, not far off, lived the mortal enemy of

P Sir Thomas Noon Talf ourd, judge and author, M.P. for Reading,
1835, 1837, and 1841. Born in 1795, died in 1854.]

[2 Sir Henry Russell, second Baronet, eldest son of Sir Henry
RusseE, the first Baronet. Born 1783; died 1852.]

MORTIMER 27

the new Poor Law, John Walter/ of The Times. The
mighty Radical, as he then was, had pitched his tent
among Tory Squires, to whom his name was a terror
and with whom he for some time lived at war. He
had a very strong temper, was firm in friendship, and
inflexible in hate. When he was rebuked for the ran-
cour with which he assailed a public man who he thought
had betrayed him, and reminded that the Bible told
you to forgive your enemies, his answer was, "Yes; but
it doesn't tell you to forgive your friends." My father
was in treaty for the purchase of a house which had a
road running too near it. Application had been made
at Quarter Sessions for permission to turn the road.
The vendor happened to be a particular enemy of
Walter. Time after time Walter came with the only
two local allies which he had to Quarter Sessions, and
opposed the turning of the road. My father, happening
to meet him, asked him what could be the motive of
his opposition. It turned out that he had fancied that
the turning of the road was a condition of the purchase
and that the sale was hung up on that account. Learn-
ing that he was mistaken, he ceased to oppose the turn-
ing of the road.
In Mortimer lived Sir John Mowbray,2 the high Tory

p This was the third John Walter of The Times. He was M.P.
for Nottingham and for Berkshire. Born 1818 ; died 1894.]

[2The Right Honourable Sir John Robert Mowbray, the first
Baronet, was the only son of Robert Stribling Cornish, of Exeter. He
assumed the surname of Mowbray upon his marriage. Born in 1815 ;
died 1899.]

28 REMINISCENCES

member for the University of Oxford. His high Tory-
ism did not interfere with our friendship, which was
kept up by correspondence when I had left England.
The value of the English rule which forbids politics
to interfere with social relations is felt when one's
lot is cast where that rule does not prevail and people
feel at liberty to indulge their personal propensities
under cover of political opinion. Mowbray was very
interesting, for he was an epitome of the House of
Commons.

We had visitors at Mortimer; one of them was Admi-
ral, afterwards Lord, Lyons/ a man of keen intelli-
gence and thorough knowledge of the world, as well as a
great naval commander. He had been Ambassador 2 at
Athens, and told some good stories of those days.
There was to be a Court Ball. A British Consul and
his family came to Athens for it. Lyons lunched with
them on the day. A little boy asked for something on
the table. Being refused, he asked for it again, threat-
ening to tell if they would not give it to him. Again
they refused. He flourished his spoon, and shouted,
"Grandmamma's dead." It had been agreed to keep
the old lady's demise quiet till after the Ball. Lyons
gave a diplomatic dinner to propitiate an offended
Oriental. There was an iced pudding, which being
taken to the guest of honour first, he, seeing something

P Edmund Lyons, first Baron Lyons of Christchureh. Born
1890; died in 1858.}

p "Minister Plenipotentiary," I think this should be.]

MORTIMER 29

unctuous, helped himself to it and put a large piece in
his mouth. He jumped up, furious, spluttering, and
rushed out of the room. Lyons followed him and found
him implacable. His mouth was burnt; it was an
abominable trick ; else why had the pudding been taken
to him first ? He went away unappeased, and diplo-
macy missed its mark.

Other visitors were Sir Roderick and Lady Murchi-
son.1 Sir Roderick was a cavalry officer who had taken
to science, and being rich became its Amphitryon.
Lady Murchison was very bright. She and I went to
see Maple Durham, a fine Elizabethan house near Read-
ing. Across the grounds there was a public path from
which there was a good view of the mansion, to the lord
of which the path, trenching on his privacy, was an
eyesore. We were standing on this path to look at
the house when a servant came up and said, " Strangers
are not allowed to stand here/' "Are they not?" said
Lady Murchison; "then will you kindly fetch me a
chair." Sir Roderick had been invited by the Czar
Nicholas to survey the mining region of the Urals.
He became intimate with the Czar, and testified, there
is no doubt truly, to the Czar's perfect good will to
England.

I cannot help mentioning my father's household as
almost a relic of old times. It was a household in the

ri Sir Roderick Impey Murchison, first Baronet. He published
"The Silurian System" in 1838. Director General of the Geologi-
cal Survey in 1855. Born in 1792; died 1871 .]

30 REMINISCENCES

true sense of the term. In it were five tipper servants
whose united terms of service with my father, my step-
mother; or both, were two hundred and thirty years.
They thoroughly identified themselves with the family
and its interests, and when the household was broken
up, took their pensions, and went into no other service.
I am afraid they were not highly educated; I doubt
whether they could have produced a grammatical
letter among them. The old coachman, who had been
with my father more than fifty years, could neither
read nor write. He was excellent in his calling, and
not without refinement of feeling. When his mistress
was dying, he sent her up a rose as his farewell. Grow-
ing very old, he had a fit upon the box. They wanted
him to give up the reins, promising him as a pension
his full wages and his house. But he said that if he
ceased to drive the family he would die; the medical
man said he believed he would. The master and
mistress seldom left home, and treated the domestics
not as servants, but as members of a household. House-
holds are hardly possible now; in America it seems
almost unexampled.

Who now lives in the old house, thinking nothing
of its former inmates ? Who strolls beneath those elms
in the summer evening, and looks over the lawn to the
farm on the hill which marks the site of the Plantagenet
hunting-seat? Whose is now the room from the win-
dow of which, rising to my early studies, I used to see
the moon and the morning star together in the sky?

MORTIMER 31

If you wish to give yourself a fit of the blues, you can-
not do better than think of the haunts of your youth
and call up the forms once familiar which have long
since become dust.

CHAPTER HI

SCHOOL
1831-1840

School— School-life — Eton — Dr. Goodall, the Provost— The
Head Master, Hawtrey— William IV— Queen Victoria —
Schoolmates.

To return to Friar Street, Reading, and the little
boy. At eight years old I was sent, as the custom
then was, to a boarding school. Being sickly, I was
sent to one on the Downs, near Bath, for the sake of
the air* The air did me good ; so perhaps did the idle-
ness. The master was an ex-Lieutenant of Marines
who had taken Orders. He knew little, and did not
attempt to teach us much. School was over at one.
After dinner we went to the playing-field or were taken
to the Downs, where we collected fossils, butterflies,
and plants. My little brain rested, my health im-
proved; perhaps I owe it to those fallow years that,
having set out with a veiy weak constitution, I am able
to do some work at eighty-four. I sometimes say
that if I have outlived four successors in my Chair of
History at Oxford, I owe it to having been at two idle
schools, as both Monkton Farley and Eton were.
Speaking seriously, are not the brains of children

SCHOOL 33

overworked? I suffered, however, from want of early
grounding.

Though the school was expensive, our fare was such
as any English boy, still more any American boy, at
the present day would regard with disgust. For break-
fast we had three squares of bread and butter and a
mug of tea. For dinner we had one helping of meat
and one of pudding. The supper was the same as the
breakfast. However, in five years I never was in bed
for sickness, nor do I remember that any one of my
schoolmates was.

The custom of sending children to boarding-schools
was, however, rather cruel. The child had not a little
to suffer by severance from his home ; his home affec-
tions were deadened; he was early familiarized and
too often indoctrinated with evil. A boarding-school
is seldom free from bullying, which makes strong boys
tyrants and weak boys cowards. An experienced
Oxford tutor said that his best pupils came from home
with a good day-school ; the next best from the great
public schools; those of the third grade from private
boarding-schools; and the worst of all from the private
tutors. It is just to the private tutors to say that to
them the desperate cases were generally turned over
from the public schools. The home as well as the day-
school must be good.

The names and faces of my schoolmates at Monkton
Farley are as fresh in my memory as if I had just left
the school; while I forget the names and faces of

34 REMINISCENCES

people to whom I was introduced yesterday. What is
memory? What is it that stores up these myriads of
impressions and retains them for seventy years ? It is
of course something physical, since the receptive or
retentive power of the retina is diminished, as I know
too well, by old age. The connections are not less
mysterious than the retention. I was travelling the
other day in a railway carriage, when suddenly there
occurred to my mind the name Heydukoff.1 With great
difficulty, after some time, I recollected that it was the
name of a hotel at Dresden where I had once dined in
1847 to taste a particular dish. Nothing had happened
since to recall the incident to my mind; nor was there
anything in the surroundings to suggest it. Here is
one riddle for physiology still to solve. Another, per-
haps, is the spontaneous action of the imagination in
sleep, originating scenes and incidents which have had
no counterpart in our waking life. But this by the
way.

Still there is a glamour over the memories of our
school days. Forty years after leaving Monkton
Farley I was standing in a crowd at Dublin when I
was touched upon the shoulder, and, turning roundr
was accosted by one of my schoolmates whom I had not
seen or heard of since we parted at Monkton Farley
school. I think I never enjoyed an evening more than

P H. Heydukoff was a "Restaurateur" in Dresden at Frauen-
strasse 12 (Palace of Cosel) in 1848; at ffrauengasse 10 in 1849;
and at Luttiehaustrasse 23, part, in 1850 and 1851.]

SCHOOL 35

the one which, after our mutual recognition, I spent
with him at his house.

From a private school I went to Eton, trembling,
for I was still far from strong and did not know what I
might have to encounter in a great public school.
My fears were at once dispelled. Fagging was merely
one of the antiquities of the place, a remnant of the
days when the young used to wait upon their elders,
when the page of noble birth served for the company
in hall. In my time hardly anything remained of it
but the custom of laying for an upper boy his breakfast
and tea things, in return for which he owed you his
advice and protection. Bullying I neither encountered
nor witnessed. Bullying was mean, and Eton boys
were gentlemen; I enjoyed perfect freedom; played at
games or not as I chose; and " sapped," that is studied,
when I took to it, without the slightest molestation.
Perhaps if by sapping I had forced others to sap, I might
not have been so free from molestation.

A curious institution was the unreformed Eton of
those days. Nothing was taught but classics; even
mathematics were not part of the school course, nor
was the mathematical master a member of the staff.
It was said that when a mathematical teacher was
appointed he asked the Provost whether he was, like
the other masters, to wear a gown. ''That is as you
please." "Are the boys to take off their hats to me ? "
"That is as they please." Our lessons were, as they
had probably been for centuries, thirty lines, neither

36 REMINISCENCES

more nor less, of Homer, Virgil, Horace, Poetae Graeei,
or Scriptores RomanL In the sixth form we read a
Greek play. The thing most prized was Latin com-
position, especially in verse. If you wrote a good set
of verses, they were sent to the Provost, the Head
Master read them out to the class, and an asterisk was
put after your name in the school list. This would
now be deemed waste of time. For most of the boys
it was so then ; the few became very familiar with the
Latin poets and acquired form in composition. A
great London editor told me that the only members
of his staff who wrote in good form from the beginning
had practised Latin verse. Exercises were done out
of school, and there was no scruple about getting them
done for you or using old copies. On my arrival I
was offered by the servant of the boarding-house a col-
lection of old copies, indexed, so that you might be
pretty sure of finding something available when the
subject for themes or verses had been given out in
school.

There were one regular whole holiday and one half
holiday in every week. Saints' days were also holi-
days. You were never in school more than three-
quarters of an hour at a time. In morning-school you
said by heart the Greek or Latin poetry which you had
read in class. This was about the hardest part of the
work, which, as a whole, was really little more than a
formality.

To wider and more serious study of the classics,

SCHOOL 37

however, we were spurred in the higher part of the
school by annual competition for the Newcastle Scholar-
ship and medal, founded by the famous old anti-reform
Duke/ who, when taxed with coercion of his tenants
in elections, asked whether he had not a right to do as
he pleased with his own. Through an oversight on
the part of the Trustees the medal was not struck for
forty years. When the oversight was discovered, and
the winners, myself one of them, were hunted up, it
was seen how wide had been the divergence of the paths
in life of those whose starting-place had been the same.
One of them had turned Jesuit, and by the rule of his
Order was incapable of holding property in his medal.
Not a few received their mark of classical distinction
on the other side of the Styx. When one has lived
long, it is curious to look back to the beginnings of so
many careers and compare the expectations formed
of them with the careers and their close.

Many of the boys in those days were not destined
for the University. Many went into the army, espe-
cially into the Guards or the Light Cavalry regiments,
the diplomatic service, the Royal Household, and the
other pleasant pastures of aristocracy before competi-
tion. They still got commissions in the army young,
though not so young as they once had. I have seen a
letter written by an Eton boy, one of the Bathursts,
who had got his commission at fourteen and gone

p Henry Pelham Fiennes PeUiam Clinton, fourth Duke of New-
castle; 1785-1851.]

38 REMINISCENCES

straight to Waterloo. It ran: " Dear Mamma: Cousin
Tom and I are all right. I never saw anything like it
in my life." Eton in those days was altogether very
much wrapped up in herself, and thought less than she
probably does now of University honours. My brother
Arthur, who went with me to Eton, was destined for
the army. I was myself nearly going into the Indian
Civil Service.

Outside of the school course, however, there was in
that little commonwealth a good deal of intellectual
activity. Many of the boys came from political homes
and took a lively interest in public questions. "Pop,"
as the Debating Society, from being held over a ginger-
beer shop, was called, was very vivacious, and bred
orators, Gladstone among the number; though that
great man's eloquence lost by practice in debating
clubs at Eton and Oxford in freshness of style part of
what it gained in fluency.

Eton conservatism was grotesque. The nominal
" bounds " of former days were preserved. In reality
it was understood that there were no bounds and that
between school hours, until "lock-up," you might go
where you pleased, only that if you met a master out-
side the nominal bounds you had to "shirk/7 that is,
to make a show of keeping out of sight, while he was
bound in courtesy not to see you. The river was out
of bounds, though not only was boating the regular
and recognized amusement, but we were all required
to learn to swim. On Sunday afternoon the Castle

SCHOOL 39

Terrace, where the Kong1 showed himself and the
band played, was in bounds, while the way to it was
out of bounds. Eton rowed against Westminster at
Datchet. The match was on a Saint's day after after-
noon chapel. There was barely time for it between
the chapel and the evening calling-over — " absence,"
as it was curiously called. But to put off the calling-
over for an hour would have been a disturbance of
the spheres. So in chapel the reader rushed through
the service ; the choristers, for an anthem, sang three
Hallelujahs; while the Head Master sat in his stall,
looking perfectly unconscious that anything unusual
was at hand.

Games were still games when Waterloo was won on
the playing-fields at Eton. "Athletics/7 with all their
paraphernalia, were still in the womb of time. An
Eton boy would have stared if you had spoken to him
of gate-money. Nor was anybody killed or maimed
at football.

The College, that is, the Foundation, is now, since
the admission has been by merit, the pick of the school.
In those days it was in a low state, the nominations
being used by the Provost and Fellows as mere patron-
age. The Collegers were "Tugs," disrated by the
Oppidans, pigging in a vast and murky den called Long
Chamber, wearing stuff gowns, and not allowed to come
on the Oppidan's part of the river. They went off by
seniority to Fellowships at King's College, Cambridge,

p William IV.J

40 REMINISCENCES

and from the Fellows at King's, in deference to an evil
tradition, all the Eton masters were taken. The
ablest of the Fellows went off to professions, and the
school got what was left. Some of our masters were
very incompetent. I was for two years in class under
one who, though he was a good old soul and I love his
memory, knew no more than I did. They have hap-
pily changed all that. The Foundation has been
thoroughly reformed. It has been provided with better
lodgings than "Long Chamber"; the appointments to
it are made by examination; and there even seems to
be a danger of its absorbing too much of the best intel-
lect of the school and leaving the dough without the
leaven.

There was one master who had not been a Fellow
of King's, but having married the daughter of the Head
Master, Keate,1 had been brought in first to fill a gap,
and then permanently retained, though not without
discreditable manifestations of jealousy on the part
of some of his colleagues. Edward Coleridge2 was
nephew of the poet and philosopher, brother of the
judge, uncle of the Lord Chief Justice. I had the good
fortune to be his pupil and board in his house. A
deep scholar he was not ; but he was a maker of schol-

p John Keate, head roaster of Eton from 1809-1834. Born
1773; died 1852.]

P Son of James Coleridge, of Tiverton, Devon ; born in 1801 ;
Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, 1823-1826 ; Assistant Master at
Eton, 1824-1850 ; Lower Master, 1850-1857 ; Fellow, 1857 ; Vicar
of Maple Durham, Berks, 1862 until his death on the 18th of May,
1883. — Alumni Oxonienses, s.v.]

SCHOOL 41

ars. He inspired where he could not instruct. He
loved his pupil-room, and gave himself with his whole
heart to its service. His pupils requited his affection,
and to have been "in my tutor's house" has always
been among them a cherished memory and a bond.
Coleridge was the Arnold of Eton, so far as Eton could
have an Arnold, and there was sympathy between him
and the Arnold of Rugby.

Twice every Sunday, twice every holiday or Saint's
day, and on every Saturday afternoon, to kindle the
flame of piety in our souls, we were mustered at choral
service in the College Chapel. Only on Sunday did
we take Prayer-Books or even affect to join in the
service. Our attendance on other days was a mere
roll-call, two or three masters attending to keep order
and prevent our talking too loud or too visibly munch-
ing candies. On Sundays the Fellows, who were super-
annuated masters, preached, and the sermons of some
of them were not only platitudinous, but grotesque.
Old Plumptre1 was incomparable. He had a Puri-
tanic habit of putting everything into Scripture lan-
guage. When Owen the Socialist had, to Plumptre's
horror, been introduced by Lord Melbourne at Court,
he had "made Blastus, the Bong's Chamberlain,
his friend." Audible laughter would go round the
juvenile congregation, and I have seen the Masters

p Frederick Charles Plumptre, Fellow of University College,
Oxford, from 1817 to 1836 ; Tutor in 1820 ; Dean, and Bursar in 1821 ;
Vice-Chancellor of the University, 1848-1851 ; and Master of his
College from 1836 till Ms death in 1870.]

42 REMINISCENCES

themselves, unable to keep their gravity, ducking
behind their stalls. Once Plumptre's text was
" Woman." It introduced an invective against the
worship of the Virgin as divine. There was an-
other Fellow and preacher who wore a very high and
stiff neck-cloth in which every other sentence was
lost, while the alternate sentence was delivered in the
shrillest tone. If, therefore, some of us were want-
ing in love of our venerable and beautiful liturgy,
or were otherwise undevout, we were not without
an excuse.

The real religion of Eton was that of the Classical
Pantheon. It was said that once a boy, having some
spiritual perplexities, was simple enough to commu-
nicate them to the Head Master. The Head Master,
when he had recovered from the shock, told him that
he would give him an order on the bookseller for a
Greek Testament with notes.

The masters, however, did try to make the boys
" gentlemen/7 a character rather narrow and savouring
of caste, yet not worthless. Eton boys as a rule were
idle, nor was their moral standard high; there was
nothing in them like the moral aim or earnestness of
Arnold's pupils. But there was in them a genuine dis-
like of anything mean or cowardly. Their conversa-
tion was clean; they did not swear, or talk filth. I
believe it may be said that they were generally ashamed
to lie, and would not have lied to a master. Propriety
and cleanliness in dress were strictly enforced. Tall

SCHOOL 43

hats, white ties, black swallowtail coats, and low shoes,
not boots, were the regulation costume.

The Provost, Dr. Goodall,1 was outwardly and in-
wardly antique. He wore knee-breeches, a cassock,
shoes with buckles, and a wig. Against change of any
kind he set his face. He would allow no improvements
in the school course or in the appointment of masters.
He would not allow a curtain to be hung over the door
of the chapel, though half the sixth form, whose seats
were near the door, were laid up with colds. By his
command of the Eton vote in Parliament, he forced
the Great Western Railway out of its course, and its
eccentricities between Slough and Windsor are a monu-
ment of his love of the ancient ways. It was said, and
was hardly incredible, that when his letters were
brought by rail he would not open them till they ought
to have come by stage. He was autocrat, and under
him there could be no reform. His successor, Provost
Hodgson,2 had been a boon companion of Byron and
a translator of Juvenal. It might have been thought
that he was a liberal and a reformer. Instead of this,
he opposed all reform, even the proposal pressed by the
Head Master, Hawtrey,8 to give the school a free choice
of masters instead of being confined to the Fellows of
King's.

P Joseph Goodall, became Head Master in 1801, and Provost in

1809. Died in 1840.]

[2 Francis Hodgson, Provost from 1840 till his death in 1852.]
p Edward Craven Hawtrey, Assistant Master 1814-1834; Head

Master 1834r-1852; Provost 1852-1862.]

44 REMINISCENCES

Dr. E. Craven Hawtrey, the Head Master, was also a
singular figure, though in a very different way. As
Eton was contrasted with the high moral and religious
tension of Arnold's Rugby, so was Hawtrey contrasted
with Arnold. He was a man of the world, a man of
fashion, at home not only in London but in Parisian
society, a sumptuous Amphitryon, an elegant but far
from deep scholar, a writer of little verses in several
languages, a collector of choice books in superb bindings,
a connoisseur in wines, a dandy in dress. I see him now,
calling over the roll in his rich silk gown and cassock,
his gold eyeglass pendent from a heavy golden chain,
his foot, which was his only beauty, put forward in
his patent-leather boot ; now sitting in the sixth class
schoolroom and commending some happy rendering
of a phrase in Horace or dilating on the remarkable
body of the ancient wines. His features were the
delight of the caricaturist, and little wooden busts of
him were in demand. He was a man of sense, and would
have made reforms if the Provost would have let him.
He did get so far as to introduce into the work of one
class the filling up of a skeleton map, which, with an-
swers to a paper of geographical questions, we handed
in as an act of piety on Sunday afternoon. He did not
rule with a very firm hand, but floated along with
tact and ease. He was in manners and sentiments
unquestionably a gentleman; for the Eton of those
days that was enough.

Foreigners of distinction often visited Eton as

SCHOOL 45

Hawtrey's guests. I saw in the schoolyard Daniel
Webster/ with his brow and port of Jove. I saw
Soult,2 who looked the war-worn veteran that he was.
Soult, when the boys recognized him and rushed to
him, was half afraid that they were going to mob
their old enemy, and was surprised at receiving a
British ovation.

Old William IV, the sailor King, was very fond of
Eton, and used to come to our rowing matches and to
the procession of boats on the fourth of July. On
Election Day, at the end of the Summer term, the sixth
form had to recite in Court-dress passages from Greek
or Latin authors, " speeches," they were called, before
the assembled school and guests. On one of those
occasions the Queen 3 was present. At her side stood
the Prince Consort, with features regular and handsome,
but wanting in expression. Canonized for his virtues
when he died, the Prince while he lived was unpopular
on account of his manner, especially with women.
Englishmen will bear a high manner in high people,
though a frank manner pleases them more ; but Prince
Albert had in fatal perfection the condescending man-

[l The A-mftriftft.fi statesman, orator, and lawyer. It was probably
when he was negotiating the Ashburton Treaty between Great
Britain and the United States that he visited Eton. Born 1782;
died 1852.]

[2 Nicolas Jean-de-Dieu Soult, one of Napoleon's Marshals ;
eommander-in-chief in Spain. Ambassador Extraordinary to Great
Britain at the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838, when, probably,
lie visited Eton. Born in 1769; died in 1851.]

I9 Queen Victoria, of course ; who succeeded William TV in 1837.]

46 REMINISCENCES

ner of German royalty. Happily he did not transmit
it to his son.1

Nothing is to me more odious than the pageantry of
death. I would have the tenantless clay mingle in
the simplest as well as in the quickest way with the
general frame. Yet the funeral of a Royal Duchess
which I attended as one of the Eton delegation was a
striking sight. St. George's Chapel at night, hung with
black; lines of Life Guards holding flambeaux, the
approach of the corpse heralded by the Dead March,
the procession up the Chapel with the female mourners
in black lace veils reaching to their feet, certainly
formed an impressive scene.

I ran among a crowd of Eton boys behind Victoria's
carriage from Eton to Windsor on the night of her
marriage,2 and I saw her more than once upon the
Castle Terrace. She was dumpy but comely, with a
fresh complexion, low forehead, receding chin, and
prominent eyes. She had in short the features of her
family. Notwithstanding her dumpiness, she acquired
a queenly bearing. In everything, I suspect, she was
a true granddaughter of George III. In the earlier
years of her reign her very natural attachment to Lord
Melbourne 3 as her political monitor and guardian, and
her consequent connection with his party, exposed her

P Afterwards His Majesty Edward VII.]

P February the 10th, 1840.]

[* William Lamb, second Viscount Melbourne, Prime Minister
from 1835 till 1841 ; Queen Victoria's chief adviser. Born in 1779 ;
died 1848.]

SCHOOL 47

to the jealousy of the other side. In her later years
political and social reaction exalted her into their fetish.
She was made the object of extravagant adulation, and
an age full of intellect, discovery, great writers, power-
ful statesmen, and momentous events has been stamped
with the name of a good and domestically exemplary,
but in no way extraordinary woman. In politics she
evidently became at last a thorough Stuart, enraged
at the honour paid to Garibaldi.

Among my schoolmates at Eton were John Duke
Coleridge,1 Lord Chief Justice that was to be, in " Pop,"
as afterwards at the Bar, noted for his silvery eloquence ;
Lord Farrer 2 who became Permanent Under-Secretary
of the Board of Trade, and, though he had inherited
an ample fortune, continued in the public service;
Henry Hallam,3 who entered on the same day with me;
and William Johnson,4 who afterwards took the name
of Cory. Henry Hallam, like Arthur, had "the bow
of Michael Angelo " on his forehead. Like Arthur he

p First Baron Coleridge. He was the chief Counsel for the
defendants in the celebrated "Tichborne case" in 1871-1872.
Born 1820; died 1894.]

[2 Thomas Henry Farrer, first Baron Farrer. Born in 1819 ;
died in 1899.]

P Henry Fitzmaurice Hallam, younger son of Henry Hallam the
historian, brother of the Arthur Hallam who was the subject of
Tennyson's "In Memoriam." He went to Trinity College, Cam-
bridge, and was one of the "Apostles." Born in 1824; died 1850.]

[* William Johnson, afterwards Cory, was an assistant master at
Eton from 1845 till 1872. He wrote a "Guide to Modern English
History"; also several volumes of poems — amongst the best
known of which, perhaps, is his "loniea." Born in 1823; died in
1892.1

48 REMINISCENCES

was wonderfully precocious in thoughtfulness and
culture, owing the culture to the circle in which at his
father's house he had lived. Whether either of the
brothers had genius as well as thoughtfulness and cul-
ture was a question left unsolved, since both died
young and under circumstances curiously alike ; each of
them suddenly, when he was on a tour with his father.
Of William Johnson great things were expected. We
fancied that he would be a sage not unlike his illustrious
namesake. The result was distinction, both educa-
tional and literary, which has won a niche in the Na-
tional Biography. But it was not a reproduction of
Johnson, whom we cannot imagine writing lyrics of
effusive affection on a favourite pupil.

Our mode of life was favourable to friendship. We
dined in the boarding-house hall, but took breakfast
and tea in our own rooms with messmates of our own
choice. Each boy had a room of his own, furnished as
a sitting-room, but with a press bed. I think it was a
civilizing arrangement.

It is something, as I have always thought, to be
brought up in a place of beauty and historic memories.
All that could be done for the young heart in that way
was done by Eton, with its ancient quadrangle, in the
middle of which stood the founder's statue, its great
grey chapel, its playing-fields and their ancient elms
stretching along the side of the river, and the class-
room on the panels of which boyish hands had carved
what afterwards became historic names; while from

SCHOOL 49

the other side looked down the castle-palace of the
old English Kings.

I am now in my seventeenth year.1 I doff the regu-
lation dress of Eton, don the black tie, which was the
symbol of emancipation, take leave of the Head Master,
placing my leaving-fee on the table, while I receive
his parting gift of a book, and come away, looking ea-
gerly forward into the doubtful vista of the life, then
opening, now at its close.

P 1840. He matriculated at Oxford on the 26tti of May, 1841.]

CHAPTER IV

OXFORD
1841-1845

Dean Gaisford-- Magdalen— Magdalen Demys— Martin Routh
—Fellows of Magdalen— The Tractarian Movement— The
Curriculum — Oxford Life — Contemporaries.

I MATRICULATED at Christ Church; and was thus
brought into brief contact with Dean Gaisford.1 The
Dean was called the Athenian Blacksmith, and both
parts of the nickname were well deserved. He was a
first-rate Greek scholar, though I venture to think
that as an editor of the classics he adheres somewhat
slavishly to certain manuscripts. But for his manners
his friends could only say that his heart was good;
which, as an autopsy was not possible, could give little
satisfaction to those who suffered from his rudeness.
"Cultivate classical literature, which not only enables
you to look down with contempt on those who are less
learned than yourself, but often leads to places of con-
siderable emolument, even in this world." Such was
the comic analysis of one of Gaisford's University
sermons, and probably it was scarcely a caricature.

P Thomas Gaisford; appointed Regius Professor of Greek at
Oxford in 1812; Dean of Christ Church from 1831 till his death in
1855; edited many of the classics. Born in 1779.]

OXFORD 51

However; from Christ Church I was soon transferred
to Magdalen, where, at the instance of my good friend
Frederick Bulley,1 afterwards President, I was nomi-
nated to a Demyship by the President, Martin Routh.3
My Magdalen, like my Eton, was a relic of the past.
It had forty Fellowships, thirty Demyships or Scholar-
ships, and a revenue of forty thousand pounds a year,
besides its rich dower of historic beauty. It took no
Commoners, and its educational output in my time
was eight or ten Undergraduate Demys and one Gentle-
man Commoner, who being under the phantom author-
ity of the nonagenarian President, lived in a license
beyond even the normal license of his class. Frederick
Bulley, afterwards President, did something for us as
tutor at least in the way of most kindly interest and
encouragement ; but we really depended for instruction
upon private tutors; " coaches" they were called.
I was coached at different times by Congreve,3 then
Fellow of Wadham, and a strong Liberal and Evangel-
ical of Arnold's school, afterwards a Comtist and head
of one section of the Positivist Church in England;
by the excellent Mountague Bernard,4 afterwards
Professor of Law, and, what was perhaps more impor-

p- Frederick Bulley, President of Magdalen College from 1855
till his death in 1885.]

[2 Martin Joseph Routh, President of Magdalen from 1791 till
his death in 1854. Born in 1755.J

[3 Richard Congreve, the Positivist ; founded the Positivist com-
munity in London in 1855. 1818-1899.]

[4 Mountague Bernard, first Professor of International Law at
Oxford, 1859-1874. Born 1820; died 1882 J

52 REMINISCENCES

tant, one of the founders of The Guardian; and by Lin-
wood/ the author of an edition of ^Eschylus and the
editor of the Pluses Oxonienses. Linwood was a
prodigy. He had written in an examination ninety-
nine Greek iambic verses, which may be seen slightly
cut down in the Musa Oxonienses} and which might
easily pass for an extract from a second-rate play of
Euripides. But he never sustained his Undergraduate
reputation. His JSschylus is jejune, and he somehow
ended in eclipse.

I was fortunate in the members of our little circle
of Demys. With pensive interest I recall their names.
One of them I saw afterwards a Roman Catholic priest.
We lived a happy life in our junior Common Room,
seeing perhaps rather too little of the University out-
side, though my Eton connection gave me acquaint-
ances. Our star was Conington,2 afterwards Professor
of Latin, who had come up from Rugby a wonderful
scholar with a miraculous memory and carried every-
thing before him in examinations. His figure was
rather grotesque, and there was about him a touch of
the Dominie Sampson which tempted little practical
jokes, though the story of his having been put under
the pump is totally baseless and utterly unjust to his

I1 William Linwood, public examiner at Oxford 1850-1851. His
best-known works are "A Lexicon to JSschylus," 1843, and "Sopho-
elis Tragcediss," 1846. Born 1817; died 1878.]

P John" Conington, Professor of Latin from 1854 till his death in
1869. Edited many of the classics; published some verse transla-
tions. Born in 1825.]

OXFORD 53

college mates, who were all of them as quiet and well
bred as they could be. His learning perhaps was supe-
rior to his taste ; but he was a great scholar, and would
have been greater had not his life been cut short.
He seemed to be the toughest of men, and little did I
think that I should survive him.

My kind father allowed me a horse, and pleasant
rides I had over the higher country round the flat on
which Oxford is built, by Bagley, Elsfield, Wood Eaton,
Stow Wood, Beckley, and other points of beauty. The
country was more open to the horseman then than it
is now. Lord Abingdon l kindly lent me a key to his
lovely Park at Wytham. Those rides were favourable
to reflection as well as to health and enjoyment. The
beauty of the College itself, with its Gothic Quadrangle,
its lawns, and its deer-park, was a perpetual delight.
It would be hard to say whether the Quadrangle looked
its best under the summer sun or under the winter moon
when the snow lay on its roofs. Once more I was happy
in aesthetic influences as an element of education.

About our President, Martin Routh, much has
already been written. He died of an accidental mal-
ady in his hundredth year. He had lived with Parr.2
As an Undergraduate he had seen Dr. Johnson. He
had seen the elevation of the house of Temple to the
peerage; and he saw its fall. Yet he had been so

[l Montagu Bertie, the sixth Earl of Abingdon, High Steward of
Oxford and Abingdon, Lord-Lieutenant and Custos Rotulorum of
Berks. 1808-1884.]

p Samuel Parr, 1747-1825.]

54 REMINISCENCES

wrapped up in his study of the Fathers and such a
recluse thafr he had little to say about the times through
which he had lived; outside of his books, county gene-
alogies were his theme. He was never seen but in
full canonicals of the fashion of the last century.
Somebody bet that he would show Routh without his
canonicals, and thought to win the bet by crying 'fire/
of which Routh was horribly afraid, at the dead of night
under his window. Routh at once appeared, in a great
fright, but in full canonicals. Such was the story.
Routh prolonged his life by excessive care, living as
it were under a glass case and never going abroad except
in the finest summer weather. On a Sunday in summer
at afternoon chapel there would sometimes be a move-
ment among the visitors in the ante-chapel, which,
with the reverential attitude of the porter and presently
the shuffling of aged feet, announced the President's
approach. Till near the end of his life Routh presided
at the terminal examinations, Collections, as they were
called, when he would put questions on the history of
the Odyssey, and explain that in those days no inde-
cency was involved in the attendance of ladies on gen-
tlemen in the bath. His deafness, increased by his
wig, combined with his old-fashioned respect for rank,
once led to a funny incident. A Gentleman Commoner,
son of a Baronet, having been beyond measure lawless,
was being reprimanded by the tutors. The President,
who had been looking the other way, hearing the loud
sound of voices, turned round, saw a Baronet's son on

OXFORD 55

the opposite side of the table, and taking it for granted
that the Tutors were paying him, compliments, chimed
in with, "I am very happy, Mr. Blank, to hear what
the tutors say of you. Pray tell Sir Charles with my
compliments that you are a credit to the College."

The President held with his Presidency the country-
living of Theale l where he was said to preach erudite
sermons to the rustics. "I know, my friends, that you
may object to me what St. Irenseus says.37

Routh's Patristic learning, which was then unique
and had produced the Reliquice Sacrce, made him a
grand card for the Tractarians when their movement
began. Yet by those who knew him well it was thought
doubtful whether he really cared much about the mat-
ter. Curiosity, they said, rather than anything else,
was the leading motive of his Patristic studies.

Routh had become President before the idea of aca-
demic duty had dawned. This perhaps is sufficient
excuse for the state of sinecurism and torpor in which to
the end of his days he allowed that magnificent College
to remain. Roundell Palmer,2 afterwards Lord Sel-
borne, then a Fellow of Magdalen, among others moved
for reform. But the answer always was, "Wait, sir,
till I am gone."

The Fellows of Magdalen were a curious assortment.
Some were relics of the age depicted in the well-known

p A parish about four miles from Reading.]
[2 Roundell Palmer, first Earl of Selborne, Lord Chancellor in
1872J

56 REMINISCENCES

words of Gibbon, using the college as a tavern and a
shooting-box. Two or three were ascetics of the new
Tractarian school. Charles Reade,1 the novelist, was
a non-resident Fellow. He came into residence for
one year for the sake of holding a College office to which
a nomination was attached. His costume was a green
frock-coat with brass buttons, and his behaviour was
not less eccentric than his costume. We took him,
in fact, to be almost crazy. Of the Tractarians the
most notable were James Mozley 2 and William Palmer.*
Many years afterwards, when the Regius Professorship
of Theology was vacant, I was asked by a friend who
was a member of the Government whom they ought to
appoint. My answer was that of preachers, commen-
tators, and writers on ecclesiastical history there were
plenty ; but that the only theologian in the proper sense
of the term known to me was James Mozley. I have
no reason to believe that my opinion had any influence
in the appointment ; but if it had, supposing Theology
not to be an extinct science, I was justified by the re-
sult. Mozley was a Tractarian, but short of Rome.

William Palmer, brother of Roundell Palmer, after-
wards Lord Selborne, was a man of genius whose
genius took a singular turn. I saw a good deal of Mm.

p Charles Eeade was elected Fellow of Magdalen in 1835. Bom
1814; died 1884.]

[2 James Bowling Mozley, Regius Professor of Divinity in 1871 ;
Bampton Lecturer; Canon of Worcester. Born 1813 : died 1878.]

[8 William Palmer; Theologian and archaeologist ; brother of
Roundell Palmer ; Fellow of Magdalen. 1811 to 1879.]

OXFORD 57

Don Quixote did not live in the age of chivalry more
completely than did William Palmer in the age of me-
dieval religion. As an inn was a castle to Don Quixote,
to William Palmer the Colleges were monasteries; only
with a rule unhappily relaxed, the Fellows were monks,
the scouts or College servants were lay brethren.
Protestantism he anathematized, earning thereby the
name of "Cursing Palmer." His leaning, however,
was not to the Roman, but to the Greek Church, which
attracted him by its superior rigidity. To bring the
Anglican Church into communion with the Greek
Church, or rather to get the communion in which he
supposed they already were recognized, was the object
of his life. For that purpose he went to Russia, and
there opened before the heads of the Greek Church
his budget of High Church doctrine, assuring them that
such was the creed of the Church of England. But
the Evangelical Chaplain of the Embassy at St. Peters-
burg — I believe it was he — being called upon for his
attestation, declared that the High Church doctrines
were anathema. An untoward accident occurred.
The wife * of Palmer's Russian host, travelling in Swit-
zerland, was converted to Protestantism by an English
clergyman of the Evangelical party. Her husband
was horrified. Palmer had averred that the two
Churches were in communion with each other. Yet
here was an Anglican clergyman converting his wife as
if she were a heretic or a heathen. Palmer at once

P Princess GaJitzinJ

58 REMINISCENCES

started in chase. He pursued the lady from place to
place, entering his caveat when she presented herself
to receive the Communion. From Bishop Spencer/
then ministering in Paris, he received some encourage-
ment. Returning to England, he put to each of the
Bishops the question whether their Church was in com-
munion with the Greek Church, and got a series, of
evasive replies, the gist of which was that the Greek
Church was a long way off. From Archbishop Howley 2
he got two letters, but no reply. Then he tried the
Anglican Church in Scotland, and proposed to attend
a Synod on the question as the deputy of Bishop
Spencer. But the answer was that Bishops could not
sit by deputy, and that Bishop Spencer was dead.
Palmer then resolved to enter the Greek Church. But
the Greek Church required him to be re-baptized, and
re-baptism in his eyes was unlawful, baptism by heretics
being valid. Not very logically he then turned to the

[l George Trevor Spencer, Bishop of Madras ; graduated, Uni-
versity College, Oxford, 1822 ; consecrated 1837 ; Chancellor of St.
Paul's Cathedral 1860. Born in 1799, died in 1866. I learn from
a private letter that he was Chaplain to the French Chapel in the
Rue Marboeuf about the year 1840, just before he was made Bishop
of Madras, And I find this verified in lt Phases of My Life," by the
Very Rev. Francis Pigou, D.D., Dean of Bristol, chapter ix, pages
150 and 151 (London : Edward Arnold ; 1898), in which the Dean
says : " . . . Bishop Spencer, formerly Bishop of Madras, . . . had
had the offer of Marboeuf Chapel in Paris. . . . The church, if
such it could be called, was situate at the bottom of the Avenue
Marboeuf, a side street off the Champs Elyse*es, of which now
scarcely any trace is left. It was originally founded by Mr. Lewis
Way, in 1824."]

P William Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1828 to 1848.
Born 1776 J

OXFORD 59

Church of Rome, which, however, he succeeded in
entering without undergoing the conditional re-baptism
commonly required of converts. Here his genius
found its grave. Fantastic Egyptology, founded on
the fancy that Satan had concocted the Egyptian
religion in mockery of Christianity, occupied him till
he died.

If William Palmer was an ecclesiastical Don Quixote,
he was also an ecclesiastical Ulysses. He had seen and
studied every variety of religious belief and life. His
conversation was most interesting; his language was
racy in the highest degree. After his Russian adventure
he wrote a book upon Church questions which you were
allowed to purchase on declaring yourself a faithful
layman, and which the virtuoso, if he ever meets with
it on a bookstall, not having to make that declaration,
will do well to acquire. "Then certain of the baser
sort made a conspiracy and cut off his head/' this or
something like this is the account of the rebellion against
Charles I.

It was to Roundell Palmer, then a non-resident Fel-
low of Magdalen, afterwards Lord Selborne and Chan-
cellor, who had kindly taken notice of a young student,
that I owed my introduction to his brother. I owed
to him much more, — the boon, for which I could never
be sufficiently grateful, of his friendship in after-life.
His history it is needless to repeat. He was a grand
example of the union of high intellectual culture and
literary tastes with the greatest professional energy

60 REMINISCENCES

and success. His power of work was wonderful. When
he was Attorney-General, about the hardest place then
in the world, I called one Wednesday afternoon at his
Chambers. His clerk said at first that he would see
me, then added, "I think you had better not go in."
" Why not ? " "Sir Roundell has not been in bed this
week." Palmer told me afterwards that it was true;
that he had been working hard to earn his Christmas
holiday, and had not gone to bed till Wednesday night.

The wit of the Magdalen Common Room was New-
man 1 (not John Henry), a first-rate mimic. One day
he amused himself by masquerading as a stranger
visiting Oxford and hiring a guide to show him round,
which the guide did with the usual illustrative com-
ments. When at last they came to Magdalen, the guide
pointed out the Fellows' Common Room. To his sur-
prise and horror Newman bolted into it and was seen
no more.

Now was the crisis of the Tractarian movement, of
which the Ritualist movement is the less earnest and
masculine successor. The source of Tractarianism is
plainly disclosed in the opening of the "Tracts." Lib-
eralism was advancing, the support of the State was
failing the Church, and threatened to be withdrawn
from her altogether. She must therefore look for sup-
port elsewhere, and she would find it in Apostolical

P Perhaps Thomas Harding Newman, of Wadham College.
Matriculated in 1829; a Demy of Magdalen from 1832 to 1847;
Fellow, 1846 to 1873; Dean of Divinity 1849; died 1882.-— But
I am not sure. — Ed.]

OXFORD 61

Succession and the supernatural virtue of the Sacra-
ments administered by priestly hands. Oxford, with
her medieval Colleges and her clerical and celibate
Fellows, was the natural centre of a movement which
pointed to a revival of the Middle Ages. The dining-
hall of Magdalen, where the diners usually were so few,
was full enough on the day of the ecclesiastical Ar-
mageddon, when all the country parsons came up to
vote on the condemnation of Ward.1 I was unlucky
in never hearing Newman 2 preach. He had just been
forced by the heads of the University to retire from
the pulpit of St. Mary's and had withdrawn with a
select circle of disciples to his monastery at Little-
more.3 I heard him read the service, which he did in a
mechanical monotone, that he might seem to be the
mere mouthpiece of the Church. His face, I always
thought, betokened refinement and acuteness much
more than strength. He was always in quest, not of
the truth, but of the best system, presenting a sharp
contrast to his brother Francis,4 whom also I knew

[l The Reverend William George Ward, nicknamed "Ideal Ward,"
one of the chief figures of the Tractarian movement. Wrote in
defence of Newman's celebrated "Tract XC." The reference is to
his removal from his Degree for heresy ; joined the Roman Catholic
Communion and wrote in favour of Papal infallibility; published
many controversial treatises. 1812-1882.]

[2 John Henry, Cardinal Newman. Born 1801 ; died 1890.]

p Two miles and a half from Oxford.]

[4 Francis William Newman, Fellow of BaHiol ; afterwards Prin-
cipal of University Hall, London; author of a "History of Hebrew
Monarchy," ."The Soul," ."Phases of Faith," etc. Born 1805;
died 1897.]

62 REMINISCENCES

well, and who through all his changes of opinions
sought the truth with singleness of heart. The " Gram-
mar of Assent " * is an apparatus for making yourself
believe or fancy that you believe things which are good
for you but of which there is no proof. It may be
doubted whether, when the hot fit of conversion was
over, Newman was a hearty Roman Catholic, or believed,
as he vowed he did, in St. Jamiarius and the House of
Loretto* Manning 2 accused him of minimizing Ca-
tholicism, and he never would make converts from the
Anglican Church.

Few of the students of those days, few at least of the
intellectual and serious class, were proof against the
witchery of Newman's style or failed to be fascinated
by his romantic presentation of the medieval Church
after the aridity of the "high and dry" regime.

Pusey3 I used to see going about with sorrowful
visage and downcast eyes and looking like the embodi-
ment of his favourite doctrine, 'the irremissibility of
post-baptismal sin. I heard him preach. He was
undeniably learned, but by no means logical or clear.
His catenas wanted a link. In his moral passages,
however, he was highly impressive in his ascetic way.

Manning I saw ascend the pulpit, a most imposing

I1 "An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent," first published in
1870. It lias gone through several editions.]

P Henry Edward Manning, Roman Catholic Archbishop of West-
minster. Born 1808; died 1892.]

[3 Edward Bouverie Pusey, Regius Professor of Hebrew at Ox-
ford; one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement ; a notable figure
amongst the 'Ritualists ' of the time. Born in 1800 ; died in 1882.]

OXFORD 63

figure, looking like an apparition of the Middle Ages;
but I thought him a tinkling cymbal, as in fact he turns
out to have been. That he would never have seceded
if they would have made him a Bishop was the opinion
of his brother-in-law Samuel of Oxford.1 Of Ward I
happened to see a good deal, when I was reading with
a Fellow of Balliol in the vacation and dined in their
Common Room. He was a first-rate dialectician,
shrinking from no conclusion, and I fancy rather revel-
ling in the uproar which he made. His joyous avowal
that clergymen of the Church of England were embrac-
ing the whole cycle of Roman Doctrine brought matters
to a head and forced the hand of Newman, who had
probably looked to remaining leader in the Church of
England and ultimately negotiating reunion with
Rome. Ward's figure was grotesque, almost Fal-
staffian ; though very fat, he walked with a sort of skip,
and wore low loose shoes which he had a trick of kicking
off. He was a candidate for a Fellowship of All Souls7
in the days when the qualifications for election there
were social, and candidates were invited to dine with
the Warden and Fellows that their social aptitudes
might be seen. Ward, so the story ran, kicked his
shoes off under the table; a rival candidate pushed
them away from him, and when the party rose to pass
from the Hall into the Common Room, Ward stood

P Samuel WHberforce, Bishop of Oxford, and then of Winchester.
His wife's sister, Caroline Sargent, married in 1833 Henry Edward,
afterwards Cardinal, Manning.]

64 REMINISCENCES

up without his shoes. There was something laughable
about all that he said or did. As a medievalist he advo-
cated clerical celibacy ; but, to use his own expression,
he had not himself the gift of continence, and the ascet-
ics of his party were taken aback by learning that
between the acts of Ms condemnation for Romanism
in the Theatre, he had read a letter from a lady to whom
he was engaged. Even in his religious writing there
was a f riskiness which seemed to show that he enjoyed
the fun.

Keble,1 who, with Newman and Pusey, made up the
Tractarian Triumvirate, had left Oxford, married, and
taken a country living. Some years afterwards I ac-
companied his friend Judge Coleridge on a visit to his
house. He was the embodiment of the sweet, gentle,
somewhat mystical and not very masculine poetry of
the "Christian Year." Why he had not joined the
secession was evident enough. Besides his wife, he
had a conjugal attachment, like that of George Herbert,
to his parish Church. I was told that he loved to per-
form service in it, even with a nominal congregation.
Nor was he likely to be drawn into anything from which
his heart recoiled by the pressure of strict logic. If
he was troubled by the lateness of the Tractarian
discovery that the Prayer Book, not the Thirty-Nine
Articles, was the real standard of the Church of Eng-

P John Keble, the author of "The Christian Year"; Professor
of Poetry at Oxford from 1831 to 1841 ; Viear of Hursley, Hamp-
shire, from 1836 till his death in 1866. Born 1792.]

OXFORD 65

land, he could satisfy himself by reference to the anal-
ogy of the Christian Dispensation, which came late
into the world. Butler's " Analogy"1 was in those
days the Oxford Koran, and in its line of argument
was found a universal solvent of the theological diffi-
culties. A very great book Butler's "Analogy" un-
doubtedly is ; but the assumption on which it is built,
that we should expect in Revelation the same diffi-
culties which we find in natural religion, is palpably
unfounded. We should expect Revelation to be the
corrective of the difficulties of natural religion, not their
counterpart. Butler, however, was a profound thinker,
and in spite of his ecclesiastical trammels nobly loyal
to reason and truth.

Curious forms did that resurrection of the ecclesias-
tical past bring forth; but none more curious than that
of John Brande Morris,2 who in the Tower of Exeter
College fondly watched for the return of the Dark Ages.
He wrote a poem pronounced by some Tractariaris
equal to Milton's in excellence and superior in subject,
in which he spoke of oxen as "trained to labour by
meek celibacy."

Let me by the way correct a common error which has
crept into the work of my excellent friend President

P "The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the
Constitution and Course of Nature." By Joseph Butler, Bishop of
Durham. First published in 1736.J

[*John Brande Morris, Fellow and Hebrew Lecturer, Exeter
College, Oxford, 1837; joined the Church of Rome 1846. 1812-
1880.]

66 REMINISCENCES

White on the ' ' Warfare of Science and Religion." l It is
a mistake to think that Everett, the American Ambas-
sador, was hooted in the Theatre when he was presented
for an honorary degree. The hooting was not at
Everett,3 but at Jelf,3 who had made himself very-
unpopular as Proctor. Several of the students were
punished for it. I was in the Undergraduates' gallery,
and saw and heard it all. Everett was not brought
in till long after the hooting had begun. It unluckily
happened that there was at the same time a Tractarian
opposition among the Graduates to Everett's Honorary
Degree on the ground that he was a Unitarian. But
the opponents, though they showed their intolerance,
did nothing rude. They sent a deputation to Everett
to assure him that no personal offence was intended.
In the Theatre they did no more than formally signify
their dissent as a legal precaution. Throughout this
period of controversy, earnest and sometimes heated
as discussion was, social tolerance remained generally

P "A History on the Warfare of Science with Theology in Chris-
tendom." By Andrew Dickson White. 2 vols. New York:
Appleton. 1896. — The reference is to Vol. II. pp. 335-336. The
incident occurred on the 28th of June, 1843.]

P Edward Everett, the celebrated American statesman, orator,
and author; successively Professor of Greek at Harvard College,
1819-1825; member of Congress; Governor of Massachusetts;
Minister to England ; President of Harvard College ; Secretary of
State; United States Senator. It was when he was Minister to
England (1841-1845) that he was given the Honorary Degree.
Born in 1794; died in 1865.]

p William Edward Jelf, Greek Reader 1879; Tutor 1836 to
1849; Proctor 1843; Public Examiner 1841 to 1855; Bampton
Lecturer 1857. Born 1811 ; died 1875.]

OXFORD 67

unimpaired, and conversation in the Common Room
was free. A body of English gentlemen, however
bigoted, could never have been brought to hoot a guest.

Academical duty, however, was lost in the theologi-
cal fray. The teaching staff to a great extent aban-
doned its task to the private coaches. From sinking
into mere clericism the University was saved only by
the Class List. The University having been absorbed
by the Colleges, and the Professor having been super-
seded by the College tutor, the Professoriate had sunk
into decrepitude. Few of the Professors except the
Professor of Theology, lectured, and if they did the
attendance was very small. Buckland1 lectured on
geology, of which he with Sedgwick 2 and Murchison
was a pioneer. I attended his course, and could not
help marking the shifts to which he was driven in his
effort to reconcile geology with Genesis. The effort
now is to reconcile Genesis with geology.

Dr. Arnold 3 held the chair of Modern History, to
which he had been appointed by a Whig Government,
His coming to deliver his course was a grand event*
His name was a horror and a terror to the dominant
High Church party. Turnus was appearing once more
in the camp of JSneas. His lectures, however, were

p William BucHand (1784r-1856), Professor of Mineralogy?
Reader in Geology ; Canon of Christ Church ; Dean of Westminster ;
President of the Geological Society in 1824 and 1840.J

P Adam Sedgrwiek (1785-1873), Woodwardian Prof essor of Geol-
ogy at Cambridge 1818 ; President of the Geological Society 1831.]

P Thomas Arnold, the Head Master of Rugby ; Regius Prof essor
of Modern History at Oxford 1841.}

68 REMINISCENCES

crowded. The success, professional and personal, was
complete. The description of the blockade of Genoa
drew tears from the eyes of Heads of Houses. The
audience felt that they were looking on a hero. And
a true hero Thomas Arnold was.

Our curriculum was classical, mathematics holding
a very secondary place, though a double first, that is, a
first-class both in classics and mathematics, was the
summit of honour; classical distinction was the general
road to such prizes open to merit as there were. Our
classical course, however, included Aristotle, Plato
for thpse who chose, and Butler by way of supplement,
together with logic and ancient history. Aristotle
was studied in a scholastic way and without distinction
between the genuine and spurious books of the Ethics.
Still the study was intercourse with a great intelligence.
It kindled an interest in the problems of humanity.

I tried for honours, and won them. But I have often
doubted whether they were a blessing to me. My rela-
tives always upbraided me with want of ambition, and
the charge was perfectly true. But my University
honours thrust upon me at the outset a sort of distinc-
tion, which, as I was unambitious, has been the source
of more pain than pleasure. My great pleasures have
always been domestic, and I should have been happier
in a perfectly private and tranquil walk of life.

Whether the system of competitive examinations is
good is a moot question. Love of the study is of course
far better as a motive. But love of study is not uni-

OXFORD 69

versal. Lord Althorp,1 one of the best and most useful
of English statesmen, owned that he would have re-
mained a mere sportsman had he not been spurred to
intellectual exertion by his mother's desire that he
should succeed in a College competition. In this case,
however, the studies were gymnastic. Bread-and-
butter studies, now in the ascendant, ought to draw
of themselves.

The life of the ordinary Undergraduate has, I believe,
become softer, more refined, and more luxurious than
it was in my day. Wine parties, which were our social
meetings, have, I am told, gone out of fashion. The
sound of the piano is now common in College Quad-
rangles; it was hardly ever heard in my day. Rooms
are said to be more elegantly and tastefully furnished.
On the other hand, athletics have assumed monstrous
proportions. Football in my time was never played
by any adults but the roughs in the North, and when
we played it at Eton only the ball was kicked, whereas
everything now is kicked but the ball. Yet we are told
that character is less masculine than it was. Nor is
this a paradox. Athletic force is muscular, not moral.

Among the incidents not to be forgotten of Oxford
Undergraduate life were the Long Vacation reading
parties. I have a pleasant recollection of the days
spent with chosen companions at Filey, then a small
village, with its spacious beach and the amphitheatre

p John Charles Spencer, Viscount Althorp and third Earl Spen-
cer. 1782-1845.]

70 REMINISCENCES

of rock into which the Northern Sea grandly rolls;
amidst the beautiful scenery of Linton; or beside
Grasmere lying in the quiet urn of its green hills. It
was when we were in Devonshire that a trial took place
closely resembling the Tichborne case. The title and
estate of an infant Baronet were claimed by an impostor
who pretended that he was the child of a secret mar-
riage. The impostor, like the Tichborne claimant/ had
got up his case with care ; and at the trial things were
going well for him when word came to the counsel on
the other side that a seal tendered by him as a proof of
family identity had been manufactured for him a few
weeks before in a London shop. The fact was sprung
upon him; he collapsed under it, and in a few weeks
was in Dartmoor gaol. The case created local excite-
ment and no more. The Tichborne case set the
whole country in a blaze, divided families, and it was
thought would have divided the nation had a general
election then taken place. So much more inflammable
and excitable has the electric telegraph made the public
mind. Such now, if a Tichborne case could divide
the nation, is government by the people.

Among my notable contemporaries, besides Coning-
ton, were Matthew Arnold 2 and Freeman. Matthew

p The celebrated Tichborne case lasted from May the llth, 1871,
to February the 28th, 1874. The claimant's name was Arthur
Orton.]

p Matthew Arnold, the poet and critic, was born in 1822 ; was a
Master at Rugby; then Private Secretary to the Marquess of
Lansdowne ; then an Inspector of Schools. He died in 1888.]

OXFORD 71

Arnold was outwardly a singular contrast to his almost
terribly earnest sire. Not that he was by any means
without serious purpose, especially in his province of
education. His outward levity was perhaps partly a
mask, possibly in some measure a recoil from his father's
sternness. As we were travelling together in a railway
carriage, I observed a pile of books at his side.
"These," said he, with a gay air, "are Celtic books
which they send me. Because I have written on Celtic
Literature, they fancy I must know something of the
language." His ideas had been formed by a few weeks
at a Welsh watering-place. He exerted, however,
unquestionably an elevating and liberalizing influence
on a large class of minds. He pierced the hide of Phi-
listinism with the silvery shafts from his bow, though
his idea of Philistinism may not always have been
perfectly just. But in all fields, social or theological
as well as literary, taste was supreme in his mind. If
there is nothing disparaging in the phrase, I should say
that he was the prince of connoisseurs. Freeman *
was a follower of Newman, and the leading spirit of the
Oxford Architectural Society, which conducted the
aesthetic part of the medieval revival. He and I be-
came great friends in after years, when he was living
as a Thane on his paternal Allod at Somerleaze, near
Wells. He was very happy when he was made a Justice

P Edward Augustus Freeman, the historian of the Norman
Conquest, was born in 1823, and was Regius Professor of Modern
History at Oxford from 1884 till his death in 1892.J

72 EEMINISCENCES

of the Peace. There are different versions of the story
of his having been toasted at an Architectural Society's
dinner as one " singularly familiar with the manners
of our rude ancestors." But it was mere brusqueness,
not insolence. From insolence he was entirely free.
In America he probably counted too much on the sim-
plicity of Republican fashions, a mistake into which
the English visitor is apt to fall. As a historian,
though diffuse in style and somewhat pedantic, he will
always be master of his period. He was profoundly
learned, strictly accurate, and, though he had his predi-
lections, thoroughly honest. He loved truth and hated
falsehood, loved righteousness and hated iniquity.
Hence he dealt rudely with the worshipper of Henry
VIH, in spite of Froude's l literary charm.

Temple2 and dough were rather my seniors.
Temple, making his way upon the small income of a
Tiverton Scholarship at Balliol, was respected as the
model of a hard-working and self-denying student.
He was presently to contribute to that manifesto of
Rationalism, "Essays and Reviews," s which set the
orthodox world in a flame; though in his own essay
there was nothing specially to alarm, and in fact I
heard it delivered as a University Sermon without

p James Anthony Froude's "History of England from the Fall
of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada."]

P Frederick Temple, was Head Master of Rugby from 1858 to
1869 ; Bishop of Exeter, then of London, and then Archbishop of
Canterbury.]

[» These were published in 1860. They were condemned by Con-
vocation in 1861 and 1864.]

OXFORD 73

disturbing the slumber of any of the Heads of Houses.
He became Archbishop of Canterbury and supreme
guardian of the orthodox faith. One cannot help
wondering what was the mental process of transition.
Transition to some extent from association with the
authors of "Essays and Reviews " there must have been.

Clough,1 Dr. Arnold's model pupil, seemed to me an
instance of a moral overstraining which was a liability
of Arnold's system. He came up to Oxford a phi-
losopher. Ward, seeing the value of such a recruit to
the Tractarian party, got hold of him, uprooted his
existing beliefs, but failed to plant new beliefs in their
room, dough was altogether upset, and missed the
first-class which he would otherwise have most easily
won. He went through life with a vague and hopeless
yearning for truth, which seemed to be depicted in his
very face. Some short poems and a translation of
Plutarch were the only products of a great intellectual
power.

Li those days before University Reform the Fellow-
ships of Magdalen were divided among certain counties,
and there was no prospect of a vacancy in my county.
I had to seek a fellowship elsewhere. It was with keen
regret that I left Magdalen ; my heart has always turned
to its beauty, and often the sound of its sweet bells has
come to me across the ocean. Reformed it had, in

*P Arthur Hugh Clough, the poet, was the son of a Liverpool
cotton merchant; born 1819; Scholar of Balliol; Fellow of Oriel,
and Tutor ; Principal of University Hall, London ; died 1861J

74 KEMINISCENCES

justice to the University and the nation, to be ; and I
had to bear a hand in the process ; but I was helping to
destroy a little Eden in a world where there are not
many of them. An attempt was made by a reforming
party at Queen's to open a Fellowship and Tutorship
for me there; it was defeated, as it was sure to be, by
a combination of Anti-reformers and Ritualists. I
found a more congenial home in University College.

GOLDWIN SMITH AT ABOUT FORTY YEARS OP AGE.

Photograph by J. H. Guggenheim, Oxford.

CHAPTER V

OXFORD TUTORSHIP
1851-1854

Fellows— Arthur Penrhyn Stanley— Benjamin Jowett— Thorold
Rogers — Mark Pattison — Sir Travers Twiss.

MY life during the years that followed was rather
a medley. I was for a time Tutor at University Col-
lege; was Assistant Secretary to the Royal Commis-
sion of Inquiry into the University of Oxford; and
Secretary to the Parliamentary Commission of Reform
which followed it; tried the study of law for a time in
London, but found that the profession would be beyond
my strength; fell back on the University; and became
Regius Professor of Modern History; during my tenure
of which office I was a member of the National Educa-
tion Commission.

Fellows at Colleges were then all unmarried and lived
in College ; such of them as were in Orders waiting for
College livings. We dined together in Hall, and after
dinner had our chat round the fire in Common Room.
The Common Room at University was that in which
Johnson had often been a guest. Over its mantelpiece
stood the bust of Alfred, our legendary founder, by

76 REMINISCENCES

Bacon/ a copy of which now stands in the Hall devoted
to liberal studies at Cornell. Living amongst our
pupils, we saw a good deal of them. The marriage of
Fellows and their residence out of College must have
greatly loosened the old ties. This is a pity. But
the change was necessary to secure teachers perma-
nently devoted to their calling, which the celibate
Fellows and Tutors of former days could not be.

There is, I believe, little difficulty in managing young
English gentlemen, if they trust you and know that
you respect their feelings. They will bear reproof
when they are conscious that it is deserved, and submit
to all that is really necessary to the enforcement of
law. Sarcasm, which hurts their self-respect, mistrust
of their word and honour, or espionage, they will not
bear. Of course it is necessary to remember that boys
are boys, and while you hold the reins firmly, not to
be always pulling at the horse's mouth. Tricks were
sometimes played on the Dons, the authors of which,
if you were wise, you were not over-anxious to discover.
From the hazing which is the strange opprobrium of
American Colleges we were almost entirely free. Once
an unpopular student of our College was hazed. The
College officer who had to deal with the case said in

P The author probably refers to John Bacon, born 1740 ; died
1799; but Chalmers (History of the Colleges, etc., i, 36 [1810]) and
Ingram (Memorials of Oxford, University College, p. 15 [1834])
describe the bust as " carved by Wilton from a model by Rysbrach."
It was presented to the College by Jacob Pleydell Bouverie, Vis-
count Folkestone, afterwards second Earl of Radnor.] j

OXFORD TUTORSHIP 77

effect, "Boys will be boys, and if you play pranks on
me or my colleagues you will be punished if we are so
unlucky as to catch you; but we are not insulted.
Your fellow-student, if you maltreat him, is insulted,
We are the guardians of the honour and feelings of
everybody under this roof, and we mean to fulfil our
trust." One appeal to good feeling was enough.

As Tutor of University I stepped into the place of
Arthur Stanley,1 whose name, in those days great, and
to High Churchmen terrible, is now almost forgotten,
while the progress of the Higher Criticism has left
the most daring of his heresies far behind.

Stanley's influence as a theologian and a religious
philosopher, never very great, apart from the charm
of his personal character, has ceased. His best works
are his "Life of Arnold," his historical lectures, and his
"Sinai and Palestine." The work last mentioned
called forth his utmost enthusiasm and gave the fullest
scope for the display of his special gift, the historical
picturesque. In the lectures on the Eastern Church
he shows his ardent historical sympathies, his power
of delineating historical character, his comprehensive-
ness of view, and the picturesque vivacity of his style.
His lectures on the Jewish Church lack a critical basis
and strictness of critical treatment altogether. The
lecturer too often escapes from a critical difficulty into

p Best known perhaps as Dean of Westminster, a post he lield
from 1864 till his death in 1881. He was born in 1815 ; became
Canon of Canterbury in 1851; and Professor of Ecclesiastical
History at Oxford in 1856.]

78 BEMINISCBNCES

preaching. To account for the subsistence of the Israel-
ites during forty years in the wilderness, with the min-
imum of miracle, he labours to make out that the desert
may once have been less barren ; a desperate hypothesis
if carried to the necessary extent. The historian who
tries to sit between the two stools, miracle and myth,
comes to the ground. The case is even worse when the
lecturer has to deal with the moral difficulties, such as
the massacre of the Canaanites, the slaying of Sisera,
and David's death-bed legacy of vengeance.

Stanley was wanting in the power of strict and
patient investigation, in the critical faculty, in force to
grasp, almost in desire of grasping, positive and definite
truth. He could scarcely even understand the need of
positive and definite truth felt by ordinary natures,
which had no golden cloud of historical sympathy and
religious eclecticism wherein to float. Hence he over-
rated the efficacy of the oil which, in a truly Evangelical
spirit, he poured upon the troubled waters. He says
that the writer of Genesis did not mean to teach us
geology, but only the relation of man to his Creator.
The writer of Genesis, however, did teach us geology,
at least cosmogony, and his apologists are driven to
saying in effect that the Creator, in dictating an account
of his own work, though not scientifically right, was
very nearly right, and almost anticipated the nebular
hypothesis. It might be asked, too, whether the crea-
tion of Adam and Eve does not concern the relation of
man to the Creator.

OXFORD TUTORSHIP 79

Stanley's theory of Church and State was derived
not so much from Hooker,1 to whom his biographer
ascribes it, as from Arnold, who again seems to have
derived it from the Greek commonwealths, the study
of which was his delight. Arnold failed to observe
that though the Athenian Commonwealth had a State
religion to which Socrates sacrificed, the religion of
Socrates was outside that of the State, and brought him
to a martyr's doom. Stanley, like Arnold, desired that
Church and State should be one. In strange practical
contrast to his general liberalism, Stanley was an
almost fanatical upholder of Church Establishments.
He went the length of feeling a qualified sympathy
even with ' Bluidy Mackenzie.' He had persuaded him-
self that, under the free system, there would be more of
sectarian bitterness and mutual persecution. But he
had only to look across the Atlantic to see that there
would be nothing of the kind, and that you might have
a Christian nation without a State Church. Strange
to say, when he visited America he seemed to miss the
significance of what he saw, and to identify himself
with the Episcopal Church alone. As a Liberal,
Stanley belonged himself to one of the Church parties,
and could not help at last being drawn from his chosen
position of mediator and peacemaker into the party
fray. When he was in it, he fought like a gamecock,
and developed unexpected powers as an oratorical

P Richard Hooker, the author of "The Laws of Eeelesiasticall
Politie."]

80 REMINISCENCES

gladiator in the debates of Convocation, though he
always bore himself as became a single-hearted cham-
pion of truth and justice, never descending to virulence
or faction. He now threw back his mantle of half
orthodoxy, and stood revealed to High Churchmen and
Evangelicals as the horrid thing he was. Their dread
of hi™ was ludicrous. Of course flowers were scattered
on him by orthodoxy. He was told that his conduct
"was scarcely reconcilable with the most fundamental
principles of morality"; that "if he had behaved with
like profligacy in the service of an earthly sovereign he
would have been tried by court-martial and shot " ; and
that he had committed "a graver offence than the tutor
who corrupts his pupil's mind or the trustee who robs the
widow and orphan of their property." This, though his
enemies did not know that he had administered the
Sacrament to such an arch-heretic as Mrs. Annie Besant l
and witnessed a Spanish bull-fight on a Sunday !

The dust of these furious controversies has now been
gathered into a narrow urn. Stanley describes the
rumour of Newman's secession to Rome as producing
an effect like that of the crack of doom. It seemed,
he said, that the sun was about to hide its rays and that
darkness was falling on the scene. To us the confluence
of Newmanism with Romanism seems as natural as
the confluence of two drops of water on a window-pane,
and perhaps fraught with consequences little more

P President of tie Theosophieal Society. Author of numerous
works. Born in 1847.]

OXFORD TUTORSHIP 81

momentous to humanity. We have far other questions
now before us.

What Stanley did practically towards liberalizing
theology was done, not so much by his theological
arguments, as indirectly by his treatment of Bible
history. As his biographer says, he brought semi-
mythical personages and events down to a human level.
He carried on, and pretty well completed, the work
begun by Milman, who, daring in his day, first designated
the Father of the Faithful as a Sheikh.

I must not forget Stanley's high claims as a bio-
grapher, in which character he first won distinction,
and is to many, perhaps, still best known. His "Life
of Arnold " is a noble, and no doubt in the main a true,
picture of a genuine hero. Though panegyrical, as a
Life written by a friend and disciple must be, it is not
slavish, any more than was Stanley's devotion to Arnold
himself. The Life is no doubt true, I say, in the main.
There was something in Arnold's character, as there is
something in his face, which a pupil who lay in his
master's bosom could hardly see. Stanley was never
a schoolboy; at Rugby, though neither unsocial nor
unpopular, he lived apart. He tells us that the school-
world of "Tom Brown " was an absolute revelation to
him, opening up a world of which, though so near him,
he was utterly ignorant. Nor could he well be sensible
of any tendency in Arnold's monitorial system to make
boys prematurely sage.

Stanley's Oxford prize poem, "The Gypsies," rises

82 REMINISCENCES

far above the prize poem level, and promises a real, if
not a great, poet. This promise he never fulfilled. It
is strange that he should have entirely lost, if ever he
had it, a sense of music, art, and scenery; that he
should have seen nothing in the glorious Alps but
"unformed and unmeaning lumps/7 and found, maugre
Ruskin, no beauty or attempt at beauty in the interior
of St. Mark's. He had no ear for music, yet between
him and its Queen, Jenny Land, there was an almost
passionate friendship.

" A quaint pathetic helplessness in practical matters
that proved at once attractive and endearing" was
characteristic of Stanley, and is ascribed by the bio-
grapher to the petting care with which he was always
treated by his domestic circle. But surely it must have
been natural and not unconnected with his want of
accuracy in investigation. He never could do a rule-
of-three sum, and when he voted for Mill, who held that
the power of doing a rule-of-three sum ought to be a
qualification for the suffrage, he said that he had been
voting for his own disfranchisement. His handwriting
was the despair of postmen and printers. A letter
addressed by him to Dublin found its way to Bath.
His " here we caught our first view of Jerusalem " was
printed "here we caught our first view of Jones.7' A
highly confidential letter intended for the Liberal
Bishop Tbirlwall l he misdirected to the High Church

P Bishop of St. David's. 1797-1875. — But Stanley exculpates
himself. See Prothero and Bradley's " Life," I, 442.]

OXFORD TUTORSHIP 83

Bishop Wilberforce, with, ludicrous results. As Dean
of Westminster, while he was a most admirable custos
of the Abbey, he seems to have been a poor custos of
its estate. But his want of aptitude for business, and
his natural distaste for it, enhance the merit of his
readiness to undertake such a post as that of secretary
of the Oxford Commission, and lay aside his congenial
work for it when what he deemed his duty called.
He lived, if ever a man did, not for himself, but to do
good. Sint animae nostrae cum illo.

I was also intimate with Stanley's illustrious yoke-
fellow Jowett,1 about whom, since his death, much
has been written. He was a far deeper and more ac-
curate scholar than Stanley, as a comparison of his
" Romans" with Stanley's " Corinthians" will show.
His essays in the same work evince great spiritual
insight and sympathy as well as literary grace. But
there was no clinch in his mind. He would have
doubted and kept other people doubting forever.
Whatever was advanced, his first impulse was always
to deny. Doubt is better than credulity only so long
as you are pushing on to truth. Nor can I understand
how a man could have found it possible to speak or
even to think with perfect freedom in such a position
as that of the clerical Head of a College, performing
religious services and preaching in the College Chapel,

[l Benjamin Jowett, Master of BaJJiol College, Oxford, and trans-
lator of Plato. Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford. Born 1817;
died 1893.J

84 EEMINISCENCES

when he had ceased to believe, not only in revealed
religion and miracle, but apparently in the existence
of any trustworthy evidence of the personality and
teaching of Christ. I cannot help thinking that Jowett
sought in translation a mental refuge. The result, no
doubt, was happy for those who can read the Classics
only in an English dress ; though it is difficult to pre-
serve in a translation the aroma of Plato or the fresh-
ness of new-born philosophy struggling to express itself
which engages us in Thucydides. Jowett did great
things for Balliol and the University. Men afterwards
eminent owed to him the awakening and direction of
their intellectual life.

Another Liberal notability, though in a very different
line and style, was Thorold Rogers,1 Professor of Politi-
cal Economy, with his burly frame, his voice of thunder,
his headlong Radicalism, and his rollicking good hu-
mour. He was a satirist as well as an economist.
Stubbs 2 and Freeman were mutual admirers.

The most remarkable figure in our circle was perhaps
that of Mark Pattison.8 He had once been an ardent
follower of Newman. It was said that he had escaped
secession only by missing a train. He had, however,

P James Ed-win Thorold Rogers, first Tooke Professor of Statistics
and Economic Science at King's College, London ; then Drummond
Professor of Political Economy, Oxford ; M.P. for Southwark, and
afterwards for Bermondsey ; published many works. 1823-1890.]

P William Stubbs, Mr. Goldwin Smith's successor in the Chair
of Modern History at Oxford. He was nominated Bishop of Ox-
ford in 1888.1

P Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford. Born 1813 ; died 1884.]

OXFORD TUTORSHIP 85

missed that train with a vengeance, and had become
a notable specimen of the recoil ; though once when he
preached before the University there seemed to me to
be something like a regurgitation of the asceticism of
his Newmanite days. In his case, as in that of Jowett,
one could not help wondering how an Agnostic could
hold the office and perform the religious functions of a
clerical Head of a College. Pattison was profoundly
learned, rigorously accurate, and a Draconian critic.
His talk, when he was in the right vein, was highly
instructive and amusing, with touches of rather grim
humour. He was the chief of a party called " Re-
searchers," who held that the proper function of a
University was not teaching, but research, for which
holders of University emoluments ought to be left
perfectly free from fixed duties. He was himself not a
happy example of his system, since as a tolerably active
College Tutor he had produced his excellent Life of
Casaubon, while as the holder of a College Headship
which was almost a sinecure and was by him made
entirely one, he produced nothing of more consequence
than newspaper reviews, a short biography of Milton,
and a school edition of Pope's "Essay on Man." That
there was an unpleasant element in his character,
passages in his Memoirs1 show. If there are such things
in the manuscript which he has deposited with the
Curators of the Bodleian for future publication, the

P "Memoirs." By Mark Pattison. Late Rector of Lincoln
College, Oxford. London : Maenullanand Co. 1885.]

86 REMINISCENCES

Curators ought to use the knife, not allow themselves
to be made the agents of posthumous libel. How
Conington can have moved Pattison's spleen, it is hard
to tell.1 He was amiable, inoffensive, and if he had
changed his mind about religious questions, Pattison
had done the same. Still more discreditable is the
allusion to the misfortunes of Dr. Travers Twiss,2
against whom Pattison cherished a grudge for having
many years before, as the legal adviser of University
College, decided against him a question of eligibility
to a Fellowship. The case of Travers Twiss was one
which might have moved even a disappointed candi-
date's heart to pity. From the summit of prosperity
and reputation he was suddenly cast down by the dis-
covery of a flaw in the pre-nuptiaJ. character of his
wife. A scoundrel, who, I heard with pleasure, had
ended his days in a Work-House, being acquainted with
Lady Twiss's history, blackmailed her and her husband
till they could bear it no more. A prudent friend
offered to take the wicked blackmailer out of the
way by finding him constant employment abroad.
But they determined to go into Court. Lady Twiss

p See the " Memoirs," pp. 245 et seq.]

P Sir Travers Twiss ; bursar, tutor, examiner, barrister ; Professor
of Political Economy, of International Law; Begius Professor of
Civil Law at Oxford, 1855-1870 ; Chancellor of the Diocese of Lon-
don; etc. He married in 1862 Marie PharialdS Rosalind Van
Lynseele. Those who desire to know the details of the "flaw"
spoken of in the text, may consult the Law Reports of the London
Times of the second week of March, 1872. Born in 1809 ; died in
1897. The reference to Sir Travers Twiss in Pattison's "Me-
moirs " is on pages 176-7.]

OXFORD TUTORSHIP 87

broke down. Twiss had to resign Ms Chancellorship
of the Diocese of London, and was a ruined man. One
day before his marriage I had dined with him in his
elegant little house in Park Lane; and quaffed Cabinet
Johannisberger, the gift of Metternich/ for service done
to Austria by Twiss's pen. The next time I saw him
was in the Strand, some years after his fall. I crossed
over to grasp his hand, but he dived into the crowd.

P The Austrian statesman and diplomatist, Prince Clemens
Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar von Metternieh-Winneburg. 1773-
1859J

CHAPTER VI

TRAVELS
1847-

The Tyrol — Dresden — Prague — Normandy — Guizot —Italy
— Italian Exiles — Louis Blanc.

OF course I travelled. Very limited the range of
travel was compared with what it is at the present day.
On the other hand, when I and my companions rambled
over Switzerland, Tyrol, and the Southern slopes of the
Alps, a faint hue of romance still lingered on the knap-
sack. We climbed the Bigi on our own feet. At
Zermatt, where now are great hotels, the good Madam
Lauber, in her little wooden hostelry, feasted us with
goat's flesh, and when I was out late at night sent her
ostler with a lantern to look for me on the Alps. Now
there are great hotels, and there is to be a railway up
the Matterhorn. In Tyrol you lived for about two
shillings a day in clean quarters with coarse but not
unwholesome fare, and coffee, probably home-grown.
In Tyrol, however, for want of trained guides we were
once near getting into a scrape* We were to cross from
the head of the valley of the Inn into the vale of Meran.
Our guide did not know the pass, and on the recommen-
dation of the priest, at whose house, for lack of an inn,

TRAVELS 89

we put up, we took a peasant from the village. Late
in the afternoon we reached a plateau of snow through
which we could just wade and on the other side of which
was the only descent to the vale of Meran. Just then
came on a blinding snowstorm, a thing bewildering and
almost appalling in the Alps. The peasant lost heart ;
refused to go on ; when persuaded to go on, took to
his flask for courage, and when, fortunately, we had just
got clear of the plateau, tumbled over a little precipice
and lay like one dead in the snow beneath. He was
got down the mountain to a spot where help could
reach him from a village. Of my knapsack memories
the Lago d' Orta l with the mountain path from Orta
to Varallo is the sweetest. From the Dent de Jaman
I saw a magnificent thunder-storm between the Alps
and the Jura. The reverberation of the thunder
between the ranges hardly ceased for hours. The first
sight of the distant Alps seems to give one a new sense.
Cobden, whom Tories called "a bagman," said to me
when I was going to America, "There are two sublimities
in nature, the sublimity of rest and the sublimity of
motion. The sunset Alps are the sublimity of rest,
the sublimity of motion is Niagara." He would now
find Niagara turned into a power and railroads running
up the sunset Alps. No wonder Switzerland does not
produce human poets in face of such transcendent poe-
try of nature. A spiritual philosophy is more likely
to be born in sight of the Alps than a school of poetry.
P (?) Laguna <T Orta.]

90 REMINISCENCES

A pleasant summer I spent in 1847 with an Oxford
party at Dresden, where we were then about the only
English. We studied German in the morning; dined
at the Briihlsehe Terrasse at noon ; at six went to the
theatre, which was excellent. We saw the "Merchant
of Venice " acted there for the first time. The rapture
of the audience and its enthusiastic acclaim of Shake-
speare's name were delightful. Often, of course, I
stood before the Sistine Madonna. That, it seems to
me, is the only infant Jesus with a supernatural look,
and it seemed to me that the effect might have been
produced by putting the eyes of a man into a child's
face. As to the pictures of the Virgin and Child in
general, I must confess that if there is one thing of
which I am more weary than I am of them it is a picture
of the Holy Family. Art toils in vain to depict Deity
as a child in a mother's arms.

We went up the Elbe to Prague, the city of quaint
magnificence and teeming memories; the most roman-
tic being those of Wallenstein. In Prague John Huss
reigns no more. He was supplanted by the Jesuits
with their St. John Nepomuk,1 Queen's confessor, and
martyr, as the Jesuits say, to the secrecy of the Confes-
sional, while the jealous King gave another account of
the martyrdom. My companion nearly won the crown
of martyrdom for himself and me by striking the statue
of St. John Nepomuk with his umbrella as we crossed
the bridge over the Moldau.

I1 Usually, I think, called St. John of Nepomuk.]

TRAVELS 91

Travelling is much altered since those days. Going
from Ham to Hanover we had to get into the interior
of a crowded Eilwagen at noon in burning weather and
to crawl amidst clouds of dust through the whole of
that day, the following night, and great part of the next
day. I preserve to this hour a grateful recollection of
the bottle of Assmannshauser with which I refreshed my-
self at Hanover. The paragon of quick travelling was
the Mallepost from Geneva to Paris, which took two pas-
sengers in a coupe. At the Geneva Poste with the first
stroke of the clock at 4 P.M. the wheel turned. We
trotted up the Jura, had ten minutes for refreshment
at the top of it, then galloped with successive relays
of neighing and kicking stallions to Paris, having only
one halt of a quarter of an hour for refreshment. We
were turned out at the Paris Poste at one o'clock in
the morning of the second day to find our lodgings as
we could. My fellow-traveller fortunately had a car-
riage to meet him, in which he kindly took me to Meu-
rice's; otherwise I might have spent the rest of the
night in the yard. However, if travelling was less
easy, people were not so restless. A man who had a
holiday reposed. The present age is so restless that it
can find repose only in action. If a man has a holi-
day, he sets out to travel as far as he can by rail,
encountering almost as many cares in catching trains,
looking after baggage, and getting rooms at hotels, as
there are in the business for relief from which he flies.
It was later on that, feeling in need of refreshment,

92 REMINISCENCES

I took a quiet carriage drive through Normandy,
stopping at each place till I had exhausted its antiqui-
ties and beauties, living at the tables d'h&te of the little
hotels, and seeing something of the people. I picked
up some history by the way. Wide is the gulf between
the France of the days before the Revolution and the
France of to-day. I came upon a ruined chateau.
The peasants could tell me nothing about it; did
not know who had been its lords; but said it had
belonged to a Baron who shod his horses with silver.
Perhaps the grandfathers of some of these men had
stood bareheaded at the gate to see the Lord go forth.
In the wall of the auberge was a medallion portrait,
probably taken from the chateau. The landlady
could not tell me whose it was, but I thought I recog-
nized the features of Marie- Antoinette.

On the trip I fell in with a young French official who
was going his rounds. We travelled some way together,
and a very pleasant companion he was. I was struck
with his attitude towards the Church. He seemed
to have got beyond any antipathy to it, and to regard
it with perfect indifference, as a thing with which he
had no concern. I was at the Church of Mont St.
Michel when a party of peasants entered. The women
all went up to the altar and knelt to it; the men all
stood aloof. On the other hand I had an introduction
to a wealthy gentleman at Caudebec who was working
zealously for the Church. The connection is every-
where close between religious and political reaction.

TRAVELS 93

Zola's picture of the peasantry in "La Terre" did
not seem to me to be applicable to the Norman peas-
ants. Taking shelter from the rain in a Norman
cottage, I found what seemed to me, for peasants, opu-
lence and civilization. But from what my friend Lady
Verney,1 a very careful observer, said, Zola's description
is true of the peasantry in the South. A sorry result
of a century of revolution !

In the magnificent churches of Caen you feel the
majesty of the Conqueror. At Falaise the castle still
looks down upon the tanneries, as in the days when
Robert the Devil wooed the tanner's daughter. There
lie buried Walter 2 and Biota,3 reputed victims of the
Conqueror's ruthless ambition. I thought of the con-
cluding words of one of Halford Vaughan's 4 lectures
on the Norman Conquest. "John, who murdered his
nephew, was weak, and he is infamous; but if Walter

P Probably Frances Parthenope, eldest daughter of William
Edward Nightingale, and second wife of Sir Harry Verney, the
second Baronet. She wrote "Real Stories from Many Lands,"
1878; "Peasant Properties, and other Selected Essays," 2 vols.,
1885; "Cottier Owners, Little Takes and Peasant Properties. A
Reprint of 'Jottings in France, Germany, and Switzerland/",
1885 ; and many other books.]

p Walter, Count of Mantes (and chosen Count of Maine), son
of Godgifu, the daughter of King Ethelred.]

[» Biota, his wife, daughter of Herbert Wake-Dog. — They were
said to have been poisoned by William the Conqueror, while they
were his guests. — See Freeman's "The Norman Conquest," iii,
139; iv, 391. — For the tale in brief, the general reader may be
referred to Freeman's " William the Conqueror," chap* iv. London :
Maemillan. 1888. ("Twelve English Statesmen" Series.)]

[4 Henry Halford Vaughan, Regius Professor of Modern History
at Oxford from 1848 to 1858.]

94 REMINISCENCES

and Biota sleep in the vaults of Falaise, the horse of
William's equestrian statue prances proudly over their
forgotten graves."

I had made the acquaintance of Guizot l when he was
an exile in London. A note recalling our acquaintance
brought a kind invitation to Val-Richer. I found a
charming family group assembled there. The fallen
Minister was evidently happy in the circle of home
affections; and I set down his happiness as a proof
of his having used power on the whole for good. So
I believe he had; though his enemies might call him
an austere intriguer, and though a stain was left on
his career by the Spanish Marriage plot; which, how-
ever, was not his work, but that of his crafty master.
His talk, as we paced the garden after breakfast, was
mainly about the religious state of Europe. He
seemed to look with complacency on the Papacy as a
conservative power. There had been a division in the
French Protestant Church, in which he was on the con-
servative side, while his son-in-law was on the latitudi-
narian. Coming to the subject of Ireland, he stopped
in his walk, and with an emphatic wave of his hand
said, "The conduct of England to Ireland for the last
thirty years has been admirable." I replied that in
intention it had; but that we had still to do away with
the Irish Church Establishment. To this he assented,
and then repeated what he said before.

P Francois Pierre GuiUaume Guizot, the celebrated French
statesman and historian. 1787-1874.]

TRAVELS 95

Italy I saw for the first time with the raptures of a
student of history, ancient and modern. I was im-
pressed, of course, by the luminous grandeur of St.
Peter's, but the impression was not religious; it was
merely sesthetic, and the style, in strong contrast with
that of the Gothic Cathedrals of Christendom, seemed
to mark the distinction between the Papal autocracy
and the religion of Anselm and Thomas & Kempis. A
later tour took in Ravenna, on which I looked as the
asylum of one of the greatest of poets, but one who at
the same time had polluted imagination with the hateful
Purgatory and Hell, depicting God as an almighty
fiend torturing through all eternity for their frailty
beings whom he had himself created frail. Profoundly
interesting is Syracuse, specially to all who read in the
original the narrative by Thucydides of the retreat of
the Athenians, which has been called the finest of all
narratives and is certainly among the very finest.

No place took my fancy more than Perugia, enthroned
upon its hill with its glorious view over those valleys,
and with the shrine of St. Francis near. The city
having become cramped and rather noisome, a new
quarter had been thrown out with a new hotel. In the
hotel-book was entered Ruskin's name, with an
anathema against the new quarter as a profanation
of history and art. The censor, however, had put up
at the new hotel.

To talk about Venice would be a platitude. About
St. Mark's, beautiful and interesting as it is, Ruskin's

96 REMINISCENCES

raptures seem to me to be overdone. What impressed
me intensely and indelibly was the whole scene. I
saw that scene just in time, before the Campanile had
fallen and steam busses had been put on the Grand
Canal.

In England in that revolutionary era I saw a good
deal of the Italian exiles, Mazzini; Saffi, and Arrivabene.1
Mazzini impressed me as really noble. His mark was
humanity, of which he wished his Italy to be a free and
worthy organ. He assured me that he had never been
concerned in any assassination plot. Between Gari-
baldi and me letters passed, and when he visited Eng-
land he was going to visit Oxford and put up at my
house, but a jealous fairy whisked him away.

A far more questionable servant of humanity was
Louis Blanc,2 with whom I sat on Richmond Hill
through a long summer afternoon, talking of his doings
and those of his party in France. In exile he was mod-
erate, as well as very lively and attractive. But it
seemed to me that he had no definite policy, though he
had strong feelings, and if the guillotine had been put
into his hands, I am afraid he would have used it. Here,

P Giuseppe Mazzini, the celebrated Italian patriot and revolu-
tionary, was born in 1808, and died in 1872. — Count Aurelio Saffi.
was (with Mazzini and ArmelHni) elected one of the Triumvirate
of Rome in. 1849. — Count Carlo Arrivabene was the author of
"An Epoch of my Life " ; *' The Urgency of the Venetian Question " ;
"Italy under Victor Emmanuel," etc.]

P Jean Joseph Charles Louis Blanc, the IVench politician, his-
torian, political writer, and socialist; the advocate of "National"
or "Social," "Workshops/! Born 1811; died 1882.]

TRAVELS 97

however, was the latest outcome of three-quarters of
a century of European revolution, of which the enor-
mous carnage and incalculable destruction were by no
means the most costly part. The most costly part
was the effect on character, political and social Let
us never glorify revolution.

1 Of Louis Blanc when he was an exile in England I
saw a good deal. He was then all gentleness and phi-
lanthropy; but had he been in power, I am afraid the
demagogic despot, perhaps even the Terrorist, would
have appeared. As we lay together on the grass at
Richmond I might have been taken, as a British Lib-
eral, to symbolize progress, while, after fierce con-
vulsions, a Reign of Terror, hideous massacres, whole-
sale banishments, dominations of scoundrels, military
despotism with enormous sacrifice of life in the des-
pot's wars, and a long train of commotions, usurpa-
tions, and massacre following, with more civil war
and overthrow of free institutions, were represented
in Louis Blanc.

p A later addition.]

CHAPTER VII

UNIVERSITY COMMISSIONS
1854r-1858

The Unreformed University— The Commissioners — Dr. Jeune
— Liddell— Tait— Johnson— The Report— The Bill— The
Executive Commission — The Executive Commissioners —
Richard Bethell, Lord Westbury —The Commissioners' Report.

" THAT which man changes not for the better, time,
the great innovator, changes for the worse." Never
was the truth of Bacon's maxim more forcibly illus-
trated than in the history of the University of Oxford.
The Colleges had absorbed the University, which had
originally been free. The Statutes of the College had
remained unchanged from the time of their medieval
founders. The Fellowships, which were originally
provisions for poor students, but had by the change of
circumstances become the endowments of the teaching
staff, were saddled with all the preferences for birth-
place, place of education, kinship, or poverty, in which
the partiality of a founder, in an age little regardful
of differences of intellect, had thought it harmless to
indulge. Oaths were taken to observe codes of medie-
val discipline which neither were nor could be observed.
All the evils of which Adam Smith and Turgot have
spoken as attaching to endowments displayed them-

UNIVERSITY COMMISSIONS 99

selves in full force. The Professoriate was almost
dead, few of the Professors lecturing, still fewer having
a respectable audience. Worst of all, perhaps, the
Heads or Fellows having been required to take Orders
in the days when every scholar was a Clerk, the Univer-
sity and its Colleges had since the Reformation become
strictly clerical, and the University, instead of being
as it had once been, a place of general learning, science,
and education, had become the citadel of ecclesiasticism
and the arena of ecclesiastical dispute. Science was
exiled. The ancient languages and literature alone were
studied. Even mathematics had but a slight footing
at Oxford, though Newton had made them fashionable
at Cambridge. The University was cut off from the
majority of the people of the United Kingdom by
Anglican tests, and the Nonconformists were despised
for their lack of culture, while they were excluded from
its national seats. A reform had commenced at Oriel
and Balliol, where conscientious Heads had opened the
Fellowships to merit. Little Dr. Jenkyns/ Master of
Balliol, was a comic figure and the subject of innumer-
able jokes. But with all his grotesqueness and pom-
posity he was, as Carlyle says of a reforming statesman,
a good antiseptic element in his day. So was Eve-
leigh 2 the Provost of Oriel. Oriel and Balliol, how-
ever, were small Colleges, and with them improvement

P Richard Jenkyns. He was also Vice-Chancellor ; also Dean of
Wells. 1782-1854.]

p John Eveleigh was Provost from 1781 till his death in 18141
He was born in 1748 J

100 REMINISCENCES

seemed to halt. It even showed a tendency to recede
when Tractarianism, having become dominant, betrayed
its hostility to intellect and its determination to keep
the endowments, consequently the tutorial staff, as
close as possible to those whom it called pauperes
Christi; in fact, to youths of inferior intellect and sub-
missive character, such as ecclesiastical leadership
requires; while the tide of ecclesiastical agitation
threatened to drown whatever was left of academical
interest and duty.

Social advantages undoubtedly there were, but in
the way of intellectual gain all that an Oxford student
got for three years of his life at a round sum of money
was a smattering, soon forgotten, of Greek and Latin.

Mr. James Heywood, a Nonconformist Member of
Parliament, was bringing forward an annual motion
for inquiry into the Universities mainly with a view
to the abolition of religious tests. His motion was
regularly negatived, being unsupported by the Liberal
leaders, who saw no party capital in University reform,
while they were afraid of stirring a formidable wasps'
nest. A few of us, Mark Pattison and Jowett among
the number, met in the rooms of Arthur Stanley at
University College and addressed to Lord John Russell,
the head of the Liberal Government, a request that
he would not allow the occasion of Heywood's motion
again to pass without holding out hope of assistance to
University reform. In compliance with this request
Lord John Russell announced a Commission of Inquiry

UNIVERSITY COMMISSIONS 101

into the Universities and their Colleges. The wasps
at once swarmed out upon him; Gladstone denounced
interference with private foundations; the Minister
seemed to waver. A series of letters written to The
Times and signed "Oxoniensis," taking Bacon's maxim
for their test, were credited with having helped to con-
firm him in his resolution. At all events he persevered,
and Royal Commissions of Inquiry, one for Oxford and
one for Cambridge, were appointed.

The Oxford Commissioners were Hinds,1 Bishop of
Norwich, a Whig prelate, put in the chair to propitiate
Churchmen; Tait,2 then Dean of Carlisle, afterwards
Archbishop of Canterbury; Dr. Jeune,3 Master of Pem-
broke College; Liddell,4 then Head Master of West-
minster, afterwards Dean of Christ Church; Dampier,5
a lawyer, to keep the Commission right in its law;
Baden Powell,6 Professor of Geometry, to represent
science; and George Henry Sacheverell Johnson,7 a

P Samuel Hinds. 1793-1872.]

P Archibald Campbell Tait. 1811-1882J

P JVancis Jeune ; afterwards President of the Probate and
Divorce Court ; created Baron Helier in 1905 ; died in that year.]

[4 Henry George Liddell, joint author, with Bobert Scott, of the
Greek Lexicon. 1811-1898.]

[5 John Lucius Dampier, son of Sir Henry Dampier, the judge, at
this time Vico-Warden of the Stannaries of Cornwall ; at one time
Recorder of Portsmouth. 1792-1853.]

[fl Baden Powell, Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford.
1796-1860.]

[7 George Henry Sacheverell Johnson, Dean of Wells; Fellow,
Tutor, and Dean of Queen's College, Oxford; Savilian Professor
of Astronomy, 1839-1842 ; Whyte Professor of Moral Philosophy,
1842-1845; F.R.S., etc. 1808-1881 J

102 REMINISCENCES

paragon of the Oxford Class list, of Queen's College.
Stanley was Secretary, and opened characteristically
by misdirecting the letters to the Chancellor and the
Vice-Chancellor of the University; the Chancellor
being Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington, whom
Tory adoration had comically thrust into that place,
as he seemed to proclaim at his inauguration by making
false quantities in reading his Latin speech and wearing
his Academical cap wrong side before. I was Assistant
Secretary-Treasurer, my services being in request
because I had studied for a literary purpose the docu-
mentary history of the Colleges, to which, the muni-
ment rooms of the Colleges hostile to the Commission
being closed, there was no longer access. The Com-
mission, being Royal, not Parliamentary, had no
compulsory powers.

The most active spirit of the Commission was Dr.
Jeune, the Master of Pembroke. The Head of a House,
to sit on a Commission of Inquiry to which Oxford
generally and his own Order in particular were bitterly
opposed, required courage. Jeune had it. He was a
man of superabundant energy, remarkable acuteness,
and lively wit. He had raised Pembroke from the
lowest place among the Colleges to a respectable posi-
tion. He was a strict political economist, and used
to say that at the Day of Judgment he would be able
to plead that he had never given a penny to a beggar.
He was, however, really a very kind-hearted man, and
would probably have given the beggar twopence. He

UNIVERSITY COMMISSIONS 103

was excellent company and said good things. A lady
at his table asked him the delicate question on what
principle they chose the Heads of Colleges. "They
always take the handsomest man among the Fellows,"
was his reply. "I should not have thought/3 said the
lady, "that the Provost of Worcester had been chosen
on that principle." "Ah! but you have not seen the
Fellows of Worcester."

Another important member of the Commission was
Liddell, joint author with Scott of our Greek Lexicon.
He was a man of stately figure, character, and mind ;
an artist, drawing beautifully, as well as a great clas-
sical scholar and a first-class in Mathematics- He
sometimes made me think of the union of art and science
in Leonardo da Vinci. It appears that he had a greater
share in the lexicon than his partner. But at one
time we expected of hrm something more than a Lexi-
con. At the height of the Tractarian movement he
preached one or two liberal and philosophical sermons
which seemed to open a door and to promise us a leader.
But he did no more in that line. Probably his intellect,
like that of Bishop Thirlwall and other great Liberals
in Orders, felt the pressure of the white tie.

With Tait I then formed a friendship which happily
for me proved lasting. During one of our visits to
England in after years, my wife and I were the Arch-
bishop's guests at Addington, and when we took leave
of our host he was lying on a bed of sickness from which
he hardly rose again. If ever I knew a good man, he

104 EEMINISCENCBS

was one. His belief in his liberal evangelicism was
thoroughly sincere, and his sincerity, combined with a
toleration as large as the law of his Church would permit,
and with unfailing courtesy and kindness, carried him
safely through all the difficulties of his position in very
perilous times. Nothing could be simpler than his
personal habits and demeanour. He had thoroughly
endeared himself to the great mass of the laity, who
looked upon him as a wise and good guide. He began
his career as a Tutor at Balliol College, and was one of
the four College Tutors who sounded a warning note
against Romanizing tendencies. Then he became Head
Master at Rugby, a place which did not suit hi™ so
well; afterwards Dean of Carlisle. The loss of four
of his children all at once by an epidemic, was said to
have moved the Queen's maternal pity and led to his
promotion to the Bishopric of London, from which
he went to Canterbury. If this was so, Her Majesty
had far better reason for her action than she knew.

Johnson, of Queen's, was a man of the finest intellect
and the broadest culture. As an undergraduate he
had been the first of his day both in classics and mathe-
matics. Great things were expected of him. But he
had spent his strength in University competitions, and
was a warning to ambitious students of that danger.
As a Fellow of a wealthy College, condemned by medie-
val statutes, or at least by a custom supposed to be
founded on them, to miserable Trulliberism and use-
lessness, he had been personally impressed with the

UNIVERSITY COMMISSIONS 105

need of reform. He was presently made Dean of
Wells, and I spent many happy days with him and his
lovely wife under the roof of the old Deanery in that
city of ecclesiastical beauty, history, and repose. Has
the tide of change and unrest yet disturbed the peace-
fulness of Wells?

The Commission of Inquiry, in spite of all obstruc-
tion on the part of the close Colleges7 resistance, pro-
duced an unanswerable Report ; and to carry its recom-
mendations into effect Parliament passed an Act ap-
pointing an executive Commission, to which there were
two Secretaries, Wayte,1 afterwards President of Trin-
ity College, who represented High Church conservatism,
and myself. Gladstone, by this time, after hovering
between Conservatism and Liberalism, had alighted on
the Liberal side. As second in command to Lord Rus-
sell in the Commons he not only approved but framed
the Bill, and with all his power of exposition and com-
bative energy pushed it through the House. One
morning I went to him at ten o'clock to help in settling
the details of the Bill. He said that he had been at
work on it till a very late hour on the previous night.
We worked at it all day, Gladstone only leaving me for
about an hour and a half to attend a Privy Council.
At six I was very glad to get away to my Club. Glad-
stone went down to the House, where he made a speech

F- Samuel William Wayte ; scholar, fellow, rhetoric lecturer,
tutor, dean, bursar, and then President of Trinity College, Oxford.
1820-1878.]

106 REMINISCENCES

at one o'clock in the morning. The Bill was a good
deal cut up by adverse amendments in the House
of Commons, Disraeli doing his worst, and some Radi-
cals ignorantly playing into his hands. When the Bill
got to the Lords, Lord Derby,1 who was Chancellor of
Oxford, made a pretty stiff speech against it. But
when he sat down, the Duke of Newcastle 2 came over
to me and said that he thought that there would be no
real opposition, as there had apparently been no Whip
on the side of the Conservatives and they were in a
minority. Lord Derby, as a "man of sense, was probably
content with a decent show of resistance, being con-
scious of the weakness of his case, and having early in
life committed himself against the religious or rather
chapel-going part of the Oxford system. I ventured
to suggest that, having a majority present, the Govern-
ment might grasp the opportunity of reversing the
Commons' amendments and restoring the integrity of
the Bill. I said that when the Bill went down again
to the Commons the Radicals might be better advised
than they were before, and that, as the end of the
Session drew near, Opposition members were likely
as usual to be out of Town. Lord John Russell 3 on
being consulted, condemned my proposal as rash and
fraught with risk to the Bill. Gladstone was laid up
with chicken-pox; but on an appeal being made to

P Edward George Geoffrey Smith Stanley, fourteenth Earl of
Derby. 179^-1869.)

P The fifth Duke. 1811-1864.]
P First Earl Russell.]

UNIVERSITY COMMISSIONS 107

him gave, as might have been expected, the order for
battle. I had the pleasure of witnessing a succession
of divisions by which the whole set of hostile amend-
ments was reversed. When the Bill went down again
to the Commons, the result was what I had hoped it
would be, and the integrity of the Bill was restored. .
The work of the Executive Commission 1 was heavy
and delicate ; negotiations having to be carried on with
all the Colleges, some of which were still in a by no
means friendly frame of mind. The chairman was
Lord Ellesmere,2 a literary grandee ; the other members
were Lord Harrowby ; 3 Longley,4 Bishop of Ripon and
afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury; Sir George
Cornewall Lewis;5 Sir John Coleridge,6 the Judge, of
whom more hereafter; Sir John Awdry,7 and Mr.
Edward Twisleton.8 Lord Harrowby was a very

P This Executive Commission must, of course, be carefully dis-
tinguished from the Commission "appointed to inquire into the
state, discipline, studies, and revenues of the University and Col-
leges of Oxford," which has formed the subject of the previous part
of this chapter. — Ed.]

P George Granville Francis Egerton, second Earl of Ellesmere.
1823-1862.]

P Dudley Ryder, second Earl of Harrowby, M.A., D.C.L., Oxon. ;
M.P. for Tiverton; Lord Privy Seal; etc. Born 1798; died
1882.]

p Charles Thomas Longley ; 1794-1868.]

[5 Sir George Cornewall Lewis, second Baronet, the statesman and
author; a liberal M.P., held various high political posts; editor
of the Edinburgh Review. 1806-1863.]

[6 First Baron Coleridge, 1820-1894.]

[7 Probably Sir John Wither Awdry, at one time Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court of Bombay. 1795-1878J

P The Honourable Edward Turner Boyd Twisleton; politician;
Fellow of Balliol; barrister. 1809-1874.]

108 REMINISCENCES

worthy man and a statesman, the model of a Liberal
Conservative, who by Ms inconveniently open mind
had given much trouble to Whips. Sir George Corne-
wall Lewis was that scholar and statesman whom
Palmerston would have preferred to Gladstone as his
political heir. He was a profound scholar. The list
of his works fills more than two columns and a half of
the "Dictionary of National Biography," but most
of them died with him; for their heaviness was not less
remarkable than their accurate erudition. He was
personally popular and took great care to keep in touch
with the House. Yet it was difficult to believe that he
could be a successful leader, especially when he would
have had Gladstone on his flank. He could say a
good thing. It was he who said after a crush party,
"Life would be pleasant enough if it were not for its
pleasures." Destructive criticism was his forte. In
two ponderous volumes he destroyed the fabulous his-
tory of longevity, and he did expose the Countess of
Desmond,1 Old Parr,2 and other pretended centena-
rians. But he was too critical in contending that no-
body had ever been proved to have lived to a hundred.
Among other instances, an herbalist at Oxford had cer-
tainly lived to one hundred and four. It was said that
when Lewis was canvassing for Parliament, if an elector
refused his vote, he would say, "If you can't give me

P Katharine Fitzgerald, Countess of Desmond, second wife of
Thomas, the twelfth Earl ; said to have lived to 140. Died in 1604.]

P Thomas Parr, a native of Alberbury, near Shrewsbury. Said
to have been born in 1483 ; died in 1635J

UNIVERSITY COMMISSIONS 109

your vote, perhaps you can direct me to some case of
longevity in this neighbourhood." No man was more
respected or beloved by those who knew hfrn well.

Edward Twisleton was a man of leisure, very learned,
among other things a Hebrew scholar, an unusual
accomplishment for a layman. He was expected
to turn out some great work. In the end he turned
out nothing but a dissertation on the ecclesiastical mir-
acle of the "African Confessors/'1 who talked when
their tongues had been cut out, and a preface to an
inquiry by an expert in handwriting into the author-
ship of Junius,2 which concluded, like all the other
evidence, in favour of Francis.

The Oxford Bill brought me into contact incidentally
with a very notable character, Bethell,8 then Attorney-
General, afterwards Lord Westbury and Chancellor,
about whom many stories have been told. Meeting
him one morning in consultation about the Bill, seeing
him very lively, and knowing how great his burden of
work was, I could not help complimenting him on the
ease with which he bore it, "Yes/7 he replied, in his

p. " The Tongue not Essential to Speech ; with illustrations of
the Power of Speech in the African Confessors." By the Hon.
Edward Twisleton. London : John Murray. 1873.]

p "The Handwriting of Junius Professionally Investigated by
Mr. Charles Chabot, Expert." With Preface and Collateral Evi-
dence by the Hon. Edward Twisleton. London: John Murray,
Albemarle Street. 1871. Quarto. Pp. Ixxviii, 300; and 267
plates.]

p Richard Bethell, first Baron Westbury; Liberal M.P.; Solici-
tor-General; Attorney-General; Lord Chancellor. Born 1800;
died 1873.1

110 REMINISCENCES

invariably pious strain and with his usual mincing
accent, "I thank God it is so, and I owe it under Prov-
idence to my habit of always working early in the morn-
ing, not late at night. I set out in life/7 he added in a
pensive tone, "with many dear friends who worked late
at night. I have buried them all." He delighted the
world, while he made himself plenty of enemies, by
sharp satiric sayings, his genius for which, as well as his
manner of uttering them, was incomparable. Coleridge,
then Leader of the Bar, afterwards Chief Justice,
was an object of his antipathy. After Coleridge's
cross-examination of the Tichborne claimant, somebody
was praising him before Bethell. "Yes," said Bethell,
"he has thoroughly exposed the greatest impostor of
our age." "You mean the Claimant?" "No." In
a debate in the House of Lords "Lord Westbury," it
was said, "poured on the heads of his opponents a
stream of pellucid vitriol." Crystalline lucidity was the
special characteristic of his intellect. But his intellect
was also one of first-rate power. If he had not thrown
himself away, he might have given England a code.
I had occasion to write to him for his opinion as to the
study of Roman Law in the Law School which we were
organizing at Oxford. He replied at once in a long
letter showing his mastery both of the subject and of
his pen. Even to hear him argue in Chancery was a
treat.

BethelTs fall was due to the luckless ambition, which
towards the close of his career seized upon him, of play-

UNIVERSITY COMMISSIONS HI

ing the man of pleasure when he was not a man of the
world. The abuse of a piece of his patronage by his
scampish son, to which nobody could imagine that he
had been privy, would not have been fatal to him.
What was fatal was the social offence he had given by
introducing a certain Countess to high ladies. I was
sitting under the gallery of the House of Commons
when the vote of censure passed. Mr. Bouverie1 who,
though a Liberal, was the bitterest of the accusers,
having evidently prepared his speech, was in the full
tide of eloquent invective and was coming out with
a fine quotation from Milton about Satan, when his
memory failed him. He paused, could not recollect
the passage, fumbled in his pocket for the slip on which
it was written, drew it out at last, read the passage,
and wrecked his peroration; whereat I chuckled, my
heart being on the Satanic side. Bethell's sporting
aspirations could not fail to give birth to jokes.
"That's the shortest Chancery suit ever I saw/' said
a sailor, as Bethell in nautical costume went up the side
of a yacht. He rented Hackwood, the seat of Lord
Bolton near Basingstoke in our neighbourhood, where
he practised his markmanship, too late acquired, on
rabbits. One day, so ran the story, a lawyer came
down from London to confer with him about a case
in which they were counsel on opposite sides and which
was to be settled out of Court. When they had done
their business, Bethell invited the lawyer to go out

P Edward PleydeU-Bouverie, M.P. for KUmarnoek. 1844-1874J

112 REMINISCENCES

rabbit-shooting with him. A rabbit crossing the drive,
Bethell fired, and the keeper received some of the shot.
At a conference afterwards held in London to draw
up the agreement the other lawyer was surprised to
find that BethelPs recollection of the terms differed
widely from his own. "But, Sir Richard, I assure
you your memory fails you." " Impossible," said Sir
Richard, "the facts are fixed in my memory by a par-
ticular circumstance. You will remember that was the
day on which you shot my keeper." The story, which
went the round at the time, if it had a basis of truth, no
doubt gained considerably by circulation ; but a great
intelligence had given birth to such stories and made
itself a butt by yielding to vanity and attempting, at
an advanced age, to play the part of fast and sporting
youth.

In connection with the Oxford Commission I had
reason to feel grateful for the invention of the electric
telegraph. The Act gave the Colleges a year for the
revision of their own Statutes under the Seal of the
Commission. On the last day of the year, Colleges
being behindhand with their engrossing, a meeting of
the Commission was held at Oxford to allow them the
last moment. Three Commissioners were a quorum.
One place was vacant. Lord Ellesmere was sick. The
Bishop of Ripon had gone to Southampton to meet his
son, who was returning from the Crimea. But four
Commissioners, Lord Harrowby, Sir John Coleridge,
the Dean of Wells, and Sir John Awdry, had promised

UNIVERSITY COMMISSIONS, 113

to attend. At two o'clock, the hour of the meeting,
I was there with the documents and the seal. The
Dean and Sir John Awdry arrived. We sat waiting for
Sir John Harrowby and Sir John Coleridge. Enter a
messenger from Lord Harrowby to say that he was
called away to the bedside of his brother who was
dangerously ill in Yorkshire. Still, with Sir John
Coleridge, we had a quorum. But scarcely had Lord
Harrowby's messenger departed when there came one
from Sir John Coleridge to say that Sir John could not
leave the bedside of his son, the future Chief Justice,
who lay dangerously ill at Ottery, twelve miles from
Exeter. Here was a dilemma. A lapse would have
entailed a fresh Act of Parliament, to the disgust of the
Government and to my disgrace. I rushed to the tele-
graph office, which had not been long opened, and
searched through the wire for the Bishop of Bipon at
Southampton, but in vain. Then I said to the Dean of
Wells and Sir John Awdry, "There is still one train
which reaches Exeter just before twelve. You must
let me put you in it. I will wire the station-master
at Exeter to direct a hotel to send a post-chaise and
four to Ottery for Sir John Coleridge. We may hold a
meeting at Exeter just in time to seal the Statutes."
I did not know Exeter; but from a person at Oxford
who did I learned the name of the hotel which Sir John
Coleridge was most likely to use. Our train was on
time at Exeter. I sprang out and ran to the station-
master. He had received my message and had sent my

REMINISCENCES

order to the hotel ; but that hotel was closed ! Another
hotel, however, had taken the order and sent the post-
chaise. Just before twelve. Sir John Coleridge rolled
into the inn yard ; the meeting was formed ; and before
the clock struck the statutes had been sealed. An
American Secretary would have put back the clock,
but I had not then been in the United States.

At the close of the Oxford University Commission
the Commissioners were so kind as to offer to recom-
mend me for a permanent place in the public service.
I declined the offer, that not being my line. In re-
ference to some false reports, let me say, that I never
sought or desired anything of the kind. When I got
the Professorship of History at Oxford, which came
to me unasked, I had all that I desired in life.

The work of reform has been since carried further
by a second Commission. The first Commission did,
I believe, as much as was practicable at the time, the
state of opinion and the opposing forces being what
they were. It swept away the medieval statutes,
opened the Fellowships and Scholarships to merit, and
practically transferred the University from clerical
to academic hands. The tests were partly abrogated
by the same Bill, and entire abrogation was sure to
follow. A liberal constitution was given to the Univer-
sity, and an existence independent of the Colleges was
restored to it; though a federation of Colleges in the
main it must continue to be, and College life must always
be the life at Oxford. The result, amplified as it has

UNIVERSITY COMMISSIONS 115

since been, proved the soundness of the maxim that the
half loaf is better than no bread.

With reform from without went reform from within,
carried forward by the same hands. The range of
studies was enlarged, science was recalled from exile,
and, with law and modern history, introduced into the
course. The proper function of the University, how-
ever, at Oxford and elsewhere, still remains unsettled.
The old idea was that the University in its educational
capacity was to be a mental training-place and a seat
for studies unremunerative in themselves ; as Freeman
said in his bluff way, it was to be devoted to the teach-
ing of things which were of no use. The new idea, which
is gaining ground and in America has almost displaced
the old idea, is that the University is to be a mart of all
kinds of scientific or superior knowledge, out of which
each student is to choose the article most useful for his
destined career. The gymnastic and the bread-and-
butter system, in short, are still confronting each other,
while there is generally a rather awkward and uneasy
attempt to combine the two. There is no essential
antagonism between studies; a study may be useful
and gymnastic at the same time. But this does not
extend to trades, and into American and Canadian
Universities trades are finding, if they have not already
found, their way.

CHAPTER VIII

EDUCATION COMMISSION
1858-1861

The Commissioners — William Charles Lake — Nassau Senior —
James Eraser —Popular Education.

A FEW years after the University Commission, I
was a member of the Commission appointed to report
to Parliament on the subject of national education and
to frame a plan. The other Commissioners were the
Duke of Newcastle,1 chairman; Sir John Coleridge,3
Lake,3 afterwards Dean of Durham; Senior/ the lead-
ing economist; Edward Miall; 5 and William Rogers.6
Coleridge, Lake, and perhaps in some degree the chair-
man, though he was very liberal, represented the inter-
ests of the Church; Edward Mall those of the Non-
conformists; Senior those of social reform on secular

P The fifth DukeJ

P Sir John Taylor Coleridge, a nephew of Samuel Taylor Cole-
ridge, Justice of the King's Bench from 1835 to 1858. Born 1791 ;
died 1876.]

p William Charles Lake, Dean of Durham from 1869 till 1894.]

[4 Nassau William Senior, the economist and author ; Professor
of Political Economy at Oxford 1825-1830 and 1847-1852J

P Edward MM, an Independent Minister of Leicester ; estab-
lished The Nonconformist; M.P. for Bradford. 1809-1881.]

P William Rogers was a great educational reformer ; curate of
St. Thomas's, Charterhouse, London; Prebendary of St. Paul's;
Rector of St, Botolph's ; etc. 1819-1896.]

116

EDUCATION COMMISSION 117

principles; William Rogers, though he was a clergy-
man, those of popular education pure and simple. I
was appointed perhaps specially to deal with the subject
of the existing Charities, educational and of other
kinds, which it was proposed to include in the inquiry.
I wrote the section of the Report on those subjects,
which afterwards had the honour of furnishing the
raw materials for a famous speech of Gladstone. As
junior member, our eminent secretary Fitzjames Ste-
phen * not giving the work much of his time, I had to
give it a good deal of mine, and for two years was much
at the office, not a little to the prejudice of my literary
pursuits.

Lake was a considerable man in his day; now, I
suppose, like many considerable men, forgotten. He
was one of Newman's circle, perhaps of the outer circle,
who had not joined the secession; a friend and ardent
supporter of Gladstone, a stately and imposing sort of
man. William Rogers/ "fat Rogers" as we used to
call, him at Eton, was Minister of a parish in the East
of London and a noble specimen of that section of his
order which, when reform knocked at the door of the
slumbering Church, took, not to theological reaction
or agitation, but to philanthropic effort. He did a great
work among the neglected masses of the city poor.

Nassau Senior was very eminent as a political econo-

l1 Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, the judge, afterwards created a
Baronet. 1829-1894.]

P Frederick Rogers in the original MS.]

118 REMINISCENCES

mist, and was in the front of all inquiries and move-
ments of that kind. He was also a great political quid-
nunc, as is shown by Ms Diary of interviews * with some
of the leading statesmen of Europe, who, however, it
may be suspected, were too shrewd to unbosom them-
selves without reserve. He had a grudge against the
Poor Law Board, and when he insisted upon drafting a
report upon their schools, we knew what he would do,
and were prepared to deal with his draft accordingly.
The draft, being loosely tied up, slipped out of the
envelope in the post, and was misdelivered to the Poor
Law Board, which refused to part with it on my appli-
cation, and drew up a very full-bodied reply. Senior
was not orthodox, and he fluttered the High Church
members of the Commission by saying, when there was
a question about reading the Bible in schools, that "he
did not want the children to be taught the very barbar-
ous history of a very barbarous people." He was a
thorough-going economist and anti-imperialist. That
the Empire of India was essential to the greatness of
England he held to be a great mistake; he wished we
were well rid of it, if we only knew how.

Not the least valuable part of our Report was that
furnished by Assistant Commissioners whom we sent
out to inquire into the existing state of things in Eng-

f1 "Journals, Conversations and Essays"; "Correspondence and
Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with N. W. Senior " ; "Con-
versations with M. Thiers, Guizot . . ."; "Conversations with
distinguished Persons , . ."; "Conversations and Journals in
Egypt and Malta " ; etc.]

EDUCATION COMMISSION 119

land and into the operation of foreign systems. One
of the Assistant Commissioners was my friend and
neighbour in the country already mentioned, James
Fraser, who, like Rogers, was a fine specimen of the
unsacerdotal and undogmatic revival among the clergy
of the Church of England. His theological opinions he
would perhaps neither have found it very easy, nor have
much cared, to define. When he became Bishop of
Manchester, he was in his right place ; and he no doubt
did, and by his influence led the chiefs of industry and
commerce to do, much social good. Our last meeting
was in his house at Manchester, which I am sure he did
not call The Palace. He had just been fiercely de-
nounced by Mrs. Besant for saying that the loss of
religious belief was followed by a falling off in morality.
What he said nevertheless was true as a matter of fact3
though the remedy needed was not the revival of dead
beliefs, but the establishment of fresh and living princi-
ples in their place.

Of the Duke, our Chairman, I shall have to speak
presently. He performed his office as a Moderator well.
The Commission opened with debate on the general
question, different phases of opinion on which we had
been appointed to represent. A debate among able
men, as my colleagues were, round a table without
reporters, is instructive. The discussion left me inclined
on the whole to the voluntary and parental system,
when it is practicable, as opposed to any state machine;
and what I have seen in the United States and Canada

120 REMINISCENCES

has confirmed me in that opinion, though the State
system has become so firmly established that I have
hardly ever thought it worth while to raise the question,
and have never refused to act under the established sys-
tem. Democracy needs security for the voter's educa-
tion ; but this might be afforded by an educational test.
Edward Miall, who was with me on this question, and I,
put our convictions and the reasons for them on record;
then, finding ourselves outvoted by five to two, we
waived our dissent and proceeded with our colleagues
to conduct inquiry and in common frame the report.

In deciding this very vital question much may depend
on circumstances social and domestic. Certainly re-
ligious and probably family influence was strong in the
old local schools of Scotland and New England. The
public school cannot do much to mould character or
manner; the influence of the teacher as a rule seems
not to be great. It is apt to have against it the fond
parent, who, the teacher not having been chosen by him,
is apt to side with the refractory child. The private
school seems to be generally preferred to the public
school by those who can afford it, though they have as
tax-payers to pay for both. Of union of classes,
therefore, if this is an object, there cannot be very
much.

CHAPTER IX

LAW

Lincoln's Inn— On Circuit — English and American Courts of
Justice — Criminal Law — Judges— The Bar — Sir Gardner
Engleheart— Briton Riviere

CHIEFLY to please my friends, who thought that a
youth who had taken a First Class at Oxford was sure
to become a Judge, I read Law, taking up my abode in
London for the purpose. Law as a study suited me well
enough. I even rather liked Fearne on " Contingent
Remainders " * for the perfection of the deductive
reasoning from a perfectly arbitrary premise. Nor
did I fail to appreciate the ingenuity of the old pleading
system, quaint and grotesque as its formularies were.
But for Law as a profession I soon saw that I should
not have either strength or the other requisite quali-
ties; for I have no gift of speech. My little knowledge
of Law, however, was useful to me when I became Pro-
fessor of History. I duly ate my dinners at Lincoln's
Inn. A course of dinners was the curriculum in those
days. For the eating of dinners as a qualification for a
learned profession excellent reasons were given; as
excellent reasons had been given for the exclusion of the

P "An Essay on the Learning of contingent Remainders and
executory Devises." By Charles Fearne, First published in 1772.]

121

122 REMINISCENCES

half-blood from inheritance and the denial of counsel to
felons. I was called to the Bar, but never appeared in
Court. The only cause I ever pleaded was as Secretary
of the Oxford Commission in defence of some of its
ordinances before the Privy Council. The Court kindly
gave judgment in my favour.

My instructor in pleading was Temple/ a most genial
guide over those sombre realms. He told me an anec-
dote illustrative of the perfection of jury trial. His
father, a country gentleman popular in the neighbour-
hood, had a cause coming on at the Assizes. The day
before the trial a farmer called on him and said, "Mr.
Temple, sir, you've a cause coming on to-morrow.
Don't you be afeared, sir; I'm on the jury. I've just
bought a new pair of leather breeches, and I'll sit a hole
in 7em afore I find agin yer."

Though I never practised Law, I saw something of

P" Temple" in the MS. But Sir J. Gardner D. Engleheart is
kind enough to write to me thus : " His name was Templer, and
he had chambers in the Middle Temple where Smith and I read for
a few months in 1847 or 1848, and learnt, or thought we learnt,
* special pleading* intricacies. . . . Templer was, I think, a
Devonshire man, a relation or a very intimate friend of the
Rajah of Borneo." —Acting on this clue, Mr. C. E. A. Bedwell, Li-
brarian of the Middle Temple, is good enough to do me the service
of identifying him as John Charles Templer, younger son of James
Templer of The Grove, Bridport. He was born in 1814 ; edu-
cated at Westminster School ; entered Trinity College, Cambridge
— A.B. 1836 ; called to the Bar (Inner Temple) 1853 ; and held for
nearly thirty years a Mastership in the Court of the Exchequer.
He was the constant friend and correspondent of Rajah Brooke.
He died on the llth of June, 1874. — "It is a tradition in the
family . . . that their name was originally Temple." (See The
Law Times for June 27, 1874 ; vol. 57, p. 165.)]

LAW 123

that side of life. I went two circuits with my kind and
revered friend Judge Coleridge,1 the brother of Edward
Coleridge, my Eton Tutor, as his Marshal. The office
was almost honorary, but its holder travelled and lived
with the Judges. Pleasant trips those two circuits
were. The second Judge on one was Vaughan Wil-
liams,2 on the other Baron Parke.3 Vaughan Williams
I remember for his good humour and kindness. Parke
was no ordinary man. His massive and powerful frame
was the abode of an intellect not less massive and power-
ful. Every sentence he uttered was like a die stamped
by a mighty engine. Yet strange to say the narrowness
of this intellect, at least in its professional aspect, was
not less notable than its strength. As a lawyer and a
Judge, Parke was remarkable for extreme technicality.
"Ingenio magnOj immensa doctrina, acumine mentis
subtilissimo, leges Anglicae feliciter ad absurdum reduxti"
was the epitaph, I believe, which my impertinence
composed for him, and I trust never reached his ears.
On the Western circuit the leading advocate was

P Sir John Taylor Coleridge.]

[2 Edward Vaughan Williams, son of Sergeant Williams, the
author of " Williams' s 'Saunders'" (the sixth and best edition of
Sir Edmund Saunders's "Reports of Several Pleadings and Cases
in K.B. in the Time of Charles II.," known as the 'Pleader's
Bible ') ; appointed a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas ; retired
in 1865 ; became a Privy Councillor and a member of the judicial
committee of that body. He wrote much, notably a Treatise on
the Law of Executors and Administrators. Born in 1797; died
in 1875.]

pNo doubt meant for Sir James Parke, afterwards Baron
Wensleydale. 1782-1868.]

124 REMINISCENCES

Cockburn,1 afterwards Chief Justice. He was a bril-
liant orator in Parliament as well as at the Bar, and
earned his Chief Justiceship by a speech in defence of
Palmerston.2 Yet it seemed to me that he was not so
successful an advocate as Crowder,3 who was no orator,
indeed a tedious speaker, but master of the game, and
particularly pertinacious and skilful in cross-examina-
tion. Cockburn was rather too fond of showing his gift.
If I mistake not, I once saw him rather mortified when
a case went off in favour of his client and he missed an
opportunity of making a great speech.

Two things impressed me. One was the superior
effect of a quiet and seemingly fair manner on a jury.
Bullying witnesses is certainly a mistake as well as an
offence. The natural sympathy of a juryman when a
witness is being bullied by counsel is with the witness.
The juryman may some day be a witness himself. The
other thing was the command which an English Judge
has of his Court, which, in saving of time as well as
in security for justice, amply repays to the country the
large salaries required to tempt the leaders from the
Bar. I have since seen something of American Courts
of Justice and have been struck with the contrast. A
Judge of the American Supreme Court told me that in
attending an English Court he had been surprised at the

P Sir Alexander James Edmund Cookburn. Born 1802 ; died

1880.]

pin the House of Commons on the 28th of June, 1850.]

[•Sir Richard Sudden Crowder, Q.C. 1837; M.P. 1849-1854;

puisne judge 1854. Born 1795; died 1859.]

LAW 125

expedition with which cases were settled, while, so far
as he could see, justice was done. The explanation is
the command which the English Judge has over his
Court; and, it must be added, the freedom with which
he is allowed to charge the rural jury, whose power of
reviewing and balancing the evidence would often, in a
case at all complicated, totally fail.

The appeal in criminal cases in America postponed
execution in one case for nearly two years. It often
postpones execution till the crime is forgotten and
public sympathy passes from the victim to the
murderer. In England, though there has been no
appeal,1 other than occasional revision of the sentence
by the Home Secretary, I do not remember to have
heard of a single case in which it was proved that the
wrong man had been hanged. Once, however, this was
near happening. A man was under sentence for mur-
der in Lancashire. The Home Secretary, having taken
the opinion of the presiding Judge as to the sufficiency
of the evidence, had gone down to the King at Windsor,
leaving directions with his Under Secretary that justice
was to take its course. In his absence came the Gov-
ernor of Lancashire gaol, praying for a stay of execution.
He had no new facts to present ; his only plea, the weak-
ness of which he admitted, was that he was familiar
with the manner of the condemned and that there was
something in this man's manner which convinced him

P It must be remembered that this was written before the Crimi-
nal Appeal Act of 1907 : 7 Edw. VII, Chapter 23 J

126 REMINISCENCES

that the man was innocent. The Under Secretary
repeated his chief's instructions. But the Governor
persisted with such earnestness that at last the Under
Secretary gave way and took it upon him to stay exe-
cution. Another man afterwards confessed the mur-
der. I had this from Lord Cardwell.

We had a painful scene at the trial of a woman for
murder; if I recollect rightly, it was for the murder of
her own child, and for the sake of the money which she
got from a society for the burial. The trial lasted all
day, and the prisoner, though her life was at stake,
fell into a state of weary apathy, as I observed prisoners
even on trial for their lives were apt to do. The jury
went out to consider their verdict. They returned
with a verdict of guilty, but with a recommendation to
mercy. When they were asked the reason of their rec-
ommendation, the Foreman said that one of them was
not satisfied with the evidence. They were thereupon
sent back to reconsider their verdict. While they were
gone, the prisoner's feelings awoke, and we had a heart-
rending half-hour. At length the juiy came in with
an unanimous verdict of guilty. The Judge told
me that he had no doubt that the woman had been
rightly convicted and that there was reason for believ-
ing that it was not her first murder.

Evidence of a murder can seldom be direct, and in
the only murder-case witnessed by me in which the
evidence was direct the result was an acquittal. It
was a case of parricide. The prisoner and his father

LAW 127

were proved to have been on bad terms. One night in
a tavern close to a bridge they quarrelled before wit-
nesses. The old man went out; his son immediately
followed. A man and his wife saw the son throw the
father from the bridge into the river, where his body
was found. They were timorous people, and ran away.
In cross-examination this evidence was a little but not
materially shaken. The Judge fully expected a convic-
tion. Then came the family of the murdered man and
the murderer, and swore a circumstantial alibi; their
story being all true except the time, about which it was
easy for them to agree on a concerted falsehood. The
jury found not guilty, and the murderer threw up his
cap and ran gleefully out of Court like a boy running
out of school. The Judge had charged distinctly
against an acquittal, and was certainly right. Prob-
ably some local or personal feeling prevailed. Such,
when the verdict was against the Judge's charge, might
generally be taken to be the case.

In a bill-stealing case at Bristol pitiably figured the
last male descendant of my idol, Sir Walter Scott. He
had been the victim of a gang of bill-stealers, but his
own habits and associations had evidently been such as
to disgrace his illustrious origin. There was a certain
likeness to Sir Walter in his face, but he had nothing of
Sir Walter's forehead. He died, I believe, soon after-
wards.

I was deeply impressed with the responsibility of a
Judge presiding in a trial for murder and having to

128 REMINISCENCES

pronounce sentence of death. I felt thankful that the
responsibility would never be mine. Capital punish-
ment, experience seeins to show, is the only sufficient
safeguard for innocent life. Nor, when a man has been
convicted of deliberate and mercenary or selfish mur-
der, can life for him have any value. His existence
thenceforth can be only that of a being abhorred of his
fellows, and, if any moral sensibility linger in him, of
himself. Othello's murder is not mercenary or selfish;
it springs from a passion in itself generous. We should
not like to hang him. But he feels himself that he can-
not live. Solitary confinement for life is worse than
death, and it shuts out the possibility of moral re-
generation, which only social action can produce. Yet
it must be painful to pronounce the irrevocable doom.
I could see that the Judges felt this, though their con-
sciences were free, and their sensibilities, like those of
the surgeon who performed painful operations, had been
brought under control by habit.

The conversation of the Judges when they came home
to dinner was very pleasant. Without being shoppy,
it abounded in legal anecdote. The subject of the
liveliest stories was M. Justice Maule,1 a name now per-
haps hardly remembered outside the profession, unless
it be by the humorous sentence on a penniless man
convicted of bigamy which was believed to have helped
in bringing about a reform of the divorce law. Maule

P Sir William Henry Maule, Baron of tlie Exchequer 1839 :
transferred to Common Pleas 1839. Born 1788 ; died 1858.]

LAW 129

seemed to have been a man of rather loose habits and
opinions, who looked down from the height of an im-
perial intellect upon the crowd, genial at heart; but out-
wardly cynical and freely indulging his satiric vein.
He hated Coventry, which, though full of interesting
antiquities, must be allowed to have a somewhat
mouldy look. A witness there was slow in answering.
''Witness/' said Maule from the Bench, "you take five
minutes for each answer; and you seem to forget that
all that time I am at Coventry." There were probably
editorial comments next morning. A case involving
indelicate details was being tried. Maule recom-
mended ladies to leave the Court. Some ladies, prob-
ably not understanding the recommendation, remained.
As the plot thickened the examining counsel paused,
looked at the ladies, and then at the Judge, thinking
that the warning should be repeated. "Oh," said
Maule, "go on, Mr. Blank; the ladies like it, and you
needn't mind me."

Maule, like many men of genius, was free in his
habits, and many anecdotes were the consequence.
One was that once when rushing out of his bedroom
calling "Fire I " the porter conjured him to go to bed
again.

The Bar was evidently becoming overcrowded. In
former days there had been a social as well as a profes-
sional line between the grade of Barrister and that of
Solicitor, and the Solicitor having no son or nephew of
his own at the Bar, was at liberty to give a brief to any

130 REMINISCENCES

young man of promise. But by this time the social line
had been effaced, the Solicitor had connections at the
Bar to whom he could without injustice to the client
give the junior work ; and thus for a young man with-
out connections the door was closed. Weary years of
solitary waiting, perhaps unrewarded after all, were his.
Under the American and Canadian system, which fuses
the grades and permits the formation of legal firms, the
young man, if he gets little pay, escapes the solitude and
the dreary inaction of English briefiessness.

A friend of mine on taking office asked me to find him
a secretary, saying that I must know a number of clever
young Oxford men. I replied that I did, but that I
was not sure they would suit his work, and he had better
let me try to find a briefless barrister. He scouted
the idea that any barrister would take a place with so
moderate a salary and no expectations. I went to the
chambers of a friend whom I knew to have every quali-
fication for success at the Bar, but believed not to have
succeeded. I found him sitting without employment
in his solitary chambers. I told him faithfully what I
had to offer. He then desired my advice. I asked
whether he had done all in his power to put himself in
the way of business. He told me that he had, and that
business had once under special circumstances come to
tantalize him, but had departed and had returned no
more. I then advised him to accept, saying that even
if business did come again, life would be spent. He
took my advice; commended himself, as I was sure he

LAW 131

would, by his practical ability, and became Sir Gardner
Engleheart,1 a highly prosperous and distinguished man.
This incident was one of the flowers that grow beside
the rugged pathway of life.

Once more at least I had a bit of good luck in this
line. Briton Riviere,2 the great animal painter, was
the son of a drawing-master at Oxford, who, having been
unfortunate as a painter, was ending his life in gloom.
His son was nevertheless bent on being a painter, and
made a great effort to give himself a high education
with that object. I knew nothing of painting, but I
trusted the youth's aspiration and gave him his first
subject. The subject, Clara bringing water to the
wounded Marmion, which I chose, as the picture was a
gift to a Fair for the wounded, did not suit the painter's
genius, and the great authorities on art at Oxford pre-
dicted that he would fail. Not long afterwards, led by
his real genius into the right line, Briton Riviere was
receiving large sums for his pictures, and his father's
life closed not in gloom.

P Sir John Gardner Dilman Engleheart, K.C.B., Comptroller
of the Household of the Prince and Princess Christian from 1866
to 1869 ; Clerk of the Council of the Duchy of Lancaster 1872-
1899; Member of the Duchy Council 1901.]

P Mr. Briton Rhiere obtained his A.R.A. in 1879, and his RA. in
1881. He is also an Honorary D.C.L. of Oxford.]

CHAPTER X

LONDON
1845-1861

Macatday — Samuel Eogers — Lord Eougkfcon — Henry Eaflam —
Milman — Thackeray — - Croker — Tyndall — Herbert Spencer
— "The Grange"— Lady Ashburton— Carlyle— Tennyson
—Bishop Wilberforce— Lady Waldegrave— Parliamentary
Debates— The Theatre— Louis Blanc— Brougham— Lady
Dukinfield.

LA.W and the three Commissions severed me from my
College work and took me a good deal to London.
Connections of different kinds opened to me a good deal
of social life there.

It was an epoch in my social life when at the din-
ner-table of Sir R. H. Inglis,1 a member for the Univer-
sity of Oxford, high Tory, and Protestant, but genial
friend and host of men of all parties, I first met Macau-
lay* Macaulay did talk essays and engross the talking
— conversation it could not be called. One could
understand how he was a bore to other talkers. He
evidently was to a great talker who sat next to me.
He would seize upon a theme and dilate, with copious
illustration, from a marvellous memory. Mention of
the exclusive respect of the Ritualists for churches in
the Gothic style led to an enumeration of the Fathers

P Sir Robert Harry Inglis, M.A., D,C.L., F.S.A., F.K.S., second
Baronet. He opposed parliamentary reform, Jewish relief, repeal
of the corn laws, etc. 1786-1855.]

132

GOLDWIN SMITH AT ABOUT FOETT YEARS OF AGE.

Copy of a photograph by Mayall, of Brighton.
(The original hangs in the Common Room of University College, Oxford.)

LONDON 133

of the early Church who had ministered in churches
which were not Gothic. A question about the rules of
equestrian statuary led to a copious dissertation proving
that nature was the only rule* I have seen a whole
evening party kept listening in a ring to an essay on
final causes and the limits of their recognition, with
numerous illustrations. But it seemed to me all ex-
uberance, not assumption or ostentation. Once, how-
ever, even I thought Macaulay a bore. It was at a
breakfast at Lord Stanhope's.1 Lord Russell was begin-
ning to give us an account of the trial of Queen Caro-
line,2 which he had witnessed. Macaulay broke in with
an essay, and Lord Russell was swept away by its tide.
Of all English talkers that I ever heard, Macaulay
seemed to me the first in brilliancy. He is the first in
brilliancy of English writers, though not always the
most sober or just. Of all his writings the least just,
while it is perhaps the most brilliant, is the Essay on
Warren Hastings. Justice has been done upon it by
Fifezjames Stephen.3

Rogers4 especially might well dislike Macaulay,
against whom, with his feeble voice, he could make no
head. He was silent during dinner. After dinner,

P Philip Henry, fifth Earl Stanhope, the historian. 1805-1875.]

P Queen of George IV.]

P "The Story of Nuneomar and the Impeachment of Sir Elijah
Impey." By Sir James Mtzjames Stephen, K.C.S.I., one of the
Judges of the High Court of Justice, Queen's Bench Division. In
two volumes. London : Macmillan and Co. 1885.]

P Samuel Rogers, the poet; published "Pleasures of Memory,"
1792 ; " Columbus," 1810 ; '/ Human Life," 1819 ; etc. Born 1763 ;
died in 1855J

134 REMINISCENCES

when the ladies were gone, he told anecdotes in lan-
guage evidently prepared. It was treason then to talk.
There was certainly a strain of malice in trim. He was
sensitive on the subject of his social position, and could
not forgive Sydney Smith for saying in his presence that
he would "bet a cheque on Rogers and Co." Theo-
dore Hook * was never tired of whipping him on that
tender spot. He was sensitive also about his appear-
ance, as, if he aspired to beauty, he had good reason for
being. It was said that he had driven his foot through
a portrait which told unflattering truth. I wish I had
been present when the attention of the party was sud-
denly drawn to a caricature bust of him which the host
had inadvertently left upon the mantel-piece. The
struggles of the party to cope with the horror, some
taking the line that it was a likeness, others that it was
not, were described to me as very amusing. The im-
mortality which Rogers expected for his poems has not
been theirs. He is not deep, yet there are passages in
him, such as the opening lines of "Human Life,77 which
are pleasant to my simple ear.

Of all the social talkers I should say the pleasantest
was Sir David Dundas,2 then Solicitor-General. He
really conversed, and, while leading the conversation,
drew out his company and made other people feel that
tiiey too had said good things.

P Theodore Edward Hook, the novelist and wit. 1788-1841.]
P Sir David Dundas, the statesman ; M.A. 1822 ; barrister 1823 ;
M.R 1840-1852 and 1861-1867; Q.C. 1840; Judge-Advocate-
General 1849.1

LONDON 135

When the Life of Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton) *

appeared, people were disappointed because it did not

sparkle with wit. Nobody who knew him could share

the disappointment. It was not in any witty things

that he said, but in his manner, which was wit in itself,

that the charm resided. His good-natured simplicity

of speech (if that will do for a translation of naivete) had

earned him the nickname of "the cool of the evening.77

He was an eager hunter of notorieties. It was said

that he would have had the most noted felon of the day

at his breakfast-table if he could. Sitting there and

looking round on the circle, you asked yourself how

you came into that museum. Milnes was a great and

a most successful collector of autographs. He showed

me on the same page some love-verses written by

Robespierre when a youth, and a death-warrant signed

by him under the Reign of Terror. General Grant, when

he went to breakfast with Milnes, was presented with

a round-robin which he had signed as a cadet at West

Point. Milnes would not tell us how he had obtained

it. To a collector of autographs everything is moral.

The writer of "Palm Leaves/' 2 in which, by the way,

there are some very pretty lines, had at one time been a

I1 Richard Monckton Milnes, first Baron Houghton, a Cam-
bridge "Apostle " ; M.P. for Pontefract, 1837 ; interested himself in
copyright, the Philobiblon Society, Miss Nightingale's Fund, Me-
chanics' Institutes, Penny Banks, Reform of the Franchise ; a poet
and a writer upon political and social topics.]

[2t'Palm Leaves." See "The Poetical Works of (Richard
Monckton Milnes) Lord Houghton. Collected edition. Two
vols. London: Murray. 1876. Pp. 134r-168.]

136 REMINISCENCES

follower of Urquhart,1 the devotee and political champion
of Turkey and the East. Urquhart can hardly have been
sane. Milnes said that once when he went to Urquhart's
house, the door was opened by 'Urquhart's son stark
naked ; that being the father's idea of physical education.

Eton friendship with Hallam's son Henry opened to
me the house of his illustrious father,2 which was no
longer in the "long unlovely street," but in "Wilton
Crescent. The historian was then old and bowed down
by the loss of the son whose epitaph is "In Memoriam,"
as well as by that of his wife and his favourite daughter.
In earlier days he had been rather a social terror.
People in his presence had spoken in fear of contradic-
tion. It was said that he had got out of bed in the night
to contradict the watchman about the hour and the
weather. Sydney Smith said that the chief use of the
electric telegraph would be to enable Hallam to con-
tradict a man at Birmingham. But in his old age and
to a boy like me Hallam was all mildness and kindness.
I see the old man now, sitting in his library, with gout in
his hands, in mournful dignity waiting for the end. But
he would know that his work was done.

Milman's 3 name it now seldom heard, yet he has left

P David Urquhart, diplomatist ; secretary of the British Embassy
at Constantinople; M.P. 1847 to 1852. Born 1805; died 1877.]

P Henry Hallam, the author of "State of Europe during the
Middle Ages " ; "Constitutional History of England " ; "Literature
of Europe " ; etc. Born 1777 ; died 1859.1

P Henry Hart Milman, Dean of St. Paul's ; Professor of Poetry
at Oxford, 1821-1831; best known perhaps by his "History of
the Jews," his "History of Christianity," and his "Latin Chris-
tianity." Born 1791; died 1868.]

LONDON 137

his mark in his Histories of the Jews and of the Latin
Church ; nor is the "Martyr of Antioch " without merits
as a poem. The author of the prize poem on the Apollo
Belvedere * had set out in life with an immense Oxford
reputation. In his History of the Jews he had as a stu-
dent of German theology faintly anticipated the Higher
Criticism, and incurred orthodox suspicion accordingly.
That he had talent, a richly stored mind, and conversa-
tional power is certain. Whether he had anything more
is doubtful. If he had, it was stifled in him, as it was
in other rationalist theologians, by the fatal white tie.
Thackeray I used to meet at the dinners of the Satur-
day Review j but had not much intercourse with him. If
he was cynical, his cynicism did not appear in his face or
manner, which betokened perfect simplicity and good
nature. From good nature, and not from that alone, I
cannot help thinking that he lapsed when he gibbeted
Croker 2 in "Vanity Fair " under the name of "Wen-
ham " as the parasite and pander of the Marquis of
Hertford, easily discernible under the pseudonym of
the "Marquis of Steyne." Croker was a rancorous
politician, and both by his tongue and pen provoked
bitter enmity; but there was nothing in his relation
with Lord Hertford 3 to brand him as a parasite, much

P Milman won the Newdigate Prize for English Verse in 1812.]
P John Wilson Croker ; politician and essayist. Perhaps many
remember him chiefly as the Editor of an edition of BoswelTs
2' Johnson." 1780 to 1857.]

p Francis Charles Seymour-Conway, third Marquess of Hert-
ford ; M.P., Oxford, Lisburne, and Camelford, 1819-1822 ; Vice-
Chamberlain to George, Prince Regent. 1777-1842.]

138 REMINISCENCES

less could he be supposed capable of playing the pander.
As a leading anti-reform member of the House of Com-
mons he had been an associate of Hertford and other
magnates of the Tory party. The connection con-
tinued after Croker's retirement in disgust from public
life. Slander, under cover of a fictitious name, as I
have said before, when the person really meant can be
easily recognized, is at once the most deadly and the
most cowardly of all ways of assailing character. The
person assailed cannot defend himself without seeming
to countenance the libel.

In the house of Sir Roderick Murchison I used to
meet the men of science ; but it was not till later that I
became intimate with Huxley1 and Tyndall.2 "With
Tyndall I became very intimate, and greatly loved him,
though on some points we widely differed. He called
himself a Materialist, and never allowed you to call him
anything else, ever faithful to his formula that matter
contained the potentiality of all life. But never was a
man less materialist in the gross sense of the term. I
used to think that he would have found it very difficult
to account, on any materialistic theory, for his own sen-
timents and aspirations. Between Huxley and Owen 3
there was at that time war about the Hippocampus

p- Thomas Henry Huxley, the great comparative anatomist and
supporter of the Darwinian hypothesis. Born 1825; died 1895.]

[2 John Tyndall, the natural philosopher ; successor of Faraday
as Superintendent of the Royal Institution. Born 1820 ; died
1893.]

P Sir Richard Owen, the celebrated anatomist. 1804-1892.]

LONDON 139

Minor. That Huxley was in the right seemed to be the
verdict of the scientific world; had he found himself in
the wrong, he would have frankly owned it, for no man
could be more loyal to truth. Murchison was a man of
large property; he had been in the army; had taken to
geology and become the Amphitryon of the scientific
world. He had been engaged in exploring the mineral
wealth of the Ural, and became very intimate with the
Czar,1 whose feeling toward England, as he assured me,
I have no doubt truly, was as good as possible, she being
in the Czar's eyes the great conservative power. The
day before the Crimean War nobody expected or desired
it; while it was going everybody was mad about it;
when it was over everybody condemned and deplored it.
If I remember rightly, I was an early subscriber to
Herbert Spencer's 2 works. But it was not till much
later, I think in 1876, that I became well acquainted
with the man. We were staying at Buxton together.
If a new moral world is built upon materialism, Herbert
Spencer will have been one of the chief builders. In
any case, he was a shining light and a power. Of his
personal eccentricities plenty of stories have been told.
His nervous sensibility was extreme. A game of bil-
liards was enough to deprive hrm of his night's rest. He
had been looking forward with pleasure to a meeting
with Huxley; but he gave it up because there was a

P Nicholas IJ

[2 Herbert Speneer, author of the Synthetic Philosophy. Born
1820; died 1903.]

140 REMINISCENCES

difference on some scientific question between them, and
this might have given rise to an argument which
Spencer's nerves could not bear. A literary flippancy 1
of mine once caused an estrangement between us, but I
am happy to say we became the best of friends again.
The most interesting of my social experiences, how-
ever, were my visits to The Grange, a name familiar to
all who have read the Life of Carlyle. Lord Ashbur-
ton,2 of the then immensely wealthy House of Baring,
was a man of intellect and culture, and by no means a
social cipher, though a less important figure than his
wife. Lady Ashburton3 was a great lady, perhaps
the nearest counterpart that England could produce to
the queen of a French salon before the Revolution. In
person, though not beautiful, she was majestic. Her
wit was of the very brightest, and dearly she loved to
give it play. She had at the same time depth of charac-

P Mr. G-oldwin Smith said of Spencer *s famous definition of Evo-
lution— "While an aggregate evolves, not only tlie matter composing
it, but also the motion of that matter, passes from an indefinite
incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity"
("Data of Ethics," chap, v., §24) — that "the universe may well
have heaved a sigh of relief when, through the cerebration of an
eminent thinker, it had been delivered of this account of itself." —
See Contemporary Review, vol. xli, pp. 335, et seq., Feb., 1882 : " Has
Science yet Found a New Basis for Morality? " Herbert Spencer
replied in the next number of the Review with an article on " Pro-
fessor Groldwin Smith as a Critic," in which the critic was accused
of " grave misrepresentation."]

P William Bingham Baring, second Baron Ashburton. 1799-
1864.]

[3 This was Lord Ashburton's first wife. She had been Lady
Harriet Mary Montagu, eldest daughter of the sixth Earl of Sand-
wich.]

LONDON 141

ter and tenderness of feeling. It was a mistake to think
that she was a Mrs. Leo Hunter on a grand scale. She
cared as little for reputation in itself as she did for rank
or wealth. To form a circle of brilliant talkers with her-
self as its centre was her aim; and in this she fully suc-
ceeded. One or two appreciative listeners were also
desirable, and were there. Beauty may have been a
passport, at least I do not know what but the wonder-
ful beauty of Mrs. Bigelow Lawrence, Sally Ward l
that had been, could have brought her and her not
intellectually brilliant husband to The Grange. Every-
thing was arranged for conversation. Breakfast was a
function, and was served on round tables, each of a
conversational size. The last comer always took Lady
Ashburton out to dinner, that he might be thoroughly
introduced into the circle.

Carlyle 2 was always there. He was a great favourite
of Lady Ashburton. His talk was like his books, but
wilder; in truth, his pessimism was monotonous and
sometimes wearisome, though he could not fail to say
striking things, still less to use striking words. One
summer evening we came out after dinner on the ter-

P Sally Ward was the daughter of Robert J. Ward, of Kentucky.
She is described as "a radiant woman, instinct with sparkling life
from the crown of her beautiful head to the tips of her slender feet,
spoiled, wilful, lovely, and loving." Before she was twenty, she
married Bigelow Lawrence of Boston ; but applied for and obtained
a divorce within a year. She had three other husbands. Died in
1898. — See "Famous American Belles of the Nineteenth Century.'!
By Virginia Tatnall Peacock. Philadelphia: Lippincott. 1901,
Pp. 148 et seq.]

p Thomas Carlyle, born 1795 ; died 1881 J

142 REMINISCENCES

race. There was a bright moon, and for a few minutes
we all looked at it in silence, each probably having his
own thoughts. At last a voice was heard. ' { Puir auld
creature." Whether the moon was an object of pity
in itself, or because she was doomed to look down on
human affairs, I failed to divine.

Tennyson was there. I adored the poet, and should
have liked to be able to worship the man. His self-
consciousness and sensitiveness to criticism were ex-
treme. One of the party, whose name I forget, but who
acted as a sort of aide-de-camp to Lady Ashburton,
asked me what I thought of Tennyson. I said that
it was most interesting to meet him. "But is he not
very sensitive? " "Sensitive ! I should think he was.
If my little girl were to tell him that his whiskers were
ugly, he wouldn't forget it for a month."

They asked Tennyson to read some of his own poetry
aloud. This he was understood to be fond of doing.
But to the general disappointment he refused. At his
side was sitting Carlyle, who had been publishing his
contempt of poetry. Immolating myself to the public
cause, I went over to Carlyle and asked him to come for
a walk in the grounds. While we were gone, the reading
came off. I was reminded of this incident, which I had
long forgotten, by a reference to it the other day in the
Illustrated Londm News.

Mrs. Carlyle was at The Grange. She was a modest
personage, rather in the background. Nobody knew
that she was so clever as her letters prove her to have

LONDON 143

been. But that Lady Ashburton ever gave her serious
cause for unhappiness I do not in the least believe.
Lady Ashburton was a queen, and may, like other
Royalties, have been sometimes a little high; but she
was incapable of doing anything unfeeling. I had a
great respect for her character as well as admiration for
her wit, and have always cherished the memory of the
message which she sent me from her death-bed.

In the circle of The Grange was to be seen Bishop
Wilberforce. He had good right to be there, for he was
a very brilliant talker, especially happy in repartee.
Of his eminent ability there could be no doubt. He
would certainly have made his mark as an advocate or
a politician. He set out as an Evangelical like his
father; he became, as was natural for a bishop, a High
Churchman. He tried to combine both systems and
to ride two horses with their heads turned different
ways. This in itself gave him, perhaps undeservedly,
an air of duplicity and a nickname. He was, however,
morbidly desirous of influence, which he seemed even to
cultivate without definite object. It was said that he
would have liked to be on the committee of every Club
in London. He had the general reputation of not being
strictly veracious ; nor, as I had once occasion to see,
was he, when Church party was in question, inflexibly
just. He turned upon the Hampden question * when
he found that his course was giving offence at Court,

P That is, the appointment of the Reverend Renn Diekson Hamp-
den to the see of Hereford, 1847.]

144 REMINISCENCES

and was upbraided with tergiversation by Ms party.
He turned upon the Irish Church question just in time
to be promoted from Oxford to Winchester, and to
what he probably coveted more than the income, the
Chancellorship of the Garter; and when he put forth a
pathetic valedictory assuring the clergy of Oxford that
he was agonized at leaving them, but could not disobey
the call of the Spirit, he provoked a smile. There could
be no question as to his meritorious activity in his
diocese. He was at first a fine preacher, but at last his
incessant activity, leaving no time for reading or
thought, impaired the matter of his sermons and com-
pelled him to make up for lack of substance by delivery,
of which, having an admirable voice and manner, he
remained a perfect master. Too much allowance can
hardly be made for the difficulties of the Mitre in those
times.

A very different realm from The Grange was Straw-
berry Hill, where reigned Frances, Lady Waldegrave,1
whose husband, Lord Carlingford,2 and I were College
friends. To the sham Gothic mansion built by the
virtuoso Horace Walpole on the bank of the Thames
had been added an enchanted castle of pleasure, with
gorgeous salons and magnificent grounds for out-of-
door f£tes stretching along the river. Frances, Lady
Waldegrave, had been four times wedded. Thrice,

P Frances Elizabeth Anne, Countess Waldegrave. 1821-1879.]
P Chiclxester Samuel Fortesque, afterwards ParMnson-Fortesque,
Baron Carlingford, 1823-1898.]

LONDON 145

it was said, she had married for title or wealth; the
fourth time for love. She was a rather florid beauty,
taking perhaps to an elderly man. In her fourth wed-
lock she had chosen well, for Carlingford was a man of
whom she might be proud, since he became a Cabinet
Minister, and at the same time a domestic pillow. He
was an Irishman, and when in the theatre at Dublin
the jocular crowd asked his spouse which of her four
husbands she liked best, she could turn their imperti-
nence to plaudits by saying, "The Irishman, of course."
She was the daughter of Braham * the singer, and one of
the best of daughters, for in her grandeur she never
failed in devoted attachment to her father, whose
portrait hung conspicuous upon her wall. Her am-
bition was to gather the whole of the great world, Roy-
alty included, in her salons at Strawberry Hill. In this
she thoroughly succeeded. Curiously enough, the great
fortune which she had accumulated by her successive
marriages she had just run through when she died.
After her death, I was staying with her husband at the
place in the country where she was buried. There she
lay, with a list of her husbands on her monument.
Her fourth husband could not bear himself to take me
to the grave; he had to put me in the hands of the
curate. Utterly unlike to Harriet Lady Ashburton
was Frances Lady Waldegrave; yet Frances Lady
Waldegrave, to use Carlyle's phrase, was not without
an eye, and she could interest herself in other subjects

P John Braham, the tenor singer. 1774 (?)-1856.j

146 REMINISCENCES

than balls and garden parties when she had a quiet
hour.

It was a mark of the difference between the two social
monarchies that while at The Grange breakfast, as I
have said, was a conversational function for which ar-
rangements were made, at Strawberry Hill you came
down to breakfast at your own hour and were served
separately from a carte. The host and hostess did not
appear till luncheon.

Now the splendour has departed from Strawberry
Hill, from the gilded salons and the magnificent grounds.
The place has become a tea-garden, or something less
elysian still. Sic transit gloria mundi.

In a mansion close to Strawberry Hill lived in luxu-
rious exile the Due d7 Aumale 1 and the Comte de Paris.2
D'Aumale, it seemed to me, would have made a strong
Pretender ; he was a soldier and a man of action, highly
cultivated withal. But he was not the heir, and it
seems that when he got back to France he gave himself
up to pleasure. The Comte de Paris was a gentle
creature who never could have made a Pretender with-
out a Morny 3to play his game.

Among the intellectual magnates who were kind to
me I must not forget Lord Stanhope.4 I spent some

P Henri Eugene Philippe Louis <T Orleans, Due d'Aumale, fourth
son of Louis Philippe ; born 1822.]

[2 Louis Philippe Albert d'OrlSans, Comte de Paris, grandson of
Louis Philippe. 1838-1894.]

P Charles Auguste Louis Joseph, Duo de Morny, half brother of
Napoleon III ; a leading spirit in the coup d'&at of December, 1851.]

[* Philip Henry Stanhope, fifth Earl Stanhope, author of "His-

LONDON 147

very pleasant days at Chevening 1 with a literary com-
pany, two members of which were Mr. and Mrs. Grote.2
Grote was quiet and retiring. Mrs. Grote was un-
retiring, a rather formidable woman with a very sharp
wit. Stanhope's History is not a masterpiece; but it
is interesting and fair, the work of a man of sense and
a gentleman. The last qualification is valuable to an
historian of the politics of aristocratic days.

Hard by lived also my great friend Grant Duff,3 a
most accomplished politician and man of the world,
whose name calls up the memory of pleasant hours.
When he was leaving for his government in India, we
"gave him a farewell banquet at a great hotel. I, having
come some distance, took a bed there. In the morning
I was awakened by a knock at my door and a female
voice offering me brandy and soda. The more I de-
clined the cup of health, the more pressingly it was
offered. Was it intended for some other revellers,
or was it taken for granted that those who had dined
there overnight must want brandy and soda in the
morning?

From Chevening we visited Knole, the country seat

tory of the War of Succession in Spain " ; "History of England from
the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles " ; "History of Eng-
land comprising the Reign of Queen Anne until the Peace of
Utrecht " ; etc. 1805-1875.]

t1 The seat of the Earls Stanhope, at Sevenoaks.]
P George Grote, the historian of Greece. 1794^1871. — Mrs.
Grote had been Harriet Lemn.]

[3 James Grant Duff, Bombay Grenadiers ; Resident of Poona ;
Resident of Sattara; published a "History of the Mahrattas."
1789-1858.]

148 REMINISCENCES

of Lord Sackville * near Sevenoaks. I there found a
portrait of Walsingham2 which confirmed me in the
belief that a portrait which on leaving Oxford I made
over to the Bodleian, it having passed for a portrait of
Sir Thomas Bodley,3 was really a portrait of Elizabeth's
great Secretary of State. Each portrait has the des-
patch symbolical of the Secretaryship, as the white
wand is of the Treasurership, in its hand. The date
of the subject's age on the picture does not exactly
agree with Bodley's age. The date of Walsingham's
birth is uncertain. His monument in St. Paul's was
destroyed by fire.

A party at a country house was seldom complete with-
out Hayward,4 the prince of anecdotists and the great
authority on social history and gossip. His anecdotes
certainly gained embellishment by repetition, and were,
therefore, perhaps more amusing than authentic. He
was fond of dissolving the false pearls of history and
destroying heroic illusions. It was with much gusto
that he assured us that Pitt's last words were, not " Oh !
my country ! how I leave my country !" but, "I think
I could eat one of Bellamy's meat pies." Disraeli,
whom he must in some way have offended, has alluded

P Mortimer Saokville-West, first Baron Sackville.]
P Six Francis Walsingham, the Elizabethan statesman. 1530 ( ?)-
1590.J

P The founder of the Bodleian Library at Oxford. 1545-1613.]
[4 Abraham Hayward, the essayist ; author of " The Art of Din-
ing," " Sketches of Eminent Statesmen and Writers," and of three
series of Essays ; editor of Mrs. Piozzi's "Autobiography," etc.
1801-1884J

LONDON 149

to Mm in "Lothair" as "a little parasite." Little he
was in stature, but he was no parasite; on the contrary
he bore himself very much as the master of the circle.
He was a bachelor; his pen must have brought him an
income; and as he had many friends among the po-
litical leaders, he could have got an appointment, if he
had needed it. But he, no doubt, prized his freedom.
I had a good friend in the Speaker of the House of
Commons, Mr. Denison,1 afterwards Lord Ossington,
through whose interest I enjoyed debates. He would
always get me under the gallery or in some place on the
floor of the House. It is on the floor of the House only
that a debate can be enjoyed. I shall have occasion
further on to mention one or two of the great speakers.
Of those I heard the general level did not seem to me to
be high. There was great waste of time in droning
through speeches which were mere dilutions of the morn-
ing's editorials. Why cannot each speaker, except the
leaders, instead of wandering over the whole subject,
take a point and press it home ? The whole discussion,
however, is little more than a great party demonstra-
tion. The name "deliberative assembly" is a mockery.
On any party question there is no more deliberation
than there is in the interchange of volleys between two
lines of battle. Besides, every one is talking less to the
House than to the Reporters. While I am in a fault-
finding mood I may say that the House, and still more

P John Evelyn Denison, first Viscount Ossington, Speaker from
1857 to 1872.]

150 REMINISCENCES

the House of Lords, is too highly decorated for a hall of
debate, where nothing should divert the eye from the
speaker. Ventilation and acoustics at that time were
bad. It seems that architectural science has not yet
learned to produce with certainty a room in which you
can be heard, a place in which you can breathe, or a
chimney which will not smoke. The acoustics of the
House of Lords were worse than those of the House of
Commons. It was said that the leader of the Opposi-
tion went out and bought an evening paper to learn
what the head of the Government was talking about.
During the passage of the Oxford University Bill I was
placed on the steps of the throne to watch the Bill and
communicate with the Minister in charge. On that
spot, where nobody sits, you could hear the speakers on
both sides well.

I enjoyed the theatre, and had in Patrick Comyn *
[sic] and Smyth Pigott 2 pleasant companions to add to
my enjoyment. Of all the acting that I saw the grand-
est was that of Bistori 3 in "Gamma"; above all, in the

P Patrick Cumin, C.B., was tlie son of William Cumin, M.D.,
of Clifton (so the Annual Register; the Alumni Oxonienses says
Glasgow). He graduated at Oxford (Balliol College) in 1845;
took his M JL in 1850 ; was a Barrister-at-Law of the Inner Temple ;
and was for many years Secretary of the Education Department
of the Privy Council. He is described to me as "a pleasant friend
and an energetic official." Died on the llth of January, 1890,
aged 65.]

p Edward Francis Smyth Pygott, for twenty years in the Lord
Chamberlain's Department as Examiner of Stage Plays. Born in
1824; died February 23rd, 1895.]

P Adelaide Ristori, Marquise Capranica del Grille, the celebrated
Italian tragedienne ; born in 1821.]

LONDON 151

famous scene in which Gamma elicits the secret of her
husband's murder by affecting love of the murderer,
then entices him to drinking the poisoned cup, drinks
of it herself, and dies. The plot, which is from Plu-
tarch, Tennyson has taken for his "Cup." Of Rachel x
Matthew Arnold has said that she began where Sara
Bernhardt ended. She was passion, especially of the
Satanic kind, incarnate. "Adrienne Lecouvreur" was
her topping part, and the death scene, for which she was
supposed to have studied in a hospital, was her topping
scene. Her direct opposite was the female star of the
English stage, Helen Faucit,2 who was all tenderness.
About Wigan, 3 our male star, there seems to have been
a difference of opinion. His friends asserted that he
alone could act a gentleman; his critics said the re-
verse. Some of the opera people acted as well as sang
well ; Jenny Lind 4 did in pieces that suited her, such as
"Gazza Ladra" and "Figlia del Regimento." Some-
thing was missed when, having renounced opera, she
sang at concerts. Tietjens 5 also acted well in such a
part as "Lucrezia Borgia"; while her companion Al-
boni,6 supreme and rapturously applauded as a singer,

P Elisa Felix, called Rachel, the great French actress. 1821-
1858. — Matthew Arnold's saying is in his Essay on "The French
Play in London." See his "Works" (Edition de luxe), vol. xi,
p. 205. London : Maemillan ; and Smith Elder.]

[2 Helena Saville Faucit, afterwards Lady Martin (wife of Sir
Theodore Martin). 1817-1898.]

p Alfred Sydney Wigan. 1814-1878.]

[* Johanna Maria Lind, married Mr. Otto Goldschmidt. 1820-
1887.]

[5 Teresa Tietjens, or Titiens, a German singer. 1834r-1877.]

P Marietta Alboni, a celebrated Italian singer ; born in 1824.]

152 REMINISCENCES

stalked the stage in her tabard with the grace of a
female elephant. Jenny Lind's character enhanced
her popularity. She was no harpy, like other prima
donnas, but left something for the lesser folk. I have
spoken of the friendship between Jenny and Arthur
Stanley, who was, like Johnson, dead to the charms of
music, and said that the only thing that pleased him was
a drum solo. Where he could have heard a drum solo we
never could ascertain. Mario1 and Grisi2 having spent
the fortunes which they had made, they were forced
to return to the stage. But superannuated as they
were, I fancy their audience, though it received them
well, took more pleasure in seeing than in hearing them.

Charles Kean3 acted "Hamlet" with applause; yet,
I thought, not well. Shakespeare is a philosophic poet
as well as a dramatist, and sometimes transcends the
dramatic sphere. Perhaps one who had the sensibility
to feel the part of Hamlet would scarcely have the
nerve to act it. The best Hamlet I ever saw was that
of the German Devrient,4 who did at all events solilo-
quize the soliloquy, not declaim it.

I enjoyed a visit to Sadler's Wells,5 the people's

P Joseph Mario, called Marquis del Candia, called "a lyric artist."
1810-1833. — He married Grisi.]

P Giulia Grisi, dame Ge"rard de Melcy. She was a sister of
Giuditta Grisi, the singer ; and a cousin of Carlotta Grisi, the dancer.
1812-1869J

[* Charles John Kean, second son of Edmund. 1811 ( ?)-1868J

[4 It is difficult to determine which, among the many actors who
bore this name, is meant. Perhaps Gustave Emile, who died at
Dresden in 1872.] p In Islington.]

LONDON 153

theatre; long since improved out of existence. It was
pleasant to see the loyalty of the people to Shake-
speare. The taste of the people, being simple, is sound.
Phelps,1 at Sadler's Wells, was a fine declaimer. He
gave well Prosperous speech in "The Tempest."

But all the theatres, and especially Sadler's Wells,
suffered from Charles Kean's fancy for spectacle. He
imagined that Shakespeare was an antiquarian, and put
on his plays in the garb of the historic period. So we
had the Duke of Athens, who to Shakespeare was like a
Duke of Milan, talking of nunneries; fairies in Athe-
nian groves ; and two Athenian gentlemen going out to
fight a duel with Grecian swords. In "Macbeth" we
had the rude simplicity of primitive Scotland, and the
throne, to which Maebeth's ambition climbed through
treason and murder, was a wooden stool. Shakespeare
paid no more respect to historical character than to
geography, and he had no scenery at all.

I was in a box at the opera one evening, with two
friends. The party next night was to meet again. I
arrived first. Presently one of the other two came in.
I asked after the third, and was horrified by the reply
that he had shot himself that afternoon. The evening
before he had apparently been in the best of spirits. He
was young and wealthy. I never learned the cause of
his weariness of life. The weather was very sultry and
bad for the liver.

f1 Samuel Phelps, who "made Shakespeare pay " for nearly twenty
years at Sadler's Wells. Born 1804 ; died 1878.]

154 REMINISCENCES

Having spoken of E. S. Pigott, I may say that he was
very inti.mg.te with Dickens, whom I only once saw,
and whom I understood it was difficult to meet, as he
lived very much in a choice circle of his intimate
friends. Pigott told me his opinion of the unhappy
relations between Dickens and his wife, which came too
much before the world. It was a common case ; Dick-
ens had married at a low level, and his wife had not
risen with him; otherwise, according to Pigott, an
excellent judge, there was no fault on her side. The
matrimonial history of writers of works of imagination
has often been unhappy. Their imagination turns a
woman into an angel, and then they find that she is a
woman. About this time the scandalous world was
being regaled with the war between Bulwer l and his
wife. When Bulwer was being elected at Hertford,2
his consort drove up in a post-chaise, mounted the
hustings, and delivered a philippic against him. Their
son was credited with some lines on the occasion: —

Who came to Hertford in a chaise,
And uttered anything but praise,
About the author of my days ?
My Mother.

If Dickens's own home was not happy, few writers
have done more to poake other homes happy and dif-
fuse kindly feelings. His " Christmas Carol" is an
Evangel.

P Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, first Baron Lyt-
ton, the novelist. 1803-1873 J
P June the 8th, 1858.]

LONDON 155

I became intimate with some of the exiles driven to
England by the political storms of Europe. Among
them was Louis Blanc, of whom I saw a good deal.
I took more to the Italian exiles/ Mazzini, Saffi, and
Arrivabene, whose cause, that of Italian independence,
was perfectly pure. To Mazzini, whose acquaintance
I formed at the house of Sir James Stansfield,2 1 took
very much. He seemed to me a genuine servant of
humanity, regarding Italian nationality, to the rescue
of which he gave his life, as subservient to the general
good of mankind. He denied that he had been con-
cerned in any assassination plot. With Garibaldi 3 I
exchanged letters, but we never met. He was coming
to Oxford and to my house when he was suddenly
whisked out of the country, by what influence is a
mystery to this hour. For myself, I never doubted
that it was by the influence of the Queen. Victoria
was a Stuart upon a Hanoverian throne. A friend of
mine at Court heard Disraeli feeding with slanderous
stories her hatred of Garibaldi. She bitterly hated
Bismarck also for having put an end to the Kingdom of
Hanover. Perhaps that may have been partly the
account of her sympathy with France against Germany.
The French Emperor,4 to whose influence some sus-

P See footnotes on page 96 ; Chapter VI.]

p Sir James Stansfield, Liberal M.P. ; held high political posts j
strong upholder of the cause of Italian unity. 1820-1898.]

P Giuseppe Garibaldi, the celebrated Italian patriot, was born
at Nice in 1807, and died in 1882.]

P Napoleon IIIJ

156 REMINISCENCES

pected the spiriting-away of Garibaldi was due, had in
Mm still something of the Revolutionist and an eye to
possible assistance from that side.

Two famous relics of a political generation gone by,
Brougham1 and Lyndhurst,2 I just saw. Lyndhurst
I heard make a speech in the House of Lords, too cur-
sory for the display of his mighty reasoning powers.
It was curious to see a man who had been at Boston a
British subject before the American Revolution.

Nothing can adequately paint the galvanic motions
of Brougham's face and figure. His activity and pro-
ductiveness, as is well known, were miraculous. He as-
pired to leadership not only in law, politics, and litera-
ture, but in science. Lord Stanhope used to tell a
story of the editor of a new magazine who humbly
petitioned Brougham for an article to grace his first
number. The happy man received three articles by
return of post! Brougham's private secretary, Sir
Denis le Marchant,3 told me that Brougham, when he
was leading at once in the Bar and in Parliament, mak-
ing one speech seven hours long, could do with two
hours' sleep each night. On Saturday afternoon, he
would turn in till Monday morning. When he was in
full practice on the northern circuit and at the same

P Henry Peter Brougham, Baron Brougham and Vaux ; Lord
Chancellor. 1778-1868.]

[2 John Singleton Copley, the younger, Baron Lyndhurst ; Lord
Chancenor. 1772-1863.]

[3 Sir Denis le Marchant, first Baronet; Liberal M.P. 1795-
1874.]

LONDON 157

time candidate for the representation of Yorkshire in
Parliament, he would, after a long day in court, get into
a post-chaise and go very long distances to election
meetings. Summoned suddenly to attend his client
Queen Caroline on a great emergency, he slept all the
way in the carriage. For this preternatural activity,
however, he paid by long fits of depression. His
sister,1 who was with us at Mortimer, was grotesquely
like him in all respects, and was subject to the same fits
of depression, which, however, in her case, were more
lasting. Brougham was very emotional, and wept
bitterly when he heard of the death of an old political
associate. His attempt to revive his failing notoriety
by circulating a report of his having been killed by an
accident took in the whole press except the Times.

Eton introduced me, among other houses, to that of
Lord Chancellor Campbell,2 whose son, Lord Strathe-
den that afterwards was, and I had been in the same
boarding-house. It was of Lord Campbell as the author
of the " Lives of the Chancellors" that Lyndhurst said
he had added a pang to death. He may not be strictly
accurate or impartial, but his book is racy of the pro-
fession. It was to Campbell that was due the putting
the plaintiff in a libel case into the witness-box. It
seems doubtful whether he did well. The consequence
is apt to be, instead of the trial of the defendant for his

p Query. — According to Burke, Henry, first Lord Brougham
and Vaux, had no sister.]

P John Campbell, first Baron Campbell, Lord Chancellor. 1779-
1861.]

158 REMINISCENCES

slander, the trial of the person libelled on his general
character and life.

I spent a day with Lushington,1 Lady Byron's Coun-
sel, but nothing was said about the famous case. Lush-
ington would never speak of it. His lips might be
sealed by professional duty. Yet it seems strange that
when the portentous version of the matter adopted by
Mrs. Beecher Stowe was in circulation, he should not, if
he could with truth, have denied that there was any-
thing more than a matrimonial quarrel of the common
kind. In my childhood I had seen Lushington chaired
on his election for Reading.2

Blessed are Clubs, and above all Clubs in my memory
the Athenaeum, with its splendid library and its social
opportunities. Without dubs what would bachelor-
life in London be? We know pretty well from the
record of days before them. Instead of being de-
nounced as hostile to marriage, the Clubs ought to be
credited with keeping young men fit for it. Even with
a Club, the life of a young man in a city where he has
no home is not free from danger. In trying many
years afterwards to assist in the foundation of a
good Club for young men in Toronto, I was acting on
observations made during my own stay in London.

Without a home in London, I could myself hardly
be said to be. I had something like a home in the house

P Stephen Lushington. 1782-1873.]

P Lushington contested Reading unsuccessfully in 1830, but was
next year returned for Winchelsea : perhaps he was chaired at Read-
ing then. — Ed.}

LONDON 159

of my father's brother-in-law, the Rev. Sir Henry
Dukinfield,1 who had succeeded to the Baronetcy
on the death of his brother after being for some time
pastor of St. Martin' s-in-the-Fields. Sir Henry was an
active and valued coadjutor of Blomfield, the Bishop
of London, a statesman prelate who strove to adapt
the Church to the times and renew her hold upon the
nation not by reviving her claims to priestly authority,
but by placing her in the van of social improvement.
He was the apostle of public batlis and wash-houses.2
His wife, Lady Dukinfield,3 was my ideal of a lovely
and graceful English woman. Nor was her character
less graceful than her form and manner. Her portrait 4
bears me out. La 'belle Anglaise, she had been called
in France, and her beauty was of the kind that loses
least by age. She was a niece of Craufurd,5 Welling-
ton's Peninsula General. Her father was a diplo-

p See note at the foot of the first page of Chapter II.]

[2 "He suggested the passing of the Act of Parliament (9th and
10th Viet. c. 74), which is generally called by his name, empowering
vestries to raise money on the parish rates for the erection and
support of Baths and Washhouses for the poor." — See "A Memoir
of the Rev. Sir Henry Robert Dukinfield, Bart." Printed for
Private Circulation. London: W. H. Dalton. 1861. Page 57.]

[3 She was a daughter of Sir James Craufurd, Baronet, who was
British Resident at Hamburg from 1798 to 1803, and afterwards
Minister Plenipotentiary at Copenhagen. She married, first Gen-
eral Chowne ; second, Sir Henry Dukinfield-1

[4 By George Richmond (1809-1896). It hangs in the drawing-
room of The Grange at Toronto.]

f5 General Robert Craufurd, third son of Sir Alexander Craufurd,
first Baronet, of Newark, Ayrshire, and brother of Sir Charles
Gregan-Craufurd, G.C.B. Born 1764; killed at Ciudad Rodrigo,
January the 24th, 1812 J

160 REMINISCENCES

matist. She was with him at Brussels at the time of
Waterloo, and was the last survivor but one of those
who had danced at the famous Ball. Her memory
was perfectly clear. They all knew that the French
were advancing. But Wellington, to prevent a panic,
had desired that the Ball might take place. The lodg-
ings of Lady Dnkinfield's father were opposite to the
quarters of the Duke, whom she saw mount his horse
and ride forth. She also saw the Guards, her brother's
regiment, march out. On the day of Waterloo, she
and her father were dining with the Prince de Cond6/
when news came that the British were totally defeated
and the French were marching on Brussels. The
Prince called for his horses and went off to Ghent.
Lady Dukinfield's father hurried her home, but found
that his horses had been stolen. They presently got
horses and set out for Ghent, finding the road blocked
with fugitives. Before they reached Ghent they were
overtaken by news of the victory. I did not ask Lady
Dnkinfield where the ball had taken place. Prince
Leopold afterwards heard her story, and I believe
took a note of it. He may have asked the question.

Sir Henry, a clergyman and a devout one, one day let
fall the remark that a man's religious reputation must
be very high to enable him to refuse a challenge to a
duel. I note this to mark the change of sentiment.

P Louis Joseph de Bourbon, Prince de Cond& 1736-1818.]

CHAPTER XI

JOURNALISM

1855-1858

Fed — The Saturday Review— Members of the Staff— Froude
•—Letters on the Empire.

LIVING in London with leisure, I was drawn into
journalism, and at the same time into a political con-
nection. I wrote some articles in the Morning Chroni-
de} the organ of the Peelites, as the section of the Con-
servative party, comprising Gladstone, the Duke of
Newcastle,1 Sidney Herbert,2 Cardwell,8 and Canning,4
which had adhered to Peel, was called.

I had the greatest respect for Peel as a thoroughly
wise and patriotic statesman, while I loathed the
"blackguard combination," as Wellington justly called
it, of office-seeking Whigs and Corn-Law Tories, the
work of Disraeli, by which the Peel Government was
overthrown. Disraeli, who had fawned on Peel in his
"Letters of Runnymede," 5 now turned round and as-
sailed him with rancorous and slanderous abuse.

P Henry Pelham, fifth Duke of Newcastle. 1811-1864.]

P Sidney Herbert, first Baron Herbert of Lea. 1810-1861 J

P Edward, Viscount Cardwell. 1813-1886.)

[4 Charles John, afterwards Earl Canning ; Governor-General
of India during the Mutiny. Born in 1812 ; died in 1862.]

[5 "The Letters of Runnymede." London: John Macrone, St.
James's Square. MDCCCXXXVI.]

M 161

162 REMINISCENCES

I presently found myself on the regular staff of the
Saturday Review. The editor and one of the proprie-
tors was John Douglas Cook/ a singular character. He
was a sort of filius terra. What his early history had
been, we never could clearly learn ; it appeared that he
bad been in India ; it was certain that he had been on
the Times. He had edited the Morning Chronicle
during its short life as a Liberal-Conservative organ.
He was a rough strong man, without literary culture
or faculty. But he had great newspaper tact. Though
he could not write himself, he instinctively knew good
writing. His courage and self-possession were im-
perturbable. Unrefined though he was, I became at-
tached to him, and I cherish his memory. Our other
proprietor was Alexander Beresford-Hope,2 a very
wealthy man, highly cultivated, to whom I fancy the
Review was a sort of literary yacht, though he was a
High Churchman and inspired the religious department
of the paper in that sense. He was generally supposed
to have been a member of the Young England party got
up by Disraeli, of which Lord John Manners 8 was the
most prominent member, and which is advertised in
"Coningsby"; but this he always denied. He was
the son of Hope 4 the millionaire, and had married a

P Jolin Douglas Cook, born in Aberdeenshire 1808(?) ; died in
1868.]

p Alexander James Beresford-Hope, politician and author. 1820-
1887.]

P Charles Cecil John Manners, sixth Duke of Rutland. 1815-1888.]

[* Thomas Hope, author and virtuoso ; belonged to the rich
family of Amsterdam merchants. 1770 (?)-1831.J

JOURNALISM 163

daughter of Lord Salisbury,1 a woman bright and brave.
"Bedgebury" was a sumptuous chateau. In those
days there were thirty acres of kept grass, with two
men and a donkey always employed upon them.
But sumptuosity was not the best of it.

The other members of the original staff, if I remember
rightly, were George Venables;2 Maine,3 afterwards
Sir Henry Maine, the historical jurist; Lord Robert
Cecil, afterwards Marquis of Salisbury;4 Hemming;5
Collett Sandars ; 6 and Scott,7 a clergyman, called, from
his cure, Scott of Hoxton. It was afterwards, I be-
lieve, that Sir William Harcourt8 joined the staff.
George Venables and Lord Robert Cecil were the chief
political writers. Sandars wrote the articles on social
subjects, for which he had a fine touch.

[i Lady Mildred Arabella Charlotte Henrietta Cecil, eldest
daughter of James, second Marquess of Salisbury. 1822-1881. J

[2 George Stovin Venables, Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge;
barrister; journalist. Born 1810; died 1888.]

p Sir Henry James Sumner Maine. 1822-1888.]

[4 Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne Cecil, third Marquess of Salis-
bury. 1830-1903.]

P Probably George Wirgman Hemming, Fellow of St. John's
College, Cambridge, Senior Wrangler, took his A.B. Degree in 1844,
and proceeded AJM. in 1847 ; a Q.C. ; for some years Counsel for
the University ; one of the Official Referees of the Supreme Court
of Judicature ; Master of the Library of, and Treasurer of, Lincoln's
Inn.]

P Thomas Collett Sandars, a Barrister; editor of Justinian's
."Institutes." 1825-1894.]

P The Rev. William Scott, Vicar of St. Olave's, Jewry, London.
1813-1872.]

P The Right Hon'ble Sir William George Granville Venables-
Vernon-Harcourt ; Solicitor-General, 1873 ; Home Secretary, 1880 ;
Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1885 and 1892. Bora 1827 ; died 1904.]

164 REMINISCENCES

Scott, a special ally of Hope, wrote the articles on
Church questions. Hemming was supposed to take
finance. But when he and I, by strange and pleasant
chance, met after many years in the Park at Toronto
and talked over our old literary comradeship, he told
me that this impression was a mistake. Lord Robert
Cecil had incurred his father's displeasure, by his mar-
riage with a daughter of Baron Alderson,1 an extremely
clever woman who was supposed privately to help us
with her pen. Something of the Saturday Reviewer was
afterwards discernible in Lord Salisbury's speeches,
perhaps not to his political advantage; for that which
would be smart in an article may be too smart in a Min-
ister's speech* He offended the Irish vote by a philo-
sophic remark on the inequalities of political capacity
and the imprudence of giving democratic institutions
to the Hottentots. "Master of flouts and gibes and
sneers " he was called by Disraeli. As the guest of
Hope at Bedgebury, where we had very pleasant meet-
ings, I was thrown much into Lord Salisbury's company,
and I always felt and expressed more confidence in his
judgment and rectitude than in his strength. Bismarck
in his slashing way said of him that he was a reed 2
painted to look like iron. This was exaggeration.
But Lord Salisbury used to speak both in public and
private of Disraeli's character and designs in terms

P Georgina Caroline, eldest daughter of tlie Honourable Sir
Edward Hall Alderson, Baron of the Exchequer.]
P Query. — Lath?]

JOURNALISM 165

which it might have been thought would make their
union impossible. His ultimate submission to Disraeli
was ascribed to the pressure of his aspiring wife. His
consent to the attack on the independence of the
Transvaal Republic, being the man of honour that he
was and clearly committed on the question, may prob-
ably be ascribed to the dominant influence of Chamber-
lain.

The staff, or at least the circle of contributors, was
afterwards so much enlarged that at the Saturday
Review dinners at Richmond or Greenwich it seemed as
if the whole literary tribe of London were gathered
together.

Douglas Cook's policy, to which Beresford-Hope's
purse enabled him to give effect, was to buy the very
best article, whatever might be the necessary price.
The field was open ; The Spectator having declined after
the death of Rintoul1; and the Saturday paid, as I
understood, from the first.

Had I written in Latin the epitaph of George Vena-
bles, it would have been Magnus Vir} Si Emersisset. It
was always a mystery to me how a man with his ability,
his force of character, and his political information,
could have been content to remain through life an
anonymous journalist. I never heard him make a
speech; but he was said as Parliamentary Counsel to
have spoken extremely well. His style as a writer was

P Robert Stephen Rintoul, founder of The Spectator. 1787-
1858J

166 REMINISCENCES

peculiar and not popular. His sentences followed each
other without connecting particles, like a succession of
pellets from a popgun. But his articles were full of
weighty good sense. Nor was he without sardonic wit.
When Thesiger,1 a popular man, but a bad lawyer, was
made Chancellor, Venables said, "Sir Frederick The-
siger is raised to the Chancellorship amidst universal
sympathy, which we cannot help extending to the
suitors.7' When Palmerston, a Tory at heart, made a
clap-trap speech, in favour I think of an extension of
the franchise, and Pakington,2 a professed Conserva-
tive, imitated and tried to cap him, Venables said that
if Pakington's speech was insincere that only increased
the servility of the imitation.

If any one into whose hands the Saturday may since
have fallen fancies that its success was due to political
pepper, he is mistaken. Its tone during its palmy days
was epicurean, and this was the source of its popularity
in the circles by which it was chiefly supported. It
was said of us that whereas with the generation of the
Reform Bill, everything had been new, everything had
been true, and everything had been of the highest im-
portance, with us nothing was new, nothing was true,
and nothing was of any importance.

One day Cook asked me whether I had written a
review of a book which he had put into my hands. I

P Frederick Thesiger, first Baron Chehnsf ord ; Lord Chancellor
1858-1859, and 1866-1868. Born 1794; died 1878.]

P John Somerset Pakington, first Baron Hampton. (His real
name was Russell.) 1799-1880J

JOURNALISM 167

replied that I had read the book, but that it was not
worth reviewing. "Ah!" he said, "you are not like
the others. If I give them a bad book, they cut it up ;
you tell me that it is not worth reviewing/7 I somehow
got a false reputation for sharpness as a reviewer. A
work like Froude's "Henry VIII," l not only artfully
palliating the detestable crimes of a despot, but art-
fully blackening the memories of his victims such as
More, Fisher, and Pole, surely calls for reprobation.2 I
have always thought that Macaulay was inhuman in
insisting on the republication of his review of poor Satan
Montgomery's poems.3 It is a pity he did not live to
read Fitzjames Stephen's examination of his Life of
Warren Hastings.4 It might have taught him mercy.
Froude was undoubtedly a man of genius. He was a
most brilliant and fascinating writer, and his History
becomes far more historical when death has rid him of
Henry VIII. But neither accuracy nor justice ever
was his strong point. He was very impossible. He
had set out under the influence of Newman; he ended,
after an interval of scepticism, under that of Carlyle.

t1 James Anthony Fronde's "History of England from the Fall
of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth."]

p Probably the reviews of the first two volumes of Fronde's His-
tory of England which appeared in the Saturday Review of April,
the 26th and May the 3d, 1856, were from Mr. Goldwin Smith's
pen.]

p Robert Montgomery. 1807-1855.]

[4 " The Story of Nuncomar and the Impeachment of Sir Elijah
Impey." By Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, KC.S.L . . . Two
volumes. London : Maemillan. 1885.]

168 EEMINISCENCES

Neither of his prophets was likely to put him in the way
of plain truth.

My most important or least unimportant work as a
journalist, however, was a series of letters in the Daily
News, afterwards reprinted under the title of "The
Empire." * It commenced with a letter advocating the
cession of the Ionian Islands, which were in a chronic
state of discontent, to Greece ; a measure favoured by
my political friends and presently adopted without
any of the terrible effects predicted by the worshippers
of Empire. The whole series was anti-Imperialist,
advocating the concession of independence to adult
Colonies, so that England might become indeed the
mother of free nations. In the debate on the question
of the Ionian Islands, Disraeli attacked me in the House
of Commons. The publication of his letter to Lord
Malmesbury,2 then Foreign Secretary, has shown that
he himself regarded "these wretched Colonies" as
"a mill-stone round our necks/7 and held that they
would "all be independent in a few years." (Malmes-
bury's Memoirs3 i. 344.) Nor was this a transient ebul-
lition* His friend Sir William Gregory tells us 8 that he

P "The Empire. A Series of Letters published in The Daily
News, 1862, 1863." By Goldwin Smith. Oxford and London:
John Henry and James Parker. 1863.]

P James Howard Harris, third Earl of Malmesbury. 1807-1889.]
P" ... as for the colonies, his expressions were (always those of
contempt and a contented impression that we should sooner or later
be rid of them." — "An Autobiography. By Sir William Gregory,
K.C.M.G., formerly Member of Parliament and sometime Governor
of Ceylon. Edited by Lady Gregory." London. Murray. 1894.
Page 105.]

JOURNALISM 169

held the same language in private to the end of his life.
To show how little I shared Disraeli's contempt for the
Colonies, it was in consequence of a suggestion made by
me to a Colonial Secretary that they were first men-
tioned in the Queen's Speech.

The opinions held by me on the Colonial Question
were at that time prevalent; some of our statesmen
avowed them, more were inclined to them. They were
undoubtedly shared by my friend Sir Frederic Rogers,1
the permanent head of the Colonial Office. They were
certainly not deemed treason by my friend Godley,2
the founder of Canterbury, New Zealand, with whom
I had a good deal of intercourse on colonial subjects.
He was at all events strongly in favour of Colonial
self-government, and said that he would rather be
ruled by a Nero on the spot than by a Board in London.
There is now a tidal wave of the opposite sentiment;
but I have more than once in the course of a long life
stood on the dry beach where a tidal wave had been. I
remain unshaken in my convictions. Nor was the
movement in which, through those letters, I took part,
without important effect at the time. A larger meas-
ure of self-government was given to the Colonies; the
British troops were withdrawn from them; and an end
was put to petty wars with Maoris and Kaffirs which
the presence of the troops, by encouraging the aggres-

P Frederic Rogers, Baron Blachford, Permanent Under-Secretary
of State for the Colonies from 1860 to 1871. 1811-1889.]

P John Robert Godley, Under-Secretary-at-War. 1814-1861.]

170 REMINISCENCES

siveness of the Colonists, had fomented and which had
cost Great Britain many millions.

Palmerston, seconded by Layard,1 proclaimed the
regeneration, political and financial, of the Turkish
Empire; encouraged British investment in its funds;
identified British diplomacy with its preservation; and
drew us into a war with Russia in its defence. In the
letters I argued on the opposite side, and on this ques-
tion at least few will say that my pen was enlisted on
the side of wrong.

The publication of the letters brought me into con-
nection with Walker,2 the editor of the Daily News, one
of the most thoroughly upright and conscientious mem-
bers of the Press I ever knew. "What is behind the
Press is now a very grave, not to say terrible, question.
If such men as Walker were behind it, we should be safe
enough.

The Letters on the Empire, with general connections,
gave me for the time something of a political position. I
was offered the nomination for Chelsea and Kensington,
a constituency in which the Liberals had a safe major-
ity. But I knew the difference between the pen and
the tongue. I never was a speaker, nor had I strength
for Parliamentary life. Disraeli, however, seemed to
take it into his head that I was likely to be trouble-

f1 Sir Austen Henry Layard, excavator of Nineveh ; politician.
1817-1894.]

p Thomas Walker; editor of the Daily News from 1858 to 1869;
then editor of the LoTidon Gazette till 1889. Born at Oxford in 1822 ;
bred a carpenter; died in 1898.]

JOURNALISM 171

some, for again he attacked me personally in the House
of Commons. This time it was for writing against en-
tails of land, a subject for which I had prepared my-
self under the guidance of an eminent land agent. He
afterwards pursued me across the Atlantic and tried to
brand me, under a perfectly transparent pseudonym, if
" Oxford Professor " could be called a pseudonym at all,
as a "social sycophant."1 There is surely nothing
more dastardly than this mode of stabbing a reputation.

[l "The Oxford Professor, who was the guest of the American
Colonel, was quite a young man, of advanced opinions on all subjects,
religious, social and political. He was clever, extremely well-in-
formed, so far as books can make a man knowing, but unable to
profit even by that limited experience of life from a restless vanity
and overflowing conceit, which prevented him from ever observing
or thinking of anything but himself. He was gifted with a great
command of words, which took the form of endless exposition, va-
ried by sarcasm and passages of ornate jargon. He was the last
person one would have expected to recognise in an Oxford professor;
but we live in an age of transition.

"A Parisian man of science, who had passed his life in alternately
fighting at barricades and discovering planets, had given Colonel
Campian, who had lived much in the French capital, a letter of
introduction to the Professor, whose invectives against the principles
of English society were hailed by foreigners as representative of the
sentiments of venerable Oxford. The Professor, who was not
satisfied with his home career, and, like many men of his order of
mind, had dreams of wild vanity which the New World, they think,
can alone realise, was very glad to make the Colonel's acquaintance,
which might facilitate his future movements. So he had lionised
the distinguished visitors during the last few days over the Univer-
sity ; and had availed himself of plenteous opportunities for exhib-
iting to them his celebrated powers of exposition, his talent for sar-
casm, which he deemed peerless, and several highly finished pictur-
esque passages, which were introduced with extemporary art.

"The Professor was much surprised when he saw Lothair enter
the saloon at the hotel. He was the last person in Oxford whom he
expected to encounter. Like sedentary men of extreme opinions,

172 EEMINISCENCBS

Although I declined to run for Parliament myself, I
went with some of my friends to their elections and en-
joyed the fun, of which something still lingered, though
reform had quenched the glories of Eatanswill. The
Liberal Whip one day sent for me and told me that Mr.
Mundella/ a Nottingham merchant, had been asked to
run for Sheffield, the seat of the most militant trade-
unionism, that Mundella was a novice in politics, but
would be inclined to accept, if I would go with him and
post him. The Whigs frowned on the enterprise, say-
ing that Roebuck2 ("Tear 7em" was his nickname),
the other candidate, through his influence with the
unions, was sure of success and would come back with
his restive Radicalism a greater thorn in the side of
the Government than ever. Besides, there was danger
of a riot. I suggested a reference to Gladstone. The
answer was, Fight. To Sheffield we went. Mundella
was approached by the most extreme and formidable
of the unions. He took by my advice a boldly in-
dependent line, which was successful, the great Union
no doubt having its enemies, and was returned by a
large majority. At Abingdon one hall was stormed,

he was a social parasite, and instead of indulging in Ms usual invec-
tives against peers and princes, finding himself unexpectedly about
to dine with one of that class, he was content to dazzle and amuse
him." Disraeli, "Lothair," Chapter xxiv.]

f1 Anthony John Mundella, M.P. from 1868 till his death in 1897 ;
much interested in Factory Acts and Education Acts, etc. Born
in 1825.]

P John Arthur Roebuck, M.P. 1832-1837; 1841-1847; 1849-
1868; 1874r-1879, Born 1801 ; died 1879.]

JOURNALISM 173

and at Reading we had a row. But these were nothing
to the election days of old. At Woodstock we fought
against the interest of Blenheim, represented by Lord
Randolph Churchill l of curious fame. But Blenheim
had given its Christmas doles and prevailed.

P Third son of the sixth Duke of Marlborough. 1849-1894.]

CHAPTER XII

CONISHECTION WITH PUBLIC MEN

Peel— Disraeli — " Lothair " — Bentinck — The Duke of Newcastle

— Cardwefl — " Welbeck " — Gladstone — The Peelites —
Sidney Herbert — Canning — Dalhousie — Sir James Graham

— Lord Aberdeen — Russell — Granville — Godley — Joseph
Chamberlain — Earl Grey.

PARTLY by my connection with Journalism; partly
by my Eton and social connections, I was led to in-
timacy with, some public men, with the Peelite circle at
first, and afterwards with Bright, Cobden, and the Man-
chester School Peel 1 himself was always the object
of my political allegiance. I saw in him a statesman, in
his later days at all events, above party, who sought
and studied with singleness of heart the good of the
whole nation, and though I had less respect for some
venerable institutions than he had, I recognized his
wisdom in preferring administrative reform, which he
steadfastly pursued, to organic change. Beyond doubt
he had the confidence not only of the majority, but of
the most intelligent and respectable part of the nation.
His fall before an unprincipled coalition of Protection-
ist Tories, office-seeking Whigs, English Radicals, and

P Sir Bobert Peel, second Baronet; Prime Minister 1834r-1835;
1841-1846. Bora in 1788; died 1850.]

174

COKttECTION WITH PUBLIC MEN 175

Irish enemies of the Union had increased my feeling in
his favour.

Of Peel I saw nothing. When I went to London he
had fallen from office; not from power; he was still at
the head of the House of Commons and of the country.
Greville says truly that he would have been elected
Prime Minister by an overwhelming majority.1 Soon
afterwards he was killed by a fall from his horse. He
was a good shot, but a bad horseman, having a loose
seat. Care was supposed to be taken in buying horses
for him on that account. But the horse which killed
him had been offered for sale to my father and other fox-
hunters in our neighbourhood, and had been rejected
for its trick of bucking and kicking. Our neighbour at
Mortimer, Sir Paul Hunter,2 met Peel riding in the Park,
recognized his horse, actually turned to warn him; but
fearing to intrude, abstained. The horse probably
played its usual trick; threw Peel over its head; and
he, falling with the reins in his hand, pulled down the
horse upon him. The horse with his knee broke the
rider's rib, drove it into his lungs, and thus, like the
mole whose mole-hill killed William III, played a part
in history.

It was currently reported, and the belief has found
a place in Froude's Biography3 of Disraeli, that Peel

p "Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria." By Charles C. F.
Gre-ville. London : Longmans. 1885. Vol. Ill, pages 100, 101.]

[2 Sir Claudius Stephen Paul Hunter, second Baronet, J.P.,
D.L. 1825-1890.1

P In "The Prime Ministers of Queen Victoria " Series, edited by
Stuart J. Reid.]

176 REMINISCENCES

wanted to send Disraeli a challenge for something said
by him in the Corn Law debates. Peel did want to send
a challenge, and for something said in the Corn Law
debates; but it was not to Disraeli; it was to Lord
George Bentinck.1 The Duke of Newcastle, who was
asked by Peel to carry the challenge, told me the story.
We were talking about our contemporaries at Eton and
Oxford. This led to mention of Sidney Herbert and
a reference to a false charge against Peel of having
abused Sidney Herbert's confidence in him. The
Duke said that no one would be less likely to be guilty
of such a thing than Peel, who was so sensitive about his
relation to his friends that, for aspersing it, he had
wanted to send a challenge to Lord George Bentinck.
The Duke proceeded to say that after the debate, when
the House was up, Peel had asked him to wait while he
wrote the customary letter to the Queen, then took his
arm and walked with him toward his own house in
Hyde Park Gardens, saying by the way that Bentinck's
language had been an aspersion on his honour and the
Duke must carry a challenge. The Duke remonstrated.
Peel insisted. They walked to and fro till workmen
began to pass on their way to work. Peel was then per-
suaded to go to bed, the Duke promising speedily to
return. Returning, the Duke found Peel still resolved
to send the challenge, but at length consideration for
what the Duke pleaded would be the feelings of the

p William George Frederic Cavendish-Bentinck, fif th child of the
fourth Duke of Portland, a statesman and a sportsman. 1802-1848 J

CONNECTION WITH PUBLIC MEN 177

Queen in case of serious consequences prevailed. Hav-
ing heard the story I naturally asked how it was that
Peel felt so much a blow of Lord George Bentinck's
bludgeon when he showed such indifference of Disraeli's
poniard, of which he once only stooped to take cursory
notice. The Duke's answer was that, calling at Peel's
house on his way to the House of Commons, he had
been shown by Peel, who took it from his bag, a letter
from Disraeli asking place. That he had ever asked
Peel for place Disraeli in the House of Commons de-
nied. The letter which proves that he lied is now pub-
lished by Mr. Charles Parker 1 and most abject it is.
The Duke gave me the fact with full liberty to use it.
I took a note of it from his lips. But I was also cog-
nizant of it in another way, Peel's correspondence
having been opened to me by his literary executors for
the purpose of a projected life. My inspection of the
correspondence was confidential, and I felt bound not
to embarrass the literary executors, especially when Peel
had himself shown so much delicacy on the subject. It
is not unlikely that the letter was before him in Peel's
bag when Disraeli's falsehood was told. Thus the fact
remained unknown until, after a long delay caused by
various accidents, Peel's correspondence saw the light.
To me, however, it was well known what the man was
who was making his gambling-table of my country. I
do not feel sure that I did right in keeping the secret.

^"Sir Robert Peel." By Charles Stuart Parker. In three
volumes. London : Murray. 1891 and 1899. Volume II, page 486.]

178 REMINISCENCES

Divulged it might have averted mischief, but Peel
had kept it.

There was one slip in the Duke's narrative. He said
that if he would not take the challenge Peel threatened
to apply to Lord Hardinge.1 Hardinge was then in
India. But I found that he had acted for Peel in an
affair with a Colonel Mitchell,2 and to this no doubt Peel
referred. There was always fire under Peel's snow, and
he was of the old school of honour.

Disraeli had in reality no great difficulties to over-
come. He was a Jew by descent, but a baptized
Christian. He was married to a rich wife. He started
in public life as an adventurer, angling for a seat in
Parliament by baits thrown out to both parties, and
going through a series of transformations in the course
of which he had a slanging match with O'Connell, who
called him the " lineal representative of the impenitent
thief." In his " Letters of Runnymede" he fawns
fulsomely on Peel and scurrilously abuses the Whigs.

One part of his Parliamentary strategy was the con-
coction of little pointed sayings about the personal
peculiarities of his opponents; as when he said of
Horsman3 that he was a "superior person," and al-
luded to Hope's 4 "Batavian grace." Lord Salisbury 5

P Charles Stewart, second Viscount Hardinge, private Secretary
to his father, Sir Henry Hardinge, Governor-General of India,
1844-1847; M.P.; Under-Secretary f or War ; etc. 1822-1894.]

[* Query. — John Mitchell, author of "The Life of Wallenstein,"
'/The Fan of Napoleon," etc. 1785-1859.]

p Edward Horsman, Whig politician. 1807-1876.]

[4 Alexander James Beresf ord-Hope.] [5 The third Marquess.]

CONNECTION WITH PUBLIC MEN 179

was a "master of gibes, flouts, and jeers." People were
weakly afraid of drawing these shafts of ridicule upon
themselves. When, however, Disraeli tried to kill
Gladstone by saying that he was a "sophistical rheto-
rician intoxicated with the exuberance of his own ver-
bosity," the ridicule turned on himself.

Disraeli's strong point as a speaker was personal
attack, apart from which he was apt to be heavy. I
heard him at the time of the Mutiny make a highly
laboured speech on the Indian question which evidently
wearied and partly cleared the House. Even as a
novelist he indulges in personal attack, though when
he comes to deal with Lord Hertford his own syco-
phancy betrays itself and he betrays a strong contrast
to the free hand of Thackeray. His ' ' Letters of Runny-
mede " are an extravagant imitation of Junius. He
says to Russell, who had given him no provocation,

'* A miniature Mokanna, you are now exhaling upon the consti-
tution of your country, which you once eulogized, and its great
fortunes, of which you once were proud, all that long-hoarded venom
and all those distempered humours that have for years accumulated
in your petty heart, and tainted the current of your mortified life." l

He avowed that he was a flatterer, having, as he said,
found the practice useful. To the Queen he "laid it on
with a trowel " and with most satisfactory effect. He
once opened a sitting of the Privy Council with an ex-
travagant compliment to her as an authoress. He was
overheard pandering to her hatred of Garibaldi, and

P Pages 59, 60.]

180 REMINISCENCES

when she said that she had been told the same thing
before, said, "Then it must be true, for no one would
tell your Majesty anything, but the truth."

Peel could not give Disraeli place, but his reply to
him was perfectly courteous, and it seems that he en-
couraged hjm at his rather unfortunate debut in the
House of Commons by a kindly cheer. Disraeli pre-
sently commenced a series of laboured attacks on Peel.
His object at this time was blackmailing, for he pro-
tested against being ruled out of the party, and after-
wards asked Graham, Peel's colleague, for patronage.
The split between Peel and the Protectionists opened a
grander game. That he had lampooned the Corn Law
squires in "Popanilla" * did not prevent his flinging
himself into their arms and glutting at once his revenge
and his ambition by a series of most intensely venomous
attacks on the great convert to free trade. He was
fortunate in the split between Peel and his Protection-
ists. He was fortunate in finding such a tool as Ben-
tinck, with his sporting reputation, his stolidity and
violence, wherewith to work upon the angry squires.
He was fortunate in finding a patron like Lord Derby,
all-powerful with the Tory and Protectionist party, and
at the same time not unjustly nicknamed "The Jockey/'
with a good deal of the turfite in his character, and,
though supposed to be a paragon of high principle, not
too scrupulous to take a leap in the dark with the high-

P"Tlie Voyage of Captain PopanSlla." By the Author of
"Vivian Grey." London. 1828J

CONNECTION WITH PUBLIC MEN 181

est interests of the nation, if thereby he could dish the
Whigs, of whom, at the time of the Reform Bill, he had
been about the most violent. He was doubly fortunate
in the sudden death of Bentinck, who was ferociously
sincere and would never have consented to the second
part of his friend's game, jettison of Protection. He
was fortunate, again, in having on the throne, no longer
Prince Albert, who abhorred him, but Prince Albert's
widow, highly receptive of the flattery which, to use
what was reported as his own expression, he laid on
with a trowel. His cleverness nobody denies. It was
shown by leading the gentlemen of England out of the
path of honour. But his whole course was one of
manoeuvring with a selfish aim. Long as was his
career, not one good measure of importance bears his
name. Nor in his speeches is there anything high or
noble, anything that can be quoted for its sentiment,
anything that shows genius unless it be the genius of
the literary stabber. His elaborate oration on India
at the time of the Mutiny, which I heard, was very
heavy, and thinned the House. His vindictiveness
was truly oriental. In his Life of Lord George Bentinck
he still gloats over the recollection of Peel rising "con-
* fused and suffering" from his attacks, as he fancied,
though it was really pain at the rupture of the tie with
party and friends about which Peel's feeling was in-
tense. The passage * is interesting read in comparison

p Chapter xv. — In the tenth edition of Disraeli's " Life," I find
the passage on page 195J

182 BEMDSflSCENCES

with PeePs scrupulous delicacy in respecting the con-
fidential letter suing for place.

It may have been partly by suspicion of my posses-
sion of an unpleasant secret that Disraeli was moved to
follow me across the Atlantic and try, as he did in
"Lothair/'1 to brand me as " a social sycophant."
His knowledge of my social character was not great,
for I had only once met him in society. His allusion to
the " Oxford Professor" who was going to the United
States was as transparent as if he had used my name.
Had I been in England, where my character was
known, I should have let the attack pass; but I
was in a strange country where, made by a man of
note, the attack was likely to tell. I therefore gave
Disraeli the lie 2 and neither he nor any of his organs
ever ventured to repeat the calumny. Surely nothing
can be more dastardly than an attack on character
under cover of a pseudonym. However false and ma-
licious the slander may be, the person attacked can-
not repel it without seeming to recognize its aptitude.

In "Popanilla" will be found clear proof that Dis-
raeli was not a Protectionist, but a satirist of Pro-

p See note on page 171, chap, arij

P In the following letter : —

"In your 'Lothair ' you introduce an Oxford Professor who is
about to emigrate to America, and you describe "Mm as a social parasite.
You well know that if you had ventured openly to accuse me of any
social "baseness you would have had to answer for your words;
but when sheltering yourself under the literary forms of a work
of fiction, you seek to traduce with impunity the social character
of a political opponent, your expressions can touch no man's honour
— they are the stingless insults of a coward."]

CONNECTION WITH PUBLIC MEN 183

tection. He took to Protection for the purpose of his
conspiracy against Peel with the intention of throwing
it over, as he did, when his object had been gained.
This programme he could not have carried out if Lord
George Bentinck had lived, insead of being removed,
as he was, just at the right moment, by a sudden death.
Bentinck was an honest fanatic, and would never have
allowed Disraeli to turn him round for the purpose of
the game. In Bentinck, who had the character and
confidence of the land-owning gentiy, which Disraeli
lacked, was found the exact tool required by Disraeli.
The charge against Peel of having fc£ murdered" Can-
ning, which Disraeli in his Life of Bentinck has carefully
credited to his fk friend," was Disraeli's own invention
and infused by him into his dupe. Bentinck had been
Canning's private Secretary. It was not likely that he
would have followed Peel all those years if he had be-
lieved him to be the betrayer of Canning, and had he
been himself devoted to Canning, as Disraeli pretends,
though Greville scouts the idea.1

At the time when Peel declared for free trade dire
distress prevailed. Tens of thousands of working-men
were out of employment. Grass was being boiled for
food. Wedding-rings were being pawned by the hun-
dred. In Ireland a terrible famine impended. Yet
this Semite, who had shown that he saw and ridiculed
the fallacy of Protection, as he continued, when Pro-
tectionism had served his turn, to do, could for his own

J1 "Memoirs," second part, Volume II, pages 398 et seq.]

co a

00 O.

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w .a

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PH d

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CONNECTION WITH PUBLIC MEN 185

revenge and advancement coolly play the Protection-
ist game.

The Conservatives who had stuck to Peel through
the Corn Law conflict, and though few in number were
the brains of the party, included Graham/ Lord
Aberdeen,2 Gladstone, the Duke of Newcastle,8 Dal-
housie,4 Cardwell,5 Sidney Herbert, and Canning. Hav-
ing hovered for a time between the two camps, they ul-
timately coalesced, and finally fused, with the Liberals.
The six younger members of the group had been
not only taken into office, but personally trained by
Peel, who was master of all departments and was
unique in devices to provide the country with a succes-
sion of statesmen.

My chief political friends of the group were the Duke
of Newcastle and Edward Cardwell. The Duke had
been, like me, though somewhat before me, in Cole-
ridge's house at Eton, which I have said was a bond.

The Duke of Newcastle was not a great statesman,
perhaps he was not even a very great administrator,
for though he was a good man of business and devoted
to work, he wore himself out with details which he

I1 Sir James Robert George Graliam. 1792-1861.]

[2 George Hamilton Gordon, fourth Earl of Aberdeen, Secretary
for War and the Colonies under Peel, 1784-1860.]

p The fifth Duke.]

[4 James Andrew Brown Ramsay, tenth Earl and first Marquess
of Dalhousie, President of the Board of Trade ; afterwards Governor-
General of India. 1812-1860.]

[5 Edward, Viscount Cardwell ; held many high political posts
under Peel and Aberdeen, PaJmerston, Russell, and Gladstone.
1813-1886J

186 REMINISCENCES

ought to have left to subordinates ; and I fancy he had
not the gift of choosing his subordinates very well.
The breakdown in the Crimea, however, was not his
fault, but the fault of a long-disused and rusty machine
which he was just getting into order when the Govern-
ment fell. Though a man of strong feelings and affec-
tions, he lacked imagination, and perhaps owed partly
to that defect the unhappiness which befell him in his
married life. But he was a thoroughly upright, high-
minded, and patriotic gentleman, who kept his soul
above his rank, and devoted himself to the service of
the State; while the fortitude with which he bore
accumulated misfortune and torturing disease would
have touched any heart, as it did mine. He showed, as
I have said, remarkable tact and temper in presiding
over the Education Commission, which was made up of
men chosen as representatives of different opinions on
a burning question. In that respect, at all events, he
would not have been a bad head of a government. His
colleagues would also have felt that they could thor-
oughly trust his honour. It was in an unlucky hour, and
at the bidding of an ill-starred ambition, that he for-
sook the Colonial Office for the Ministry of War. As a
Colonial Minister he was successful in his own way,
which was that of a decided Imperialist, though he was
too good-natured ever to quarrel with a friend who
wrote in support of the opposite view. I turned up
the other day one of his notes bidding me come to
dinner and he would have one or two Colonists to

CONNECTION WITH PUBLIC MEN 187

"roast" me. His greatest mistake, perhaps, was his
alliance with Sadleir 1 and that gang. But into this he
was led by a sincere desire of a liberal government for
Ireland. His liberal tendencies did not fail to bring
upon him the wrath of his father, who had greatly
encumbered the estate by reckless purchases of terri-
torial influence for the purpose of upholding ultra-
Toryism, and had prepared for himself a place among
the most hapless victims of the irony of fate by opening
the door of the House of Commons to Mr. Gladstone.

Cardwell, whose acquaintance I made at first through
the Duke, always seemed to me the model of a public
servant. He was the most typical pupil, as well as
one of the warmest adherents of Peel, who, as I have
said, did his best to train statesmen for the country,
and exacted, as the title to promotion, the conscien-
tious industry and thorough devotion to the public
service of which he was himself a grand example.
Cardwell, like Peel, was dry, and, like Peel, somewhat
stiff and formal ; there was nothing about him brilliant
or impressive to anyone who was not impressed by duty.
He was not and never could have been a party leader;
he had not the fire, the magnetism, the eloquence, or
the skill as a tactician. It did not seem to me that he
ever scanned the political field for strategical purposes
as party leaders do. He was content to do the business
and solve the question of the hour. The question of

pJohn Sadleir, the "Irish politician and swindler." 1814r-
1856.]

188 REMINISCENCES

the hour he solved by an honest sort of opportunism,
rather than on any very broad principle, or with refer-
ence to any far-reaching policy. Not only was he
unqualified to be a party leader, but he was an indiffer-
ent partisan; his mind was too fair, and his judgment
was too cool. On the other hand, he was a true com-
rade, a fast friend, and not a bad hater of the enemies of
his friends. I believe that this is the right way of stat-
ing the case, and that Cardwell was free from rancour.
I know that some whose opinion is of weight thought
him unjust to opponents. It is difficult for a gladiator
in such an arena as party politics to be perfectly just;
but I must say that I never heard Cardwell speak bit-
terly of mere difference of opinion, or of anything but
what he sincerely believed to be dishonest. He was
cautious, perhaps reticent, to a fault. Without being
eloquent, he was a good and convincing speaker in
Peel's manner, and particularly clear in exposition;
yet he never spoke if he could help it, and more than
once rehearsed to me, in substance, speeches which he
was going to make, but when the time came did not
make. It was as an administrator and practical legis-
lator that he was really great. While others talked
and manoeuvred for power, he did an immense amount
of work, and of the best quality, for the nation. His
great achievements and monuments are the Merchant
Shipping Act of 1854,1 which is still the code of our
Mercantile Marine, and the transformation of the army
p_17 and 18 Viet. Cap. exxj

CONNECTION WITH PUBLIC MEN 189

from an unprofessional and unscientific to a profes-
sional and scientific force, which he accomplished with
Lord Wolseley's aid. Peel made it a point of honour
so carefully to prepare his Bills that they should pass
with little amendment, and in this, as in other respects,
Cardwell was a faithful pupil. The Merchant Shipping
Bill with its five hundred and forty-eight sections passed
through Committee at a single sitting — curious con-
trast to a Franchise Act, the work of the opposite school,
which, when it finally became law, retained of the
original Bill scarcely anything but the preamble.1
The transformation of the army in face of all the
prejudices and opposition of the men of the old school
was probably as heavy a piece of work as ever fell to the
lot of a British legislator. It broke Cardwell down, and
brought on the malady which closed his working days.
The strongest testimony is borne, by those who are best
qualified to judge, to the temper and patience as well as
to the ability and the power of mastering details dis-
played in the conduct of the business. Testimony
equally strong is borne to the display of the same
qualities in other departments, notably in the Board of
Trade. As Colonial Secretary Cardwell had to deal,
amidst a tornado of public excitement, with the ques-
tion of the disturbances in Jamaica and of Governor
Eyre.2 The case of Jamaica he was generally allowed
to have settled well, though in the case of Governor

t1 No doubt a reference to Disraeli's Reform Bill, which became
law in August, 1867.] p See Chapter XX.]

190 EEMINISCENCES

Eyre it was impossible to unite the suffrages of those
who regarded the Governor as a hero with the suffrages
of those who regarded him not only as the hateful in-
strument of a cruel panic, but as the dastardly murderer
of his personal enemy, Gordon. To Cardwell is due, if
not the initiative, the execution, of a great change in
Colonial policy; for he it was who, by practically in-
sisting that the Colonies should pay for troops main-
tained in them, inaugurated self-defence, which was a
long step towards Colonial independence. Cardwell
was no eye-server; he did the work of his office thor-
oughly and faithfully without any thought of self-dis-
play or of the figure which he was to make before the
House of Commons; and one could not help thinking
how absurd was the party system which compelled the
country to deprive itself of such a departmental ad-
ministrator because the party to which he belonged
had been defeated on some legislative question totally
unconnected with the business of his department.
Albeit, as has already been said, no party leader or
organizer of political forces, Cardwell in council, though
quiet, was strong, and was able even to control the
course of errant and flaming bodies which afterwards
set the political firmament on fire. Such at least was
the impression which I formed when I was living in
the Peelite circle. Though everywhere but in his home
Cardwell seemed rather cold, his wife could not live
when he was gone. Her remaining days, in fact, were
almost spent in lingering round his grave.

CONNECTION WITH PUBLIC MEN 191

With Newcastle and Cardwell I was very intimate,
passing much time and meeting interesting people in
the houses of both of them. Clumber? the Duke's
abode, was in itself full of interest as a great historic
house still full of historic treasures, gifts, some of them
gifts of Royalty, to statesmen of old. Among these was
a superb pair of Sevres vases, the gift of the King of
France. They had been lent to an exhibition where one
of them was swept in a roll of cotton off a packing table
and smashed to pieces, but had been very skilfully put
together again. The Duke was trying to redeem the
estate encumbered by the extravagance of his predeces-
sors, one of whom had indulged his pride by buying and
tearing down a vast and sumptuous mansion in the
neighbourhood that Clumber might have no rival.
But saving must have been difficult when such a house-
hold as I saw in the domestic Chapel at Clumber was
to be maintained. These households must have eaten
deeply into the revenues of the landed aristocracy of
England.

The present King,1 then Prince of Wales, was at
Clumber. In his honour a banquet was given in the
state dining-room, with the ancestral dessert service of
gold plate, which did not seem to me very dazzling in its
brilliancy. The Mayors of neighbouring towns were
invited. Ice to cool wine had just come into fashion.
One of the Mayors took it for an entree, got it on his
plate, first tried to cut it, then carried a lump of it to his

P- This refers, of course, to Ms late Majesty King Edward VII.]

192 REMINISCENCES

mouth with a spoon. A well-trained footman, seeing
the situation, whipped away the ice, but the Mayor's
confidence was shaken for the rest of the feast.

A strange claim raised to the Portland inheritance
reminded me of a visit I paid to Welbeck in company
with Denison, afterwards Lord Ossington,1 when we
were together staying at Clumber. Denison was the
brother-in-law of the Duke of Portland.2 When we
approached Welbeck he said, "I can't take you in; I
can't go in myself, though I am the Duke's brother-in-
law. He is hypochondriac, lives underground, goes
underground to the railroad, and will let nobody see
him. But we can look round the place." The first
things I saw were some pines which had been trans-
planted at their full growth with a screen of proportion-
ate height to protect them from the wind. The next
thing was a newly-built set of stables, coach-houses, and
other offices on the very grandest scale, with carriages
and horses to match, all to keep up the state of a gran-
dee who never showed his face out of doors. It is
surely most unlikely that a man so full of aristocratic
pride, even if his sanity was impaired, should have
chosen to masquerade as a London tradesman. We
rode home by moonlight through a grove of spruces,
feathering to the ground, which I thought the most
solemn things in the way of trees I had ever seen. I

P See page 149, Chapter X. He married Charlotte, seventh
child of the fourth Duke of Portland. 1800-1873.]

p William John Cavendish Scott Bentinck, the fifth Duke of
Portland. Born, 1800; died in 1879 J

CONNECTION WITH PUBLIC MEN 193

have since seen the rival of that grove, perhaps its su-
perior, in the road through the forest from Vancouver
to New Westminster.

My memories of Gladstone, with whom I was also
very intimate, I have given elsewhere.1 I will not
dwell again on his almost miraculous powers of work
and speech, on his mastery of the art of framing great
measures and carrying them through Parliament, on
his triumphs as a financier, his general though less un-
chequered merits as a statesman, his virtues, graces of
character, and piety as a man. Nor need I touch again
his weaker points; his liability to self-deception and
casuistry, or the violent impulsiveness and combative-
ness which hurried him at last into his Irish policy and
made his great friend and admirer Lord Selborne de-
scribe him in a letter to me as "morally insane.77 Even
in his intellect there was a strange mixture of weakness
with strength. It is difficult to believe that the same
man can have made the budget-speeches and written,
as Gladstone in the full light of research and science
wrote, about theology and Homer. His fancy, heated
with the political fray, grew wild enough to compare
the abolition of the exclusionist Parliament of Ireland
to the massacre of St. Bartholomew. In the earlier
part of his career, Gladstone I suspect was uncon-
sciously controlled by the gentle influence of friends
such as Cardwell and Newcastle, both of whom he lost.

[l "My Memory of Gladstone." Toronto: Wm. Tyrrell;
London : T. Fisher Unwin. 1904. Second edition, 1909.]

194 REMINISCENCES

Of Mr. Morley's * Life, the first two volumes are his-
torical as well as admirably written; this can hardly
be said of the last. It does credit to PeePs largeness
of mind that he should have recognized and promoted
high ability in a character so different from his own.
Gladstone was loyal to Peel, but I do not think he ever
loved him. Peel was an orthodox Protestant and
Erastian, while Gladstone was a High Churchman, with
Ritualists for his special friends, and hankering for re-
union with Rome. After PeePs death, and when Pro-
tection, as Disraeli said, was "dead and damned," Glad-
stone would have taken the Conservative leadership, if
Disraeli had not stood in the way. Disraeli professed
his willingness to go, but did not go.

That for which I could never cease to be grateful
to Gladstone was his noble advocacy of the cause of the
oppressed; of the cause of the Italians by Austria and
the Bourbons; of the cause of the Christians oppressed
by the Turks. Here at all events he was perfectly
single-hearted and sincere. His sympathy was with
everybody who was struggling to be free. This it was
mainly, I believe, which led him in the American War of
Secession to lean to the side of the South, and in a not
very happy moment to proclaim that Jefferson Davis
had made the South a nation. His course gave offence
to strong Liberals. It was probably with a view to re-
gaining their good opinion that he wrote one of them a

P Now Viscount Morley of Blackburn. His Life of Gladstone
was published by Messrs. MaemilLan in 1903J

CONNECTION WITH PUBLIC MEN 195

letter saying that if the South were separated from the
North he would willingly see Canada annexed to the
North. The avowal would not have satisfied those
who desired the extinction of the slave-power; while it
might have embarrassed the writer if he had ever been
called upon again as Minister to deal with Colonial
questions. It was therefore destroyed.

It may safely be said that it was not without serious
misgiving that Gladstone went into the Crimean War.
This probably was the real source of his secession from
Palmerston's Government. It happened that when he
was meditating that step I was with him one morning
on business. Our business done, he went on to talk
to me, or to himself, about the war in a way that be-
trayed his intention. He said that Russia had offered
us the terms originally demanded, and that if the Tro-
jans would have given back Helen and her possessions,
the Greeks would have raised the siege of Troy. It did
not occur to him that the terms originally demanded
might not satisfy after the expenditure of so much
blood, or that when he had roused the pugnacity of the
bull-dog it might be difficult to call him off.

I can hardly attempt here fully to discuss his charac-
ter, his public character, of course, I mean; for his
private character, it need not be said, was admirable in-
every way. Labouchere said that he did not object to
Gladstone's having aces up his sleeve, but he did object
to his thinking that the Almighty had put them there.
Jowett, who always withheld his confidence, said some-

196 REMINISCENCES

thing much more severe.1 Simplicity certainly was not
Gladstone's ordinary characteristic, nor could it be
denied that he had a singular power of self-deception.
It was the general impression that he would have taken
the Conservative leadership if Disraeli had been out of
the way. Having become the Liberal Leader, he threw
himself into his part with all the impetuosity of his
nature; persuading himself; perhaps, that he had long
been a Liberal as he persuaded himself that he had long
been inclined to Home Rule. It cannot be denied that
his great Liberal moves, Disestablishment and Home
Rule, coincided, though he might not be conscious of
the coincidence, with the exigencies of his struggle for
power. It has now been pretty well proved that his
sudden dissolution of Parliament in 1874 without con-
sulting his colleagues, which appeared so unaccount-
able, and for a time wrecked his party, was his mode of
escape from a personal dilemma, in which he had in-
volved himself by taking the salaried office of Chancel-
lor of the Exchequer without going to his constituents
for re-election. I was at Manchester when the disso-
lution was announced, and I remember the astonish-
ment and consternation which it caused.

Archbishop Tait told me that what he most feared in
Gladstone was his levity. This may seem paradoxical ;
yet I believe the Archbishop was right. That Glad-

P See " The Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett, MJL Master
of Balliol College, Oxford." By Evelyn Abbott, MJL, LL.D., and
Lewis Campbell, M.A., LLJX 2 vols. London: Murray. 1897.
Volume I, page 406 J

CONNECTION WITH PUBLIC MEN 197

stone's moral aspirations were high cannot be doubted.
It is more doubtful whether his sense of responsibility
was very strong. At a dinner party at which I was
present he came up late from the House, He was in the
best of spirits and seemed to have nothing on his mind.
At last he spoke of the motion of which he had just
given notice in the House. The motion, as afterwards
appeared, was one which would have brought the two
Houses into collision with each other, and the notice
of which had been given amidst extreme excitement.
When his love of power and his pugnacity were ex-
cited, it is questionable whether he thought much of
anything but victory. Perhaps there is a certain
similarity between the cases of a political leader and a
stormy element which would "make extreme sensitive-
ness a drawback.

That Gladstone was a statesman of the very highest
class I should find it difficult to believe. His moves
always seemed to be impulses rather than parts of a
settled plan. In his speeches on the extension of the
franchise he failed to indicate the polity which he ex-
pected to produce, and talked fallacious commonplace
about uniting the whole people about their ancient
throne. If he attacked the Lords, it was not that he
had deliberately made up his mind in favour of a change,
but that they came in his way at the moment ; and the
constitutional doctrines which he put forward on that
occasion were the angry fabrication of the hour. His
proposal to give Ireland a Parliament of her own and at

198 REMINISCENCES

the same time a representation in the United Parlia-
ment which would have enabled her to hold the balance
of parties and practically to dominate there, can hardly
be mentioned with calmness. His lifelong friend and
supporter, Lord Selborne, said in a letter to me that
Gladstone was "morally insane."

As a speaker he was in the highest degree effective,
but the effect was produced by his command of the
subject, by the ascendancy of his character, by the im-
pressiveness of his manner and an admirable voice,
rather than by any grace or force of language. He
was at his best, I think, in expounding a great measure
and steering it through the House. He had, as was
said before, marred the freshness of his style by over-
much speaking in debating-clubs early in life. His
prolixity, which Disraeli called his verbosity, was not
felt by the hearers of his speeches, who were rather
struck by his command of perfectly correct language,
but it is greatly felt by his readers.

"We are much better off than you are for a leader "
said a Conservative Member of Parliament to a Liberal ;
"ours is only an unprincipled scoundrel, yours is a
dangerous lunatic." Tories were always saying, and
half believed, that Gladstone was literally insane, and
stories of his insanity were current. One was that
he had gone to a toyshop and ordered its whole
contents to be sent to Ms house. I asked Lady
Russell whether there could be any foundation for
this report. Her answer was, "I begin to think

CONNECTION WITH PUBLIC MEN 199

there must be, for I have heard it" now every session
for several years."

If Gladstone had not, like Brougham, the vanity of
versatility, he had the propensity in large measure. It
is true that his amazing powers of acquisition enabled
him in a way to deal with many subjects. But his
writings, enormously voluminous and various, are of
little value. His controversy with Huxley about Gen-
esis displayed his weakness. His argument, in effect,
was that the Creator, though unscientific, had come re-
markably near the truth about his own work and had all
but hit upon the Nebular Hypothesis. In his Homeric
and mythological lucubrations there are some things
that are interesting, but there are others so fantastic
that their publication shakes one's confidence in the
general wisdom of the man. He once propounded to
me a Homeric theory which he was going to give to the
world founded on a philological discovery which he sup-
posed himself to have made. I felt sure that the dis-
covery was an illusion, and tried to convince him of this,
without effect. Just then his brother-in-law, Lord
Lyttleton,1 who was a first-rate classical scholar, came
into the room. He evidently saw the matter as I did,
yet he allowed himself to be half talked-over, and I sup-
pose the fancy went into print. Before the publication,
Gladstone gave a Homeric dinner to half a dozen schol-
ars, including Milman and Cornewall Lewis. The osten-
sible object of our meeting was to discuss Gladstone's

P The fourth Baron.]

200 REMINISCENCES

theories. But of discussion there was very little. I
suspect it was not easy for adverse truths to find access to
the Great Man. It was very difficult to convince him by
argument ; but I suspect he was more open to infusion.

There was nothing fine or indicative of high intellect
in the face except the fire of the eye. The whole frame
bespoke nervous energy. Gladstone was a first-rate
sleeper. At the time when he was being fiercely at-
tacked for his secession from Palmerston's Government,
I was told by a common friend whom I met one evening
that he was in a state of extreme excitement. I hap-
pened next morning to have business with him. He
went out of the room to fetch a letter, leaving me with
Mrs. Gladstone, to whom I made some remark on the
trying nature of his situation. She answered that her
husband came home from the most exciting of the
scenes, laid his head upon the pillow, and slept like a
child; thatif ever he had abadnighthewasgoodfornoth-
ing the next day, but that this very rarely happened.

Greville's Journal has revived the memory of the
Peelites; and an article appeared the other day, by the
survivor and the most renowned of the group, in which,
as a set of men taking their own course and remaining
outside the regular parties, they were designated as a
public nuisance.1 One cannot help surmising that they

F This refers to Gladstone's article on " The History of 1852-60,
and Greville's latest Journals" in The English Historical Review
for April, 1887, Volume II, page 258. Much of this chapter con-
sists of passages taken from Mr. Goldwin Smith's article on " The
Peelites " in Macmttlan's Magazine of October, 1887.]

CONNECTION WITH PUBLIC MEN 201

incurred this severe judgment in some measure by their
similarity to a set of public men who at the present time
are so misguided as to refuse at the call of a party
leader to say what they think false and to do what they
think wrong. It is the car of the Caucus Juggernaut
rolling backwards over political history.1

Though I never was in public life, I saw a good deal
of some of the Peelites, and from them heard about the
rest more than after the lapse of many years I can re-
member. The acquaintance of the Duke of Newcastle
I made through our common tutor at Eton, Edward
Coleridge, who died the other day,2 and of whom,
amidst the flood of biography, I wonder no memoir has
appeared. Coleridge was the Arnold of Eton. He was
a very Eton Arnold, it is true ; and as he was not head
master, but only an assistant, his sphere was rather his
own pupil-room than the school. But in that sphere,
and in his own way, he did for the very dry bones of
education at Eton what Arnold did at Rugby. "My
Tutor " was greatly beloved, as he deserved to be, by
all his pupils, and the connection always remained a

[1TMs sentence occurs in the article on "The Peelites" in Mao*
millan's Magazine for October, 1887. — It will be remembered that
Mr. Gladstone adopted a Home Rule policy in March of the pre-
vious year, bringing in his Home Rule Bill in the following month ;
and that the definite formation of the Liberal Unionist Party
occurred twelve months later, seven months before the appearance
of Mr. Goldwin Smith's article.]

[* May the 18th, 1883. — Edward Coleridge was Fellow of Exeter
College, Oxford, 1823-1826; Assistant Master at Eton, 1824-1850;
Lower Master, 1850-1857 ; Fellow, 1857 ; Vicar of Maple Durham,
Berks, from 1862 till his death.]

202 EEMINISCENCES

bond. It drew together even those who, like the Duke
and myself, had not been contemporaries at Eton.

I passed a summer with Cardwell in the Phoenix Park
when he was Secretary for Ireland, and there had the
advantage both of observing Irish government and of
hearing Lord O'Hagan, Sir Alexander McDonnell the
head of the Education Department, Dr. Russell the
Principal of Maynooth, and other wise and patriotic
Irishmen, on the Irish Question.1

Of Sidney Herbert I did not see so much. He was
the model of a high-bred English gentleman in public
life. To the elevation of his character, fully as much
as to his powers of mind, he owed his high position, his
designation as a Prime Minister that was to be, and the
tears shed over his early grave. He had the advantage
of rank and wealth ; not of rank and wealth only, but
of historic rank and of wealth associated with the
poetry of Wilton. Of aristocracy he was the very flower.
The special qualities of leadership he can hardly be said
to have shown, and though he administered the War
Office well, I should not suppose that his power of work
rivalled that which was possessed by some of his asso-
ciates. He had, however, beneath a quiet bearing,
and a slight appearance of aristocratic listlessness,
plenty of courage and not a little force of character.
Disraeli, who hated him as PeePs "gentleman,3' at-
tacked him bitterly and found that he had better have
let him alone. "If a man wishes to see humiliation,
P Notes on these names will "be found in Chapter XVIII.]

CONNECTION WITH PUBLIC MEN 203

let him look there/' said Sidney Herbert, pointing at
Disraeli, who had thrown over Protection, with his
finger, beneath which even Disraeli cowered. Sidney
Herbert was a High Churchman, and Wilton Church
shows that the aesthetic element of the school was
strong in him. Mr. Gladstone, as all the world knows,
was a High Church-man also; so in a less degree was
the Duke of Newcastle ; and the combination of political
Liberalism with Ritualism may be said to have had its
origin in the secession of the Peelites from the Tory
party.

Of Lord Canning I saw something in connection with
the Oxford University Reform Bill, with which he was
charged in the House of Lords, and for the debate on
which I was set to cram him. He seemed to me, I con-
fess, slow of apprehension and somewhat puzzle-headed.
It was believed that he was sent to India to get him out
of the Cabinet where he gave trouble by his opinionative-
ness; and everybody shuddered, when the Mutiny
broke out, at the thought that India was in his hands.
I was dining with Sir Charles Trevelyan,1 who had
been head of a College in India, and a Chairman of the
East Indian Company was one of the guests, when news
arrived of the capture of Delhi by the Sepoy mutineers.
Great was the consternation. It was increased by mis-
trust of Lord Canning, then Governor-General of India.
Canning had been advanced by Peel as a tribute to the

t1 Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan, Baronet, of Wallington. 1807-
1886J

204 REMINISCENCES

shade of his father, to whom, however, Peel had never
done the wrong of which Bentinck, prompted by his
friend, accused him. But he was slow of intellect, as I
found when I had to coach him for the debate on the
Oxford University Bill. In the Cabinet his opinion-
ativeness gave trouble, and it was understood that he
had been sent to India, then perfectly quiet, to get him
out of the way. These misgivings he nobly belied. He
met the tremendous peril well, and saved the character
of the country by keeping control over the bloodthirsty
frenzy of the dominant race, and thereby earning for
himself the epithet, meant as opprobrious, but really
glorious, of "Clemency Canning." What the frenzy in
India was and into what jeopardy it brought the honour
of the Imperial country may be learned from the letters
of the good Lord Elgin1 and from those of Russell2 to the
Times. One Commander proposed impalement. In
England also frenzy reigned, and horrible were the
yellings of literary eunuchs displaying their virility by
cries for blood. Philanthropy itself in the person of
Lord Shaftesbury 3 was carried away so far as to coun-
tenance stories of the mutilation of Englishmen by the
rebels, which, after bringing on a storm of vengeful fury,
proved unfounded. We had a terrible lesson on the
moral perils of the Empire.
Lord Dalhousie's government of India and his State

p James, the eighth Earl.]

P Alexander Eussell, journalist. 181-^-1876.]

P Anthony Ashley Cooper, eighth Earl.]

CONNECTION WITH PUBLIC MEN 205

Papers relating to it were another proof of Peel's suc-
cess in forming administrators. This may be said
without raising any question as to his Indian policy.
His name as a member of the British Parliament is
connected with what has always seemed to me the
weakest point in Peel's career, the abandonment, on
the eve of the railway-mania, of the policy of control
over the construction of railways which Lord Dalhousie
had earnestly recommended and afterwards applied,
as Governor-General, to the railway system of India.
PeeFs extreme unwillingness to interfere with the opera-
tions of trade and commercial enterprise was a fault
on the right side, but it was a fault.

Graham,1 as well as Cardwell, always seemed to me
a striking instance of the weakness of the system which
inseparably connects the duty of an administrator with
that of a legislator on organic questions. As an admin-
istrator he was first-rate. At the beginning of the
Crimean War he got the navy with wonderful rapidity
into first-rate order. He was also excellent as a speaker,
both in force and clearness. On the organic questions
with regard to the greatest of which he had played
leading parts as a member of the Grey Government,
he seemed to trim and to be playing a game of his own.
But Parker's Life 2 of him apparently shows that the
apparent trimming was really an honest avoidance of

p Sir James Graham, second Baronet, of NetherbyJ

p " Life and Letters of Sir James Graham second Baronet of

Netherby, P.C., G.C.B." 1792-1861. By Charles Stuart Parker.

2vols. London: Murray. 1907.]

206 REMINISCENCES

doubtful combinations at the expense of his personal
ambition. Graham's reputation and influence were so
high that it was said he could command fifty votes in
the House of Commons, and his foot was on the
steps of power when he died and in a moment was
forgotten.

Of Lord Aberdeen personally I saw nothing. But
from what his associates said in private, as well as from
his public conduct, I learned to feel the greatest respect
for him. It seemed to me that with him for Foreign
Minister England presented herself to other govern-
ments as an English gentleman presents himself to
his fellows, upright and honourable in all his dealings,
careful to maintain his own rights and dignity, and
equally careful to respect those of other people. No-
body ever suspected Lord Aberdeen of trickery, of
intrigue, or deception of any kind. His despatches
bear the marks of perfect straightforwardness and
truth. Though Conservative in diplomacy, he was not
illiberal; he declared for the repeal of the Corn Laws
before any of his colleagues, and he never refused his
assent to any measure of domestic reform. He it
was who, sitting at Wellington's side when the Duke
made his fatal declaration against any reform of Par-
liament, told him that he had undone the party. On
the other hand, he was anti-revolutionary, and never
conspired or caballed for propagandist objects against
the Governments with which he had to deal. He kept
for his country all her friends, and never made her an

CONNECTION WITH PUBLIC MEN 207

enemy. On the Neapolitan question we should have
liked him to be less discreet.

Of Lord Russell/ better known in history as Lord
John Russell, I saw most towards the end of his life,
when he was living at Richmond, and my wife and I
were spending a summer on the Terrace. I then
conversed a good deal with him. He had a vast his-
toric name as the mover of the Reform Bill of 1832
and the veteran leader of the Whig party in Parlia-
ment. But I never could think him very great. He
was the reverse of Peel; not being a first-rate admin-
istrator, he was prone to recruit his popularity by
appeals to the desire of organic change. It is difficult
not to believe that this propensity was working in him
when after his explicit declaration of finality he declared
for fresh extensions of the suffrage, and wept with
mortification upon being forced to drop his Bill. He
professed a belief in the elevating and purifying in-
fluence of responsibility on the political character and
conduct of the people, in which perhaps he may have
been sincere. He was not magnanimous. Nothing
could justify or excuse his coalition with the Protection-
ists to turn out Peel, nominally on the question of the
Irish Coercion Bill, really on that of Protection, when
he had himself acknowledged the necessity for the Bill
and had committed himself to free trade. Holding
office in the Coalition Ministry of Lord Aberdeen, he

p First Earl Russell ; third son of John Russell, sixth Duke of
Bedford. 1792-1878J

208 REMINISCENCES

was too sensible of the sacrifice which he had made,
and wanting in hearty loyalty to his chief. His deser-
tion of his colleagues when Roebuck l gave notice of a
motion of censure, proved, as was said at the time, that
he had not been at a Public School. Nor was much
greatness of mind or exalted patriotism shown by his
eagerness to embarrass and trip up Peel in the Corn
Law crisis of 1846. Still, he played a great part with
ability, and as a party leader in the House of Commons
had shown consummate skill. Of the speakers he had
heard he thought the three best were Plunket,2 Can-
ning, and Peel. Plunket, if I remember rightly, he
thought the most persuasive ; Canning the most charm-
ing; Peel the most formidable in debate. He was him-
self by no means a first-rate speaker, though in his
speeches there was almost always something above the
common mark.

I saw something of Lord Granville,3 a thoroughly
diplomatic personage, most graceful and engaging.
"Puss," he was nicknamed from his gentleness. But
when he was stirred, as he was when Derby and Disraeli
put a spy at his door to watch his communications with
the Peelites, it was found that "Puss had claws." The
Foreign Office seems to be regarded rather as a sphere
apart, the holder of which is not bound thoroughly

P John Arthur Roebuck, M.P. for Bath. 1801-1879.]
P William Conyngham Plunket, first Baron Plunket, Lord Chan-
cellor of Ireland. 1764-1854.]

P Granville George Leveson-Gower, second Earl of Granville.
1815-1891.]

CONNECTION WITH PUBLIC MEN 209

to share the general policy of the Government, but only
to preserve the outward unity of the Cabinet by his
vote. Lord Rosebery * evidently was not a Home
Ruler when he gave a regulation vote for Gladstone's
measure of Home Rule.2 I can hardly believe that
Lord Granville heartily concurred in Gladstone's
Irish policy, though he retained the Foreign Office
under Gladstone. Sitting beside him at dinner and
talking to him, about politics, I was struck by the con-
servatism of his tone. Grandees covet the office which
brings them into the grand circle of Europe.

Among my London associates was Godley, the
founder of Canterbury in New Zealand, a notable man
in his way. As a model colony and a High Church
Utopia, Canterbury failed, as all model colonies do;
as did afterwards the model colony in Tennessee, in
which Thomas Hughes s embarked. The colonist who
has come out only to better himself materially does
not share the enthusiasm for the ideal. But the
settlers brought out by Godley to Canterbury, being of
a respectable and religious class, were, like the Puritan
colonists, a good moral foundation.

Neither Godley nor Sir Frederic Rogers nor any of
the authorities on colonization with whom I used to
converse in those days had the slightest tincture of the

P Archibald Philip Primrose, fifth Earl of Rosebery.]

[2 September the 8th, 1893, when the House of Lords defeated, "by

419 to 41, Gladstone's second Home Rule Bill.]

[» County Court Judge, author of "Tom Brown's School Days."

1822-1896.]

210 REMINISCENCES

Imperialism which we are now called upon, on pain of
being damned as " Little Englanders," to embrace.
All looked forward to colonial independence, and re-
garded England as the destined mother of free nations.
I believe I am right also in thinking that some even of
the most Conservative regarded the ultimate union of
Canada with the rest of her continent as probable if
not certain. These men were not less regardful and
proud of the grandeur of their country, though more
modest in their aims for her, than are members of
Imperial Leagues. They thought that the greatness
and power of England were not in her dependencies, but
in herself. They also felt the value of insular security
and the weakness of an Empire open to attack in all
parts of the globe.

It is with pleasure that I find among my correspon-
dence a letter from Joseph Chamberlain 1 deprecating
my opposition to his scheme of planting in each of the
cities a Radical Caucus to control the representation
which would have been his tool. He was then in his
extreme Radical phase, threatening to make property
pay a ransom for its existence. I saw the man's whole
career. It was that of a political gambler laying his
stakes, now on Rouge, now on Noir. He was taken
into Gladstone's Government to please the Radical
wing of the party, and intrigued against his chief,
working up outside the Cabinet a party for himself,

P The Right Honourable Joseph Chamberlain, M.P. for Birming-
ham since 1885; Secretary of State for the Colonies, 1895-1903J

CONNECTION WITH PUBLIC MEN 211

and drawing from Gladstone, as Labouchere told us in
Truthj about the bitterest words that ever fell from
Mr. Gladstone's lips; at that time, Gladstone, being still
Unionist, Chamberlain for Home Rule and in its extreme
form, that of federation. If Wemyss Reid's state-
ment * regarding the ownership of the Pall Mall Ga-
zette is true, Chamberlain must have been attacking his
colleague in the Government, Forster, from behind,
when Forster was struggling with insurrection in Ire-
land. When Gladstone was talking Home Rule,
Chamberlain turned against it, and without apology
or explanation went over to the Conservative camp,
became a Jingo, presently took office under the high
Tory and Imperialist, Lord Salisbury,2 and drew the
country into the Boer War.3 His next move was a
repetition against BaJfour of the manoeuvre practised
against Gladstone. After getting rid by a trick of the
free-trade members of the Cabinet, Chamberlain went
out of it, leaving his son to work as his confederate in it,
got up a Protectionist movement of his own, captured
the party organization and press, meaning when this
was done to press a dissolution and drive Balfour on
the rocks. This he did. But the vessel was driven on
the rocks too hard. To Chamberlain was due the Boer

P See "Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Keid, 1842-1885." Edited,
with an Introduction, by Stuart J. Reid. London : Cassell. 1905.
Chapter XV.]

[2 He was Colonial Secretary in Lord Salisbury's Coalition Min-
istry of June, 1895.]

[3 October, 1899.1

212 REMINISCENCES

War, the consequences of which, after seeing them on
the spot, led him to cover them by an agitation for
Tariff Reform, as he and his followers call Protection.

Another public man with whom I was brought into
connection, though more by correspondence than per-
sonally, was Earl Grey,1 with whose moderate Liberal-
ism in politics I sympathized. Macaulay spoke very
harshly of him because his refusal to form a Govern-
ment of which Palmerston, the universal disturber,
was to be Foreign Minister formed the ostensible cause
of RusselPs failure to form a Government upon Peel's
resignation in 1846. Lord Grey's temper may not
have been very compliant; but he was a thoroughly
upright statesman and if he or any one minded as he
was could have held the helm, all would have gone on
pretty well. We corresponded a good deal, and he was
a very old man when I received from him a letter in
thirty quarto pages on the political situation.

P The third Earl Grey. 1802-1894.]

CONNECTION WITH PUBLIC MEN 213

NOTE BY THE EDITOR

I append here Disraeli's letter to Peel alluded to on page
177; also parts of the speeches of Peel and Disraeli made in
the House of Commons when this letter was referred to by
the first-named.

"GROSVENOR GATE, Sept. 5, 1841.
"DEAR SIR ROBERT, —

"I have shrunk from obtruding myself upon you at this moment,
and should have continued to do so if there were any one on whom I
could rely to express my feelings.

"I am not going to trouble you -with claims similar to those with
which you must be wearied. I will not say that I have fougjit since
1834 four contests for your party, that I have expended great sums,
have exerted my intelligence to the utmost for the propagation of
your policy, and have that position in life which can command a
costly seat.

"But there is one peculiarity in my case on which I cannot be
silent. I have had to struggle against a storm of political hate and
malice which few men ever experienced, from the moment, at the
instigation of a member of your Cabinet, I enrolled myself under your
banner, and I have only been sustained under these trials by the
conviction that the day would come when the foremost man of this
country would publicly testify that he had some respect for m^
ability and my character.

"I confess, to be unrecognized at this moment by you appears to/
me to be overwhelming, and I appeal to your own heart — to that
justice and that magnanimity which I feel are your characteristics —
to save me from an intolerable humiliation.

"Believe me, dear Sir Robert,

"Your faithful servant,

"B. DISRAELI."

(Parker's "Life of Peel," Vol. H, page 486.)
Peel's Speech: —

"Sir, I will only say of that hon. gentleman that if he, after
reviewing the whole of my public life — a life extending over thirty
years previously to my accession to office in 1841 — if he then enter-
tained the opinion of me which he now professes ; if he thought I

214 EEMINISCENCES

was guilty of these petty larcenies from Mr. Homer and others, it
is a little surprising that in the spring of 1841, after his long expe-
rience of my public career, he should have been prepared to give me
his confidence. It is still more surprising that he should have been
ready, as I think he was, to unite his fortunes with mine in office,
thus implying the strongest proof which any public man can give of
confidence in the honour and integrity of a Minister of the Crown,"
Hansard, 3 S. Imvi, 689.

Disraeli's Speech ;—

"I never shall— it is totally foreign to my nature— make an
application for any place, But in 1841, when the Government was
formed — I am sorry to touch upon such a matter, but insinuations
have been made by paragraphs in the newspapers, and now by
charges in this House — I have never adverted to the subject, but
when these charges axe made, I must. — In 1841, when the Govern-
ment was formed, an individual possessing, as I believe him to
possess, the most intimate and complete confidence of the right
hon. gentleman, called on me and communicated with me. There
was certainly some conversation — I have certainly never adverted
to these circumstances, and should not now unless compelled, be-
cause they were under a seal of secrecy confided in me — there was
some communication, not at all of that nature which the House
perhaps supposes, between the right hon. gentleman and me, but of
the most amicable kind. I can only say this — It was a transaction
not originated by me, but which any gentleman, I care not how high
his honour or spirit, might entertain to-morrow,"

Huisaid, 3 S. Imvi, 707-708.

CHAPTER

THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL

Objects of the School— Peace Policy— Anti-ImperiaBsm— Bright
and Cobden — Socialism — Property— The Irish Question.

THE members of the Manchester School, or most of
them, are in their graves. The youngest survivors
must be seventy. The other day I was reading the
obituary of my old friend Sir James Stansfield1 and
thinking that I must be about the last left of my circle,
when I received an engraving of the portrait of Sir
Thomas Bazley,2 a leader of the Manchester School.
In thanking him I said how much pleasure it gave me
to know that there were two of us still alive. I re-
ceived an answer from his son, saying that it was he
that had sent the portrait, that his own age was seventy,
and that his father, my friend, if he were alive, would
be one hundred and two.

The object of the School was economical. Imperial-
ism and Militarism it opposed on economical grounds
as enemies to trade and frugality. It had nothing to
do with Socialism, but on the contrary was always for
the liberty to which Socialism would put an end. For

p 1820-1898. Held various high political posts ; M JP. for Hali-
fax; Under-Secretary of State for India; etc.]

P 1797-1885. Cotton manufacturer and politician.]

215

216 REMINISCENCES

peace and reduction of armaments it pleaded as a whole
on economical, its leaders on philanthropic, grounds.

1 "School " and not 'Tarty " is the right term. The
circle never was formed into a party, never put forth
a general programme, had not even recognized leaders,
though it looked up to Bright and Cobden. Its only
organization was the Anti-Corn-Law League,2 in which
it had its origin, and which brought its chiefs to the
front. No doubt, on the part of the manufacturers
who formed the League, self-interest was strong.
Some of them, when they had gained their commercial
object, or, as Cobden said with his usual simplicity,
when "their gross, pocket question was settled," fell
away politically, and even became Tories. The senti-
ment of class, manufacturer against squire, also made
itself felt. Unhappily, without gross pocket questions
or sectional sentiment, you will not often find a suffi-
cient motive power; and it was by self-interest on the
part of a Parliament of landowners that the Corn Law
had been imposed.

• That Free Trade has not made the progress in the
world which at the moment of victory its English cham-
pions hoped and predicted, is true; yet the mockery
with which the prophets are assailed is unjust. What
has arrested the progress of Free Trade? Not change
of conviction, but the political power of sinister inter-

p What f ollows, down to page 237, appeared in the Contemporary
Review, March, 1895, Volume LXVTI, pages 377-388.]

P Founded in January, 1839. It was dissolved July 2, 1846J

TEE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 217

ests, international antipathies, cultivated for the pur-
poses of Protection, and, above all, the necessity of tax-
ation created by bloated armaments, for the existence
of which Manchester peace-mongers assuredly have
not to answer. The Protectionist tariff of the United
States itself was a war-tariff. While Protectionism
reigned in American legislation, almost all the pro-
fessors of political economy in the American Univer-
sities, and the writers on economy generally, were
on the side of Free Trade.

To the taunt that the world had not continued to
move in the direction of Cobden's policy, Free Trade
and peace, Cobden could reply, so much the worse for
the world. He could not help the revival of the war
spirit, nor in 1850 could he well have foreseen it. Pitt's
economical calculations were suddenly wrecked by the
French Revolution. It was to the United States that
Cobden looked with special hope, and there all was
changed by the War of Secession. That Cobden was
not free from the enthusiasm of his convictions, and
that he overrated the power of his economic talisman,
has already been admitted.

The League having done its work, and the bond
which it created having come to an end, there remained
the school of political thought which it had formed.
There was plenty of room in that school for differences
of opinion on particular questions, and for varieties of
degree in the application of the general principles which
were held in common. "To try to square the policy

218 REMINISCENCES

of the country with the maxims of common sense and
of a plain morality w was Bright's description of his
own aim, and it was the general aim of his school.

Peace-mongers, Quakers, and Little Englanders were
epithets freely bestowed on us by the Jingoes. If
anybody can persuade himself that a Europe armed to
the teeth and consuming a large part of its earnings in
preparation for war is a blessing, he may call us any
names he pleases. We did not preach defencelessness,
or tame submission to wrong. Cobden said that in
a just war, though he could not serve in the field, he
would serve in the hospital. Bright was a Quaker,
but he had tacitly dropped the extreme sentiments as
well as the garb and dialect of his community, and
never, I believe, in his later years, said anything against
national defence. He was a member of a Government
which had the army and navy in its charge, though
he never administered, and would no doubt have
refused to administer, a War Department. That he
would have been extreme in his peace policy I do not
doubt. But surely, for an industrial people dependent
on trade for its daily bread, if not for a warlike aris-
tocracy, his was the right extreme. The School stead-
fastly opposed Palmerston with his Civis Romanus sum
and his Russian and Chinese wars. On the question
of the war with China he beat us, and unseated our
chiefs in a general election by an appeal to what he
called the honour of the country. Let Palmerston's
admirers read the letters of his own envoy to China,

THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 219

Lord Elgin, in Walrond's excellent Life,1 and say by
whom the real honour of the country was best upheld.
For nothing was the Manchester School more denounced
than for its steady opposition to what was supposed
to be the patriotic policy of perennial enmity to Russia
and of propping up the Turkish Empire in Europe,
What now remains of the fruits of the Crimean War
but the Crimean graves, and to what has Turkish Em-
pire come ?

Another example is that of the Boer War, which the
Manchester School would assuredly have opposed, as
a great Manchester journal most gallantly did oppose,
and the only fruit of which was the loss of two hundred
and fifty millions of money and a far worse loss of
honour.

It was always possible, as I can bear witness, to
belong to the Manchester School, and at the same time
to regard the British army and navy with the heartiest
attachment and their achievements with the liveliest
pride; though it was not possible for any one belong-
ing to the Manchester School to join in the Jingo
choruses of the music-halls, or to forget the responsi-
bility that rests on every civilian who incites to war.
On this subject there were different shades of sentiment
among us. Some of us thought, and, as the event

P " Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin, Governor
of Jamaica, Governor-General of Canada, Envoy to China, Viceroy
of India." Edited by Theodore Walrond, C.B. With a Preface by
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster. London:
Murray. 1872.]

220 BEMINISCBNCES

proved, with reason, that Bright and Cobden were
too much inclined to rely on the good faith of the
French Emperor l and to deride the necessity of pre-
parations against his restlessness, his necessities, and
the schemes to which his necessities gave birth. The
extravagances of the panic-mongers had driven them
to the opposite extreme. They also, perhaps, gave the
Emperor credit for better motives than those which
really actuated him in making the commercial treaty.
They did wrong, as some of their followers thought and
think, in discouraging the volunteer movement. They,
however, did not quarrel with those among their friends
who like myself enlisted as volunteers. That the real
occasions for war are very few, and that instead of
courting and provoking it, every effort ought to be
made to avert it and to keep its spirit under control
were, it is to be believed, the only necessary articles
of the Manchester creed in relation to this subject.
For these we must answer at the tribunal of history
if we ever have the honour to come before it.

The question between intervention and non-inter-
vention, again, was one on which, though our general
principle was non-intervention, we recognized no hard-
and-fast line. To meddling with the domestic affairs
or institutions of other nations we were generally op-
posed. There would probably have been difference
of opinion as to intervention in favour of Italian inde-
pendence. Garibaldi, however, had passionate ad-

P Napoleon HIJ

THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 221

mirers and supporters in the personal circle of Bright
and Cobden. I do not think that any of us denied
that there was a community of nations, or that a right
and clear cause must be upheld and wrong put down.

Again, during the War of Secession in the United
States, at Manchester was the centre of opposition to
sympathy and alliance with the slave power. For
this, too, we were denounced as negrophilists, enemies
to British interests, and patriots of every country
but our own. Those reproaches have sunk in silence.
We saw the party of alliance with the slave power go
into an inner chamber to hide itself, and almost
cringe to the victorious Republic.

Just now * the particular cry against the School and
its memory is that we were anti-colonial and wanted to
get rid of the colonies, a base design in which we are
triumphantly told we have failed, after being tantalized
by a near approach to success. To get rid of the
colonies, as it would be highly criminal, is happily
impossible, the relation between the Mother-country
and a colony being one which can never be annulled.
A colony need not be a dependency, nor have the most
successful colonies been dependent. The tie between
Greek Mother-country and colony was strong though
purely parental. To promote colonial independence
was our aim, and a great step towards it was made by
the completion of colonial self-government and the with-
drawal of the troops. By the withdrawal of the troops

P This was written about January, 1895.]

222 REMINISCENCES

the British taxpayer obtained relief from the expendi-
ture on Maori and Kaffir wars which had cost many
millions, and would probably have continued so long
as the colonists had British troops at their command.
The colonists gained not less in humanity and in self-
reliance. By neither measure is it now contended that
the colonies have suffered, or that the mutual affection
of the Mother-country and the colonies has been
impaired, much as was said against both at the time.
Imperial Federationists are now trying to reverse the
Manchester policy. But they have not yet achieved
any practical success. We never wished to make
England little. We believed that her greatness was
in herself, and was only impaired by the dissipation
of her forces, and her exposure, through her dependen-
cies, to attack in every quarter of the globe. The
England of Cromwell was not little.

If, in regard to Imperial and foreign policy generally,
the Manchester School has been in favour of neutrality,
moderation, and justice, rather than of meddling,
bullying, and aggression, surely there is in this nothing
that need grate on a patriotic ear. Scrupulous regard
for the rights and for the honour of others, while you
manfully maintain your own, is the rule of an English
gentleman's conduct in private life, and it never entails
loss of dignity, seldom loss of anything else. Review
the diplomatic and Imperial history of England in
this light, and say which of the two policies has been
that of her best rulers, and by which of the two most

THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 223

has been gained or lost. Is it possible that quarrel-
someness and aggressiveness should be the true policy
of a country with a world-wide commerce, with depend-
encies open to attack in every part of the world, and
dependent on the importation of raw materials?

Then, the Manchester men were unsentimental.
They were "cotton-spinners " and "bagmen," with the
gross and sordid notions of their trade. It was not
likely that, owing its origin to a commercial question,
and having its seat in a manufacturing centre, the
School would be particularly poetic. On some occa-
sions, as in the struggle against slavery, the culture of
the country was almost all on the other side. No
doubt the school had the defects of its qualities and
the exaggerations of its principles. But if Bright and
Cobden directed their political efforts to the promotion
of material welfare, it was not because they were in-
capable of appreciating spiritual things, or set material
things above them, but because they thought that
the material welfare of the people was the special object
of government. Cobden said that he valued religious
equality more than commercial freedom. One can only
smile at the idea that there was less of sentiment in
Bright or Cobden than in a Tory squire or colonel.
In both of them there was rather more. Bright adored
Milton, and read poetry, as well as the Bible, better
than any other man I ever heard: nor could any man
talk with more interest on high subjects. Cobden
was a reader of Burke, Spenser, and Cervantes, as his

224 REMINISCENCES

speeches and pamphlets show. He read Demosthenes
in a translation. Bright's speeches are classic, and
Cobden was a first-rate writer in a plain style. His
heart was thoroughly open to beauty and to poetical
impressions of every kind. When he was asked by
a friend who was about to visit America whether
Niagara was worth a special journey, his answer was :
"There are two sublimities in Nature: one of rest, the
other of motion; the sublimity in rest are the distant
Alps, the sublimity of motion is Niagara." * Let it
be remembered, too, that a sentiment, though different
from that of war and aggrandizement, attaches to the
prosperous industry which brings with it kindly feel-
ings, self-respect, cheerful hearts, and happy homes.
As to character, our belief was that if the people were
prosperous they would be happy, and that if they were
happy they would as a rule be good.

We of the Manchester School were, or flattered our-
selves that we were, thorough going reformers in a prac-
tical way. Bright stood aloof from the two aristocratic
parties, and compared them to two trading establish-
ments which pretended to be rivals, and courted custom
by running each other down till each became bankrupt,
when it turned out that both were the same concern.
We looked forward to the elimination of the hereditary
principle from legislation. We also looked forward
to the severance of the connection between Church and
State, and all the more earnestly when the State clergy

P See also Chapter VI, page 89J

THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 225

preached war, or rang their church-bells on the acquittal
of Governor Eyre ; 1 though opposition to a State Church
was not opposition to religion, for both Bright and
Cobden were religious men, and Cobden remained a
member of the Church of England, saying that it had
been the Church of his mother. It seems that events
have not condemned us, and it would have been better
to have considered betimes the expediency of changes
for contemplating which we were called revolutionists.
Revolutionists we never were, nor can any revolution-
ary party claim the allegiance of any of the survivors
of us. To make the past slide quietly into the future
was Bright's conception of statesmanship, as expressed
by himself. Peel, as the Minister of practical reform,
had our strong sympathy. In a memorable letter,
Cobden tendered him not only sympathy, but support.
Cobden, as may be gathered from Mr. Morley's Life
of him, was rather indisposed to move in the line of
organic change, aad preferred to devote his energies
to economic improvement.

On looking back, I think it must be owned that we
were somewhat too trustful of the political intelligence
of the masses, and too ready to concur in the sweeping
extension of the suffrage. For this, perhaps, more
than for anything else, we may have to fear the verdict
of posterity. Not from us, however, but from Lord
John Russell and the Whigs came the first proposal
to disturb the settlement of 1832. In Cobden's writings

P See Chapter XX.]
Q

226 REMINISCENCES

will be found clear perception of the danger of popular
ignorance and folly, loyalty to government by intelli-
gence, and freedom from sympathy with anything
like mob rule. The Chartists were enemies to the
League. One of the School, at least, believes that he
can truly say that he never addressed an audience of
working-men on the subject without avowing his belief
that the franchise was a trust, for which qualifications
ought to be required. It must be remembered, too,
that we were for a reform of the House of Lords, a
measure then thought revolutionary, but which, if it
could now be carried in an effective shape, might redress
the balance of the Constitution. It must further be
remembered that Bright and Cobden were sincere, and
had no selfish or party end in view. They were not
like the Whigs and Tories, who were bidding against
each other for power by largesses of the suffrage. Their
object was not to "dish " Whigs or Tories, but to set
Parliament free from the landowning oligarchy, by
which it was still dominated, and to bring it into unison
with the interest of the whole nation.

The Corn Law struggle unhappily took the shape of a
war between two classes, the landowners and the mill-
owners, which was waged with great bitterness on both
sides, and certainly not with the least bitterness on
the side of the landowners. I am not aware that either
Bright or Cobden was a strenuous advocate of peasant-
ownership, though they would gladly have seen the
great estates of the present aristocracy broken up, and

THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 227

an end put to the divorce of the people from the land.
They could hardly fail to see that agricultural England
was almost irreversibly organized on the principle of
large farms. But they did, in the heat of conflict,
make somewhat unmeasured attacks on the squire
and the manorial system. There was no denying,
however, that the condition of the peasantry in those
days over large districts was very wretched and dis-
creditable to their masters. Too symbolical of it was
the pair of trousers belonging to a Dorsetshire peasant
exhibited in the Free Trade Hall at Manchester, which
stood upright with grease and patches. The landlord's
pretence that he was defending the labourer against
Free Trade could not possibly be treated with respect.
The weak point in the manorial system is that it de-
pends on the willingness of a rich Tna,n to do unforced
duty. In anything like a malignant and fanatical
attack on the landed gentry as a class, or an attempt
to use taxation as an instrument for their ruin, I do
not believe that Bright or Cobden would for a moment
have thought of taking part.

To the character of our leaders I think we may point
with reasonable pride. They had their failings, no
doubt, but in the main they were actuated through
their whole career, not by ambition or self-interest,
but by a sincere belief that what they were doing was
for the public good. There is something in this at
least as noble as the vociferous patriotism which leads
to the prizes of ambition. For Cobden a handsome

228 BEMINISCENCES

provision was made by generous friends, of whom
Mr. Thomasson1 of Bolton was the chief. He had
left his business to give himself to the cause. Why was
the tribute which he received from gratitude, and had
amply earned, less honourable than the fortune which
a member of the landed aristocracy inherits by birth?
The same Tory Press which denounced Cobden as a
mendicant charged Bright as a manufacturer with
hard and rapacious treatment of his workmen; Bright
said nothing, but the workmen came forward, and gave
the accusers an answer which silenced them forever.

I do not think that either Bright or Cobden looked
very favourably on the trade unions. They were
master manufacturers, and the unions, at Sheffield
especially, showed their bad as well as their good side.
My own convictions as well as my sympathies led me
to fight for the unions, which seemed to me absolutely
necessary if justice was to be done the artisan against
the united phalanx of employers. I received some
hard knocks in the fray. I stood with the heartiest
satisfaction on the platform of Joseph Arch, who
behaved unexceptionably, never giving a political
turn or that of a social war to his movement. For
the movement he had heart-rending cause in the wages
of farm labour and the state of the rural poor.

With the Socialists the Manchester School never had
anything in common, except the most general desire

P Thomas Thomasson, manufacturer and political economist.
1808-1876.]

THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 229

to remove economical injustice and to promote the
good of the whole people. Its motto, often repeated
by Bright and Cobden, was

"All constraint,

Except what Wisdom lays on evil men,
Is evil."

It thought that "man having, after centuries of struggle,
shaken himself free from the paternal control of auto-
crats or aristocracy, and got a chance of self-develop-
ment, ought to be allowed to make what he could of
that chance, and not thrust again under a despotic
yoke, even though the despot, instead of being a king,
might be a committee representing the trade unions.
It regarded the general function of Government as
that of protecting, not regulating, the conduct of life.
"I would rather,77 said Cobden, "live in a country
where this feeling in favour of individual freedom is
jealously cherished than be without it in the enjoyment
of all the principles of the French Constituent As-
sembly." The principle was no doubt carried to excess
in the attitude of some of the Manchester men towards
factory legislation. Nor was their combat, in this case
any more than in that of the Corn Laws, untainted
by self-interest. On the other hand, the landowners,
in pressing the Factory Acts, were certainly actuated
in some measure by a desire to retaliate on the land-
owners for the repeal of the Corn Laws. Brougham,
who had no interest in manufactures, was, on principle,
an opponent of the Factory Acts. We were, and the

THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 231

has arrived. The paternal meddling of Peter the
Great may not have been so bad for the Russia of his
time, nor may that of the Jesuit have been so bad for
Paraguay. What services Government should under-
take, whether it should own the railways as well as
the highroads, and the telegraph as well as the post;
whether it should build in private yards or in yards
of its own, is not a question of principle; nor am I
aware that the Manchester School ever enunciated
any dogma on the subject. It is in the hands of offi-
cials, let us remember, not in those of the community
at large, with its collective wisdom, that, under the
Socialist dispensation, we should be. A system of
State education, which Cobden, by the way, favoured,
is in the charge of the Minister of Education and his
bureaucratic subordinates. However, let Government
do that which the citizen cannot do for himself with
the aid of voluntary association, and let it protect all
who cannot protect themselves. To say this, one need
not be a Socialist. No Tna,n of sense will object to good
sanitary regulations or to the adoption of the necessary
means of enforcing them, any more than he will rejoice
in the extension of official interference for its own sake,
or in the growth of an army of inspectors. Nor does
even a limitation of the hours of adult labour, as a
measure of public health, whether it be wise or unwise,
violate the general principle of freedom of contract,
or answer to the aspirations of the Socialist who wishes
to put the State in the place of the capitalist, and make

232 REMINISCENCES

it the employer of labour. But when we are told that
an entity called the State has rights transcending
those of the individual citizen, and that it is the State's
duty to regulate our industries and lives, the answer
is that the State, if it means anything but the Govern-
ment, is a mere abstraction, which can have no rights
or duties of any kind.

In property, again, the Manchester School, like
everybody but Proudhon in those days, believed. We
believed in it as the only known motive power of pro-
duction, and at the same time the foundation of domes-
tic life. We wished to do away with such a privilege
as the power of entail ; but we thought that all a man's
honest earnings, whether great or small, were his own,
and that this, being the only incentive to earning and
saving, was for the good of the community as well as
for that of the individual man, unless a race of men
could be found willing to work, not for themselves and
their families, but for the community at large. We
should have gone heartily with any one who sought
to regulate taxation so that as little of the burden as
possible should fall upon the poor; though we should
not have gone with any one who wished to use the tax-
ing power for the purpose of demagogic confiscation.
We were never, I believe, for the spoliation of the few
by the many, any more than for that of the many by
the few. By Cobden, in his controversy with Delane^1
anything like agrarian rapine was indignantly dis-

P John Tliadeus Delane, editor of The Times. This was in 1863.]

THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 233

claimed. Peace and economy, we hoped, would afford
fiscal relief to all, and especially to the working-classes;
while the increase of wages, arising from Free Trade
and its consequences, was at any rate a larger measure
of upward levelling than any which Socialism with its
ateliers nationaux has yet achieved.

The hopes of the Manchester School were limited to
gradual improvement. The last millennium in his-
tory, which was that of French fraternity, had covered
the century with its wreck. It may be that a new era
is now opening, and that the social organism is at last
to be, not improved only, but transformed. Socialists,
however, have not yet told us what their scheme of a
reconstituted society is, or how they propose to put it
in execution. They must bear in mind that for the
construction of the new edifice they have only those
human materials which they have already condemned
as full of prejudice, selfishness, and the evil traditions
of property and competition. At present, we have
nothing before us but most general principles or senti-
ments, sometimes embodied in Utopian visions of fic-
titious characters who wake from a magic sleep or
pass through some fissure of the earth into a social and
material paradise free from cupidity, from competition,
from pecuniary transactions, and almost from disease
and death. Meanwhile, the wage-earning classes
i through Europe, the mechanics especially, are imbibing
7 and proceeding to act upon a very practical Socialism
of their own. They are learning that instead of im-

234 REMINISCENCES

proving their lot by frugality, temperance, and faithful
industry, it will be easier and more pleasant to use
their political power in transferring the property of
the other classes to themselves. In almost all countries
governed by popular vote a reign of legislative confis-
cation seems to be setting in, and demagogues are
beginning to vie with each other in the purchase of
votes by largesses of public money — that is, the
money of all except the politically favoured class.
Labour is in danger of being demoralized, and unless
the owners of property are willing to be plundered
without limit, they will presently turn to bay, and
there will be social war, in which the victory of the
demagogues and masses is not assured. If the trans-
formation of society is to take place through the rival
action of political parties bidding against each other
for power, the crash is not far off.

I cannot help, in conclusion, protesting that nothing
can be more unjust than to charge Bright and his
associates with apostasy because they refused to turn
round with Mr. Gladstone on the Irish Question. They
had all along been hearty friends to justice for Ireland,
heartier friends, if practical effort is to be the measure,
than the Irish Members of Parliament themselves.
They had strenuously pleaded for the disestablishment
of the State Church in Ireland, for the reform of the
Irish land system, for the payment of the tenants for
improvements, for the abolition of primogeniture,
for every righteous measure that could help the people

THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 235

to the possession of land, though not for the subversion
of the faith of contracts, or for the spoliation of pro-
prietors. They had done this long before the conver-
sion of Mr. Gladstone to the policy which he himself
denounced as that of "dismemberment and rapine."
They had always been favourable in a general way to
the extension of local self-government. But not one
of them, I believe, had ever committed himself to Home
Rule or disunion in any form. Cobden shrank from
alliance, almost from contact, with O'Connell, and in
answer to the advocates of Repeal, said that the real
source of evil was in the character of the Irish Members
of Parliament, which he thought would not be improved
by transferring them from Westminster to Dublin.

I was myself supposed at the time to have truly
reflected the sentiments of my friends in a work on
"Irish History and Irish Character." l Much of the
historical part of that book has required and undergone
modification in the light of subsequent research. But
in its practical conclusions it is Unionist and as much
opposed to Mr. Gladstone's measure of Home Rule as
anything I could write now. A man must surely be
steeped in party spirit if he can persuade himself that
we were all bound at Mr. Gladstone's bidding to change
in a day the opinions of our lives, not only about Irish
policy, but about Irish history, and to join him in de-
nouncing as a monstrous crime what he himself lauded

P" Irish History and Irish Character." By Goldwin Smith.
Oxford and London : J. H. and Jas. Parker. 1862.]

236 REMINISCENCES

as the great work of Pitt. Was it supposed that we
could shut our eyes to the circumstances under which
Mr. Gladstone's sudden conversion to Home Rule
took place ? Were we bound to go with him in reviving
the hideous memories and rekindling the hateful pas-
sions of a war of Irish races, in setting the masses against
the classes, and ignorance against intelligence, in reviv-
ing dead jealousies and antipathies among the different
sections of the United Kingdom — all for the purpose
of forcing on the nation a policy in which we had never
believed, and which the nation, if the issue could be
clearly tendered to it, free from irrelevant subjects of
agitation, would manifestly condemn? We had never
bound ourselves to Mr. Gladstone's leadership. We
rejoiced, of course, when he gradually came over to us
and carried Liberal measures, such as University Re-
form and Irish Disestablishment, which he had once
opposed. We rejoiced when the most distinguished
member of the Government which made the Crimean
War, not only abandoned, but denounced, Protectorate
of Turkey. On the British question of Free Trade
Mr. Gladstone was always with us, and we knew how
to value his support. Still, there were points of dif-
ference. Mr. Gladstone seemed to be unchangeably
committed to the principle of English Church Establish-
ment. He seemed also strongly attached to hereditary
institutions, and we hardly knew of which party he
would have become the leader if Disraeli had been out
of the way. Bright left Mr. Gladstone's Government

THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL 237

on the Egyptian Question, and, as I have said, I know
that he felt strongly about it, though he was too chiv-
alrous to attack in public the Government of which
he had been a member. Our chiefs had preserved
perfect independence, and when we went with the sur-
vivor of them on the Irish Question, we were being true
to personal connection as well as to public principles.

Society, as was said before, may be at the opening
of a new era and on the eve of a complete reconstruction.
Even in that case it may be hoped that the champions
of Free Trade, retrenchment, religious equality, peace,
and "a government squared to the maxims of common
sense and a plain morality/' will be held to have done
not badly in their brief day. How it will fare with our
belief in liberty and property remains to be seen. If
coercion and confiscation gain the day and make the
world happy, our principles will lie forever in the grave
of extinct superstitions. Otherwise, Eesurgemus.

CHAPTER XIV

BRIGHT AND COBDEN

Blight's Oratory— Cobden— His politics— Fed— Disraeli— Peel
as a Party Leader.

LIBERA.USM — colonial, economical, an general — had
early connected me with Bright and Cobden; but the
tie was rendered much closer by sympathy and joint
action at the time of the war in America between North
and South.

Few would hesitate to give John Bright the foremost
place among the British orators of his day. The ques-
tion whether his speeches were prepared has been de-
bated. But there can be no doubt upon the point. I
have stood by him when he was speaking and seen the
little sheaf of notepapers on each of which probably his
sentence or his catchword was written and which
dropped into his hat as he went on. Nobody can speak
literature ex tempore} and Bright's great speeches are
literature, first-rate of its kind. He was, however, by
no means without the power of speaking ex tempore.
I have known him when called on unexpectedly respond
very well. If he was interrupted by an opponent in his
speech, he was ready with his retort. He told me that
when he was to speak at the unveiling of Cobden's

BRIGHT AND COBDEN 239

Statue at Bradford he had been greatly at a loss as to
what he should say ; but the happy thought had come to
him one morning while he was dressing. He had begun
as a temperance lecturer with a single address. He had
no doubt formed his style on the Bible, which I never
heard read so well as when I heard him read it to his
household. His delivery was calm and impressive,
without gesticulation or appearance of oratorical pas-
sion. His enunciation was perfectly distinct, and he
thus without straining his voice made himself heard in
the largest hall. He confessed to me that after all his
practice and success he never got over his nervousness.
At Bradford, where his audience was more than friendly,
he told me that his knees shook under him when he rose
to speak.

An orator, however perfect in his art, can hardly be
impressive without weight and dignity of character.
These John Bright had in a high degree. Nobody could
doubt his sincerity or the depth of his convictions.
Though he was combative and they caricatured him as
the fighting Quaker, he never lost his balance. He
gave remarkable proofs of greatness of mind. He long
bore in silence slanderous reports about his treatment
of his work-people, and when the denial came it was not
from him, but from the work-people themselves. When
he was opposing the Crimean War and I told him in
jest that his life was threatened by the Jingoes, his
reply was that a man might come to a worse end. Nor
did he ever betray selfish ambition or pique. When he

240 KEMINISCENCES

left Gladstone's Ministry on account of its invasion of
Egypt,1 though in private he spoke very warmly on the
subject, he was too chivalrous to say in public anything
which could embarrass his late colleagues.

Oratory was his sphere. For business he had not
much aptitude. I understood that as Chancellor of
the Duchy of Lancaster he was very little at his office.
In truth, I should think that he was by nature rather
indolent and required strong stimulus, such as the Corn
Law agitation, to make hi™ put forth his powers. In
his face there is a certain likeness to Pym. But in
Pym's face you see the man of action ; in that of Bright
you did not.

Bright probably did not read much beyond the mate-
rials of his speeches. He was, however, fond of sono-
rous poetry, and once read aloud to me with great gusto
a sonorous passage from the "Epic of Hades." 2 Of
Milton he was very fond, both on poetical and political
grounds. He asked me whom I thought the greatest of
Englishmen, and answered his own question by naming
Milton, because Milton was so great at once as a man of
letters and as a citizen. On his seventieth birthday,
when his friends were sending him presents, I got a copy
of the Baskerville "Milton" printed at Birmingham,
for which Bright was then Member, and wrote his own
words on the fly-leaf.

He had doffed the Quaker dress and given up the
Quaker dialect; but if you had said anything disparag-
P In 1882 J p By Lewis Morris.]

BRIGHT AND COBDBN 241

ing of Quakerism before Mm, you would soon have
found that he had not renounced his faith. One of the
last conversations which I had with him was about the
religious difficulties of our time. He seemed to think
that Quakerism or something like it was the true
solution; and that we had only to get rid of forms
which interfered with the freedom of our spiritual
life.

Bright never was revolutionary or desirous of over-
turning any Government which he believed would do
justice to the people. It was the class character of the
aristocratic and landlord Government that provoked
his enmity. In the last years of his life when the com-
mercial battle between the New England of the North
and the Old England of the South was over, he softened
very much towards old institutions, as old institutions
did toward him. As he sat on my lawn at Oxford one
summer afternoon when the music of bells was floating
from the ancient city, I overheard hrm say, "It would be
very pleasant to be eighteen and to be coining here."

At a critical moment of the Home Rule agitation
there was a dinner party of three at the house of Lord
Selborne at which the Irish question was discussed. If
Bright's opinion had not been fixed before, I think it was
fixed then. What may safely be said is that he had the
good of Ireland as much as that of England in view.
His wisdom told him where it lay. He was utterly
incapable of sacrificing justice or the real interest of any
people to British or Imperial dominion.

242 REMINISCENCES

1 Cobden too, I had the happiness of knowing well,
and I can bear witness to the truth of Mr. Morley's
portrait of him. A man more transparently honest,
more single-minded, more truthful, more entirely
devoid of selfish ambition and of selfishness of every
kind, more absolutely devoted to the service of his
country and of humanity, never, I should think, ap-
peared in public life. The persuasiveness of his elo-
quence was simply the result of his character. In
rhetoric he was not great. His kindness of heart, his
charity, his candour, had remained unimpaired by all
his battles. Wrong and oppression he hated with all
his soul : but he had no enmities, any more than he had
rivalries. His nature was entirely sweet and sound.

He was no bagman, though his enemies called him so,
and he freely called himself so in jest. He had not re-
ceived a good education at school, but he had educated
— and not only educated, but cultivated — his intellect
in gratifying his boundless love of knowledge. He had
explored and studied Europe, economical, social, and
political, with a curious eye and a comprehensive mind.
He was acute and exact in observing the connection of
the different influences which form national character
with each other, and was a true social philosopher,
though without a formal system. His insight into
political character and tendency was very keen. In
1849 he foresaw the Tory Suffrage Bill of 1867.

t1 What follows, down to page 271, appeared in The Nineteenth
Century for June, 1888.]

BRIGHT AND COBDEN 243

"May I predict that, if we should succeed to the extent
above named, there would not be wanting shrewd mem-
bers of the Tory aristocracy who would be found
advocating universal suffrage to take their chance in an
appeal to the ignorance and vice of the country against
the opinions of the teetotallers, Nonconformists, and
rational Radicals, who would constitute nine-tenths
of our phalanx of forty-shilling freeholders." Nor
was he without literary or even without classical inter-
ests, notwithstanding his rather economical sayings
about the scanty waters of the Hissus, and the terri-
torial insignificance of the scenes of Greek history. He
would talk, and talk well, about Greek oratory and the
Greek drama, which he had explored as well as he could
through translations. He was apparently a little dis-
appointed by the absence of passionate rhetoric in
Demosthenes. Cobden's style is excellent for its pur-
pose, which is that of the pamphleteer. Cobden's
favourite poet was Cowper, who touched him morally.
For poetry of the deeper and more philosophic kind, he
probably did not much care. But he had an eye and a
heart for nature. On the whole it may pretty safely
be said, that among all those who affected scorn of
Cobden's vulgarity and narrowness, there would prob-
ably not have been found so rich or so comprehensive
a mind.
In a striking passage quoted by Mr. Morley,1 Cobden

P"Iife of Richard Cobden," London: Chapman and Hall.
1881. Volume I, pages 200-202.]

244 REMINISCENCES

says emphatically, that the basis of his own character
was religious, that his sympathies were with religious
men, and that it was his "reverence " that sustained
him through the labours and struggles of his public life.
I have no doubt that he spoke the truth. He was not
in the least sectarian; he was a devout believer in
phrenology, the crude precursor of scientific rational-
ism; but he certainly was religious, and always felt
that in bravely doing his duty, in upholding righteous-
ness, in labouring for the good of his kind, he was in the
hand of God.

This roan was not an un-English man, but, on the
contrary, the truest and heartiest of patriots. Na-
tional swagger he hated as well as national injustice;
but the pages of his life show that he was as proud
as any swaggerer of the high qualities and the great
achievements of his countrymen, while he had a large-
minded and generous appreciation of the special excel-
lences and advantages of other nations. England, as
represented by him, was a gentleman, and not a bully.
He desired for his country the leadership of interna-
tional morality, and he believed that her real interest
was bound up with the interest of humanity ; but he did
not disregard her interest; on the contrary, he always
looked to it first, and never without distinct reference
to it proposed any plan of cosmopolitan improvement.
If he advocated and encouraged a friend to advocate
colonial emancipation, it wa/s not because either of them
wished to deprive their country of anything that could

BRIGHT AND COBDEN 245

bring her wealth or strength, but because both of them
were convinced that these distant dependencies brought
neither wealth nor strength, but, on the contrary, loss
of money and weakness; that, in a military point of
view, they entailed a forfeiture of the advantages of an
insular position; and that the only bond which could
permanently and usefully -unite England to free colonies
was the bond of the heart. He certainly looked forward
to the ultimate junction of Canada with the United
States, and the union of the whole English-speaking race
on the American continent; but he expected this to
take place with the consent of the Mother-country, and
believed that it would be greatly to her advantage.

Cobden had no sympathy with Repeal. His policy
for Ireland was the abolition of the feudal land law,
which fosters great estates and, in the case of Ireland,
absenteeism. The feudal law ought indeed to have
been abolished, by the abrogation of primogeniture and
entail, before entering on a course of more violent and
equivocal legislation.

Mr. Kinglake says that Cobden and his great asso-
ciate had no chance of getting a hearing when they
strove to keep the peace with Russia, because, as they
had declared against war in general, it was impossible
that they should command attention when they spoke
against any particular war.1 Mr. Morley replies 2 with

[l See "The Invasion of the Crimea: its Origin, and an Account
of its Progress down to the Death of Lord Raglan." By .Alexander
William Kinglake. Volume I, pages 270 et seq. New York:
Harper. 1880. Volume II, pages 69-71 of the English edition.]

[2 "Life of Richard Cobden." Volume 11* pages 157 et seq.]

246 EEMINISCENCES

truth that Cobden had not declared against war in gen-
eral. But he had attended Peace Conferences, the ob-
ject of which was to denounce all war. A demonstra-
tion for or against a definite measure or course of policy,
such as the repeal of the Corn Laws or the support of
the Ottoman dominion, is often useful ; but a demon-
stration in favour of a general principle always seems
to commit, and usually does in fact commit, those who
take part in it to an indiscriminate application. Cob-
den's authority on questions of peace and war was
weakened in this way.

Hardly any mind can escape the bias of its history;
Cobden's had no doubt contracted a bias, and a serious
one, from the Free Trade struggle. Absolutely free
from any sordid sentiment, from any disposition to be-
lieve that man lives by bread alone, from any conscious
preference of material over moral and political con-
sideration, he yet was inclined to overrate the be-
neficent power of commercial influences, and conse-
quently the value of commercial objects. This was
seen at the beginning of the war between the free and
slave States in America, when, though his heart was as
thoroughly on the side of political and industrial free-
dom as that of any human b'eing could be, he was for a
time prevented from raising his voice for the right, if
not held in a wavering state of mind, by his strong feel-
ing in favour of the Southerners as Free Traders;
though he could hardly have helped knowing that with
them, Free Trade was not an enlightened principle, but

BRIGHT AND COBDEN 247

the necessity of a community incapable of manufactur-
ing for itself. The same thing was seen again in the
case of the French Treaty. Mr. Morley is mistaken in
thinking that anybody objected to negotiating with the
French Government on account of its character and
origin; we were all ready to do business with Nero;
though certainly, if there was a hand which Liberals
might be excused for not wishing to take even in the
course of business, it was that of Louis Napoleon. The
objection which some of us felt was to abetting the Em-
peror in an arbitrary use of his treaty-making power
for the purpose of overriding, on a question of domestic
policy, the well-known sentiments of his Legislature and
his people. We thus, for a commercial object, became
accomplices in Absolutist encroachment. There could
be no mistake about the matter. The Emperor as-
sured Cobden that the Legislative Body was irrecon-
cilably hostile to every manner of Free Trade, and
Cobden himself says that it would be impossible to
assemble five hundred persons in France by any process
of" selection, and not find nine-tenths of them, at least,
in favour of the restrictive system. An apprehension,
which events too well justified, was felt that Free Trade
itself would be tainted in the mind of the French people
by association with the violence done by a high-handed
stretch of power to national opinion.

That the good effects even of commercial prosperity
were neither unlimited nor unmixed, Cobden himself
had reason to observe. Writing about the rejection of

BRIGHT AND COBDBN 249

men from all parts of that thriving district, the
French Emperor was everywhere hailed as the best
man in Europe. He who had not only destroyed the
liberties which he was set to guard, but had literally
revelled in perjury and rioted in innocent blood, who
was not only the greatest enemy of freedom, but the
greatest felon in Europe, and who a few years before
had been denounced by the universal voice of British
morality, had in a moment, to the bribed understand-
ings and consciences of all these respectable and reli-
gious traders, become the best man in Europe because
he had promised to add something to their gains !

It is due, however, to Cobden always to mark that
he was a Free Trader indeed; his heart was with those
who proposed absolutely to abolish all import duties,
and supply their place, so far as was necessary, by direct
taxation. His desire and his hope were to make
one commercial community of the whole human race.
Thoroughly embracing the principle, he was entitled to
reckon on the full effects of its application. In this he
differed essentially from those who, calling themselves
Free Traders, are in fact nothing of the kind, but merely
advocates of a particular tariff, very wisely framed no
doubt with reference to British industries and interests,
but not necessarily suited to those of all the countries
in the world.

Peel I did not know; but I lived very much with
those who knew hi™ well. I have also had access to
information of a documentary kind which helps to

250 REMINISCENCES

explain some of the doubtful passages of his long and
vexed career. When he fell from power,1 1 was still at
college, and; in common with most of the young Liber-
als of the day, I looked up with ardent sympathy to the
great statesman who, trying to rise above party and
govern in the interest of the nation, was struck down
by the blind resentment of a selfish faction and by
the dagger of the political bravo.

Peel and Cobden, after their long strife and final
reconcilement, were in a way united in their burials.
Peel lies, not in Westminster Abbey, but in his home ;
Cobden lies in a country churchyard. Peel, by his will,
specially forbade his son to accept a peerage on account
of his father's services. Cobden was essentially a
republican. There was a touch of something anti-
aristocratic, if not . . . 2

Peel has been called the greatest Member of Parlia-
ment who ever lived. A sneer perhaps lurks in the
compliment; but, apart from the sneer, the compli-
ment belongs rather to Pym or to one of the Pitts. It
may more truly be said of Peel that he was about the
best public servant whom England ever had. No other
Minister ever was so thoroughly conversant with all
the interests and master of all the business of the
State. This it was that lent such weight to his
speeches, and gave him his immense power over the
House of Commons. That, so far as the evil system of
party — for the establishment of which he was not

P June the 27th, 1846J p Hiatus in MS.]

BRIGHT AND COBDEN 251

responsible — would let him, Peel was a true patriot,
and served his country to the utmost of his power and
with all his heart, never sparing himself, but giving the
most conscientious attention to all the details of the
public business, must be the conviction of every one
who really knows his history. His great qualities were
rather those of an administrator than those of a legis-
lator, and were liable to be rated lower than they de-
served under the party system, which counts only leg-
islative triumphs. In legislation he was not an origina-
tor, at least upon the greatest questions; but, as one
who gave practical effect to the conclusions of the time,
his record on the Statute Book is immense. When once
he put his hand to the work, he was bold, and never
stopped at half-measures. His bills were framed with
the greatest care, so as to pass with the least possible
amendment. For his memorable Budgets, his financial
experiments, the creation of the fiscal system under
which England has prospered, he had the assistance of
first-rate coadjutors, official and non-official; yet the
measures may fairly be said to have been his own.
Irrespective of the party ties by which in his very
boyhood he had been tightly and almost inextricably
bound, he was by nature a Conservative — ready for
any practical reform, but averse from organic change.
Such is apt to be the temperament of great adminis-
trators, who are satisfied with their tools as they are;
and it is a better temperament, at all events, than that
of politicians who seek power through great convul-

252 EEMINISCENCES

sions and use it for small jobs. The weak points of
Peel's career are his conversions on Catholic Emanci-
pation and the Corn Laws; of which nobody denies
either the sincerity or the necessity, but which involved
an appearance of infidelity to party; while the desper-
ate awkwardness of the position in which, during the
process of conversion, a leader is placed, between the
impossibility of keeping silence as a private man whose
mind was wavering would do, and the danger of pre-
maturely avowing conclusions which may shake the
State, has furnished malice with materials for imputa-
tions of deceitfulness of which unsparing use has been
made. To these imputations Peel was too nervously
susceptible ; but we have tried effrontery, and can tell
which has the best effect on public character. That
the intellect of the man who was chiefly responsible for
the welfare of the people should not upon such a ques-
tion as the Corn Laws have been allowed to act freely
for the public good, and that the country should have
been compelled to deprive itself of the services of its
great administrator because there had been a change in
national opinion upon an economical question, have
always seemed to me heavy counts in the indictment
against the party system, and that constitutional rule
which requires that, whenever a new light breaks upon
the mind of the legislative body, the executive Govern-
ment shall be overturned.

Factious things must, in the course of nature, be
done by every leader of opposition; but no leader of

BRIGHT AND COBDEN 253

opposition ever did fewer of them than Peel. He never
weakened or degraded Government. He played no
jockey tricks. He never descended to the tactics
familiar to those who supplanted him, of coalescing with
the extreme section of the other party for the purpose
of upsetting the Ministry. He would have spurned
such a suggestion as the utter betrayal of all the ob-
sects for which his party existed, as the depth at once
of folly and dishonour. Never did he give his followers
the signal to turn round and vote against the second
reading of a bill when they had voted in favour of the
first reading because it appeared that advantage might
be taken of a division in the ranks of the Government.
Never did he on a great measure belie his recorded con-
victions and trifle with the political life of the nation
for the purpose of "dishing" his rivals. He avoided
rather than sought faction fights ; held back his follow-
ers as much as he could from premature attacks; never
attempted to filch office, but waited till his time was
fully come, and, instead of climbing over the wall, he
could enter by the great gate. In time of public peril
he knew that party feeling and personal ambition must
be restrained.

A man of genius Peel cannot be called. He was not
imaginative or creative; even in appreciation his mind,
open as it was, moved slowly. It moved slowly in all
things; and, like Burghley,1 he used his pen a good deal
in the process of deliberation. Nor did he always see
P Queen Elizabeth's great Chief Minister, 1520-1598.]

254 REMINISCENCES

the limits of a principle ; if he had, perhaps he would
have perceived more clearly and maintained more firmly
that the principle of free competition, however sound as
applied to commerce in general, was hardly sound when
applied to national works like railways. Still, in the
construction of the Conservative party, and in placing
it exactly on the right basis after the great change of
1832, his practical sagacity did the work of genius.
His moderation in resistance lent no pretext for violence
to the progressists, and perhaps perverted l revolution.
He was greatly helped in this by his commercial origin
and his affinity to the middle class. The same influ-
ences were always drawing him towards alliance with
such a man as Cobden, wide as the gulf between them
might appear.

In one respect he stands almost by himself. It
would be difficult at least to name any leader who had
left the country such a bequest of statesmen. In
drawing young men to him he had to get over the diffi-
culties of his extreme shyness, and of a manner at first
icy, though Lord Aberdeen said of him that when he
did open himself he was the most confiding of mankind.
He had also to get over a certain formality of judgment
and want of sympathy with anything eccentric or
sentimental, natural to him, no doubt, but confirmed
by the habits of a life spent in business of State, with
little time for reading, intellectual intercourse, or specu-
lation of any kind. From the personal jealousy which

P Query. — Prevented ? or averted ? ]

BRIGHT AND COBDEN 255

sometimes narrows the choice of associates he was free,
as he showed by the eagerness with which he welcomed
to his side Stanley,1 in whose unquiet ambition and aris-
tocratic arrogance his sagacity could hardly fail to see
the probable source of trouble to himself. The shade
of Peel may proudly ask what those who charged him
with want of sympathy with genius have left to eclipse
his staff. In one instance he has been accused — and
•will, no doubt, be accused again — of a fatal oversight.
But the accusers must remember that the Disraeli of
1841 was not the Lord Beaconsfield of a later time.
The Disraeli of 1841 had announced himself under the
name of Vivian Grey as an unscrupulous adventurer,
bent on gratifying his ambition, not by the qualities
which Peel valued in a public servant, but by skill in
intrigue ; he had verified that announcement by seeking
election to Parliament, first as a Radical, and immedi-
ately afterwards as a Tory; and he had been denounced
for so doing by public men whose confidence and whose
names he had, as they thought, abused. He had sig-
nified the intention which, in the case of Lord Derby,
he, with incomparable skill and knowledge of character,
carried into effect, of using his political leader as a
Marquis of Carabas.2 He had presented himself to the
House of Commons in raiment which, though symboli-
cal by its gorgeousness of a dazzling policy, was not

P Afterwards fourteenth Earl of Derby. He was Colonial Sec-
retary under Peel from 1841 to 1844.]

P The Marquis of Carabas in Disraeli's "Vivian Grey" is, I
believe, intended for the Marquis of Clanricarde.]

256 REMINISCENCES

likely to fascinate an unimaginative man of sense. He
had approached his leader, both in public and in private,
with fulsome flattery; and fulsome flattery, however
successful it might be in other quarters, was not likely
to succeed with Peel. Nor was anything to be gained by
disparaging the Duke of Wellington, in whom Peel did
not see a rival, and whom, though little guided by his
counsels, he always treated with the tenderest respect.
After all, there is a tradition that Peel — always toler-
ant, though not appreciative, of the vagaries of talent,
and ever anxious to enlist it for the party — wished to
give Disraeli place, but was prevented by the opposition
of Lord Stanley. When his papers are published, it will
be found, I suspect, that he afterwards treated Disraeli
with a magnanimity which may be thought by some to
have been rather magnanimous in him than clearly
consistent with the public good.1

To do right in the question between Cobden and Peel
while they were in collision, we must remember that
Cobden was leading an agitation in the interest of a
particular class. The class was large, and its interest
on this occasion coincided with that of the community,
otherwise it could not have had Cobden and Bright for
spokesmen; but still it was a class. With Cobden and
Bright the repeal of the Corn Law was part of a general
policy of Free Trade, and Free Trade itself was but a
part of a still more general policy of peace and good-will

pThis was mitten before the publication of Volumes II and III
of Charles Stuart Parker's Life, of Peel. These appeared in 1899 J

BRIGHT AND COBDEN 257

among nations, economy, and government in the inter-
est of the people. But the object of most of the manu-
facturers who were members of the League was simply
the repeal of a noxious impost, which specially pressed
on their own industry. They were not universal philan-
thropists; they were hardly even Free Traders in the
full sense of the term. Their subscriptions to the
League Fund were what Cobden himself called them, in-
vestments, which they expected to be repaid to them,
and which were in fact repaid to them a hundred fold.
Had the same men been landowners, they would prob-
ably have been Protectionists. To the general policy of
Bright and Cobden their attachment was very equivo-
cal, as the sequel showed, and as Cobden himself has
told us; —

"I am of opinion that we have not the same elements
in Lancashire for a Democratic Reform movement as
we had for Free Trade. To me the most discouraging
fact in our political state is the condition of the Lan-
cashire boroughs, where, with the exception of Man-
chester, nearly all the municipalities are in the hands of
the stupidest Tories in England, and where we can
hardly see our way for an equal half-share of Liberal
representation. We have the labour of Hercules in
hand to abate the power of the aristocracy, and their
allies the snobs of the towns.

"You hint at the possibility of Manchester taking me
in case of poor Potter's * death. I don't think the offer
will ever be made, but I am quite sure that there is no

[l Thomas Bayley Potter, politician; founder of the Cobden
Club. 1817-1898.]

258 REMINISCENCES

demonstration of the kind that could induce me (apart
from my determination not at present to stand for any
place) to put myself in the hands of the people who,
without more cause then than now, struck down men
whose politics are identically my own. To confess my
honest belief, I regard the Manchester constituency,
now that their gross pocket question is settled, as a very
unsound, and to us a very unsafe body.

"The manufacturers of Yorkshire and Lancashire
look upon India and China as a field of enterprise, which
can only be kept open to them by force; and, indeed,
they are willing apparently to be at all the cost of hold-
ing open the door of the whole of Asia for the rest of
the world to trade on the same terms as themselves.
How few of those who fought for the repeal of the Corn
Law really understand the full meaning of Free Trade
principles ! "

Men may be named, besides Cobden and Bright, who
did thoroughly understand the meaning of the principle,
and its connection with principles larger still; but with
the rank and file of the movement Free Trade meant
nothing but an alteration of the tariff in their own
favour.

Peel, on the other hand, was the ruler of the whole
nation, and was bound to consider not one class or in-
terest alone, but all. He was also bound to consider
political as well as economical consequences. The
aristocracy personally he loved little, and had little
cause to love ; it accepted his services without ever for-
getting that he was by origin a cotton-spinner; and
that he stood aloof from it in heart was shown by his
testamentary injunction to his son. But he believed

BRIGHT AND COBDEN 259

it to be an essential part of the Constitution, and he saw
plainly that its basis was territorial, or, in plain English,
that its influence depended on its rents. It was very
well for the League to say that the landowners would
not suffer by repeal ; the League cared little whether the
landowners suffered or not, and the truth is that though
the reduction of rents was suspended for a time by the
enormous extension of the English market for agricul-
tural produce which followed the growth of manufac-
tures, it has evidently come at last, and seems likely to
bring its political consequences with it. The predic-
tion of evil to the landed interest, which events appeared
to have belied, has been apparently fulfilled after all ;
for some time past, at least, the extent of English land
under the plough has been rapidly decreasing. There
was some force also in the military argument against
dependence on the foreigner for food; it seemed that
the Island Fortress would lose its impregnability; and
Peel could not accept, and would have been entirely
misled if he had accepted, as infallibly true the Leaguers'
assurance that Free Trade would be followed by uni-
versal peace. Economical fallacies, which experience
has now taught us to deride, then fettered strong minds ;
nor would a statesman, when he began to meditate the
great change, have felt that he had any great force of
independent opinion on his side. The sudden conver-
sion of the Whigs, was, as Mr. Morley truly says, nothing
more than the device of a foundering faction. So long
as they had a secure tenure of power, and were able to

260 REMINISCENCES

control legislation, they declared that to meddle with the
Corn Law would be madness. They even, after the
failure of their attempt "to set fire to the house which
they were leaving/7 showed rather faint attachment to
their new opinions, and their chiefs declined to vote for
for Mr. Villiers's * annual motion 2 in 1844. Peel had,
however, avowed in the most distinct terms that unless
the Corn Law was shown to be good for the whole people
it could not stand ; and his freedom in dealing with it
had already driven extreme Protectionists, such as the
Duke of Buckingham, from his side. The general ten-
dency of his financial policy was also distinctly in the
direction of Free Trade. For a roan in his position, and
under the party system, the process- of change, as has
been already said, was desperately difficult, and the
utmost allowance ought to be made for anything am-
biguous in his utterances or in his conduct. He was
the object not only of cruel misconstruction, but of ca-
lumnious invention on the part of enemies who certainly
could not like him be accused of lacking imagination.
It was most circumstantially stated and widely believed,
that when he found himself no longer able to defend the
Corn Law he had contrived to shirk a debate, and to
put forward his young lieutenant, Sidney Herbert, to
defend the Corn Law in his place. He was of all men
the least capable of such an act of treachery to a friend.

p Cliarles Pelham VilJiers, statesman ; M.P. for Wolverhamp-
ton from 1835 till 1898 ; held many high posts. 1802-1898.]

pFor the repeal of the Corn Law. He brought it in annually
from 1838 till its abolition in 1846 J

BRIGHT AND COBDEN 261

Mr. Morley gives what is probably the grain of truth in
the story, if there is any grain of truth in it at all. He
says that after a powerful speech from Cobden, Peel
was overheard to say to Sidney Herbert, "You must
answer that, for I cannot." Whatever construction
may be put upon the incident, it clearly involves nothing
dishonourable on the part of Peel.

When a class in possession of power, as the landlord
class was in the Parliament of those days, refuses jus-
tice to the community, agitation is the only remedy, and
it is better than civil war. But it entails some of the

moral evils of civil war. What says Cobden himself ? —

— . j

"You must not judge me by what I say at these
tumultuous public meetings. I constantly regret the
necessity of violating good taste and kind feeling in my
public harangues. I say advisedly necessity ; for I defy
anybody to keep the ear of the public for seven years
upon any one question without striving to amuse as
well as instruct. People do not attend public meetings
to be taught, but to be excited, flattered, and pleased.
If they are simply lectured, they may sit out the lesson
for once, but they will not come again; and as I have
required them again and again, I have been obliged
to amuse them, not by standing on my head or eating
fire, but by kindred feats of jugglery, such as appeals
to their self-esteem, their combativeness, or their hu-
mour. You know how easily in touching their feel-
ings one degenerates into flattery, vindictiveness, or

It would be a relief to him, he says, to know that he
should never again have to attend a public meeting.

262 REMINISCENCES

If this was true of Cobden, how much more must it have
been true of common agitators I The passions of those
whose interest was threatened were of course inflamed to
fury by the wordy cannonade, and the difficulty of
Peel's task in bringing them round was increased ten-
fold. After all, as Cobden admits, the agitation would
have failed had it not been for the Irish famine.

It was perhaps inevitable that the leaders of the
League should be unjust to Peel, as well as wanting in
that consideration for his position which wisdom bade
them show if they wished to win him to their side.
Unjust, however, they were. They refused to recognize
what he had done and was doing for the gradual pro-
motion of the general policy of Free Trade; they
treated with contempt his great budget of 1842, though
as a step in economical progress it was second in im-
portance only to the repeal of the Corn Law itself; and
they persisted in fixing on V>im; who least of all men in
power deserved it, the entire responsibility and odium
of maintaining a system which was paralyzing trade and
spreading distress among the people. Hence arose a
personal quarrel between him and Cobden, of which it
would be painful to speak if it had not been closed by
a noble reconciliation. On the fifth night of a fierce
debate in the House of Commons, when party passions
were at fever heat, Cobden made a very bitter attack
on Peel, accusing him of " folly or ignorance" as a
financier, treating his fiscal legislation with the most
cutting contempt, and pointing to him, with emphatic

BRIGHT AND COBDEN 263

and passionate reiteration, as "individually respon-
sible " for the lamentable and dangerous state of the
country. The recent murder of Peel's secretary and
friend, Mr. Drummond/ by a bullet, which was supposed
to have been intended for Peel himself, was in every-
body's mind; and when Peel in his reply pounced
angrily on the expression "individually responsible,"
Protectionist hatred of the great Leaguer burst forth in
a fierce shout of denunciation, and a tornado followed
in which Peel's anger mounted still higher, all moral
bearings were lost and all attempts at explanation be-
came fruitless. Peel afterwards positively disclaimed
the atrocious meaning which had been fixed, in the fury
of the moment, on his words ; and he surely might be
pardoned, especially when heated by debate, for fiercely
resenting an attempt to hold him up individually to a
people exasperated by suffering as the author of their
misery. Cobden himself avows that he meant to
frighten Peel; he had made up his mind that "when
Peel bolted or betrayed the Protectionists the game
would be up." "It was this conviction,77 he says,
"which induced me after some deliberation to throw
the responsibility upon Peel ; and he is not only alarmed
at it, but indiscreet enough to let everybody know that
he is so." Surely this goes far to justify anything that
Peel really said.

Mr. Morley quotes, as the best judgment that can be
passed on the affair, a letter written immediately after

P Edward Dnnnmond. 1792-1843.]

264 REMINISCENCES

it by Cobden, in which Peel is accused of hypocritically
feigning emotion, and said to have incurred ridicule as
a coward. "Ah I vous gdtez lei Soyons amis ! " cried
somebody from the pit, when Augustus in " Cinna " 1 was
recounting the vices and crimes of the man whose hand
he was about to take. For the charge of simulating
emotion Mr. Morley is of course able to cite the author-
ity of Disraeli. Yet nobody who knows Peel's history
can doubt that, like other members of his family, he had
a hot temper, though it was usually under strict con-
trol. It is impossible to suppose that he was "acting
the part of the choleric gentleman" in the tempestuous
scene which occurred when Parliament was dissolved
upon the rejection of the Reform Bill. As little was he
open to the imputation of cowardice ; he was sensitive
to pain; all men of fine organization are; and there
are traces in his correspondence of his having been
rather nervous, or of somebody having been nervous
for him, about plots; but I believe I am right in saying
that, besides his affair with O'Connell, whom he des-
perately strove to drag into the field, he on three other
occasions displayed his anachronistic propensity to
fight duels. I know that it was with the utmost diffi-
culty that, by an appeal to his feeling for the Queen,
he was dissuaded from sending a challenge to Lord
George Bentinck, who had touched his honour on a
point on which it was particularly sensitive, by traduc-
ing the integrity of his relations with his friends. It

p Conieille's tragedy.]

BRIGHT AND COBDEN 265

may be surmised that his equivocal position in the
society of those days as a cotton-spinner among aristo-
crats made him rather more peppery in resenting insult
than he would otherwise have been. What is certain
is that, if readiness to look on the muzzle of a pistol
is a proof of courage, Peel cannot have been a
coward.

All soon came right between him and Cobden. The
two soldiers of the same cause, under opposite stand-
ards and in hostile uniforms, recognized each other and
clasped hands. Cobden wrote Peel, whose defeat by
the coalition of Whigs and Protectionists on the Coer-
cion Bill was then impending, a confidential letter prom-
ising him hearty support, conjuring him to dissolve Par-
liament, and assuring him, if he would, of an immense
victory. He desired Peel to burn the letter. Peel kept
it, and, as Mr. Morley says, a question may be raised
by those who occupy themselves about minor morals.
But Peel in his answer says, "I need not give you as-
surance that I shall regard your letter as a communi-
cation more purely confidential than if it had been
written to me by some person united to me by the closest
bonds of private friendship." That is to say, " I have
not burned the letter, but I will keep it a dead secret; "
and in this Cobden tacitly acquiesced. Peel must have
known very well that the letter would be eminently
honourable to the memory of both of them, and espe-
cially to that of the writer, who thus buried in a moment
all past enmities, forgot all selfish rivalries, and threw

266 REMINISCENCES

himself into the arms of the statesman who had brought
in the repeal of the Corn Law.

Had Peel taken Cobden's advice and dissolved, no
doubt Cobden's prediction would have been fulfilled.
There would have been a total rout of the Protectionists,
and among others, the Member for Shrewsbury1 would
have lost his seat. But Peel could not, without a
scandalous disregard of old ties, have appealed to the
country against his own party. Nor could he have
vaulted at once from the leadership of the Conservatives
to the leadership of the Liberals, which was what Cob-
den in effect proposed. It is, in short, difficult to see
how he could have done anything but what he did.
Those who, like the author of the "Life of Lord George
Bentinck,"1 accuse him of "astuteness," and of ma-
noeuvring for the retention of his place, are met by the
fact that, on finding his Cabinet divided, he resigned,
and that Lord John Russell was prevented from forming
a Government only by an objection among his own
friends to the appointment of Palmerston as Foreign
Minister, which no astuteness in Peel could have fore-
seen, much less have contrived.* It has been plausibly
urged, and the writer of this paper used to think, that
Peel ought to have held a meeting of his party: if he
was prevented from taking that course in any degree

P Benjamin Disraeli.]

* The author of the "life of Lord George Bentinck" calls this
an intrigue. Everybody was an intriguer but he. The objector
was about the most inflexibly upright and thoroughly straight-
forward of public men. [Note by the author.]

BRIGHT AND COBDEN 267

by want of frankness and moral courage, or even by a
punctilious tenacity of his own authority as Minister,
to that extent he did wrong; but it was certain that
there would be a disagreement at the meeting, probable
that there would be a scene of great violence. What
Stanley/ Disraeli, and their section wanted above all
things was to produce a split; and the consequence
would have been that the quarrel in the House would
only have been made more desperate and scandalous.
The result, however, was inevitable, nor was it other-
wise than welcome to Peel, who was careworn, exhausted,
ill in body, and deeply wounded by the quarrel with old
friends. He fell from office, but not from power: he
remained the leading man in England; and had not
his life been accidentally cut short, the voice of the
nation would almost certainly have recalled him to the
helm.

Peel's failure to make his party turn round with him
in 1846 has been contrasted with the success of the Tory
leaders in 1867. But Mr. Morley aptly replies that the
second was a case of political principle, while the first
was a case of pocket. Besides this, in 1867 expedients
were used which were quite unknown to Peel; the
Tories were not so much persuaded as decoyed ; a Min-
ister put up to say that the House of Commons would
never grant household suffrage, and the pitfall, in which
that revolutionary measure lurked was carefully covered

[ 1 Afterwards f ourteentli Earl of Derby. He was Lord Stanley
of Bickerstaffe at this period of his career.]

268 REMINISCENCES

with Personal Payment of Rates. What is still more
important, between 1846 and 1867 the party had under-
gone a most effective process of education.

Still, there is a moral to be drawn. The one man in
whom the nation trusted, and had reason to trust, was
driven from power because he had carried a measure
which was urgently needed to give the people bread;
and which was soon to be ratified by universal approba-
tion, even those who had most rancorously assailed its
author at the time acquiescing as soon as acquiescence
became necessary to them as a passport to place. The
coalition against the Coercion Bill,1 by which this was
brought about, consisted of three elements; Conserva-
tives who had themselves supported the Coercion Bill in
its earlier stage ; Whigs to whom coercion was familiar,
and who, as soon as they had tripped up Peel, resorted
to it again; and Radicals who were then, as they are
now, unused to government, hardly conscious of its
necessities, unready to avow Republicanism, but ready
to make unlimited concessions to all who demanded
them, and let Irish insurgents, or any one who would,
tear to pieces the heritage of the commonwealth. The
one great gainer by the transaction was a man whose
motives were purely personal, as he used afterwards
very frankly to avow; who, on a question affecting not
a mere political theory, but the subsistence of the people
who were starving round >>JTn; was taking a course con-
trary to his often recorded convictions, and traducing
P Introduced in June, 1846.]

BRIGHT AND COBDEN 269

with laborious virulence the character and career of a
statesman whom he knew to be doing right, on whom
a little time before he had been lavishing his adulation,
and to whom he had been a suitor for place. The pro-
gressive domination of such characters is the inherent
tendency of the party system.

In spite of their conflicts, Peel and Cobden were really
united in their political lives, and it may be said that in
death they were not divided. Neither of them was
buried in Westminster Abbey. Peel lies among his
family and neighbours, Cobden lies in a country church-
yard. A man who had worked for fame will like to rest
in a pantheon ; a man who has worked for duty and for
the approbation of the power of duty will perhaps pre-
fer to rest by the side of honest labour, and among those
whom he has loved.

Free Trade still stands pretty much where it stood
on the morrow of the reconciliation of Cobden with Peel.
Their visions — Cobden's visions at least — have not
been fulfilled. The reason has been already given.
England, while she preaches Free Trade, and thinks
all the world demented because it will not listen to her
preaching, is herself not a Free Trade nation. She
raises many millions by import duties, which, though
admirably well adjusted to her special circumstances,
are not the less interferences with freedom of trade.
Every nation has its tariff, every nation will continue
to have its tariff so long as money for establishments
and armaments is required : and for tariffs, as was said

270 REMINISCENCES

before, there is no absolute rule ; each country must be
allowed to frame its own. Cobden assumed that the
world was a single community; he could not bring the
human race to that far-off goal of philanthropy, though
he did something to help it on its way.

It seems at the present moment 1 as if the same thing
might be said with too much truth about the Irish
Question. It was upon a Coercion Bill that the Peel
Government fell, Cobden voting against the Bill,
though apparently more because this was the regular
line of his political section than in obedience to any
strong opinion of his own. His biographer's hostility
to such measures is more decided. "The Ministry," he
says, "resorted for the eighteenth time since the Union
to the stale device of a Coercion Bill, that stereotyped
avowal — and always made, strange to say, without
shame or contrition — of the secular neglect and incom-
petency of the English government of Ireland." 2 Sir
Robert Peel was not incompetent, nor had he neglected
the Irish Question; on the contrary, he had studied it
for thirty years with all the advantages which a suc-
cessive tenure of the Irish Secretaryship, the Home
Secretaryship, and the Premiership could afford, and
with an anxiety proportioned to his consciousness that,
as he said, Ireland was the difficulty of his administra-
tion. We must therefore be permitted to believe

p Written about 1888. —The Irish Crimes Bill (a measure of
coercion) was introduced in March, 1887.]

[2 Morley's "Life of Richard Cobden," vol. i, p. 360. London :
1881.]

BRIGHT AND COBDEN 271

that the temporary reinforcement of public justice in
Ireland during outbreaks of murderous anarchy caused
by agitation or distress, and when the ordinary law has
become evidently insufficient, though it may not be the
highest pinnacle of statesmanship, is not the lowest
depth of ignorance, carelessness, or folly. That force,
while necessarily used to restrain disorder, is no remedy
for an economical malady, is a truth as certain and as
fruitful as that the strait-waistcoat, necessarily used to
control madness in its paroxysms, is no remedy for a
disease of the lungs.

CHAPTER XV

OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP
1858-1866

Settling at Oxford— Telepathy — Half ord Vaughan — Henry
Smith— Max Midler — Monier-Williams— Thorold Rogers—
Rolleston — Waring — Goxe — Fronde — Cradock — The Great
Western Railway — King Edward VII — Prince Leopold —
Dr. Aeknd— Gladstone.

IN 1858 1 was appointed Regius Professor of Modern
History at Oxford. This ended my correction with
the Saturday Review. The position, while it was wholly
unsolicited, was the height of my desire. I thought
with pleasure that I was settled in it for life. On the
North of the " Parks " I built me a little House which I
called Parks End, and which afterwards had the honour
of being occupied by Max Mtiller 1 and after him by
Professor Osier.2 I planted my little garden. I laid
out my little croquet ground, which in summer evenings
was the scene of pleasant little croquet parties followed
by pleasant little suppers. The subject of my Profes-
sorship was the one for which my lamp had very often
been lighted long before sunrise. The future smiled.

Mortimer was within easy reach by rail* I could go

P See infra, page 276.]

[s Regius Professor of Medicine; Honorary Professor of Medi-
cine of Johns Hopkins University. Born at Bond Head, Canada,
in 1849.]

272

PHOTOGRAPH OF A BUST OF GOLDWIN SMITH
Made at Oxford about 1S66, by Alexander Muaro.

OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 273

there now and then for a day with the South Berks
hounds. On one of my visits there happened a curious
thing, which may interest the Telepathists. At some
distance from my father's house I was seized with faint-
ness, to which I was liable. After lying some time on
the common I got water at a cottage and reached home.
There I found at the very moment of my faintness a
telegram had been received from my housekeeper at
Oxford asking whether it was true that I had died sud-
denly. It was another member of the University of
the same name. The telegram would have been docu-
mentary evidence; which in these cases is generally
wanting. Coincidence would as usual have been aided
by the working of the retroactive imagination. A story
was told by Sir Harry Burrard Neale * one of the Bur-
rard family with which mine was intimate and I believe
was remotely connected.2 An old couple in Scotland,
Cameron, I think, was the name, left their home to seek
for their only son who had been carried off by a press-
gang. They wandered to Lymington on the Solent*
There a kind boatman took them on board his boat
bound for Portsmouth, where they would find the men-
of-war. A storm came on, and the boat was in danger.
Sir Harry Burrard Neale was coining up the Solent in
his ship, the San Firenze. He saw the boat in danger,
hove to, took the old people on board, and asked them

P Second Baronet, Admiral. 1765-1840J

[* G-oldwin Smith's mother's aunt, Mrs. Goldwin, Ixad a sister
named Mrs. Coppell. Mrs. CoppelTs daughter married a Mr.
Burrard.]

274 REMINISCENCES

what they were doing at sea in such weather. They
told him that they were seeking for their son, whose
name they gave. " There is a pressed man of that
name/' he said, "on board this ship; send him up."
He was their son. To this, which is certainly fact, but
not less certainly mere coincidence, the retroactive im-
agination of the two old people would probably lend
miraculous colours.

It was seldom that we? or anybody, went from
home. But my Mother and I stayed with Sir George
Burrard, rector of Yarmouth in the Isle of Wight.1
The Burrard family before the Reform Bill had been
patrons of the borough of Lymington, which sent two
members to Parliament, and Sir George held three
livings, two of which he served by Curates. He was
a kindly and noble-looking old gentlemen, with knee
breeches and powdered hair. In those days was to
be seen at Spithead a sight of beauty and grandeur
which will never be seen again; that of the great
sailing men-of-war.

My predecessor in the Chair was HaJford Vaughan,2
whose history was one of genius, mournfully, almost
tragically, thrown away. As a student he had shown

[**i I went with my two Boys to visit my Brothers at Southamp-
ton and Land's End, and also to stay with Mr. Burrard at Yar-
mouth, April 15th, [1828]."— Extract from Goldwin Smith's
mother's Diary. — Goldwin Smith's mother paid another visit
to Yarmouth in July of the year 1833. Her little son, Goldwin,
who was then ten years old, accompanied her on that occasion
also.]

P Henry HaJford Vaughan. 1811-1885J

OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 275

powers of mind far beyond those of ordinary prizemen.
By his father, who was a Judge, he had been destined
for the Bar; but his heart was devoted to Philosophy.
It was said that the Judge gave him as an exercise a case
on which to write a judgment, and on reading the judg-
ment wept to think what a lawyer was going to be lost.
Vaughan's lectures on the Norman Conquest were ad-
mirable and were very well attended. But he took it
into his head that regular lecturing was intellectual
slavery, not to be endured; he resigned his chair; was
reinstalled by the efforts of friends; and again re-
signed. He had written a work on moral philosophy
which was understood to be highly original and of
which great expectations were formed; but again and
again when his work was on the point of publication
some strange accident occurred, or he fancied that it
had occurred, and the book never saw light. There
can be little doubt that Vaughan in the end became
hypochondriac. His last years were passed in retire-
ment. His lectures were never published, and the only
fruit of his genius ever given to the world was a not
very valuable set of critical notes on Shakespeare.

Society for any one of my class and pursuits could
hardly be more pleasant than it was at Oxford in those
days. The Professors of different subjects, with the
resident Tutors and Fellows of Colleges, formed a circle
with various lines and interests, moderate incomes, so-
cially and hospitably disposed. Hospitality, easy and
frugal, College kitchens and Common Rooms supplied.

276 REMINISCENCES

At the little dinner parties talk was rational yet bright
and merry. The old academic rust had departed.
Oxford was now within an hour and a half of London,
and perfectly in the world.

The most eminent of the group was Henry Smith,1
Professor of Mathematics, and, but for his early death,
good judges thought a Newton or a La Place. He was
generally cultivated, and sparkled with wit. One of
our Professors who was weak in his aspirates voted at an
election, at which Gladstone and Hardy 2 were the can-
didates, and meaning to vote for Gladstone, in his ner-
vous haste said " ;ardy." Trying to correct himself, he
said that he had not finished pronouncing the name.
"He has not begun to pronounce it," said Henry Smith,
who was sitting as scrutineer. As mathematical profes-
sor Henry Smith noted a falling off in the brain power
of his students which he was inclined to ascribe to smok-
ing. At Magdalen when I was there nobody smoked.
One of the Dons still took snuff.

Another notability was Max Muller 3 on whose philo-
logical glories it is needless to dwell. He ought by
rights to have been Professor of Sanskrit. But in
rejecting him in favour of Monier-Williams 4 the Univer-

P Henry John Stephen Smith. 1826-1883.]

P Gathorne Hardy.]

P The Right Honourable Friedrich Max Muller, Professor of
Modern Languages and afterwards of Comparative Philology.
Born at Dessau in 1823 ; died in 1900.]

[4 Sir Monier Monier-Williams, K.C.I.B., D.C.L., LL.D., Fellow
of Baffiol, 1882-1888; Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford, 1860-1899.
Born in 1819; died April 11, 1899 J

OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 277

sity was not so far guilty of bigotry or nativism as Dean
Stanley and other angry friends of Max Mutter sup-
posed. The professorship was a very recent foundation,
and the object of the founder had unquestionably been
religious. He thought that Sanskrit, as a key to the
early mythology of the Hindoos, would be a help to the
missionary. There could be no doubt that he would
have preferred the orthodox Anglican to the German
freethinker.

Thorold Rogers/ the Professor of Political Economy,
was and looked a son of thunder. He was a strenuous
worker and really great in his line, though not perfectly
judicial. Perfectly judicial he could hardly be, as he
was in politics a strong Radical. He sat in Parliament
for Southwark.2 On the hustings he said, as candi-
dates always do, that the electors would certainly return
him. " They'll see you in hell first," cried a voice in
the crowd. "My dear Sir," replied Rogers/' if that mis-
fortune does befall me, you certainly will be there to see
it." Rogers was also a writer of satires. Of the two
great allies, my successors in the Chair, he said,

" So, ladling flattery from their several tubs,
Stubbs butters Freeman, Freeman butters Stubbs."

To which the persons satirized raised the totally irrele-
vant objection that it was untrue.

My special friend was Dr. Rolleston,3 Professor of

P See Chapter V, page 84,]
[2 Also for Bermondsey.]

P George RoUeston, F.RS., F.L.S. ; Fellow of Merton. 1829-
1881.1

278 REMINISCENCES

Physiology. When overwork laid him in an early
grave, I was allowed to put up his portrait in the Com-
mon Room of his College. But no portrait could do
justice to his enthusiasm in scientific research, his
energy, his buoyancy, his humour, the life which he
brought into our social circle. I wrote under the por-
trait, —

Sic indefessum facie spirante vigorem,

Veri enitebar mente aperire viam;
Quum vitae et vultus nimio lux victa labore est,

Et vestra abrepta est gloria magna domo.

Wilson,1 Professor of Moral Philosophy, afterwards Presi-
dent of Corpus, was full of pleasant wit. So was Mark
Pattison, when he was in good humour and at his best.
I could give a string of names well remembered by me
who am now about the last of the circle. Mentem
mortalia tangunt.

A wonder, though known to few, was George War-
ing,2 the most universally learned man of all my ac-
quaintance. He had graduated late at what was then
Magdalen Hall, now Hertford College. He was mar-
ried, settled at Oxford, holding no academical office,
but feeding his ravenous hunger of knowledge. One
eye he had lost, the other was weak so that he had to
hold his book close to it. The whole of every day he
spent in the Bodleian Library. It would have been
hard to say with what subject, saving physical science,
he was not well acquainted. Yet he left no work, nor

F John Matthias Wilson. 1814-1881.]

P Second son of Henry Waring, of Hereford. Born 1807.]

OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 279

any trace of himself except in the way of occasional aid
to other students. The University was near giving a
large price for what pretended to be a Samaritan manu-
script. The Professor of the department was taken in,
but Waring detected the imposture.

Waring reminds me of "Bodley " Coxe,1 the prince of
librarians, and soul of the social circle. Pattison used
to say that the librarian who read was lost. I think
Coxe had read, but at all events he had great knowledge
of manuscripts. An impostor tendered the library a
manuscript pretending to the highest antiquity. The
curators referred it to Coxe. At the subsequent meet-
ing, the vendor of the manuscript being present, Coxe
was asked what he considered to be its date. He
quickly replied, "I should say about the middle of the
nineteenth century." ^

There were still some relics of the Oxford before the
flood of reform; among them "Mo" Griffith2 of Mer-
on, and Frowd,3 of Corpus. Each was slightly non
compos. Frowd, a Fellow of Corpus, was annoyed at
the trampling of grass under his window. He set a
man-trap, and watching for the result, presently heard
a scream, rushed down and found he had caught the
Professor of Moral Philosophy. By way of penance, he
condemned himself to attendance on the Professor's
lectures for the rest of the term. Lodging in London

P Henry Octavius Coxe, Bodley's librarian, I860.]
P (Edward) Moses Griffith. 1767-1859.]
P John Brickenden BVowd. 1778-1865.]

280 REMINISCENCES

when a contested election at Oxford was coming on, he
wrote letters to a number of people in the county pro-
posing to pair. Before their answers had time to come
in, he ran down himself to Oxford and voted. His plea
was that he had not received from any of the people to
whom he had written their consent to pair. There was
an uproar, of course, but the plea of insanity was entered
and accepted.

A remarkably pleasant house was that of Edward
Hartopp Cradock,1 the Principal of Brasenose. Mrs.
Cradock (she was a Russell) had been a Maid of Hon-
our. She was very bright, full of anecdote and fun.
There we had the genuine Afternoon Tea, a meeting of
a few people for real enjoyment, with talk, music, and
reading aloud; far different from the social battue of
people crowded into a house in which there is hardly
room for them to stand, and talking against a hubbub,
into which the Afternoon Tea has now grown.

It chanced that I had to do a little fighting for the
University. Oxford city, which did not fully appre-
ciate its advantages and honours as the seat of a great
University, wanted to bring the Great Western Railway
works to Oxford, where, besides the outrage to the
genius of the place, building-land could ill have been
spared. The University shuddered, but feared to
move, having discredited itself by foolishly using its
influence to turn away the line of the Great Western

P The third son of Edward Grove, of Shenston, Staffordshire. —
He changed his name. Died in 1886.]

OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 281

Railway. I wrote to the Times. The Times backed
my letter. One of the Directors of the railway wrote
to me, saying that he was heartily with me and that if
I would fight outside the Board he would fight inside.
I did fight, got society on my side, and, with the help of
my friend in the other camp, won. The city, which had
expected great gain from the presence of the works, was
very angry, and for some days my house had to be
guarded by the police. The works went to Swindon,
where they are much better placed in every respect, and
peace returned. I almost think I could have gone to
Parliament for Oxford. Harcourt,1 who did go, was in-
troduced to the city by me. A seat in Parliament for
myself, as I have said, I never desired.

As Professor of History at Oxford I had for a pupil
the present King, then Prince of Wales.2 He was a
comely youth, like his mother in face, and with a slight
German accent, showing, as he had not been in Ger-
many, that German was spoken in his domestic circle.
His manner was very engaging and he was thoroughly
good-natured. I am sure I bored him when I went to
examine him in history. A malicious story was current
about Prince Albert's death. It was said to have been
caused by sleeping in an unaired bed when he had gone
down suddenly to Cambridge, where his son then was,
to break off a bad engagement, I can say positively

p Sir William George Granville Vernon Harcourt. See note on
page 163, Chapter XL]

P This refers, of course, to his late Majesty, King Edward VTL]

282 BEMINISCENCES

that the story was untrue. I was invited to go with
the Prince's party to Canada; but could not leave my
Chair. The notion that I wanted anything in Canada
was preposterous. I was happily and perfectly settled
for life. The King * has always shown a kindly remem-
brance of his old preceptor.

Common Room Society must have been greatly
broken up by the marriage of Fellows, which, as I
have said, was necessary in order to secure an order of
teachers devoted to their calling. But its like will
not easily be found.

Prince Leopold 2 afterwards came to Oxford, where I
was introduced to him and had the honour of teaching
Mm euchre. The weakness of his constitution debarred
him from active sports and made him a musician and
something of a virtuoso. He played well upon the
piano. I was his guest, and, after his death, that of the
Princess, his widow, at Claremont. It was curious to
see the gentle pair entertaining us with music in the
great room carpeted with the sumptuous gift of an
Indian Prince, which Clive had probably paced, dis-
tracted with agony, in the dark evening of his stormy
day. The Duchess was a charming hostess, and has
remained a most kind and valued friend. As I write
this I mentally kiss her hand.

One morning as I was sitting in my library my maid

P His late Majesty, King Edward VTL]

P Dnke of Albany. Youngest brother of the late King, Edward
VII.]

OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 283

came to tell me that there were two gentlemen waiting
in the other room to see me. To my surprise one of
them introduced the other as the Crown Prince of Den-
mark.1 But I had scarcely got him into my hands as a
pupil when he was snatched away by the Schleswig-
Holstein War.2

My excellent friend Dr. Acland,3 the Professor of
Medicine, in whose house many a pleasant evening was
passed, went with the Prince to Canada. He was very
affable, and not very guarded. At a ball at Quebec he
was accosted by a stranger of gentlemanly manner, who
drew him into conversation about the Prince. He said
that the Prince was extremely amiable, but had not the
brains of his brother, the Duke of Edinburgh. When
the stranger went away, some one asked Acland whether
he knew to whom he had been talking. Acland said
that he did not. "That was the correspondent of the
New York Herald" A day or two afterwards the
Prince came down to breakfast flourishing in his hand
a copy of the New York Herald and saying, "Acland, I
see that you think I am very amiable, but I have not
the brains of my brother Edinburgh." This shows his
good nature.

In Canada, Oronyatekha,4 the Great that was to be,
was introduced to Acland as a decided proof of Indian

P The present King Frederik VIII.]
[2 1864.]

[3 Afterwards Sir Henry Wentworth Acland. 1815-1900.]
[4 Dr. Oronyatekha was afterwards Supreme Chief Ranger of the
Independent Order of Foresters. Born 1841 ; died 1907.]

284 REMINISCENCES

capacity. Acland, always kind, and apt to be gushing,
told Oronyatekha that they must have him at Oxford.
Some time afterwards, thanks, I believe, to the liberality
of the Prince, when Acland was at Oxford, Oronyatekha
appeared. Acland entered him at what was then Mag-
dalen Hall and is now Hertford College. It was not
likely that academical studies or college rules would
suit the aspiring Indian. He at all events left Magda-
len Hall for a more practical field without taking a de-
gree. Such was the version of the story which I heard
at the time. Another version introduces the Prince of
Wales.

James I. had kindly but unwisely given the Univer-
sity representation in Parliament, which involved it in
politics. We had some fierce fights, owing to the grad-
ual approximation of Gladstone to the Liberals and his
consequent estrangement from his Tory friends, who
sought angrily to unseat him as an apostate. In those
days I was a fervent adherent of Gladstone, and an ac-
tive member of his Committee. Our difficulty was in
holding together the two sections of his supporters ; the
High Churchmen, who clung to him for the sake of his
religious opinions, hoping that he would influence
Church appointments; and the Liberals, who wel-
comed his political advances towards their side. Pal-
merston, in whose Ministry Gladstone was Chancellor
of the Exchequer, was fishing, through Lord Shaftes-
bury, for the Evangelical vote, and allowed Shaftesbury
to appoint Low Church Bishops. This brought our

OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP 285

difficulty to a head. I was instructed to see Gladstone
and explain to him, that unless his influence were soon
seen in Church appointments, the High Church section
would bolt, and his seat for the University would be
lost. He began as usual by combating the fact. This
was his way, and I could only let it pass. Presently he
came round and asked whom they wanted made a
Bishop. Probably he addressed the question to himself
rather than to me; the answer at all events was not
in my instructions. The upshot of this and probably
other representations of the same kind from different
quarters was the appointment of Thomson/ Provost of
Queen's, to the Bishopric of Peterborough, from which
he soon afterwards mounted to the Archbishopric of
York.

The Tories made a grand mistake in ejecting Glad-
stone from his seat for the University. They thereby,
as he himself said, "unmuzzled" him- It curiously
happened that on the day of his defeat the Bible fell
from the hand of the statue of James I in the quad-
rangle of the Bodleian. It was an omen of the separa-
tion of the Church from the State, towards which Glad-
stone's abolition of the State Church of Ireland was an
important step, and towards which he would have taken
another important step had he carried out his pledge
of Disestablishment for Wales. I suspected, however,
that of that pledge he repented, and that his unwilling-
ness to fulfil it was partly the cause of his final retire-
f1 William Thomson. 1819-1890J

286 REMINISCENCES

meat from power. He remained to the last a High
Churchman. To the last High Churchmen were his
bosom friends, and they clung to him in spite of his
political changes. They might bear with equanimity
the disestablishment of the Irish Church, which was
separate from the Church of England, and, from an-
tagonism to the Irish Roman Catholics, Low Church
in its doctrine. But the disestablishment of the Church
of Wales, an integral part of the Church of England,
would have cut them to the heart.

The University Reform Bill and Oxford University
elections brought me a good deal into contact with
Gladstone. I followed him zealously till he suddenly
embraced the policy which he had himself described as
" wading through rapine to dismemberment." Then,
not being able on the spur of the moment to invert my
notions either of rapine or dismemberment, I was con-
strained not only to leave him, but to do my best in aid
of the opponents of his "Home Rule."

CHAPTER XVI

PUBLIC EVENTS

Crimean War— The War Passion— The War Policy— Napoleon
III— The Chartist Procession.

THERE is no use in rehearsing the " Annual Register."
We of the Manchester School were against the Crimean
War, and suffered by the war fever. The impression
which I afterwards gathered from friends who had the
best means of information was that the coalition Gov-
ernment of Lord Aberdeen,1 weak from internal differ-
ences between Whigs and Peelites, while its chief, Lord
Aberdeen, though the best of men, was wanting in
firmness, had been gradually drawn to the brink of war
by three men, each of whom had personal motives.
Palmerston was a fanatical enemy of Russia, as the fatal
expedition to the Cabul proved, and probably not very
loyal to Lord Aberdeen, a Peelite and a Minister of peace.
Sir Stratford Canning 2 the Czar s had refused to receive
as Ambassador at St. Petersburg. Louis Napoleon, like
his putative uncle, wanted the consecration of glory for
his usurped throne, and a recognized place for himself,
an upstart of birth not unquestioned, among the
crowned heads of Europe, which he gained by being

p See page 185, et seq., Chapter XII.]

[2 Afterwards Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe. 178&-1880.]

p Nicholas L]

287

288 REMINISCENCES

allowed publicly to embrace the Queen of England. It
is possible that the French Emperor had the further
design of sowing enmity between powers the union of
which might have stood in the way of his ulterior views.
He was a political cracksman who. with his legs under
your table would be meditating a raid upon your strong-
box. His friend and confederate, Palmerston, at last
awakened to his real character and bade the nation
stand upon its guard.

Sir Roderick Murehison, the geologist; who, having
been invited to explore the mineral resources of the Ural,
had been intimate with the Czar, assured me that
Nicholas always spoke in the most cordial terms of
Great Britain, which he regarded as the great conser-
vative power. His offence and the cause of war, so far
as could be made out through the cloud of diplomatic
dust, was a premature anticipation of the dissolution of
the Turkish Empire, to a partition of which and a share
of the wreck he invited Great Britain.

In the case of the Crimean, as afterwards in that
of the Lorcha, War was seen the fatal ease with which
the war passion is kindled when the means of indulging
it, great armaments, are at hand. On the eve of the
Crimean War nobody believed that it was coming. Few
understood the diplomatic quarrel. But in an instant
all was aflame. Bright was burnt in effigy, and every
one who talked of bringing the war to an end was a
traitor. Tennyson wrote those burning lines in
"Maud," assuming that the weaker passions would be

PUBLIC EVENTS 289

extinguished by the fiercer; though to the ordinary
frauds, such as that of Strahan and Paul,1 were added
the usual frauds of contractors; while if there was a
" giant liar" on whom it behooved that the "justice of
God " should be done, it was Tennyson's ally, the French
Emperor. Yet the grass had barely grown on the
graves of Sebastopol before opinion turned against the
war. The Lorcha war was kindled by Bowring,2 the
British Resident at Canton, a disciple of Bentham,
who had quarrelled with the native authorities and em-
braced the opportunity of promoting the greatest hap-
piness of the greatest number by throwing bombs into
the most densely peopled city in the world. It was
practically a war in defence of the opium trade. By
the House of Commons it was condemned. But when
Palmerston appealed to the people, telling them that an
insolent barbarian had trampled on the honour of the
Empire by hauling down the flag of an opium smuggler,
the flame burst out in full fury. Opponents of the war
lost their seats in Parliament. The letters of the good
Lord Elgin, who was sent to coerce the Chinese, show
his feeling about his mission and the war.3 So long as
there are great armaments on foot, wars of passion will
not cease.

p Messrs. Straliaii, Paul, and Bates, bankers and navy agents,
suspended payment on June the llth, 1855.]

P Sir John Bpwring. 1792-1872.]

[8 "Letters and Journals of James, eighth Earl of Elgin." . . .
Edited by Theodore Walrond. London: Murray. 1872. Pages
212, et seq.]

290 REMINISCENCES

During the Crimean War I was much at the house of
my very kind and dear friend Mrs. Pearson/ the sister of
Admiral Lyons.2 Loss of the Agamemnorij Lyons's
ship, was cried by newsboys under her window. To
show in what a state was the supply department, the
Admiral wrote to his sisters begging them to buy for him
some quinine, of which the army was in great want.
His sisters, on proceeding to fulfil his request, were told
by the War Office that they might spare their pains,
since quinine had been bought by the Government till
the price of it had greatly risen in the market. It was
all the time lying at Balaklava in the hold of a ship
filled with other stores. The machine had just been
brought into working order when Louis Napoleon
stopped the war.

The state of things was probably in some measure due
to the senile despotism of the Duke of Wellington at the
Horse Guards. The Duke's mind was failing in his last
years, as he showed by foolish fondness for a woman of
fashion, Mrs. Jones of Pant-y-Glass [sic],3 as well as by

P Mrs. Henry Shepherd Pearson, formerly Caroline Lyons.]
p Edmund Lyons, first Baron Lyons. 1790-1858.]
P This was Margaret Charlotte, daughter of Sir G-eorge Camp-
bell, of Edenwood, Fifeshire, and wife of David Jones, of Pantglas,
Carmarthen, Member of Parliament for Carmarthen from 1852 to
1874. She married a second time, after his death. Born 1825 ;
died 1871. A selection from the Duke of Wellington's letters to
Mrs. Jones were published, with the Duke's grandson's permission,
in The Century Magazine of December, 1889 (Volume XXXIX, No. 2,
p. 163), by Mary Eleanor, wife of Herbert Davies-Evans, Esq., of
Highmead, Llanybyther, South Wales, Lord Lieutenant of Cardi-
ganshire. Mrs. Davies-Evans is a daughter of Mrs. Jones, and to
her I am indebted for kindly referring me to these letters.]

PUBLIC EVENTS 291

a long and strange though innocent correspondence
with another woman.1 Of the influence of Mrs. Jones
of Pant-y-Glass Cobden told ine a strange story which
he said he had on the best authority. Her name had
appeared in the promotion lists.

There was an outcry because the allied fleets did not
attack Odessa, the Russian arsenal. Absurd suspicions
were cast upon as loyal a gentleman as ever lived, Sidney
Herbert, who had Russian connections through his wife.
When the war was over, I asked the Duke of Newcastle,
who had been in the Cabinet, why Odessa had not been
attacked. His reply was that the French Emperor
would not consent.

I have alluded to the French Emperor's birth. I
once asked the best authority I knew on social France 2
whether Louis Napoleon was the son of his reputed
father, and whether the Prince Imperial, on whose birth
also doubt was cast, was the child of his reputed parents.
The first question was answered decidedly in the nega-
tive ; the second not less decidedly in the affirmative.
There seems to be little doubt that Louis Napoleon was
the son of the Dutch Admiral Verhuel. Court painters
and sculptors struggled in vain to give him the Napo-
leonic brow. Perhaps his Dutch phlegm and reticence
gave him some advantage over the volatile Frenchmen
with whom he had to deal.

p This probably refers to " Miss J.," Wellington's letters to whom
were published in 1890.]

p I think this must refer to Lady Verney, wife of Sir Harry
Verney.]

292 REMINISCENCES

Delane, of the Times, who was with the army on its
way to the Crimea, gave bad accounts of the behaviour
of the French soldiery. He said that at Varna, a fire
having broken out, advantage was taken of it by some
Zouaves to violate the beautiful daughter of a Greek
baker, and that when complaint was made to the French
Commander, he treated it with indifference. The corps
of Zouaves, however, was hardly French. Nominally
Algerian, it was recruited from waifs of various races.
It was said that a British officer in the Crimea addressed
a Zouave officer in French. The Zouave answered in
good English. "Why/' said the Englishman, "you
speak English very well." "I should think I did. I
was with you at Eton."

I saw from the window of the Athenaeum the return
of the Guards from the Crimea. They inarched with
great simplicity, through a crowd rather full of emotion
than demonstrative, to their barracks. I have wit-
nessed more ostentatious but less impressive ovations.

It is with amusement now that one looks back on the
alarm felt in London on the 10th of April 1848,1 and the
military preparations made to encounter a phantom of
our fancy. We parted on the evening before the
dreaded day, imagining that something terrible would
happen before we met again. The House of Commons
sat surrounded by a cordon of troops. I had the honour
to command a squad of special constables posted in
Oxford Street. There was a stream of working-men
f- The day of the Chartist demonstration.]

PUBLIC EVENTS 293

eastward, but nothing to excite the slightest alarm.
The car containing the monster petition l of the dreaded
revolutionists was arrested on its way to Westminster
by the special constables, who thought that the crowd
had been robbing Astley's.2 The demonstration, how-
ever, was effective in showing that England was op-
posed to revolution.

P Of the Chartists.]

P Astley's Circus, afterwards Sanger's.]

CHAPTER XVII

EMOTIONS

Anthony John Mundella— Sheffield— Trades-Unionism — Nurs-
ing a Constituency— Election Tactics — The Party System.

AGAINST the siren voices which lured me to stand for
a seat in Parliament I stopped my ears, knowing my
total want of oratorical power, and being moreover little
disposed to run the gantlet of popular election. The
only instance in which I yielded was in the mortal
struggle for the integrity of the United Kingdom against
Gladstone and Home Rule ; and luckily for me on that
occasion I was saved by the delay of a telegram from
the consequences of my compliance, and thus cheaply
discharged my conscience as a patriot. But I enjoyed
acting as bottle-holder to a friend. Mundella 1 asked
me to be with him when he first stood for Sheffield. We
had to fight Roebuck, justly named "Tear 'em," who
having once been the most violent of Radicals had
become the most violent of those who are now called
Jingoes, the most fanatical enemy of the American
Republic, a prominent upholder of the Turk, and the
most outrageous of anti-philanthropists, advocating

P Anthony John Mundella. He was MJ?. for Sheffield from
1868 to 1885 ; and for the Brightside division of Sheffield from 1885
to 1897. The general elections referred to were held in November
and December of 1885.]

294

ELECTIONS 295

the extermination of "the wild man/' We had, as
might have been expected, an exciting time. Sheffield
in those days was the seat of trades-unionism in its most
sinister form. Not very long before had taken place the
Sheffield murders. Mundella was approached by the
most violent of the Unions. I asked him, whether he
could conscientiously give the pledges which the Union
required, and on his saying that he could not, I advised
him not to palter but to refuse point-blank, and thus,
openly breaking with the Union, to win the suffrages of
its enemies. The Government Whip, Mr. Sellar,1
through whom Mundella sent his invitation to me, had
believed we should be beaten and questioned the ex-
pediency of a contest which would send Roebuck back
to Parliament a more violent enemy to the Government
than ever. I appealed to Gladstone, who was always
for fighting. We won, and by a large majority.

At Sheffield we were opposed by the local Union.
But I was no enemy to Unions in general. On the con-
trary, I maintained that Unions in general were plainly
needed to protect the interests of the working-men
against the confederation of employers. I bore some
hard knocks in that conflict. Keeping to lawful and
proper courses, the Unions may do good in other ways
besides that of securing fair wages. To violence, intimi-
dation, or monopoly, it is needless to say, I never could
have been a friend. The Unions, if they take to those
ways, will fall into the grave of the Guilds. When I see

P Alexander Craig Sellar, M.P. from 1882 to 1888. 1835-1890.]

296 REMINISCENCES

an exulting announcement that a tradesman has been
ruined by refusal to use the Union label, it is clear that
there is something very wrong, and sure if it continues
to rouse the community to resistance. Two great
dangers are the leadership of professional agitators and
the ascendency in the Union councils of young unmar-
ried men.

I took part in several other elections besides that of
Sheffield, and saw some lively scenes; for, in spite of
reforms, elections retained traces of their old character,
and the meeting would sometimes be stormed by the
enemy. Going with my excellent friend George Brod-
rick,1 afterwards Warden of Merton, to Woodstock, I
had an opportunity of studying the protean character of
bribery, which is not exterminated by bribery laws, but
only chased from one form into another, and when sup-
pressed in the form of money takes that of blankets or
other doles. I knew a city in which, of the two seats,
one was always fiercely contested, but the other was
securely held by a man who had no political qualifica-
tions, probably took little interest in politics, and
seldom, except at elections, came near the place. He
wanted the social grade and opportunities which a seat
in the House of Commons then conferred. His method
was simple. At Christinas a large sum of money was
distributed by his local manager among the poor elec-
tors, of whom there were a good many. Not a word
was said about votes, nor was any distinction made on

P The Honourable George Charles Brodrick.]

ELECTIONS 297

that score. But the recipients were left to conclude
that the largess would continue so long as the donor
was their Member. The seat probably cost its purchaser
less than a yacht, and for his social objects the money
was well spent. At a party meeting before a general
election at which I was present, the question was raised
as to the candidacy for a particular seat. One of those
present told us that we need not trouble ourselves about
that seat; it was already booked by a local man of
wealth. I said the name surprised me, as I thought
the man took no interest in politics. "Neither does
he," was the reply. "Then why does he want the
seat? " "He does not want it." "Then why does he
take it? " "Because his wife does." I think I could
have pointed to a wealthy and titled pair whom any
Minister might have made his own by getting them an
invitation to a Court Ball. Nursing boroughs, it seems,
has now become a system. It, at all events, like bribery
of the old style, costs the State nothing, and the corrup-
tion is limited. Demagogic bribery by the sacrifice of
public interests corrupts the community at large, and
costs the State a good deal. Witness the American
Pension List.

At elections you must have mass meetings to beat
the big drum. But being attended only by your own
party, they do not bring votes. For bringing votes,
ward-meetings, with attention to the particular inter-
ests or fancies of the district, seemed more effective.
I was in England during the great fight for the Union

298 REMINISCENCES

in 1886, and being a zealous Unionist put myself at the
service of the Unionist Committee and under its aus-
pices took an active part in several elections. At one
of them I went to the Committee-Room just before the
polling day, and on asking what they were going to do
on that evening, was told that they were going to hold
a meeting in a certain quarter, in which, however, they
could not hope to get votes, the people being mechanics
or railway men who hated the Irish as competitors for
employment, and had been convinced that if Home
Rule was carried the Irish would be happy in their own
island and would stay at home. I went to the meeting ;
the evening was fine ; and the people from curiosity had
filled the hall. I opened the meeting and soon found
that I had before me an adverse audience. Then I
called to mind what I had heard in the morning. I
said that there was one question of the highest impor-
tance which seemed to me not to have received suffi-
cient attention; which policy, Home Rule or Union,
would have the greater tendency to keep the Irish at
home? I argued that Home Rule would frighten
capital away from Ireland; that employment there
would consequently be diminished, and more Irish than
ever would come over to England and particularly to
that city. This I turned backwards and forwards for
half an hour. From the moment at which I touched
that chord I was heard with attention; and though I
concluded without a cheer, I understood afterwards that
we polled a number of votes in that district, sufficient,

ELECTIONS 299

the parties being nearly balanced, to turn the election.
I may say this without breach of modesty, since the
effect was due not to my eloquence, but wholly to the
hint received in the morning, on which I mechanically
acted. Such are the things which turn popular elec-
tions.

In the campaign against Home Rule the great difficulty
and the object of my mission was to get Liberals who had
always voted Yellow to give a Blue vote on the grand
issue. At one place to which I went there was a leading
Liberal whose presence at the meeting was thought very
important, but who was hanging back. I was sent to
persuade him. He pleaded weakness which prevented
his attending a public meeting. But I noticed in the
room a young gentleman evidently listening eagerly.
I asked the gentleman whether that was his son, and
being told he was, I said, "Then perhaps he would come
to represent you." The youth eagerly caught at the
proposal, his father was caught, and we had the satis-
faction of placing the son in the front of the platform
as the representative of his father unfortunately de-
tained by ill-health.

Let me say that my experience of elections deeply
impressed me with the evils of the party system. A
great issue like that of the Union may raise it for the
moment above itself. But as a rule it is immoral and
indefensible. Chatham was trying to govern without
it when disease smote him down. Burke's attack on
Chatham's government is mere sophistry, however

300 REMINISCENCES

rhetorically brilliant. His object was to get the Rock-
ingham clique; with himself as its manager, into power.
What is the special " principle " on which he supposes
his party to be founded ? l It is nothing but a special
question with the settlement of which the moral and
rational foundation for his party will come to an end.
The eloquence of Burke is unquestionable; so is his
patriotism; so is his political wisdom when his passions
are not moved as they are to the total ruin of his
sagacity and regard for fact in his Essay on the
French Revolution.

P I think tlie reference is to "Party is a body of men united, for
promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some
particular principle in which they are all agreed." — "Thoughts on
the Cause of the Present Discontents.'! Burke's works. London :
Rivington. 1826. Vol. II, p. 335.] ,

CHAPTER XVIII

IRELAND
1862; 1881

Cardwell as Irish Secretary —The Irish People— Irish Liberals—
Crime in Ireland— Education— Social Life— Robert Lowe—
Second visit to Ireland — Lord O'Eagan— Royal visits to
Ireland— W. E. Forster— Gladstone's Irish Policy.

THE summer of 1862 1 spent in Ireland with Cardwell,1
then Irish Secretary, at The Lodge in Phcenix Park.
Of all parks that I ever saw, the Phoenix, with its view
of the Wicklow Hills, is the most beautiful. Yet it was
little frequented by the citizens of Dublin, who seemed
to prefer the streets, and left their Park in a solitude
which fitted it to be the scene of the Murders.2 Card-
well, being a Cabinet Minister, was the real ruler. The
Lord Lieutenant, Lord Carlisle,3 a most amiable and
popular man, was happy in displaying his admirable
social qualities by making the after-dinner speeches
in which, thanks to his unique flow of heartfelt flum-

p Edward Cardwell, Viscount Cardwell, Secretary to the Treas-
ury, 1845-1846; President of the Board of Trade, 1852-1855;
Secretary for Ireland, 1859-1861; Colonial Secretary, 1864^1866 ;
Secretary for war, 1868-1874. Born 1813 ; died 1886.]

p The reference is to the murder of Lord Frederick Charles Cav-
endish and Thomas Henry Burke on May the 6th, 1882.]

p George William Frederick Howard, seventh Earl of Carlisle.
1802-1864.]

301

302 REMINISCENCES

mery; he was unrivalled; and by occasionally scoring at
cricket.

The general impression, I believe, was that Cardwell
had failed as Irish Secretary. It is certain that he was
the reverse of a typical Irishman. To give him an in-
sight into Irish character I had persuaded him. before
he came over to see the "Colleen Bawn," I fear with no
good effect. But I do not believe that he failed. His
patience, industry, justice, and impartiality were ap-
preciated by the best Irishmen ; my inquiries led me to
believe that they were appreciated by the people at
large; and I came away disabused of the belief that
roistering misrule is the only thing for Ireland. That
there is a tendency of that sort in the Irish character
may be true, but it calls for an antidote, not for in-
dulgence.

On CardwelPs arrival at Dublin, a list of promises
which had been made to supporters of the Government
was laid before him. The staid English official stood
aghast when he saw how much their number exceeded
the possibilities of performance. He was told that he
need not be uneasy. A promise, even though it could
not be fulfilled, was preferred to a refusal. The angler
prefers a bite to a perfectly blank day.

I was deeply impressed with the pensive beauty of
Ireland and the weird melancholy of its relics, the
Round Towers, the Seven Churches of Glendalough,
the Hill of Cashel, the ruins of the primeval seat of
learning at Cloumacnois. With the historic pathos

IKELAND 303

mingled the comic traits of Irish character; a field with
grand iron portals and no fence; a house with three
windows and a flight of marble steps fit for a mansion ;
a magnificent chimney-piece with filthy walls; a fine
lodge with two pieces of timber laid across each
other for a gate ; excellent wines and execrable cookery.
One could faintly realize the old roaring and reckless
days. I had supposed the pig in the family to be a
satire, but found it a reality. The people in their pen-
ury were light-hearted. But I am told they are chang-
ing their mood as well as ceasing to be attached to their
social chiefs. It is said that their simplicity of character,
their love of fun, and the wit, which over-leaping itself
produced their bulls, have since these stern political
struggles been passing away, and that a more sombre
hue is coming over the whole scene.

At the time of my visit even, "ould Ireland/7 with
its factions and feuds, the relics of the clan, was hardly
extinct. Not long before, the Government had been
called upon to stop the annual faction-fight between
the two-year-olds and three-year-olds, the origin of
whose feud was lost in fabulous antiquity, but was sup-
posed to have been a dispute about the age of a steer.
In another place two factions fought annually for a
mystic stone. The magistrates, by direction of the
Government, sank the stone in the river. The two
factions combined in fishing it up, and then fought for it.
Donnybrook Fair, however, had ceased to exist.

Before I left Ireland I came distinctly to two con-

304 REMINISCENCES

elusions. One was that the Irish character, with all its
defects, its unthrift, recklessness, lawlessness, and love
of conspiracy, was largely the product of Irish history.
The other was that Irish history, with all its calamities
and horrors, was the product of untoward accident
more than of anybody's crimes. I embodied these
conclusions in an essay on "Irish History and Irish
Character"1 which, though now superseded and for-
gotten, had some novelty and some vogue at the time.
I drew my inspiration from some of the last of the
Irish Liberals, constant intercourse with whom I en-
joyed, such as Lord O'Hagan,2 Sir Alexander McDon-
nell,8 the head of the Education Department and the
organizer of national education; Dr. Russell,4 the Prin-
cipal of Maynooth, a most excellent, liberal, and lovable
man; Professor Simpson of Belfast;5 and a member
of the Catholic Hierarchy whose name has escaped my
aged memory. All these men, while they were thor-
oughly patriotic Irishmen, were firmly attached to the

P Oxford and London : J. H. and Jas. Parker. 1862.]

[2 Thomas O'Hagan, first Baron O'Hagan, Lord Chancellor of
Ireland. 1812-1885.]

P Sir Alexander McDonnell, first Baronet, Chief Clerk in the
Chief Secretary's office, in Ireland; Resident Commissioner of the
Board of Education, Ireland, 1839-1871. Born 1794; died 1875.]

P Charles Wffliam Russell. 1812-1880.]

[* So the MS. But Mr. J. M. Finnegan, Secretary of the Queen's
University of Belfast, writes to me : " I am afraid there must be
some error, as there was no Professor of this name in Queen's Col-
lege, and, as far as I can make out, none of that name in Belfast."
—Perhaps the author means the late Dr. Maxwell Simpson, F.R.S.,
who was Professor of Chemistry at Queen's College, Cork.]

IRELAND 305

Union. They desired Disestablishment, and such im-
provement in the land law as could be made without
impairing the faith of contracts, as well as certain sec-
ondary reforms, including better facilities for private-
bill legislation and perhaps for legal appeals. But
from the thought of dissolving the Union they all
recoiled; and they rebuked me if I said anything the
least tending that way.

What is certain, to my mind, is that the choice lies
between Legislative Union and Independence. A
vassal Parliament such as Gladstone proposed would
presently struggle for equality and freedom. Before
the Union, when there were two Parliaments, the con-
nection between the two islands, and the subordina-
tion of Ireland to England were maintained by undis-
guised corruption. That state of things nobody would
desire to revive. What the people wanted, as I always
believed, was the land, which had been the object of
contention in every crisis of Irish history; and had
security of tenure, like that of the English copyholder,
been given them, the political agitation, it seemed to
me, would have subsided; it never showed much force
apart from the agrarian movement. But I would not
undertake to say how far the spirit of nationality has
been evoked by the long struggle, or what concession
to it may have become unavoidable. The worst of all
policies, however, it seems to me, is Home Rule, if
Home Rule means a vassal Parliament.

Agrarian murder, in other words the war of assassi-

306 REMINISCENCES

nation against the landlords, had barely ceased. Land-
lords were too often absentees; — grinding the people
through their agents. Some of the absentee estates,
the Lansdowne estates among the number, were liber-
ally managed; but this did not make up for the absence
of the proprietor and the non-performance of his terri-
torial duties. It was said that, an agent having com-
plained to his absentee employer that his life was in
danger, the employer replied, "Tell them that they
need not think to intimidate me by shooting you."
The people were one vast agrarian conspiracy, so that
conviction was impossible. The Attorney-General
could give the Council an exact account of an agrarian
murder with the names of the murderer and of those
who had been present. But when it was proposed to
liiTn to prosecute, his answer was, that every one of the
witnesses would forswear himself, and thus his only
chance, that of getting one of them at a later day to turn
King's evidence, would be lost.

There is risk in the employment of detectives. An
agrarian murder had been committed, and a large re-
ward was offered for conviction. Part of the cartridge
was picked up and proved to be a leaf taken from a
common school-book. Suspicion fixed on a man in
the neighbourhood who kept such books for sale. A
detective got admission to the house and reported that
the book was there and that the fatal leaf was missing.
The police entered the house and brought away the
book. The proof seemed clear. But before proceed-

IBEIAND 307

ing, the Attorney-General suggested a reference to the
publisher of the book. The publisher's reply was that
it was the right book, but not the right edition. The
detective had torn the leaf out of the book which he
found in the house of the suspected man to get a con-
viction and pocket the reward.

I visited Dr. Russell at Maynooth, and witnessed
the perfection of that system of mental drill and of
isolation from every breath of free opinion by which,
carried on through a course of seven years, an Irish
peasant is turned into a priest with no ideas but those
instilled by authority, and no aspiration but devotion
to his Church. The text-book was Suarez, even the
comparatively liberal Aquinas being disused. When,
to such a training, celibacy and corporate influence was
superadded, it was easy to understand how the Church
kept so complete a hold on her clergy and why apostasy
was so rare. Sir Alexander McDonnell and all my
Protestant friends bore emphatic testimony to the
purity of the Irish priesthood.

A peasant clergy sympathized with the peasantry in
political and agrarian struggles. The Hierarchy,
mingling socially with the upper classes, were more
conservative, and it seemed to me would have dis-
countenanced Fenianism altogether if they had not
been dependent on their people for their incomes.
The policy of payment, ascribed to Pitt, would no doubt
have had its effect. The people, however, could keep
their secrets from the priesthood. Dr. Russell told

308 REMINISCENCES

me that they had no idea they had any Fenians in the
village of Maynooth till, one of the abortive risings
having taken place, a number left the village to join it.

At the time of my visit the issue was national educa-
tion, which afforded a field for the liberalism of Bishop
Moriarty 1 and Catholics of his school. Of the Catholic
laity not a few were at heart with the Government.
Some would come up the back stairs and promise their
support so long as the Government showed perfect
respect for their Church.

The religious war between Catholics and Protestants
was not over. The two denominations of Christians
were still breaking each other's heads at Belfast.
Protestant challenges to controversy uncomplimentary
to the Virgin and the Saints were posted on the walls.
In making up dinner-parties at The Lodge it was neces-
sary to take care how members of the hostile Churches
were confronted with each other.

The mainstay of order was the Constabulary, a noble
body of men, whether the policy of which they were the
bodyguard was wise or not. The Constabulary was
Protestant ; but the ordinary police was largely Roman
Catholic. Yet it was trustworthy; loyalty to the corps
prevailing over religious feeling. The Irishman seems
to be fond of Government service and faithful to its
uniform.

There were some relics of the old convivial days. At
the dinner parties in the Vice-regal Lodge, when the
I1 David Moriarty, Bishop of Kerry. 1814-1877.]

IRELAND 309

ladies left the room, the servants remained; and as soon
as you put down your glass they refilled it. I thought
I saw some effects of this generous hospitality.

The Horse Fair at Ballinasloe disappointed me. So
did not the Cashel steeplechases, to see which I unsenti-
mentally gave up Killarney. Tipperary trooped into
Cashel with its swallow-tail coats of frieze, its tall hats,
and shillelahs. The races were excellent, and the course
was so chosen that from a rising ground you could see
them well. The enthusiasm of the people was delight-
ful. Mounted police were riding about to keep order,
and late in the day there seemed to be some need of
them. Has the chilling influence of politics now been
cast over the race-course at Cashel ?

There were guests at The Lodge in Phoenix Park,
among them was Sir John Lawrence,1 afterwards
Governor-General of India, in all the simplicity of true
greatness. I asked his opinion of the competition-
wallahs, the nickname given to the civil servants
appointed under the then new system of competitive
examination. Of all men I thought he was the least
likely to put literary above practical qualifications.
He gave sentence, however, in favour of the wallahs,
saying that when another officer of Government wrote
to him about them in a disparaging strain, his reply
was, that he would be glad to exchange.

Robert Lowe, afterwards Lord Sherbrooke,2 was

I1 Afterwards Baron Lawrence. 1811-1879.1

p Robert Lowe, first Viscount Sherbrooke, a politician in New
South Wales, 1843-1850 ; M.P. in England, 1852-1874; held many
high political posts. Born 1811; died 1892.]

310 REMINISCENCES

there for some time with his wife. Him I had already
known well. There is a memoir of him written under
the auspices of the second wife/ whose affection soothed
his spirit in his old age. The fame of the man who
made the last great stand in favour of middle-class
government against democracy can hardly have died
away. It was not for aristocracy that he fought;
though an intense aristocrat of intellect, he was in
nothing else aristocratic; but for government by the
educated against government by the masses. He
had perhaps seen the rough side of democracy in New
South Wales, where for some years he had practised
Law at a time before the convict taint had been thor-
oughly worked off. I forget whether it was he or one
of his friends who at a Ball at Government House had
the misfortune to tread upon and tear the gorgeous
dress of a lady. The fair wearer turned upon the cul-
prit with an expression of her wounded feelings which
cannot with any approach to decency be repeated.
It was a bitter moment for Robert Lowe when, Glad-
stone's Reform Bill having been thrown out mainly by
his efforts, and the Liberal Ministry having thus been
overturned, Disraeli brought in a Bill 2 not less demo-
cratic than that of Gladstone, and the Conservative

P This must refer to the "Life and Letters of the Right Honour-
able Robert Lowe Viscount Sherbrooke, G.C.B., D.C.L., etc. With
a Memoir of Sir John Coape Sherbrooke, C.G.B., Sometime Gov-
ernor-General of Canada." By A. Patchett Martin. London:
Longmans, Green, and Co., 1893 ; for it is dedicated to Caroline,
Viscountess Sherbrooke.]

p March 18, 1867.]

IRELAND 311

rank and file, who had rapturously applauded Lowe's
anti-democratic speeches, sat, under the rod of party
discipline, sullenly supporting the Bill and deaf to the
passionate appeals which Lowe made to them. It
was said that he was moved to tears.

Lowe was an albino, with eyes so weak that when he
was reading his nose literally touched his book. He
took high honours at Oxford, and it is said would have
taken higher if he had not rubbed out with big nose
what he had written with his pen. Yet I have been
driven by him in a phaeton at a rattling pace through
crowded streets.

In public, Lowe affected a utilitarian contempt for
classical education; in private he was always reading
the classics. When I was staying with him at Cater-
ham he asked me what I thought was the best history
of the Roman Republic. I told him Mommsen's,1
which had just appeared. A few days afterwards an
editorial in a leading newspaper for which he wrote
began, "In Mr. Thompson's history of the Roman
Republic, which appears to us to be the best." I
wonder whether booksellers received orders for the
book !

Lowe was the most naturally and spontaneously
brilliant talker that I ever knew. Other great talkers
wanted an audience. Lowe did not. He was not less

[l " Romische Gesehichte." By Theodor Mommsen. AD Eng-
lish translation (in five volumes) was made by the Rev. William P.
Dickson, and published by Richard Bentley, London, in 1867.1

312 REMINISCENCES

likely to say a good thing to you as you sat by him on
the driving-box than to say it to the most appreciative
circle. Touch him when you would, he gave out the
electric spark. His talk was rather cynical and sar-
donic in form; but he was not really a cynic; he was
a Democritus who laughed at the world ; though rather
too impatient of honest stupidity. "Look at that
fool throwing away his natural advantages!" he
exclaimed when a deaf member of the House of Com-
mons put up his ear trumpet.

Mrs. Lowe was a fat, good-natured lady, clever in
her way, for she painted well, and an excellent wife,
but rather a joke among her friends. Her husband,
though he loved her dearly, sometimes could not help
making fun of her. One morning at breakfast he was
railing in his dashing way at the marriage service of the
Church of England: "It made me" — turning to his
wife — "say ' With all my worldly goods I thee endow,7
when I had no worldly goods to endow you with."

"Ah! Robert; but then there were your brains."

"Well, all the world knows I did not endow you with
them."

Spreading his arms to help her spacious person down
from a jaunting-car, he exclaimed, "Descend, ye Nine ! "
Combative he certainly was, and he had at least his
fair share of foes. The "Whitehead torpedo" was his
nickname.1 A party of us, including the old Lord

P "Lord Beaoonsfield's mind being now exclusively turned upon
military matters, there has occurred to him a new and happy name

IRELAND 313

Chancellor Cranworth,1 went to see Powerscourt water-
fall. Our cars brought us back to the station some
time before the arrival of the train. To fill up the time
Lowe said, "Let us have a row with the car-men about
the fare.77 A row it actually became, and the Lord
Chancellor looked the picture of dismay. Lowe prized
intellect above all things, in others and in himself. At
the time when his own powerful mind was giving way,
and had painfully betrayed its decadence in the House
of Commons, we met at an Academy dinner. Lowe
took me to see a picture at which he had just been look-
ing and admired. He failed to identify it, and he burst
into tears.

Twenty years afterwards2 I was in Ireland again,
presiding over a section of the Social Science Associa-
tion at Dublin. This time I was the guest of my friend
the ex-Chancellor, Lord O'Hagan. If the Irish ques-
tion could only have been put into the hands of a few
men like him for quiet settlement, instead of being made
the prey of demagogism and the football of party,
how much better would the result have been, and how
much less the public morality and the faith of contracts
have suffered in the process !

Lord O'Hagan's political saint was Arthur O'Leary,3

for his old adversary, Lowe. He alludes to him in private conver-
sation as 'The Whitehead Torpedo.*" — "A Diary of Two Parlia-
ments." By Henry W. Lucy. The Disraeli Parliament. 1874-
1880. Second edition. Cassell and Co. 1885. Under date April 16,
1878.]

^ Robert Monsey Rolfe, Baron Cranworth. 1790-1868.]

P October, 1881.] [3 Irish priest and politician. 1729-1802.]

314 REMINISCENCES

whose portrait hung in his study, and whose policy was
union with justice. It has recently been discovered
that O'Leary was in communication with the Govern-
ment, and received money from it. This would have
been a shock to O'Hagan. But there is no reason to
suspect the sincerity of O'Leary's convictions or to
reverse any opinion as to the soundness of his views.
Nothing that has transpired warrants us in calling him
a spy.

There was no excuse for the neglect of Ireland by
the Court during the late reign.1 The Queen, when
she paid a brief visit, was received as enthusiastically
as she could desire. That the probable effect of her
presence has been somewhat overrated is not unlikely,
but her persistent absence was felt as a standing affront.
Royalty must be charitably judged, since it is inevitably
nursed in delusion. The claims of duty are never
brought home to it. It is made to feel by flattery that
the gratification of its own whims is a public duty.
There was, however, in this case an uneasy conscious-
ness of the omission. I believe I heard it on good
authority that an Irish Lord-in- Waiting who had rashly
touched the tender point received a message which
caused him to resign.

At the close of the Convention I had to propose a
vote of thanks to a scientific society which had given
us a breakfast in the Phoenix Park. I said that the
Phoenix Park seemed to me by its beauty to be not less

p That is, the reign of Queen Victoria.]

IRELAND 315

worthy of the occasional residence of Royalty than
Osborne or Balmoral. The sentiment was cheered.
In the evening there was a banquet at the Mansion
House at which the Lord-Mayor echoed what I had
said in the morning. Prince Teek,1 who was a guest,
followed suit, with a strong expression of his regret
that the Royal family did not come more to Ireland;
"and why they do not, I don't know why." This of
course made a sensation, and was echoed by the morn-
ing papers. The Prince then knew that he had of-
fended, and an attempt to mop him up was made, I
believe, in one of the evening papers, but with the
usual result. Presently out came a long editorial,
evidently inspired, in the TimeSj taking me, poor inno-
cent as I was, to task for having given expression to
what was called the paradoxical notion that it would
be a good thing for the Court to visit Ireland, and
demonstrating by arguments which seemed to me
rather paradoxical that such a step would be most
unwise. Afterwards the Prince of Wales 2 referred to
the question in a public speech, though in language per-
fectly kind towards his old teacher, showing thereby
how sore the subject was.

Among the Company at O'Hagan's was a very pleas-
ant and well-informed man whom I did not know,
but who, I afterwards learned, was a leading writer in

I1 H. S. H. Francis Paul diaries Louis Alexander, Prince and
Duke of Teck, son of Duke Alexander of Wurtemberg, born 1837.
Father of Her Majesty, our present Queen.]

P Afterwards King Edward VII.]

316 REMINISCENCES

the Times. As he and I strolled in the grounds one
morning, our conversation turned on the subject of
the Royal neglect of Ireland, and I spoke of George IV's
visit as a redeeming point in his unedifying career.
My companion heartily concurred. It may have been
my fancy, but I thought that in the editorial taking the
other side I identified a phrase which had been used
in that morning's conversation.

This was the time of the struggle with Parnell and
his Nationalist following. Things had come to such a
pass that some who did not sympathize with the League
were joining it to obtain for their callings the protec-
tion which the Queen's Government could no longer
afford. The Irish Secretary and the occupant of The
Lodge was another friend of mine, W. E. Forster/ an
able, honest, solid, and most industrious, though rather
uncouth man, who, it was thought, with a little grace
and polish might have achieved to the highest place.
In grace and polish, however, he was totally wanting.
I have seen him in speaking stand for some time on
one leg holding up a glass of water in one hand as if
he were going to drink it to the health of the audience,
He was fighting the Parnellites with a Coercion Bill
in hourly danger of assassination, as was subsequently
proved.

I wrote something in defence of Forster's application
of the Coercion Act, saying that one of three things

P William Edward Forster ; liberal M.P. for Bradford, 1861-
1886 ; held several Hgli political posts. 1818-1886.]

IRELAND 317

had to be done; either the Coercion Act must be
applied; or the troops must fire; or the Queen's
Government in Ireland, as it could no longer protect
people in their lawful callings, must resign. Forster
soon after came over to England. When we met he
thanked me for my defence of him, but said that a dif-
ferent policy had prevailed. From his tone I augured
that he was about to resign, as a day or two afterwards
he did.

Peel, when he changed, averred his change, and gave
credit to those who had converted him. Gladstone
set his retrospective imagination at work to make out
that he had always been consistent. If, as he pre-
tended in his "History of an Idea," * his mind had many
years before been turning towards Home Rule, how
could he justify himself in continuing to lead the nation
on what he had begun to suspect was a wrong line, in
denouncing Parnell as "wading through rapine to dis-
memberment "; in proclaiming his arrest to a shouting
multitude at Guildhall; in throwing him and his fol-
lowers into prison; above all in allowing his own col-
leagues, especially his Home Secretary, to rise at his
side night after night and denounce the Home Rule
movement and its leader in most scathing terms?
Is it possible by any stretch of charity to doubt that
Gladstone's failure in 1885 to obtain a majority inde-
pendent of the Parnellites was the proximate cause of
his sudden accession to Home Rule? That he should

P Published in August, 1886J

318 REMINISCENCES

have persuaded himself of the contrary is only one of
the many proofs that his power of self-deception was
unbounded. It is not less true that his emotions were
generous and that his enthusiasm when once he had
espoused any cause was perfectly real.

CHAPTER XIX

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
1861-1865

Secession— Its True Character— Lincoln's View— The Alabama
Claim — Attitude of the British Government — British Liberals
— Visits to the United States — Friends in the United States —
J. M. Forbes— Emerson— Lowell— Bancroft —The Attitude
of the North — Finance — General Butler — The Opposing
Forces — General Grant — Sherman— General Meade — Lee —
General Butler again— Washington— Seward— Abraham Lincoln.

IN 1861 came Secession, and what was taken to be
the death-knell of the American Republic. The
aristocratic and wealthy classes in England generally,
exulting in the downfall of democracy, at once em-
braced the side of the South. A short time before
they had given an ovation to the authoress of "Uncle
Tom's Cabin." But that was when slavery was the
reproach of the Republic.

Classes will be classes. The success of American
democracy had always been a threat to aristocracy in
England. But the people in England generally would
not have been without excuse if they had gone wrong.
Slavery was accursed; it was under the ban of human-
ity; England had made great efforts and sacrifices
for its extinction. Its extension, which would probably
have ensued on the slave-owners' victory, would have

319

320 BEMINISCENCES

been the bane of moral civilization. On this account,
and on this account only, was any one bound to take
the side of the North. With a war for the reconquest
of a new-born nation, severed from the Northern States
by a natural line of cleavage after a long period of
internal strife, we should in no way have been called
upon to sympathize. But on slavery Congress, Lin-
coln, and Seward had disclaimed any intention of
making war, and Congress had offered to perpetuate
its constitutional existence if the Slave States would
return to the Union. We who took the side of the
North had to contend that the formal was not the prac-
tical issue, and to make the masses see this was not easy,
especially when the masses, by the cutting off of cot-
ton, were being stinted of their bread. Mr. Spence,1 in
his cunning book, had propagated the notion that the
real issue was economical, and that the South was for
Free Trade ; as it was, though not from enlightenment,
but because slavery could not manufacture. Cobden,
as I have said, wavered at first, though he soon came
round to the truth. Bright came out at once for the
North, and delivered in St. James's Hall the best speech
I ever heard. All things considered, the conduct of
the British people was surely good. The partisans of

p James Spence, of Liverpool. "The American Union; its
Effect on National Character and Policy, with an Inquiry into
Secession as a Constitutional Right, and the Causes of the Disrup-
tion." London. 1861. — Also, " On the Recognition of the Southern
Confederation." London. 1862. — Also "Southern Independence :
an Address." London : Bentley. 1863.]

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 321

the South, though they spat a good deal of fire and
had the mighty Times on their side, never ventured,
in Parliament or elsewhere, to make a decided move in
favour of intervention. Lincoln, with all his wisdom
and goodness of heart, never took — or at least never
showed that he took — a right view of the case with
which he had to deal ; if he had, perhaps there would
have been no war. He viewed and treated as a rebel-
lion that which was in fact a natural disruption, post-
poned for some time by uneasy shifts and compromises,
but inevitable in the end. This same error pervaded
Reconstruction. It led to the fatal exclusion of the
Southern leaders from the work of Reconstruction, to
Carpet-bagging government, to the Ku-Klux, and to
the almost desperate situation which has ensued. It
is true that Lincoln's personal character and history-
were, to those who knew them, a pledge for the adop-
tion of the antislavery policy if victory rested with his
party; but by us in England Lincoln's character and
history were unknown, and his official utterances were
naturally taken as decisive.

The great writers having generally gone with their
class, my pen was in requisition on the side of the North.
It is true, as J. M. Forbes is recorded in his daughter's
Memoir 1 of him to have noted, that I somewhat hesi-
tated at first. It seemed hardly our business to fan
the flame of civil war in another nation. But I also

[* " Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes." Edited
by Ms Daughter, Sarah Forbes Hughes. Boston and New York:
Houghton Mifflin Co. 1899. Volume II, page 108.J

322 REMINISCENCES

felt a doubt, which in the sequel has proved not base-
less, about the policy of reincorporating the Slavs
States. The first ground of hesitation was removed by
the efforts of the South to draw us into the quarrel.
The second was swept away by the progress of the war,
which left us practically to choose between the victory
of freedom and that of slavery.

My first appearance on a platform was at a great
meeting in the Free Trade Hall at Manchester, called,
upon the escape of the Alabama, to protest against the
fitting out of cruisers for the South. The meeting was
called by the Union League, an organization at the
head of which was Thomas Potter,1 one of the leaders
of Manchester commerce, and a brand plucked from
the burning; for Manchester magnates generally leant
to the other side. At that moment we were seriously
alarmed. Other cruisers were being built in Laird;s
yard, and a party, of which the present Lord Salisbury,2
then Lord Robert Cecil, was an active member, were
working to prevent their arrest. Too strong language
was used by me and others at that crisis. When all
was known, the Government was seen to have been
guilty only of allowing the papers to lie too long before
the Queen's Advocate, who it did not know had been
suddenly stricken with illness. The order for the arrest
of the Alabama was on its way when she sailed, without

P Thomas Bayley Potter. 1817-1898.]

P This, of course, refers to the third Marquess of Salisbury,
father of the present Marquess.]

AMERICAN CIVIL^WAR 323

a clearance, on a pretended trip of pleasure. She
took on board her armament from a tender at the
Azores. There was one seaman of the Reserve in her
crew, but Government had no general control over the
engagements of those men. Allowance must be made
for a Government responsible for very scattered pos-
sessions and exposed for four years to the strain of
maintaining a neutrality which the South was always
trying to break. Nations which, instead of settling
their differences by negotiation or arbitration, disturb
the neighbourhood by going to war, must be content
with reasonable maintenance of an honest neutrality.
The Government of the United States had no shadow
of justification for making war on Spain other than the
trouble to which it was put in maintaining the neutrality
between the Spaniards and the insurgent Cubans,
though the enforcement was not very strict, filibuster-
ing expeditions having escaped, and Cuban revolution
having been allowed freely to operate at New York.
I was glad when the indemnities were paid by the Brit-
ish Government, because the payment plucked out a
thorn. But I doubt whether they were due ; I feel sure
that, in any case but that of the Alabama, they were
not.

I lived with those who could not be misinformed, and
my conviction is that the British Government remained
throughout unshaken in its neutrality, and never for
a moment gave ear either to the solicitations of the
South or to the promptings of the Emperor of the

324 REMINISCENCES

French. Palmerston was a Tory, and his heart may
have been with the Southern oligarchy. On the
Trent affair he drafted a despatch, instinct with his
overbearing temper, which was happily modified by
the Prince Consort. But he was deeply pledged to the
extinction of slavery. About the course of the Duke
of Argyll, Cornewall Lewis, or Cardwell, there could
be no doubt. Of Gladstone's course and his motives
for it I have already spoken. In him there may have
been a tincture of Liverpool.1 But he sympathized
with all struggles for independence. In a letter to me
he suggested that if the North would let the South go,
Canada might afterwards be allowed to enter the Union.
I suppressed the letter, which I thought would be of
little use at the time and might afterwards do Tivm harm.
Though he said, and had the fact on his side in saying,
that Jeff Davis had made a nation, it did not follow
that he voted for intervention in the Cabinet. I feel
sure that he did not. For mediation the British Gov-
ernment was always ready, as well it might be, con-
sidering the loss and suffering to which the war was
exposing its people.

The British Government was upbraided for recogniz-
ing the belligerency of the South. Did not the North
from the outset recognize the belligerency of the South
and treat its soldiers as entitled to all the laws, human-
ities, and courtesies of war ? It called the South rebels ;

[l Robert Bauis JenMnson, second Earl of Liverpool. 1770-
1828.]

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 325

but did it, during the war; ever treat a single South-
erner as a rebel ?

Had the French Emperor chosen, in pursuance of
his own designs, to intervene on the side of the South,
England could not have been permitted to intervene
on the side of the North. The opposition would have
been far too strong. It is not unlikely that the North
owed a good deal to the attitude of Russia, whatever
the motive of that attitude may have been.

At this critical time we were unlucky in our Foreign
Minister. Lord Russell's diplomatic manner was as
bad as possible. It was haughty, unconciliatory, and
brusque. His appointment to the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs was a striking instance of the tendency of party
Government, in distributing the high offices among
the party leaders, to put the square man in the round
hole. He apologized for his want of courtesy frankly,
but late. We were lucky, on the other hand, in having,
as the American Ambassador, Mr. Adams,1 whose bear-
ing throughout was excellent, and who, to the pride of
aristocracy, could oppose the dignity of an illustrious
line, Mr. Adams' temper must have been tried. He
certainly was not exposed during those years to the
social allurements, under the sweet but emasculating
influence of which American Ambassadors to England
are apt to fall.

In the course of the struggle I spent some pleasant

f1 Charles Francis Adams, United States Minister to England.
1861-1868.]

326 REMINISCENCES

days with Thomas Potter at his house, Buel Hill, near
Manchester, and enjoyed the advantage of seeing the
life of a great centre of industry and of intercourse
with Manchester men. Potter in those days was very
opulent. His grapery was famous, and on New Year's
Day we eat the grapes of the old and those of the new
year off the same dish. He stood nearly alone among
the magnates of Manchester on the side of the North.
With most of them Cotton was King.

My acquaintance with the land of manufactures
extended. I saw a good deal of it at Bradford, as the
guest of my very dear friends Robert and Samuel Kell,1
and afterwards at Rochdale, where Bright's home and
works were, Nottingham, and Leeds. Machinery has
added vastly to the wealth, would we could say with
confidence to the happiness, of the world. Factory
hands are human hammers and spindles ; they can feel
no interest in their work; they do not even see it in its

p Robert and Samuel Kell were prosperous cloth, manufacturers
of Bradford, their firm's name being Sehwann, Kell, and Company.
Mr. Frederic Harrison tells me that they were "ardent Radicals,
Free Church and Social Reform enthusiasts ; men of great weight
and high character amongst the Yorkshire Reformers of the sixties
and seventies; stout supporters of Edward Miall, Alfred Dling-
worth, etc." — Samuel Copeland Kell, the elder brother, was born
in 1812 and died at Bradford on May the 20th, 1869 ; Robert died on
December the 13th, 1894. They were sons of the Rev. Robert Kell,
a Unitarian minister. The Bradford Observer of December the 14th,
1894, contains a long and sympathetic obituary notice of Robert,
who seems to have been the more prominent and influential. —
For much of this information I am indebted to widespread inquiries

AFRICAN CIVIL WAR 327

finished state ; their abodes are dismal ; their lives are
monotonous. They can hardly be blamed either for
addiction to sensual enjoyments or for readiness to
listen to any Karl Marx who tells them that they ought
to have more pay. Socially they are quite cut off
from their employers, whose mansions, perhaps, in
their Sunday stroll in the suburbs, they see with no
friendly eye. Anything that could create a feeling of
partnership between employer and employed would be
the greatest of blessings, but nothing in that way as yet
seems to have had much success. The master looks
for his gains to the future; the mechanic wants his
wages to-day.

Saltaire,1 in which I for a time held an honorary
office, was not successful. It was furnished apparently
with everything that could make its denizens happy.
But they kicked against every restriction and seemed
to feel that they were not free. It was the same with
Pullman, the model factory village near Chicago.
Some sort of partnership giving the men an interest
in their work seems alone likely to be the cure.

In 1864, when the war was drawing to a close, I
paid a visit to the United States charged with the
sympathy of Bright, Cobden, and other British friends
of the North as a little antidote to the venom of the
too powerful Times. I was desired at the same time
to report on the real state of affairs. Those were the

p A little socialistic town in the West Riding of Yorkshire three
miles from Bradford, founded by Sir Titus Salt in 1853.]

328 REMINISCENCES

days before the cable, and we were still imperfectly
informed, especially on the vital question whether the
West was acting heartily with the North or, as the
friends of the South averred, was a reluctant partner in
the struggle. I was also curious to see the Civil War.

The first thing that struck me was that there was
no civil war to be seen. The war was between two
nations, formed by an inevitable disruption, and in
the Northern, which was the invading nation, though
war was visibly on foot, and all minds and papers were
full of it, life was undisturbed. In the Border States
alone, which were the borderland between freedom
and slavery, was there anything like Civil War. Social
intercourse, therefore, went on as pleasantly as usual,
and my enjoyment of it was complete.

My introductions were very helpful to me. I saw
and heard all that there was to be seen or heard, and
met eminent men not a few. I landed at Boston, after
what was thought a good passage of thirteen days,
under the kind command of Captain Anderson, who
afterwards laid the Atlantic Cable. I was at the
Tremont Hotel. The card was sent up to me of Mr.
Loring,1 the name of a U. E. Loyalist family connected
with my family by marriage.2 The parlour of the hotel

P Charles Loring, a weU-kmrwn member of the Boston Bar.
Born in Boston, 1794; an orator and an author. Died in 1868.]

P Ann Smith, sister of Dr. Richard Pritchard Smith (Goldwin
Smith's father), married Major Robert Loring on the 19th of July,
1828. They sailed for Canada on August the 26th of the same
year.]

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 329

I found full of people, among whom I at once identified
Mr. Loring by his striking likeness to my connections.
Going up to him, I thanked him for his call; which I
presumed had been made at the suggestion of my
relatives. To my surprise, he had never heard of them.
The family had been divided by the Revolution, the
Whig branch remaining at Boston, the Tory branch
emigrating to Canada. So lasting are family features.
I afterwards saw in the house of Commissioner Loring
at Washington what I should at once have taken for
the portrait of my cousin had I not been told that it
was the beautiful Mrs. Loring who won the heart of
General Howe. I was once introduced to a Cecil
whose likeness to my old comrade1 on the Saturday
was so strong as to make me say that introduction was
almost needless. He replied that he was not of the
Salisbury but of the Exeter branch of Cecil, and that
there had been no intermarriage between the branches
since the time of Elizabeth.

My friendships are, saving my marriage, the great
events of my life ; and of my friendships none is more
dear than that with Charles Eliot Norton,2 who was my
host, more than hospitable, at Cambridge. He com-
bined the highest European culture with the most
fervent love of his own country. That his patriotism

[l Lord Robert Cecil, afterwards third Marquess of Salisbury.]
[2 Charles Eliot Norton, born at Cambridge, Mass., in 1827 ;
editor (with J. R. Lowell) of the North American Review from
1864 to 1868; Professor of History at Harvard University; author
of many works. Died October the 21st, 1908.]

330 REMINISCENCES

was of the best brand he has since shown by doing his
best to save his country from the gulf of Imperialist
folly and wickedness towards which evil men have been
dragging her.1 Other Boston friends, never to be for-
gotten, were Mr. Charles Loring above mentioned, and
Mr. J. M. Forbes,2 both of whom showed how in a Re-
public a man might be a great citizen without being a
professional politician. Of this, Mr. Forbes especially
was a striking example. He was one of the leaders
of Boston commerce. He went as an informal envoy
of the North to England during the war. He did not
go into politics, which, as they are managed, would have
been repellent to his honest and generous nature; but
he did go with all his heart and soul into every great
public cause. Whenever public good was to be pro-
moted or public evil to be combated, he exerted him-
self with an ardour which could not have been exceeded
if a Prime Ministership or a Dukedom had been his
prize. He was a great citizen; a character within the
reach of some who could not succeed in politics if they
would and would not if they could. Forbes was one of
the liveliest and most entertaining of hosts and com-
panions. Bright were the days I spent with him in
his house with his family circle at Milton Hill or at
his hunting-box in the island of Naushon. He had a

t1 Referring, I suppose, to tlie American war with Spain, and the
annexation of the Philippines.]

p John Murray Forbes, born in 1813, engaged in mercantile pur-
suits, ship-building, and in railway and financial interests ; died in
1898.]

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 331

deer forest on the island of Naushon, where I shot a
deer. I did not kill it ; it had to be killed, and I never
would shoot another. Under Mr. Forbes' roof I met
Emerson. I of course looked with interest on a man
whose name and influence were so great. Emerson's
character was undoubtedly fine and his influence was
very good. But I cannot honestly say that I ever got
much from his writings. I can find no system; I
find only aphorisms ; an avalanche, as it were, of uncon-
nected pebbles of thought, some of them transparent,
some translucent, some to me opaque. Carlyle intro-
duced Emerson to the British public as one who brought
new fire from the empyrean. But the two men in
genius were leagues apart, and Carlyle at last found the
new fire a bore. George Venables, calling one evening
on Carlyle at Chelsea, found himself received with
extraordinary warmth, the reason of which Mrs. Car-
lyle explained by exclaiming, "Oh, we were afraid it
was Emerson." I heard Emerson lecture. Now and
then he shot a telling bolt. The rest of his discourse
to me was almost darkness. I heard him read his
own poetry aloud, but it remained as obscure to me
as before. Certain, however, it is that, by whatever
means, he was inspiring and an elevating influence in
his day; which was the critical time, when, New Eng-
land Puritanism having lost its power, there was press-
' ing need of something to maintain spiritual life. Long-
fellow also I met, of course, with interest, and he was
most attractive as a man, though I can hardly credit

332 REMINISCENCES

him with anything more than sweetness as a poet.
Bryant lives by his "Waterfowl," and almost by that
alone. Poe had poetic genius if he had only taken
more care of it and of himself. Excepting him, can it
be said that America has produced a poet? Perhaps
America might ask whether at this time there is such a
thing as a true poet in the world.

Lowell; whom I also met, was in those days very
anti-British. We could not greatly complain, if the
feeling of the ruling class in England was taken to be
that of the nation, and resented as such. The Tijnes,
from its immense ascendency as a journal, was naturally
regarded as the great organ of British opinion, and
nothing could be more galling to American patriotism
than its attacks. From their English visitor the cour-
tesy of the Americans concealed any feeling they might
have against his country. However, among the best of
them there was still a lurking affection for the old land,
and sorrow rather than anger at her defection from the
good cause. At Mr. Loring's on Thanksgiving Day,
our host, though one at least of his family was a soldier
on the Northern side, gave as a toast "The President
of the United States and the Queen of England."

Pleasant and instructive too were the days which
I spent with Bancroft,1 the historian, in his Newport

[l George Bancroft, the American historian, statesman, and diplo-
matist; tutor of Greek at Harvard ; Secretary of the Navy, 1845-
1846 ; United States Minister to England, 1846-1849 ; Minister at
Berlin, 1867-1874. Wrote a " History of the United States " in ten
volumes. Born in 1800 ; died 1891.]

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 333

villa. He had been long in public life, and had known
Jackson, whom he described, to my surprise, as mild
by nature and putting himself into a rage only when
it would serve a purpose, I went with Bancroft to a
festival at Brown University in Providence. The ban-
quet was in a marquee; there was a high wind; the
canvas flapped; and the speeches could not be heard.
I was green enough not to foresee that I should
be called upon for a speech. Otherwise the speech
would have been written. Called upon I was, and
when I had done a reporter told me that I had been
inaudible, and asked me for my notes. I had no notes
to give him. The boat was waiting. The reporter
made a speech for me which I dare say was better than
my own, but certainly was not my own, and took me
considerably aback when I read it in the paper next
morning. The demand for speeches, which I was by
nature wholly incapable of supplying, was the one
serious drawback of my American tour.

With Bancroft I renewed my acquaintance at Wash-
ington in his last days, and made up his whist-table.
As a politician he was said to have rather overrated
democracy and too much idolized "the dear people."
His " History of the United States" is in somewhat Fourth
of July style, as was to be expected in that day; but
it is a considerable work; easy reading, and not unfair
or in bad taste for its time.

Any doubt as to the hearty participation of the
Western States in the struggle for the Union was soon

334 REMINISCENCES

set at rest. If the North had hung back, the West
would have gone on. By the stalwart yeomen of the
Western States under Grant the tide was first turned
in favour of the North and victory was in the end
mainly won. Patriotic enthusiasm and the spirit of
self-sacrifice were certainly intense and general. The
national character at that time rose to a moral height
which has not since been sustained. The Republican
party, as a body, remains the same, with the name
unchanged. But how changed is the spirit! How
unlike is this league of log-rolling monopolists to the
patriot democracy headed by Lincoln in the days of
the War!

It was for the Union rather than against slavery
that the North in general appeared to me to be fighting.
When the people were asked the cause, the usual an-
swer was "to uphold the law." Slavery was the object
of hostility chiefly because it was the cause of disrup-
tion. This was the case especially with the officers of
the army, among whom the feeling against slavery
was not strong. It was partly a sense of this, I believe,
which caused Lincoln to hesitate in proclaiming eman-
cipation. Garrison,1 on the other hand, and the thor-
ough-going Abolitionists before the war would have
been glad to renounce the "covenant with hell" and
let the Slave States go. This, however, was Garrison's

P William Lloyd Garrison, born in 1805 ; a printer and journalist ;
founder of the first Abolition Society; President of the American
Anti-Slavery Society. Died in 1879.]

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 335

hour of victory after a life of devotion and martyrdom.
Soon he was to stand at Charleston triumphant at the
grave of Calhoun. A sudden change is a shock, even
though it be from persecution to popularity. When
a complimentary watch was presented to Garrison, he
said that he felt at a loss for appropriate words ; had it
been a rotten egg, he would have known exactly what
to say. Other men probably have had the same feeling.
It seemed to me that at the North generally there
was a remarkable absence of truculence. The deter-
mination was fixed to subdue the South and restore
the Union. But I heard few expressions of thirst for
revenge such as were heard the other day from Loyalists
at Cape Town.1 Prisoners of war were well treated.
I visited the prison-camp at Chicago and saw that its
inmates were well fed and were suffering no hardships
beyond that of confinement. If they died under im-
prisonment, it was as the caged eagle dies. I visited
the prisoners' hospital at Baltimore, went through
every part of it, and satisfied myself that the treatment
was good. My visit was unannounced. On Thanks-
giving Day the table was spread with the good things
of the season. I record this as an answer to the charges
of cruelty rife at the time in England. It was the more
notable as the treatment of Federal prisoners in some
of the Confederate prisons was known to be most
inhuman. In the Andersonville prison-camp it was
devilish, and such as no want of resources on the part

p An allusion, of course, to the Boer war.]

336 REMINISCENCES

of the captors could excuse. I saw at Annapolis the
first batch of prisoners exchanged from Andersonville.
They were living skeletons. I put my finger and thumb
round the upper part of a large man's arm. It must
be said that Grant was partly responsible, if, as was
understood, he refused to exchange prisoners. No
laws of war surely can warrant the retention of prisoners
whom a captor cannot feed. They ought to be released
on parole.

Nor did it seem to me that internal repression was
carried by the Washington Government beyond the
real necessities of the case, considering that there was
at the North a party openly sympathizing with the
South and doing its best to weaken the arm of Govern-
ment in the war. Great liberty was allowed to the
press, and the elections were perfectly free. I was at
Boston at the time of the second election of Lincoln.
Party feeling of course ran very high, yet the Demo-
cratic minority was allowed without molestation to
hold its meetings, hang out its banners across the
street, and march in its torchlight processions. Nor
on that day was there serious disturbance, so far as I
could learn, in any one of the Northern States. When
the Irish rose against the draft in New York and filled
the city with murderous outrage, they no doubt were
ruthlessly put down.

Even social ties were less broken than might have
been expected. At Boston I met men of opposite par-
ties under the same roof. At Baltimore, which was

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 337

close upon the scene of the war, and had in it a strong
pro-slavery party, by which Lee, if he had conquered
at Gettysburg, would have found the banquet spread
for him, the feeling was more bitter, and the social
severance was complete. Yet Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy,
whose guest I was, though ardent Unionists, interested
themselves actively in obtaining pardon for a lady who
had been convicted, not for the first time, of corre-
spondence with a Confederate raider.

My visit to the prison-camp at Chicago was paid
under the wing of the Roman Catholic Bishop, with
whom I had some intercourse. A most highly culti-
vated and very attractive man he was. His gifts had
made him a Bishop at the earliest possible age. His
liberality surprised and almost startled me. Inquiring
for him when I afterwards came to America, I was
told that mental illness had caused his retirement from
his See. His brain had probably been overstrained.
Had his Liberalism led him too far?

The greatest sign of disturbance was the depreciated
paper currency. The issue of this was probably a
breach of the Constitution, which withholds from the
Federal Government all that it does not give, and does
not give the power of issuing paper money. It would
have been better and cheaper to borrow at the current
rate, whatever that rate might be. The return to specie
in the end probably cost a good deal more than the loan
would have cost, besides the disturbance of commerce
and industry. I had a talk on the subject with

338 REMINISCENCES

Mr. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, on whom
I totally failed to impress the orthodox doctrine. He
must have understood the question better than I did.
Perhaps he saw the truth, but held that financial prin-
ciple must give way to urgent necessity. Fluctuation
of wages could not fail especially to be felt. I believe
there had been no very serious strikes before that time.
Lincoln was comically ignorant of economy. He is
said, when there was lack of money, to have asked
whether the printing-press had given out. But it is
surprising how many people have a lurking idea that
the bank bill is money, not clearly seeing that it is
a promissory note, and that when it changes hands
specie passes at the bank of issue from the credit of the
giver to that of the taker. The illusion is helped by
the ambiguous word "currency." One consequence is
that the Government, whose proper business is only
to stamp the coin, fancies that it is specially concerned
in the banking trade, and entitled to the profits of the
paper circulation. Let me say, however, that I never
doubted that the paper promises of the United States
would be redeemed. After my return to England, I
found myself in a large party alone maintaining that
the Americans would pay in gold. I had a higher
opinion of their honesty than the rest of the company;
but I felt sure that their commercial instinct would

P Salmon Portland Chase, United States Senator from Ohio,
1849-1855; Governor of Ohio, 1856-1860; Secretary of the Treas-
ury, 1861-1864; Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 1864^1873.
Born 1808; died 1873.]

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 339

preserve them from a ruinous forfeiture of their credit.
Had my works been like my faith, had I invested largely
in American paper when it was down to forty; my
visit would have been profitable as well as instructive.
Gettysburg had been fought, Vicksburg had fallen,
the murderous campaign of the Wilderness had come
to its close. Grant was before Petersburg, and the
Confederacy was in its last ditch. I was taken to the
scene of war by General Benjamin Butler,1 to whom I,
at all events, owe gratitude. We went up the Potomac
from Washington, starting coveys of ducks which had
enjoyed a respite from shooting while the sportsmen
were shooting each other. Landing, we got on horse-
back to ride to Butler's quarters. On the way we
espied some men in the bush, pretty near at hand, who
were pronounced to be Confederate riflemen. One
of the party, a military man, was inclined to retire and
re-form. But there was no danger. I afterwards
found that where nothing particular was going on, I
could safely get upon the parapet and look down upon
the Confederates changing guard. The humanities
and chivalries of war were well observed on both sides,
except perhaps by the Southerners towards negro
soldiers. This proved to me that there was a sun behind
the cloud, and that the strife, bitter as it was at the
time, would end in reconciliation. I was confirmed in
this forecast by hearing that a "sesesh " lady at Balti-
more had eloped with a Yankee trumpeter.

P See note on page 348, infra.]

340 REMINISCENCES

A Federal commander with the local forces found
himself in a very tight place. It was a question whether
he should waste blood by fighting or surrender. He
surprised the Confederate by paying him a visit under
a flag of truce and asking him for his candid opinion
upon the case, saying that he could make a good fight,
but did not wish to sacrifice the lives of his people in
vain. The Confederate showed him round the position
and then gave him his candid opinion, which was that
if his command formed part of a general plan of opera-
tions, he was bound to fight; otherwise he might
with propriety surrender. I had this story with names
of persons and place, which I have forgotten. I can
only say that it was likely and illustrative of American
character and of the feelings of the military men on
the two sides towards each other, which never was so
bitter as those of the civilians.

If the military leaders of the South, after their defeat,
instead of being treated as rebels could have been taken
into counsel in the work of reconstruction, the result,
though it could hardly have solved the desperate negro
problem, might have been far better than it was.
But, as I have said, neither Lincoln nor any one else
seemed at that time to understand that this was not
a rebellion, but the inevitable parting of two groups of
States, radically antagonistic in their social and political
structure, which had been long held together in uneasy
union by hollow compromise, but had obeyed their
natural impulses at last.

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 341

When I was in the camp the two armies lay facing
each other in lines at Petersburg. Richmond could
almost be seen through a telescope, and the last move
on the chess-board was evidently at hand, though the
correspondent of the Times kept assuring his employers
that Confederate victory was near. Sherman was
setting out on his famous march through the heart of
the Confederacy; Sheridan was ending the business in
the Shenandoah Valley; and overwhelming forces
were presently to close upon Lee. Against Grant alone
Lee might probably have maintained himself. His
lines were strong; an attempt to storm them after
mining failed; nor were his supplies either of food or
ammunition exhausted. Prisoners and deserters who
came in were in good case. They had bread enough,
though not coffee. Confederate batteries were pretty
lavish of shot and shell, notwithstanding that the
Confederacy could not manufacture and that its trans-
portation had broken down.

The Federal army was evidently sound and abun-
dantly supplied. Stories of large foreign and Indian
enlistments were fictions. There were Germans and
other immigrants, no doubt; but they had made the
United States their country. There was one Indian,
not with a tomahawk, but with the usual side-arms of an
officer. In the course of the war there were, as Sir
John Macdonald1 told me, forty thousand Canadian
enlistments. But of these men, again, many probably

P Prime Minister of Canada, 1867-1873 ; 1878-1891 J

342 REMINISCENCES

adopted the United States as their country. Bounties
were high, and under the draft system there were a great
many substitutes, giving occasion for not a few jokes.
A party of returned soldiers, it was said, were recounting
their deeds and sufferings in the national cause, when
a voice broke in with " Ah ! you boast of your deeds and
sufferings, but after all you returned. I did not return.
The bones of my substitute are whitening the bank of
the James River."

The country was thickly wooded and blind. Grant
told me that in action he could not see the length of a
brigade. A charge or even a formation of cavalry would
have been impracticable. There could be no sweeping
up of prisoners at the end of a battle. The defeated
army fell back through the woods, and thus battles were
comparatively indecisive.

Grant l was a silent, somewhat saturnine man, very
simple in his demeanour and habits. His quarters were
a common tent, in which was a chest with his kit marked
"U. S. G., TLS.A." He was said to dislike military
parade and even military music. He seems to have
been less of a strategist than of a sledge-hammer of war,
pounding his enemy by his blows, with little regard for
the expenditure of life. He may be almost said to have
professed the strategy of attrition. Of this the bloody
battle of Cold Harbour, fought in a blind country, was
a signal instance. Why the battles of the Wilderness
were fought at all, when the plan apparently was to hold

PThe great Northern General. 1822-1885 J

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 343

Lee in the North while Sherman pierced the Confed-
eracy to the heart, was a question to which I never could
get a clear answer from a soldier. But there can be no
doubt as to the inestimable service which Grant by his
iron resolution and inflexible tenacity did the cause.
His great victory at Fort Donelson was the first light of
hope in a darkness which seemed almost that of despair.
He also rendered a great service by firmly taking the
whole war into his own hands and out of those of the
politicians, whose meddling had done much mischief.
A remark to the contrary in an article of the New York
Sun on "The Political Element in War-Power" was
from the pen of the editor, not that of the writer.1 His
generosity Grant showed by handing back to Sherman,
when the attack on Vicksburg had succeeded, the pro-
test which at the Council-of-War Sherman had put in
against the attack. His chivalry was shown by his
demeanour to Lee after the surrender at Appomattox,
when he treated Lee at once as a friend and refused to
receive his sword. His good feeling and his good sense
together he showed by at once paroling the beaten
army, providing for their wants, and giving them back
their horses "for the Fall Ploughing." He nobly de-
clined to enter Richmond as a conqueror.

Pitchforked into the Presidency by the passion of

the Americans for military glory, Grant, being totally

without political experience, of course failed. The only

political quality which he had was resolution, which he

[l See note on page 356.]

344 REMINISCENCES

once at least opposed, under good advice, to his honest
and mischievous legislation. He had a fatal notion that
supporting public delinquents of his own party was
standing by comrades under fire. Between this rough
soldier and such a man as Charles Sumner,1 with his
high-stepping culture and lofty self-esteem, antipathy
was sure to be strong. Some one, to please Grant, was
decrying Sumner to him, saying that Sumner was a
Free-thinker and did not even believe in the Bible.
"Well," said Grant, "I suppose he didn't write it."
Wellington, between whom and Grant there was some
resemblance, also once in his life said a good thing.
When he appeared at the Court of the Restoration the
Marshals of the Empire turned their backs on him.
The King apologized to him for their rudeness.
"N'importe, Sire, c'est leur habitude," was Welling-
ton's reply.

I met Grant and Mrs. Grant some years afterwards
at a garden party at Lambeth Palace.2 A curiously
rustic couple they looked in that assemblage of fashion.
Grant was then touring under the auspices of politicians
who wanted a third term for him and thought it might
be secured by presenting him to the world's homage.
No showman could have had a worse lion. Stanley,
who showed Grant over Westminster Abbey, said that
of all men of rank whom he had met Grant "was the

F Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, 1861-1871.
He was removed from it for his opposition to Grant's policy regard-
ing the Annexation of San Domingo.]

P The residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury.]

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 345

most boorish." Grant was no doubt unappreciative
of antiquities7 and Stanley had no opportunity of diving
into the character of the man.

Sherman, who was accounted the greatest strategist
on the side of the North, though some put Thomas 1
first, I met some years afterwards at a dinner of the
Chamber of Commerce at New York. He was then,
I thought, showing the effect of years. I may mention
in passing that I did not, as the Quarterly Review stated,
at that time or on any other public occasion in the
United States, talk annexation, and that Sherman,
whom the Quarterly gleefully represented as having
rebuked me, spoke before me, so that nothing he said
could have reference to my speech. Nor, in a conversa-
tion which I had with hi™ afterwards, did he take the
slightest exception to anything I had said. The subject
was Reciprocity, to which my remarks were confined.2

P General George Henry Thomas, the defender of Chickamauga.
1816-1870.]

[2 Mr. Goldwin Smith's speech was delivered at the banquet of
the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, on the 20th
of November, 1888, in response to the toast "Our Relations with
Canada — May all our differences be amicably adjusted, and our
intercourse become increasingly reciprocal and profitable." In
the course of this speech occur the following remarks : " There
are some of us, however, who look forward to a more complete and
lasting settlement of all commercial questions between Canada
and the United States than any Fisheries Treaty can afford. . . .
The Fisheries dispute will be at rest forever, when the fisheries and
the coasting trade are common to us all ... there are . . . who be-
lieve that the English-speaking race upon this continent will some day
be one people." It was afterwards printed in pamphlet form, with
the imprint: "New-York: Press of the Chamber of Commerce.
1888."

346 REMINISCENCES

I also some years afterwards at Philadelphia made

The animadversions of the Quarterly Review (Vol. 170, No. 340,
Art. X, pp. 537 and 538) are as follows : —

"There are two distinguished British subjects residing in Canada,
who, from the prominence given in the English press to their ut-
terances, have a certain notoriety on this side the Atlantic as favour-
ing the annexation of Canada to the United States. Mr. Goldwin
Smith, and Mr. Eonore" Mercier, the French Catholic Premier of
Quebec, not ^infrequently deliver sentiments which, in the days
when the term was in usage, might have qualified them for the title
of rebels ; but we are perfectly certain that either of those eminent
personages would much prefer to be called a rebel than to be coupled
and associated in the minds of men with the other. Of Mr. Goldwin
Smith we would at once say that his motives are as disinterested
as they are mischievous ; but though mischievous his motives, the
mischief he effects is infinitesimal, — that is to say, it amounts to
the harm which ensues from the printing in large type of his letters,
advocating the disruption of the Empire, in London journals which
profess Imperialism. Though we reprobate his views, we think that
the old Regius Professor is often unjustly treated. People who
do not know him derive their impression of the man from Mr.
Disraeli's rancorous portrait of him in 'Lothair'; he is there de-
scribed as talking a language of 'ornate jargon' ; as a matter of fact
his diction is severe compared to Mr. Disraeli's, and we regret that
Ms plausible sentiments are not veiled in jargon, but are on the
contrary expressed in admirable and forcible English. He has lately
had his revenge on his limner in a recent oration at New York,
when he emphasized his offer of Canada to the American nation
by an unearthed quotation from an ancient letter of Lord Beacons-
field, who once seems to have written mysteriously that 'the Colo-
nies, and Canada in particular, were millstones round our necks,
but that they would soon be independent/ It is, moreover, unjust
to ascribe Mr. Goldwin Smith's disaffection to any disappointments
he may have encountered in his Canadian career, as we find Sir
George Bowen describing in 1862 his schemes for the emancipation
of Australia. It ought, however, to be put on record, for the benefit
of those who are perturbed by his letters to the English papers,
that Mr. Goldwin Smith has no following whatever in Canada, and
no disciples across the frontier of his unpatriotic propaganda.
Around Ms home in Toronto he has hosts of personal friends and
not one political ally. In the United States an ungrateful lack of
warmth greets Ms harangues, in wMch he inveighs against the un-

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 347

the acquaintance of Meade,1 who appeared to me a high-
minded soldier and a thorough gentleman. I could well
believe that he had done good service in restoring the
tone of the Army of the Potomac when it had been run
down under Hooker.2 Of Meade's generalship I am of
course incompetent to form a judgment. It may be
that after the repulse of Lee's attack at Gettysburg,
he ought to have ordered his line to advance. Had he
attacked Lee in the position which Lee afterwards took
up, he might have lost what he had won at Gettysburg,
so great had become the superiority of the defence over
the attack. He was very candid in saying that at
Gettysburg Lee had thrown away his chances, and that
had he manoeuvred instead of rushing against a strong
position, the result would not have been so sure. He
said not a word against Grant, but showed, I thought,
that he did not admire the strategy of attrition.
Lee3 has been pronounced a great strategist by those

natural division, of a continent which Providence destined to be one.
Not long ago he was about to discourse in this wise to an American
audience at a banquet, when the veteran General Sherman, perhaps
anticipating, arose and said: 'The American people want not an-
other rood of bad land in Mexico or of good land in Canada.1 After
that, Mr. Goldwin Smith's customary periods about 'one flag, one
language, one literature/ lacked a little of their usual sonority."]

[l General George Gordon Meade, Commander of the Army of
the Potomac from June, 1863, till the close of the war. 1815-
1872.]

P General Joseph Hooker was appointed to the command of the
Army of the Potomac in January, 1863 ; he was relieved of his com-
mand in the following June.]

[3 Robert Edward Lee, the great Confederate General. 1807-
1870.]

348 EEMINISCENCES

whose judgment cannot be disputed, though only by
an American writer has he been put above Marlborough.
He can scarcely be said to have encountered an op-
ponent worthy of MTTI before Gettysburg. His two
offensive movements were unsuccessful ; the first end-
ing with Antietam; the second with Gettysburg. But
he was constrained to make them by the nature of the
war, which was a monster siege of the South by the
North. Lee sallied in hopes of shaking off the besieger,
gathering supplies, and at the same time calling forth
political sympathy and support at the North. It seems
to be admitted that he did a desperate thing at Gettys-
burg in ordering the advance of his infantry over more
than half a mile of open ground against a formidable
position with a powerful artillery. He had done some-
thing of the same kind at Malvern Heights, with the
same disastrous result. General Lee seems to have
fought, not against the Union, nor for slavery; but
simply as a liegeman of his State. His character evi-
dently was fine, and well would it have been both for
South and North if in Reconstruction his voice could
have been heard.

The name of General Benjamin Butler,1 whose guest I
was at the Camp, had been execrated because he was
supposed, as Commandant of New Orleans, to have put
forth a proclamation threatening to give up the women
of that city to the license of his soldiery. The charge

P Benjamin Franklin Butler, commanded the Army of the James ;
military governor of New Orleans. 1818-1893J

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 349

was unfounded. Butler was commanding the Federal
garrison of a great city with a population noted for
violence, turbulence, and fanatical devotion to the
cause of slavery. The women, whose passions, as usual,
were the fiercest, insulted his men on the streets, and
there was constant danger of an affray which would
have led to bloodshed. To avert this, Butler threatened
the women, if their insults were repeated, with being
sent to the lock-up house like common women of the
town. His proclamation was coarse, as anything of
his was likely to be; but it did not bear, nor would any
unprejudiced reader have taken it to bear, the odious
sense ascribed to it. Butler was a curious personage.
He was exceedingly ugly, and squinted horribly; but
his face and figure were an incarnation of rude force,
and reminded you of a steam ram. Unscrupulous he
was in the highest degree. But I believe his ruling
passion was notoriety rather than gain. Those who
were put on his track at New Orleans found, as I was
told at the time, no trace of his stealing for himself,
though he had winked at the doings of subordinates.
He was evidently a loving husband to his amiable wife
and a loving father to his beautiful daughter. He was
evidently popular with his aides and with his men. He
wanted to be President. This was his motive in his
attack on Andrew Johnson1 and in his advocacy of
repudiation. In his advocacy of repudiation he was

P Andrew Johnson, seventeenth President of the United States.
1808-1875.]

350 REMINISCENCES

misled, as the unscrupulous are apt to be, by under-
rating the general honesty of the world.

Butler was a very sociable and amusing companion.
He had stories to tell of himself. When he was com-
manding at New Orleans, to prevent an outbreak, he
had issued a general order requiring all citizens in pos-
session of arms to deliver them up at headquarters.
A citizen was found possessing arms in contravention
of the order, and with his arms was brought before the
General. He pleaded that the arms were only family
relics. "That, General, was my father's sword."
" When did your father die, Sir?" "In 1858." "Then
he must have worn the sword in hell, Sir, for it was
made in 1859."

Ben had been a first-rate criminal counsel — Old
Bailey counsel, as the English would say, and he brought
his sharp practice to bear upon the question as to the
principle on which the negro should be treated by the
Northern armies; emancipation having not yet been
proclaimed. Ben astutely advised that the negro, as
his labour sustained the enemy, should be treated as
contraband of war.

As a General, Ben was not a success. Grant said that
he was "bottled up" in the bend of the James River
where he was carrying on some engineering operations
suggested by his restlessly inventive genius. He did
me the honour to impart to me his plan for blowing up
Fort Fisher, which had obstinately resisted Federal
attack, by running ashore under it a gunboat loaded

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 351

with powder. I could not help venturing to suggest
the general ineffectiveness of powder fired in the open
air. But Butler thought he had scientific proof that
the displacement of air would be so great that Fort
Fisher would cease to exist. The experiment was
afterwards made, and the breaking of two or three
windows in the Fort was the only result.

I had first fallen in with Butler at New York, whither
he had been summoned at the time of Lincoln's second
election with troops to prevent a second rising of Irish
against the draft. He did not land his troops, but
came ashore himself with his staff, called the leaders of
the Irish before him, told them that he was glad to
have the pleasure of meeting them, and that if any dis-
turbance took place he would hold them personally
responsible. No disturbance took place. The grateful
city planted Butler for an evening in a hall of the Fifth
Avenue Hotel while an endless train' of citizens filed
past form, each of them taking him by the hand. His
hand must have been surfeited with public gratitude.

The soldiers of the North were not only well but
lavishly supplied. On that side the war exceeded all
wars in its cost. It is perhaps fortunate for democracy
that, as it is bound to treat every man well, it must find
the luxury pf war expensive. Confederate prisoners
seemed in pretty good case, and said that, though they
had nothing but bread, of bread they had enough.
How they managed to supply themselves with a,mmnni-
tion, of which they were lavish, in their exhausted state

352 REMINISCENCES

and with their railroads all dilapidated, was a mys-
tery.

I saw but little fighting; only just enough to impress
me with the belief that cannon-balls and shells in the
open field were rather ineffective, and that the rifle aimed
at you was the really formidable weapon. The range of
artillery, however, has greatly increased since that time.

I saw the wounded in a field hospital ; and I venture
to say that nobody who had done the same would ever
speak lightly of war or gloat over the reports of carnage.
The hospital arrangements seemed to me to be excellent.
The plan adopted was that of isolated pavilions to obvi-
ate infection. I thought of that field hospital when our
gentlemen and ladies at Toronto were exulting over the
slaughter of Boers in the South African War.

From the camp on the Potomac I went back to Wash-
ington, which in 1864 was a different place from the
bright and beautiful city now becoming the social capi-
tal of America. The northwestern quarter with its
gay mansions had not been built. There was scarcely
a house of any pretensions except the White House.
Pennsylvania Avenue looked like a string of shabby
villages. The sidewalks were unrepaired; the roads
were mud-holes. Frequent on the houses were the
advertisements of embalmment of the dead, thirteen
thousand of whom lay in a provisional cemetery near
the city awaiting, most of them, removal to their own
States. For my own part, I cannot understand such
care for the cast-off weeds of humanity. Immediate

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 353

return into the general frame of Nature seems to me
the only agreeable idea connected with death. But
the care taken for the relics of these soldiers showed
that the army was not one of hirelings ; few of the
head-boards bore the inscription "Unknown Soldier."

At Washington I had the honour of being the guest
of Mr. Seward x and saw the diplomatist unbend in his
social hour. He did indeed unbend in his social hour,
and there was no limit to the freedom of his talk. In
those days happily social confidence was still sacred,
and Seward might unbosom himself with the certainty
that of his guests there was not one who would not
deem himself degraded by repeating anything that was
said at the social board. Seward was at the same time
the least cautious of diplomatists, and sometimes star-
tled the British Ambassador, Lord Lyons,2 who was
accustomed to the reticence and impassiveness of diplo-
matists in the Old World. He now and then risked a
joke, which was liable to be misunderstood. One of
these jokes, something about bombarding Liveipool,
had been made to the Duke of Newcastle, who was
rather dry and touchy, and, being recalled at a time
when there was gunpowder lying about, came near to
producing an explosion.

Crossing the mud-hole between Seward's house and

P William Henry Seward, Governor of New Tort ; United States
Senator; Secretary of State, 1861-1869. Born in 1801; died in
1872.]

[2 Richard Bickerton Pemell, second Baron and first Earl Lyons,
British Minister at Washington. 1858-1865.]

354 REMINISCENCES

an official building, I presented my card and found my-
self in the presence of Abraham Lincoln. The notion
formed of Lincoln in England had been that of a Yankee
rail-splitter with an ungainly and grotesque figure, dis-
playing an unfeeling levity by the utterance of rather
coarse jokes, from which he did not abstain even among
the relics of the battle-field. Ungainly and grotesque
the figure, with its gaunt height, its shock of unkempt
hair, and its large hands and feet, undeniably was;
but on the face, instead of levity, sat melancholy and
care. The little stories, in which Lincoln often wrapt
up his reasonings and of which he told me one or two
during our interview, were the indulgence of a Western
habit and perhaps a relief of the overstrained mind; as
it were, pinches of mental snuff. Lincoln since his
death has been deified. He has been styled the greatest
statesman of the age. The American mind is never
sparing of superlatives in either extreme. He had the
wisdom which happily belongs to a perfectly honest
and simple character. He never was misled by
cupidity, vanity, or selfishness of any kind. He had
also, as the result of a naturally sympathetic nature,
improved by campaign practice, a remarkable power of
reading public sentiment and keeping himself in touch
with what he called the plain people. His addresses
and State papers are admirable; the simplicity and
clearness of their style bespoke the integrity and sin-
cerity of their author. But, as I have said, Lincoln, if
he saw, never showed that he saw the fundamental

AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 355

character of the situation with which he had to deal.
He always spoke and wrote as if he took Secession to be
a rebellion, whereas it was a natural severance of the
slave-owning South from the free North, social struc-
ture having, as usual, asserted its ascendency over
political organization. How he would have dealt with
Reconstruction is a secret buried in his grave; more
wisely, it may safely be assumed, than did Charles
Sumner and the other fiery and revengeful politicians
into whose hands, after his death, the question passed.
His character, whatever his theory, would have guided
him and the State aright. In resolving to despatch
supplies to Fort Sumter Lincoln may perhaps be said
to have brought on war; and supreme statesmanship
would hardly do that which in itself is little worth do-
ing if tremendous consequences are to follow. But if
Lincoln had any share in the failure to avert war, his
responsibility is fully balanced by that of the Southern
chiefs. Had Jeff Davis and his colleagues, scrupulously
abstaining from anything like violence or insult, put
forth a temperate and respectful manifesto, setting forth
the proved impracticability of a political union between
communities radically different in social structure, and
appealing to the people of the North for acquiescence in
a friendly separation, with full security for debts and as
much of reciprocal privilege as national independence
would permit, the Northern people would scarcely have
called on the Government to go to war.
No one could have failed to be struck by Lincoln's

356 REMINISCENCES

unguarded state, there being even then threats of
assassination in the air. A desperado might easily have
rushed past the sentinel who paced outside the door.
When, therefore, a report of the assassination reached
us in England, I felt at once that it would prove true.
Let me with others bear witness that, in spite of the
anti-American feeling which prevailed in certain classes,
the news was received in England with general sorrow*

Note by the Editor.

The article on " The Political Element in War-Power " in
the Nev York to, referred to on page 343, appeared on
Sunday, March the 15th, 1896. It was written by Mr. Gold-
win Smith. In it occurs the following sentence: —

" Party politics are said to have interfered in some degree with
military appointments and operations ; and it has eoen been said,
though without the least grain of truth, that at one time Gen. Grant
manifested a resolute determination to cut loose from Washington
and keep the conduct of the war in his own hands."

In the copy preserved at The Grange, a pen has been drawn
through the words I have Italicized, and against them has
been written, " Interpolated by Dana probably."

CHAPTER XX

JAMAICA
1866

Conflict of Races— Outbreak— Governor Eyre's Action— The
Jamaica Committee — Chief Justice Cockburn's Charge —
John Stuart Mill —Woman Suffrage— Thomas Hughes —
Frederick Denison Maurice— Manchester Liberals.

A SORT of corollary of the question between slavery
and freedom in America was that caused by the conflict
of races in Jamaica. The ex-slaveholder's hatred and
fear of the emancipated slave, after long brooding, broke
out in 1865 with terrible violence. A local and acci-
dental affray caused by the unpopularity of a district
magistrate was seized upon by the whites as a pre-
text for a reign of terror, Governor Eyre1 sharing
and giving the reins to their panic rage. Altogether
four hundred and thirty-nine men and women were put
to death, and the number flogged could not have been
less than six hundred. The hangings went on for
nearly five weeks after the outbreak. Men received
one hundred lashes; women thirty. Many of those
who were flogged with a cat-o'-nine-tails were women
on the simple charge of stealing. Wire was twisted
round the cords of the whip. There had been enmity,

p Edward John Eyre, previously Lieutenant-Governor of An-
tigua.]

357

358 REMINISCENCES

personal as well as political, between Governor Eyre
and William Gordon, the political leader of the blacks.
Eyre arrested Gordon at Kingston, where martial law
did not prevail ; carried him into a district where mar-
tial law had been proclaimed and a court-martial was
sitting; packed the court afresh; and when even that
packed court hesitated to put the man to death without
evidence, himself ordered the execution. "Murder,"
said John Bright, "is foul; and judicial murder is the
foulest of all."

A Committee was formed in the interest of humanity
and justice. We were not bloody-minded; we did not
want to hang Governor Eyre or care to punish him,
otherwise than by dismissal from his Governorship,
from which in fact he was removed. But we did wish,
by bringing him to the bar of justice, to prove that all
British subjects, black or white, were under the protec-
tion of British law. We did want to vindicate human-
ity. In this we were defeated by the sympathy of the
Tory upper classes with arbitrary and sanguinary
violence. A member of the House of Lords told Gov-
ernor Eyre publicly that if his case came before them
he would find them a friendly tribunal. The Anglican
clergy played their usual part, confirming and strength-
ening my opinion of them. Such was the natural
consequence of Establishment. Carlyle, Kingsley, and
Ruskin were of course for violence, which they took for
strength. The calls of sentimental eunuchs like Ruskin
for blood on this occasion, and at the time of the Indian

JAMAICA 359

Mutiny, made an indelible impression on my mind. The
best fruit of our movement was a memorable Charge
of Chief-Justice Cockburn against the abuse of martial
law.1 The Chief-Justice weakened in his practical
conclusion, but to his declaration of principles justice
and mercy could always appeal.

On the Jamaica Committee I met John Stuart Mill,2
the most strictly conscientious man, I think, that I ever
knew. In an unhappy moment he allowed himself to be
elected to the House of Commons, and sat night after
night, like an image of patience, listening to debates on
which the time of the great philosopher and economist
was miserably wasted. His conscientiousness was car-
ried into his habits as a speaker. His speeches were
prepared, and he sometimes lost the thread. But he
would not, like less scrupulous speakers, fill the gap with
mere words; he would wait, however awkward the
pause might be, till the thread was recovered. I have
always looked upon him as a notable instance of the
division which is taking place between the dogmas and
the ethics of Christianity; the dogmas remaining with
the orthodox, the ethics often going to the infidel.

P This Charge was afterwards printed in pamphlet form. See
"Charge of the Lord Chief Justice of England to the Grand Jury
at the Central Criminal Court in the case of The Queen against
Nelson and Brand. Taken from tne Shorthand Writer's Notes,
Eevised and Corrected by the Lord Chief Justice. With Occa-
sional Notes." Edited by Frederick Cockburn, Esq., of the Crown
Office. London : William Ridgway, 1867.]

P Author of "A System of Logic"; "Principles of Political
Economy" ; "Representative Government" ; "Utilitarianism" ; etc.
1806-1873J

360 REMINISCENCES

Upon the ethics it is to be hoped Christendom will re-
unite.

It was partly, I think, from respect to Mill that Bright
and I signed his first petition in favour of Woman
Suffrage. Afterwards we both withdrew; and I be-
lieve on the same ground, because we found that the
best representatives of the sex among our acquaintance
were opposed to the measure. Mill's enthusiasm on this
subject, I have always suspected, had its source in his
personal history. He had received from his father an
arid and heart-withering education which developed
his intellect intensely, at the expense of his affections.
Later in life the affections asserted a power increased
by their long suppression. He fell platonically in love
with the wife of his friend Mr. Taylor, and consorted
with her in a way which he sincerely supposed her
husband to approve. His fancy invested her with ex-
traordinary genius. But those who knew her told me
that her genius consisted in the faculty of readily imbib-
ing Mill's theories and giving them back to him as her
own. In the parts of his works which he ascribes spe-
cially to her inspiration, no extraordinary power is shown.
Had his book on the Subjection of Women1 taken full
effect, its exaggerations might have disturbed the peace
and happiness of many homes. He did not know, or
at least did not lay it to heart, that of the two unions
that of the State and that of the family, that of the
family is as essential and as sacred as that of the State.

p Published in 1869.J

JAMAICA 361

Another leading member of the Jamaica Committee
was Thomas Hughes. It is needless to say that he was
Tom Brown grown up. Well did he deserve his statue
at Rugby. In him all the manly, the robust, and even
the fighting qualities of which Englishmen are proud
were combined with perfect gentleness, tenderness, and
humanity, as well as with the broadest liberality of
mind. With all his vigour and courage, there was not
the faintest odour of Jingoism about him. We became
great friends, and I was his guest at Chester, when we
were fighting together for the Union against Gladstone
and Home Rule.

Hughes had been one of the Christian Socialists, who,
sympathizing with the Socialist desire of substituting
co-operation for competition, tried to give it effect on
Christian principles, while the ordinary Socialists were
agnostics. Their attempts to set on foot co-operative
production were failures, labour not proving able to
dispense with the guidance or the support of capital.
Whether they had much to do with the brilliant suc-
cess of co-operative distribution I cannot say. But
they certainly did something towards the mitigation of
class bitterness. Hughes towards the end of his life was
led by his philanthropic zeal to become the founder of a
model colony in Tennessee. It appears that he was
deceived in the purchase of the land. But all model
colonies, like model villages, such as Pullman and Sal-
taire, have failed. The people do not enter into the
spirit of the foundation; their object is to make their

362 REMINISCENCES

bread, and they fret under regulations. The matter
caused Hughes some trouble for a time.

In the Jamaica case, as in the case of the Indian Mu-
tiny, when the savage passion ruled the hour, it was not
men like Thomas Hughes, but the weak and hysterical,
that were clamouring for violence and blood.

The leader of the Christian Socialists was Frederick
Maurice,1 a most sincere lover and no mean benefactor
of his kind. He formed a circle round him by his trans-
parent sincerity of aim and goodness of soul. His
excellence was practical and social. As a thinker he
lacked clearness. I have heard him in Lincoln's Inn
Chapel preach with the utmost fervour a sermon of
which I could hardly understand one word. He was
liberal in theology, and proscribed by orthodoxy ac-
cordingly. But he managed to persuade himself that
the Anglican Articles and Creeds were in reality sym-
bols of freedom.

The Honorary Secretary of the Jamaica Committee
was Mr. Chesson,2 now no doubt forgotten, yet not un-
worthy of remembrance. His life had been devoted to
the protection of the aborigines, clients who could not
pay their advocates either in money or in fame, and of

P Frederick Denison Maurice. 1805-1872. Founded, with
Sterling, the Apostles' Club at Cambridge; inaugurated, and
Principal of, Working Men's College, London. Professor of Moral
Philosophy at Cambridge, 1866; Incumbent of St. Edwards,
Cambridge, 1870-1872.]

[2 Frederick William Chesson was "for many years the inde-
fatigable Secretary to the Aborigines Protection Society." He
died on April the 30th, 1888, aged 54.]

JAMAICA 363

whom the vast majority probably never heard of his
existence. Instead of being rewarded or honoured, he
had to undergo much obloquy and ridicule. Here he
certainly received no crown ; if the world is under moral
government, he may have received a crown elsewhere.

The Corn Law question, the American question, and
the Jamaica question threw me a good deal among the
Liberal manufacturers of the North, and enlarged my
political experience. In Bradford, especially, as the
guest of the two Kells, I learned much that no books
could have taught me. But moderate Liberalism with
perhaps an occasional turn or jerk one way or the other
remained my creed. I was in no danger of becoming a
demagogue, for I never could speak. In that I had
neither genius nor tongue. Will oratory ever lose its
power? Shall we ever get back in this respect to the
days of Burley and the Council-board? Popular ora-
tory almost inevitably involves exaggeration, which
must surely affect the soundness of the mind.

I saw also a good deal of the mechanic on his political
side. He is very sharp-witted, but very open to novel
opinions, especially of course to such as exalt his class.
It has been said of him that he is a Socialist at home and
a Jingo abroad. A Jingo abroad unhappily he is apt to
be. He was for the Crimean War, burning Bright in
effigy for opposing it. He was for the Lorcha War, un-
seating Bright and Cobden for voting against it. He
was for the infamous Boer War, than which there never
was a more flagrant breach of humanity or a fouler

364 REMINISCENCES

stain on the character of any nation. Extreme excita-
bility is his danger, and the danger of the State in which
he has so large a vote.

Among my dear friends and instructive companions
in those regions were Mr. and Mrs. Winkworth of Bol-
ton. Mrs. Winkworth was the daughter of Mr. Tho-
mpson/ a great manufacturer and I should think about
the last of those who lived close to his works and among
his men. Now, the master, if he is a man and not a
company, lives in a suburban villa, on which the work-
ing-man, going out for his Sunday walk, looks perhaps
with a sinister eye, thinking, as his Socialist prophet
tells him, it is all the product of his labour. This com-
plete separation, local and social, is a bad element in the
case*

The great problem, however, is that of giving em-
ployer and employed if possible a common interest in
the gains. He who brings this about would be one of
the greatest benefactors of his kind.

P Thomas Thomasson, chief promoter of the anti-corn law agi-
tation. 1808-1876.]

GOLDWIN SMITH AT ABOUT FOETY-FIVE YEARS OF AGE.
Photograph by C. H. Howes, of Ithaca, N. Y.

CHAPTER XXI

CORNELL
1868-1871

Resignation of Oxford Professorship — Invitation to Cornell — Ezra
Cornell — The University — Cornell's Ideas — Arrival at Ithaca
— Fellow-Lecturers— life at Ithaca— The Oneida Community
—Friends at Cornell.

IN 1866 1 had to resign my Oxford Professorship and
take up my abode in my father's house at Mortimer.
In 1868,1 after a long and most painful illness, my father
came to a tragical end, in consequence of a malady
which had its source in an injury received in a railway
accident. I was greatly broken by this, and was some
time in recovering mental health and tone. Having
then no very definite object in life, and having an inde-
pendent income, I thought of returning to America and
further studying American history and institutions.

PSotheMS.,butthedate was certainly 1867.—
Magazine for November, 1867, New Series, Volume IV, page 689:
"At Mortimer House, Reading, aged 72, Richard Pritehard Smith,
esq., M.D. . . ." See also "A History of the Reading Pathological
Society." By J. B. Hurry. London: Bale, Sons, and Danielsson.
1909. Page 55* Besides, in a letter in Mr. Goldwin Smith's own
hand (since received), dated " Mortimer House, Reading, Oct. 13,
1867," and addressed to "Sir Chas. Russell, Bart., M.P., Swallow-
field, Reading," occurs the sentence, "My father was buried on
Friday," (The letter was kindly lent me by Lady Russell, of
Swallowfield, widow of Sir George Russell, Baronet, brother of its
recipient.)!

365

366 REMINISCENCES

Just then I had the good luck to come across Andrew
White,1 who was looking out for Professors for the new
Cornell University, of which he had accepted the Presi-
dency. Ezra Cornell,3 the founder of the University,
had been a labourer and had laid telegraph poles with
his own hands. Having by a fortunate investment be-
come a millionaire, he at once asked what he could do
with his wealth for the public good. The Federal Gov-
ernment was giving each State an allotment of landscrip
to be employed in founding a place of education with
special reference to the improvement of agriculture, and
at the same time of military training. Cornell, advised
by Andrew White, offered, if the grant for the State of
New York were put into his hands, to meet it with half
a million of his own. Other States sold their scrip;
Cornell located that of New York in pine lands, which
afterwards became very valuable and formed the chief
endowment of the University, This investment was
the great service which in the pecuniary way he ren-
dered to the enterprise.

Equal to Ezra Cornell in merit and in his claim on the
gratitude of Cornellians is Andrew White, a wealthy
citizen of Syracuse, a man of the highest attainments

p- Andrew Diekson White, first President of Cornell University ;
American Minister at Berlin, also at St. Petersburg; afterwards
American Ambassador at Berlin ; and has held various other high
posts. Born in 1832.]

[2 Ezra Cornell, born at Westchester Landing, New York State,
in 1807, of Quaker stock. He was President of the State Agricul-
tural Society, and a Trustee of the State Agricultural College. He
died at Ithaca in 1874.J

CORNELL 367

and culture, who devoted to the foundation not only
much of his wealth, but labour, which was of higher
value and bestowed at a greater sacrifice. American
wealth has a bad side. It has also a good and noble side,
which showed itself here. Andrew White has since been
transferred to another sphere, and has shone as a
diplomatist at St. Petersburg and Berlin. He has also
shone as a writer.1

Cornell's special object was to put within the reach of
poor youths the University training which in his own
case poverty had denied. He thought that a young
man might maintain himself by the labour of his hands
while he was undergoing a University education. This
part of his scheme, after fair trial, failed and was aban-
doned. Mental and intellectual labour draw on the
same fund of nervous energy, which in ordinary cases
cannot supply both. Ezra Cornell himself was a man of
extraordinary vigour and power of work. In the early
days of the University notices were put up for students
of employment in tending masons. But this soon came
to an end. I am afraid I rather offended the good man
by cautioning young English mechanics against a too
hasty acceptance of a general invitation which he had
sent them. I thought I knew better than he could what
effect his invitation would have upon the imagination of

p Among Mr. White's works are, "The Warfare of Science,"
1876; "History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Chris-
tendom," 1897; "Autobiography," 1905; "The Warfare of Hu-
manity with Unreason," 1906 ; " Seven Great Statesmen," 1910 ;

368 REMINISCENCES

my young fellow-countrymen, who would fancy that in
being admitted to a University they were going to be
raised at once socially to the level of Oxford and Cam-
bridge. The rush might have been overwhelming.

Cornell, however, retained so much of its original
character as to become a school of practical science more
than of literary culture ; though the student of practical
science probably takes away that which raises him in-
tellectually above the mechanic, and enables him if he
rises in life, as so many of them do, to fill his place well.

The goodly Chapter Houses of some of the Greek
Letter Societies and the general habits of a large class of
the students are proofs that Cornell is not limited to the
poorer class. Still, I imagine that there is nothing like
the luxury of the sons of millionaires at Harvard and
Yale. The extravagant and costly passion for athletics,
which had its source in the Universities of the English
gentry, has invaded in full force the American Univer-
sities, and Cornell among the number. University
authorities ought to have the courage and integrity to
control it. University education is already challenged
by commercial men as interfering with a youth's start
in business life. To this challenge, if the student is to
spend his time and his father's money in training his
muscles, there will be no reply. After all, no excellence
that he can gain in that way will put him on a level with
many a negro porter. I have, in fact, seen a negro
porter who was physically a finer man than any Col-
lege athlete. The model of perfect human form in the

CORNELL 369

London Museum of the College of Surgeons is or was a
negro, who we may be sure was as nature had made him.
A lower level still is reached when the student becomes
a professional performer and gate-money is the object
of the game. A University which permits this suffers
absolute degradation.

My intercourse with American students was very in-
teresting and pleasant. They are, of course, more in-
dependent than the English students, and would hardly
submit to the same discipline, though it did not seem to
me that the Faculty feared to use its authority at need.
The political tendencies of the Americans show them-
selves in the contests for the election of the officers of
the Classes and the Editors of the College Journal, as
well as in a pervading addiction to rhetoric. Their
weakest point is their strange and worse than strange
addiction to hazing, and to the bullying of freshmen,
which was sometimes carried to a disgraceful extent.
It will be curious to see how the large body of American
students to be imported into Oxford under the Rhodes-
ian bequest will adapt themselves to the spirit and the
habits of the place. I cannot say that I saw with pleas-
ure my old University made a pedestal for the statue of
such a man as Rhodes. Nor can I think that, unless
the object is some special branch of knowledge, it can be
a good thing for a youth to be brought up in a social ele-
ment different from that in which his life is to be passed.

The Greek Letter Societies seemed to me in some
measure to fill the place filled in English Universities

370 REMINISCENCES

by the College, as social bonds in a University too large
for anything like general association. Probably they
vary in character, some being more expensive and ex-
clusive than others, but I cannot think that they are
otherwise than wholesome in the main. The records
which they keep of the lives of their members may help
in sustaining fidelity to the path of honour. I was
myself a member of the Psi Upsilon, and among my
brethren were Professor Willard Fiske1 and Andrew
White.

Ezra Cornell could know nothing about Universities.
His ideas were derived from the establishment of facto-
ries and sawmills. Without the guidance -of Andrew
White he might have failed. As it was, he imperilled
the success of his enterprise by placing his University at
Ithaca, then a village with no advantage for the purpose.
Ithaca had been his home in his early days; he was at-
tached to it, and perhaps was not insensible to the pleas-
ure of seeing his University rise on the hill above the
spot on which his lowly abode had once stood. "There
is no enjoyment/' says an Italian writer, "keener than
that of being great where once you were little." That
in attracting Professors intellectual exile would' be a
drawback, Ezra could not understand. He had been
conjured by White to place the University at Syracuse.
But to Syracuse he had a special antipathy. He had

P Daniel Willard Fiske, Librarian and Professor of North-Euro-
pean Languages in Cornell University from 1868 to 1883. Born
at Ellisburgli, N.T., in 1831 ; died at Frankfurt, Germany, in 1904.]

COENELL 371

once stood on the bridge there for a whole day to be
hired. At evening he was hired, but by a man who
cheated him of his wages. He had an extremely strong
will, and hardly anybody, but White, could have in-
fluenced him on any subject. Here even White failed.
However, thanks to a most happy choice of President and
staff, all had ended well and the shade of Ezra Cornell
may rejoice. The University is now1 a large society
in itself, Ithaca has grown into a little city, and is a
healthier place than a great city for young men taken
from their homes.

It was on a dark November morning amidst pouring
rain, that, having come by the night train from New
York, I descended upon Ithaca. I was met at the Clin-
ton House by Andrew White. After breakfast, Ezra
Cornell took me out in his buggy on the hill, the site of
the University that was to be. Nothing could be less
cheering or promising than was then the aspect of things
upon that hill. The University was represented by a
single block of building, much the reverse of beautiful,
and looking particularly grim on that dreary morning.
But I knew that there was sun behind the cloud. That
sun has since shone out with full lustre. On that hill
now cluster, on and round the fair Campus, the various
academical buildings, and the numerous professorial
residences of the great Cornell University. So rapid is
the growth of American institutions. The site, a pla-
teau looking over Lake Cayuga, is one of the finest I

p This was written in 1899.]

372 REMINISCENCES

ever saw. Unluckily among Ezra Cornell's gifts was not
architectural taste ; or perhaps in arranging the group
of buildings more advantage might have been taken of
the excellence of the site.

The opening of the University had taken place a few
days before my arrival. I have always been sorry that
by those few days I missed being a pioneer. In my
chequered passage through life there is no happier in-
cident than my connection with Cornell.

I was one of a set of non-resident Lecturers or Pro-
fessors, which included Agassiz/ Lowell,2 George Curtis,8
and Bayard Taylor.4 Agassiz was lecturing when I
arrived ; we boarded together in the Clinton House, and
for some weeks I enjoyed his society. Eminent as a
man of science, in character and habits he was simple as
a child. He never used a bank, but, as he told me, car-
ried his money in his pocket, and when it was spent
went lecturing to get more. I was amused by his at-
tempt in one of his lectures, in deference to what he no
doubt deemed a religious audience, to reconcile with

P Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz, a Swiss, born in 1807, went to
America in 1846; of wide scientific reputation in his day. Died
in 1873.]

[2 James Russell Lowell, an eminent poet, essayist, scholar, and
diplomatist; born at Cambridge, Mass., in 1819; for twenty
years Professor of Modern Languages and Literature at Harvard.
Died in 1891.]

[3 George William Curtis, a noted journalist, orator, publicist,
and author. Born at Providence, R.I., in 1824; died in 1892.]

P Bayard Taylor, a poet, a traveller, a writer ; author of a long
list of books. Born in 1825 ; Professor of German Literature at
Cornell; died in 1878.]

CORNELL 373

geological fact the account In Genesis of a universal
flood. "If there is an overflow of the Mississippi/7 said
he, ' ' what do we hear ? We hear that the whole country
is under water." He had refused to receive the Dar-
winian gospel of evolution. In this he was unhappy;
though perhaps the account between him and Darwin
may not yet be quite settled. We are living too much
under the immediate influence of Darwin's mighty
discovery to think of its possible limits and qualifi-
cations.

Another of the set of Non-resident Lecturers was Wil-
liam Curtis, an admirable lecturer and speaker as well as
writer on public subjects and one of the best of American
citizens. On the platform and as a journalist, he was
always a staunch defender of the right and a terror to
the evil-doer. Largely to his efforts was due the reform
of the Civil Service. Unfortunately he lived in an elec-
toral district where the opposite party had the majority
and thus by the fatuous localism which the Americans
have imposed upon themselves he was debarred from
doing his best for the country. Democracy, we must
sorrowfully confess, is not yet large-minded.

Lowell was also one of the ten. His anti-British
prejudice was at that time still rather strong. I found
him more sociable when I afterwards met him as Ameri-
can Ambassador in England. He was not only cured of
his anti-British prejudice, but largely Anglicized, as
American Ambassadors to England are apt to be. It is
hardly wise to make them afterwards American Secre-

374 REMINISCENCES

taries of State. Mr. Adams * of course escaped the
influence, his great natural strength of character being
aided by the circumstances of a mission which he dis-
charged with incomparable skill.

Accommodation at Ithaca at first was scanty. The
mass of us, Professors and students, were quartered in
Cascadilla, aimge building which had been intended for
a water-cure, but was so ill-ventilated that as many
patients probably would have been killed by the air as
would have been cured by the water. I had rooms on
the ground floor at the South- West Angle, from which I
could step out upon the platform to see the sunsets, and,
now and then, an eagle hovering over Lake Cayuga.
We had some material discomforts to endure. But our
life was social and merry. The people in the village,
city, as Ithaca is now, were kind. I look back upon
those days with pleasure. No years of my life have
been better spent. My only regret, at least, is that
having not then fully recovered strength and tone, I
was below my proper mark as a teacher. None of us
had anything to endure like the load of anxiety and
trouble which was nobly borne in those early days by
Andrew White. There was serious financial difficulty
for a time, the fund having been invested in the pine
lands, which it would have been ruinous at that time to
sell.

The country round the head of the two Lakes, Cayuga

I1 Charles Francis Adams, appointed by Lincoln Minister to
Great Britain, where he represented the United States during the
Civil War.]

CORNELL 375

and Seneca, is very beautiful. I indulged in excur-
sions on foot. This British habit the people could not
understand. A farmer, if he overtook me on the road
in his buggy, would kindly offer me a ride, thinking that
it was only for want of a horse that anybody could be
going on foot. A farmer with whom I had fallen into
conversation said something that led me to think he took
me for an American. I told him I was an Englishman.
"Yes," he said, with a strong nasal twang, "I knew you
to be an Englishman by your brogue."

A summer vacation of the University which I spent
in Cascadilla was not an unpleasant time, for I had every
evening the society of the kindest of friends, Professor
and Mrs. Sprague.1 The Professor, who fought for the
Union in the war, was an American indeed, true to the
principles of righteousness on which the Republic was
founded.

From Ithaca I visited the Oneida (immunity, and
through the courtesy of Mr. Noyes,2 its founder and
dictator, spent two interesting days there. A glance
was enough to show that the social problem had not
been solved for the world at large. The Community
had grown rich ; was the owner of three factories, which
were run on the ordinary footing with hired labour ; and

p Homer Baxter Sprague, at one time Professor of Rhetoric and
English Literature at Cornell; a well-known Lecturer. Born at
Button, Mass., in 1829. He married Antoinette E. Pardee, of New
Haven, Conn.]

p John Humphrey Noyes, born in Brattleboro, Vt., in 1811 ;
a theologian, preacher, and writer.]

376 REMINISCENCES

was sitting at its ease with a very comfortable residence
with every convenience and luxury that opulence could
afford. For those who were learning the piano there
was a little Kiosk in the grounds that their practising
might not annoy. Celibacy had been the rule; but
when the community grew wealthy, Noyes introduced,
not marriage, but temporary unions of couples, paired
by him on biological principles ; an institution that ex-
cited the marked displeasure of a moral neighbourhood.
There was a set of nurseries in which the offspring of
these unions were reared as children of the Community.
With the acquisition of wealth there had been an end of
proselytism ; and the Community was, in fact, a Utopian
club with the prospect, supposing the last survivor was
to inherit the estate, of becoming a tontine* Celibacy,
it seemed to me, had been the secret of success, if success
other than material this could be called. It enabled
the Community to save, and it removed the separatist
influence of the family, which was the rock upon which
the Socialist enterprise of Owen * and other Utopias had
split. The same thing accounts for the temporary
prosperity of the Shakers. Another necessity seems to
be a religious dictatorship such as was that of Dr.
Noyes, You are lucky if your dictator is not an im-
postor.

I attended a great Camp Meeting. It seemed to me
quite as much a social gathering as a religious commun-
ion. Preaching of a vehement kind was going on all the
p Robert Owen. 1771-1858J

CORNELL 377

time, and people were coming up to the preacher's stand
and declaring themselves converted. But there were
ice-cream establishments, and there was a good deal,
evidently, of social enjoyment at the same time. The
effect of "Rock of Ages/7 however, sung by the multi-
tude among the pines and under the stars, was very fine.
Most Englishmen who visit the United States see
only the cities, and all that is worst in American society
and institutions meets the eye. At Ithaca I associated
with the inhabitants of a country town, and the infer-
ence to which my experience led me was entirely hopeful
and reassuring. I have ever since felt, when things
looked worst, that there was a reserve of sound and in-
telligent patriotism, though it might be somewhat slow
in coming to the front. Of respect for law the little
community was a model. For police a single constable
sufficed. When people went away from home, they
merely locked the doors of their houses. If in those
days there were occasionally lynchings in Northern or
Western States, they were, paradoxical as it may seem,
proofs rather of respect for law than of lawlessness.
There was usually no need of a rural police, and when
the district was raided by train-robbers or horse-stealers,
probably a gang of foreigners from New York, the
people were compelled to take up arms in their own
defence. The fear now is that the American blood may
be fatally diluted and the American character, with its
love of law and spontaneous attachment to order, may
be impaired by a vast and miscellaneous immigration.

378 KEMIXISCEXCES

The public schools may do much in the way of assimila-
tion. They cannot do all. They cannot at once assimi-
late character, political or moral.

It has been always a great pleasure to me to revisit
Cornell, and meet again my old friends in the Profes-
sorial Staff, such as Professors Wilder1 and Corson.2
Professor Wilder has made me promise to bequeath my
brain to his physiological collection. Whatever he de-
sires I do with pleasure.3 This will be my only contri-
bution to science. When I am cremated, as I hope to
be, I shall be obliged to the wind if it will waft a grain
or two of the ashes to the Campus of Cornell.

P Burt Green Wilder, B.S., M.D., Professor of Neurology and
Vertebrate Zoology, Emeritus.]

p Hiram Corson, A.M., LL.D., Litt.D., Professor of English
literature, Emeritus.]

pBut in the New York Tribune of October the 2d, 1910,
Professor Wilder writes as follows: —

"Sir, — The second instalment of the 'Reminiscences of Gold-
win Smith ' in the October number of McClure's Magazine contains
the following sentence : ' Professor Wilder has made me promise
to bequeath my brain to his physiological collection. Whatever
he desires I do with pleasure/

" The opening words must have been written by my dear friend
in forgetfulness of the following circumstances : During the even-
ing of April 20, 1891, in my rooms in Cascadilla Place, Ithaca,
N.T., in the presence of the late Henry W. Sage, and Douglas
Boardman, both trustees of Cornell University, after I had stated
the desirability of studying the brains of orderly and educated per-
sons, Goldwin Smith said : ' Wilder, I would as soon you had my
brain as my old hat, and I wish I had ten of them for you/

" The substance of this declaration was recorded by me on the
26th, and it is probable that a copy was sent to Mm, but neither
then nor subsequently did I depart from my rule never to make a
direct request for a bequest of brain. That he viewed the matter
seriously appears from the fact that, eight months later, on January

CORNELL 379

Since my parting from Cornell my name has been
given to a new Hall. A generation hence perhaps
will ask what the owner of that name was and what
he had done to merit the honour. The professor who
is showing him over the Hall will have some difficulty
in finding the answer. Canada, or rather be it said
Ontario, cooped up as it is and severed from the great
literary and publishing centres, is not a field in which
literary distinction is to be earned. But if hearty
attachment to the University and sincere gratitude
for the relief that its service gave him in a dark
hour, the name of Goldwin Smith is not ill placed
there,

1, 1892, lie sent me a holograph note accompanying a holograph
copy of a letter to his executors, directing them to deliver his
brain to me promptly after his death ; that spontaneous references
to the subject occur in his letters of May 3, 1896 ; November 6 and
17, 1902, and September 26, 1906 ; and that on November 21, 1902,
he filled out the regular 'Form of Bequest of Brain/ witnessed by
T. Arnold Haultain, then his private secretary, now, I understand,
his literary executor [*]...

"BURT G. WILDER.
"Siasconset, Mass., Sept. 29, 1910."]

* Yes, I possess a duplicate copy of this form, signed and witnessed as the writer
avers; but as no instructions were delivered to me, I could not act. —Ed.

CHAPTER XXII

VISITS TO EUROPE1

Reading — Magdalen — Oxford — Spiritualism — Ignorance of Can-
ada — Knaresborough — Curious Crimes — Italy — Florence —
Venice — Ravenna — Second Visit to Italy — Sicily — The
Mafia— Pizzo — Italian Cruelty— Amalfi— The Papacy —
Capua — Rome — Florence again.

FROM time to time I re-visited England. Re-visiting
the scenes of one's youth in age is a rather melancholy
pleasure. You find yourself unknown and knowing
nobody where once you knew everybody and everybody
knew you. Reading, from the quiet old place of my
childhood, had grown into a bustling city, while the
Reading and Basingstoke Railway had made Mortimer,
once so rural and secluded, almost a suburb of Reading.
I was there the guest of my old friend Sir John Mow-
bray,2 a political veteran stored with reminiscences of
the House of Commons. At Oxford a few of my con-
temporaries still lingered, while some of my old pupils
remained as Heads of Colleges or Professors. But the
character of the place, by the work of two reforming
Commissions, the abolition of tests, the introduction of

P These were made in 1876-1878; 1881-1882; 1893-1894; and
1899-1900 — this last was to Italy.]

P The Right Honourable Sir John Robert Mowbray, Baronet,
P.O., J.P., D.L., M.P. for the University of Oxford; also for the
city of Durham, etc. Born 1815; died 1899.]

VISITS TO EUROPE 381

science, and the general progress of the times, was
changed. At Magdalen, instead of a little party of
Demys which in my time encircled the fire in the junior
Common Room after Hall, there was a full complement
of undergraduates. New buildings had been added.
There was a new President's Lodge, and in it, in place of
the centenarian and faineant Routh, lived and ruled
the very active and highly efficient President, my friend
Warren.1 This was well. The wealth and beauty of
Magdalen, instead of being largely wasted, were being
put to their right use. Yet I could not refrain from
mentally wafting a sigh to the memory of the unre-
formed Magdalen, and feeling a slight compunction at
having taken an active part in letting the stir of a
progressive age into that little nook of unprogressive
felicity.

The University had largely increased in numbers.
The statute regulating the admission of non-collegiate
students, drawn long ago by my hand, had taken full
effect. Partly as one of its consequences, there had
grown up in the north a new town, on which I could not
help looking with some jealousy, as an irruption of the
common into the uncommon with a probable disturb-
ance of the circle of academic society which used to be
so pleasant. The abolition of tests had also done its
work. There had grown up two Non-conformist Col-
leges, while Non-conformists were everywhere freely
admitted. But what I had predicted when the battle

P T. Herbert Warren, Vice-Chancellor, 1906 to 1910J

382 REMINISCENCES

for the abolition of tests was being fought appeared to
have come to pass. The Non-conformists had not, as
the defenders of tests feared, swallowed up old Oxford;
old Oxford had rather swallowed the Non-conformists,
The spirit of the place, aided by its aesthetic and his-
toric influences, had prevailed. On the other hand,
science and intellectual freedom had produced their
effect on the Anglicans themselves. The removal of the
clerical restrictions had largely transferred teaching
and influence from clerical to lay hands. Not that the
medievalizing movement of Pusey and Newman had
by any means expired in its native and most congenial
seat. One could not enter a church without seeing that
the movement still prevailed. It had, however, as-
sumed a new guise and one indicative of waning force.
It had become literally Ritualist, sustained largely by
aesthetic influences, whereas under Pusey and Newman
it had been theological and was finding its adherents in
a weaker class of minds. Newman was not Ritualistic.
I never saw his Oratory, but it was said that everything
was very plain.

In one of our visits to England we found ourselves in
a boarding-house with a pair of highly cultivated and
pleasant people who were believers in Spiritualism; had
in fact adopted it as their religion and went to stance as
to Church. I was a sceptic, remembering as I did the
beginning of the movement in table-turning and the
turning of hats. Our friends were anxious for my con-
version. They proposed to me a stance with the first

VISITS TO EUROPE 383

Medium of the day, who was then in London. My
curiosity led me gladly to assent to the proposal . Going
to the Medium's abode, I paid a guinea, as I should to
a physician, and was shown into a room where I waited
for some time. Presently the Medium appeared, an
American with a strong New England accent. He
entered into a desultory conversation with me, probably
with fishing intent. Then he announced that the spirit
Winona had entered into him and that thenceforth it
would be she that spoke to me. In compliment to her
Medium, however, she spoke with a strong Yankee
accent. She launched into a maundering discourse, to
which, growing impatient, I put an end by asking her
whether I was married. That I seemed alone in the
material world, yet not alone, was the luminous reply.
Further maundering followed. The spirit condoled
with me on the ill luck which had befallen my nephew.
"What misfortune?" I asked, feigning surprise at the
accuracy of her information. She proceeded to give
me an account of my nephew's misfortune in missing a
Government appointment. As I never had a nephew,
I went away perfectly satisfied with the interview. I
could not help suspecting that Winona had received a
tip, and that her prompter had made a mistake. How
otherwise could this story have come into her head?
What fantastic tricks will not pious self-deception play !
Again, I was breakfasting with a friend, a shrewd and
successful man of business, and his wife, a clever woman.
There was a third person present whom I did not know.

384 BEMINISCENCES

The Court of Chancery had just compelled Home/ the
Medium, to disgorge a large sum out of which he had
swindled an old woman by personating the spirit of her
dead husband. I referred with pleasure to the incident.
My friends looked displeased, and at last disclosed the
fact that they were friends and disciples of Mr. Home,
to whom they had been introduced by Gully,2 of the
Water Cure, who afterwards figured rather equivocally
in a famous criminal case. I had then to beat a partial
retreat. I said that I was not sceptical by nature, and
that I was prepared to accept facts foreign or even
opposed to my own experience on trustworthy evidence.
"Will you then believe us if we tell you that Mr. Home
held a stance in this room last evening and that we saw
that heavy arm-chair advance at his bidding from the
corner in which it now stands to the centre of the
room?" "Certainly," was my reply; "knowing you
as I do to be perfectly trustworthy witnesses, I will on
your evidence accept the fact. But I have two ques-
tions to ask. Did the chair move away from Mr. Home
as well as towards; and was there anybody between
him and the chair when it moved ? " Both questions

p Daniel Dunglas Home, born near Edinburgh in 1833 ; died at
Auteuil in 1886. — He is the "Sludge" in Browning's "Sludge the
Medium" (published in 1864).]

[2 James Manby Gully. He and James Wilson introduced the
hydropathic treatment of disease at Malvern about 1842. He is
the "Dr. Gullson" of Charles Reade's "It is Never too Late to
Mend." — The case referred to was known as the " Bravo case."
A Mrs. Bravo was suspected of poisoning her husband. Disclosures
showed Gully's intimacy with the lady. Born 1808 ; died 1883 J

VISITS TO EUROPE 385

had to be answered in the negative. The impostor no
doubt pulled the chair to him with a horse-hair line.
The light was imperfect, and the witnesses, blinded by
their faith, and by the solemnity of the quack, allowed
themselves to be imposed upon by a trick which they
would at once have detected had it been played by a
common conjurer.

I saw another case of spiritualism in which I thought
the illusion was evidently produced by a yearning for
intercourse with the dead. In connection with this
case I was brought into contact with a female Medium
who was evidently the coarsest of impostors and whose
juggling apparatus could deceive no cool-headed ob-
server. But before these pages are in print Spiritual-
ism will have passed away.

In those days one encountered curious proofs of
British ignorance of Canada. On the door of Knares-
borough Church I read a proclamation by the Privy
Council relating to the Colorado Beetle, a visitation of
which was expected, beginning; "Whereas intelligence
has been received from Ontario, Canada, that the coun-
try round that town, etc/3 Within a few days after-
wards I fell in with three Privy Councillors, and when I
next went to Knaresborough Church the proclamation
had disappeared. At one place our landlady, a well-
educated woman, could hardly be brought to believe
that my wife's maid was a Canadian, as she was not red.
I was invited to an emigration meeting at a city remark-
able for intelligence. The Alabama question had just

386 REMINISCENCES

been settled, by the treaty of Washington.1 I spoke,
dwelling on the good feelings of Canadians towards the
Mother-country. I was followed by a gentleman,
evidently well-educated and a good speaker. He said
that he had listened with particular pleasure to what I
had said about the feeling of Canadians towards the
Mother-country, and that he hoped, now that the Ala-
bama question was settled, there would be nothing to
divide the two countries from each other. The audience
showed no surprise. A considerable change has since
that time been made by assiduous " advertising" of
Canada, and still more by the South African war. Yet
it seems more than doubtful whether the masses in the
two countries can ever be brought to know each other
and to think and act together sufficiently for the pur-
pose of Imperial Federation.

Knaresborough is the scene of the story of Eugene
Aram, whose character has been sentimentally trans-
figured by Bulwer,2 but who was really a mercenary
murderer, though he was cultivated and literary, as he
showed in his defence. We had something like a coun-
terpart of him at Ithaca in the person of one Ruloff,
who in a remarkable way combined criminal propensi-
ties with literary tastes, being a great philologist, and
engaged in the invention of a universal language. Ru-
loff committed a series of robberies and murders, the
series of murders beginning with those of his wife and

P February the 9th, 1871.]

P Bulwer Lytton's "Eugene Aram" was published in 1832.]

VISITS TO EUKOPE 387

daughter. On that occasion he escaped justice through
the absence of a corpus delicti, Lake Cayuga, into which
he had thrown the bodies, being undredgable. He
wandered into Virginia, where he committed other
crimes, all the time working at philology and his univer-
sal language. Returning to his old haunts, he again
committed robbery and murder, and again fell into the
hands of justice. The opponents of capital punishment
petitioned against his execution on the stock plea of
insanity, and on the somewhat inconsistent ground that
he had invented a universal language and that by hang-
ing him a light of science would be put out. The Gov-
ernor of the State issued two Commissions of Inquiry,
one to report on each plea. Both reported in the nega-
tive, and Ruloff was hanged. His forehead, in the cast
which was taken, bespeaks intellect, but the width of
the head between the ears gives it the aspect of that of
a bull.

My early Alpine tours embraced the Southern slope of
the Alps. Otherwise I did not see Italy till late in life,
when I had settled in Canada. Then I unspeakably
enjoyed it. I hardly needed a guide ; every object was
already familiar. The greatest surprise was the ancient
sculpture, which I found I was far from having seen in
seeing the casts. The tact of my courier just saved me
from entering Pompeii with a "caravan" of German
"tourists," whom we found drinking beer in the restau-
rant. What you bring back from a tour depends on
what you take to it, and probably most of the people

388 REMINISCENCES

of that caravan brought little with them to Italy. Does
the touring which is now the universal rage do the mass
of tourists more good by enlarging their ideas than it
does them harm by taking them away from their duties
in life?

At the lovely Carthusian Monastery near Florence I
was received by a monk with a figure so austere and
venerable that I was ashamed to use him as a showman.
He bowed at all the altars, and appeared to be a model
of devotion. He showed me cells in which the Brethren
were immured, with orifices through which their meals
were passed to them. At last he pointed to a door,
telling me that on going through it I should see a view,
with an air which seemed to imply that views might
have their attractions for children of this world. The
view was lovely. But as I was looking at it, what was
my surprise to hear behind my back the monk and my
man chaffing each other about the quality of the liqueur
made at different monasteries. When I turned round,
the monk's austerity had vanished. We went to the
pharmacia and "liquored up." Coining away I said to
my man, "You seem to know that monk." "Yes, he
was once a brown begging friar at Rome." "But is
that man going to be shut up in one of those cells and
to have his meals passed to Trim through a hole in the
wall?" "Oh, since the Monastery has been reduced,
they have relaxed the rule."

The monks and nuns from the dissolved or reduced
monasteries, I was told, had generally been glad to get

VISITS TO EUROPE 389

back to domestic life ; a fact which threw some light on
the dissolution of the monasteries in England. Lovely
homes of monasticism, such as the Benedictine Monas-
tery at Bologna and that of San Martino at Naples,
remained, when I was last in Italy, on the hands of the
Government. Will a new spirit ever take up its abode
in them and struggle against the ascendency of material-
ism as monasticism in its way and measure struggled
against the ascendency of brute force in the feudal
era?

To be for the first time in Venice when your mind
and knowledge are mature is the realization of a dream.
I fortunately got there before a steamer had begun to
run upon the Grand Canal and some time before the
fall of the Campanile; a catastrophe which is irrepa-
rable, for the old memories will never gather round the
new building. This will not be the tower from which
Antonio scanned the horizon for his over-due argosies,
or the sight of which greeted the eye of the Venetian
mariner returning from Oriental trade or Turkish war.
The Dogana and St. Mark's seem to be imperilled. The
piles surely must give way in time. Venice "rose like
an exhalation from the deep." Into the deep like an
exhalation she may return. Better almost this than
that she should become a vulgar trading town.

Ruskin was there sketching. Are we bound to
share his present admiration for St. Mark's? To
me, I confess, it seemed more interesting as symbolic
of the half Oriental piety of a race of commercial

390 REMINISCENCES

adventurers than transcendently beautiful. It surely
is too dark.

The piombi are the grim memorials of that wonderful
oligarchy which for so many centuries, while it deprived
the people of political life and thought, gave them free-
dom from the political convulsions of Florence and the
other democratic republics, with security for the life of
trade, literature, art, and the brothel.

Another vision of the past was Ravenna, a city of
ancient history preserved in its antiquity and silence by
the silting up of the harbour,where once the Roman fleet
rode at anchor, and by the malarious rice grounds.
Byzantine work is that of a decadence. Mosaic is not
art. Yet the churches have a certain magnificence,
besides the intense interest of their antiquity. The
portraits of Justinian and his court are apparently
genuine, though barbaresque. Here is a Roman Em-
peror, though one of the lowest decadence, in his own
tomb. A Roman Empress was actually to be seen in
hers till some profane urchins threw in a lighted match.
"Old Ravenna's immemorial wood" of Italian pines
was also profoundly impressive when I was there; I
believe it has since been decaying. Ravenna, if it was
in Dante's time anything like what it is now, must have
been a suitable place of exile for the writer of "Purga-
tory" and "Hell." I admire, but I never could love,
the poet who had painted God as the creator and keeper
of a torture-house unspeakably worse than that of the
most execrable of Italian tyrants.

VISITS TO EUROPE 391

Ravenna by this time no doubt swarms with tourists
"doing" its antiquities. Though the spell might be
impaired by the crowd, one might be glad that the en-
joyment was shared, were it certain that it was real, not
a formal course of sight-seeing from which no idea or
impression is carried away.

My visit to Italy was repeated in 1899 when I went in
company with my dear wife and our friend Miss Crooks,
now Mrs. Burns.1 Then it took in Sicily. I saw the
Temple of Concord at Girgenti standing on the silent
shores, a lovely mourner over the grave of the mighty
Agrigentum. I saw the great harbour of Syracuse
where Athenian Imperialism had met its doom, and
the quarries which had been its tragic prison-house.
I saw the divine Landscape of Taormina. I saw Pa-
lermo with its broad valley lying among the hills, a dark
green expanse of orange and lemon groves, with its
ravishing Chapel Royal, and still more ravishing Church
of Monreale. On the night when I was at Palermo took
place, amidst a scene of the greatest popular excitement,
the arrest of Palizzolo, a local magnate and chief of the
Mafia, for the murder of his enemy Notabartolo.2 The
murder had been committed several years before, but
the murderer's political influence had prevented the

P A daughter of the late Robert Pilkington Crooks, of Osgoode
Hall, Toronto, and widow of Captain A. Norman Burns, of the 49th
(late Princess Charlotte of Wales's) Regiment.]

[2 In 1893 Signor Notarbartolo, a Governor of the Bank of Sicily,
accused Palizzolo, a brother-Governor, of fraud. A week or two
afterwards his dead body was found, covered with wounds.]

392 REMINISCENCES

passing by the Chamber of Deputies, of which he was a
member, of the resolution necessary to put a Deputy
on his trial. Thus for years murder had stalked the
streets of Palermo, defying justice, while those streets
were full of soldiery. At last a strong Prime Minister
carried the resolution, stopped the post and telegraph,
and pounced upon Palizzolo. The venue was changed
to Milan, conviction in Sicily being hopeless. But
when I left Italy, the court had got no further than
committing twenty witnesses for refusing to give evi-
dence against the Mafia.

Matters were not much better at Naples where the
Camorra domineered. Miss Crooks was robbed of her
reticule in one of the principal streets at midday by a
man who then jumped into a cab and was going off
when he was collared by a bersaglieri. We received a
friendly hint that we had better leave Naples. Had
there been a trial, there might really have been some
risk. Luckily the robber proved to be a ticket-of-leave
man and was remanded to prison on his former sentence.
The career of Mussolino and the sympathy felt for the
savage, show how, when the law has been for centuries
the enemy of the people, the people become the enemies
of the law. Nor, when I was at Naples, had the law, or
at least the Government, become the people's friend.
Half the morsel of coarse bread and the cup of meagre
wine were being taken from the lips of poverty to pay
for the share of Italy in the Imperialist and Militarist
craze. The squalid misery in Naples was frightful.

VISITS TO EUROPE 393

On my way back from Sicily, through the irregularity
of the Italian railway service, I found myself stranded
for the night at Pizzo in Calabria, the place where Murat,
landing with revolutionary designs, got himself shot;
a late sacrifice to the manes of the thousands whom the
ruffian had massacred at Madrid. A darker or more sin-
ister-looking place I had never beheld than that little
Calabrian town. The filth of the inn was unspeakable.
But the courtesy of the people whom I found at supper
in the saloon, probably the heads of Pizzo society,
nothing could exceed. In the morning I heard under
my window a noise which reminded me of the chorus
of frogs. Looking out, I saw all Pizzo gathered in the
square and holding its early conversazione. Ragged
and dirty in the highest degree the company were.
But they seemed, and let us hope that they were, as
merry as multi-millionaires or crickets.

The Italians are the worst of horse masters. Nothing
can exceed their cruelty. There is no use in remon-
strating. There might be some danger; for they are
not less peppery than courteous. In fact, an envoy of
the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
who pulled up a savage at Naples was thrashed within
an inch of his life. I was told that the Pope, when they
appealed to him on the subject, said that Christians
owed no duty to brutes. This was scarcely credible of
Leo XIII. He would have known that even if Chris-
tians owed no duty to brutes they owed some to them-
selves. In Sicily I saw a goat hitched up to a wall so

394 REMINISCENCES

that it could only touch the ground with its hind legs*
If I had rebuked the barbarian, he would very likely
have drawn his knife. The poor little Italian horses
do not deserve the treatment which they get. A pair of
them trotted with me and my courier from Salerno to
Sorrento, eight hours, with little more than an hour of
rest, and came in as lively as they went out. I longed
to give the poor little fellows an extra feed, but I knew
that I should be only giving an extra feed or drink to
the driver.

Amalfi is now a petty town, and could never have
been a large city. But romantic interest attaches to
it as the cradle of scientific navigation.1 "Empire/*
which we are now told is political bliss, was then happily
far away in Germany, and a chance was given for that
free and emulous development which produced the
Italian Republics. On the day when I halted at Amalfi
preparations were being made for an annual miracle, an
exudation from the bones of St. Andrew, which Amal-
fian mariners had been so fortunate as to secure, prob-
ably from some Byzantine relic-monger, in the Middle
Ages. This is a counterpart of the liquefaction of the
blood of St. Januarius. A terrible millstone these an- i
nual thanmaturgfes must be round the neck of the Cath-
olic Church, which cannot go on performing them with-
out forfeiting the allegiance of the educated or discon-
tinue them without forfeiting the allegiance of the people.

P The introduction of the mariner's compass has been attributed
to Flavio Gioia, a citizen of Arrmlfiy in 1307.]

VISITS TO EUROPE 395

Of the allegiance of the educated, it is true, there is
not much left to be forfeited. The tone of the drawing-
room, I was told, was almost universally sceptical. A
few old families, mostly of Papal creation, are rather
politically than theologically devout. Yet the position
of the Prisoner of the Vatican, if he could only see it, is
one of far greater influence, as well as far more respect-
able, than was that of the Temporal lord of Rome. It
bears a certain resemblance to the Papacy of the Middle
Ages, though Democracy and Science do not go to
Canossa. It is in fact a crucial proof of the elevation
which, as well as freedom, a Church gains by separation
from the State.

Passing Capua, I thought I could mark the spot on
the hillside where Hannibal must have stood with his
staff looking down on the besieged city and thinking
how he could relieve it. The result was his ineffectual
march on Rome. Why had he not marched on Rome
after Cannse? He could not have besieged the city,
as he had no siege-train ; but he might have starved it.
His own army could well have subsisted on the country ;
and he would have paralyzed the confederacy of which'
Rome was the head. But his judgment was that of the
greatest captain, probably, as well as the most striking
figure in military history. It might be conjectured that
after Cannae his mercenaries grew riotous and demanded
immediate reward ; but never, not even in his passage of
the Alps, in his terrible inarch through the floods, or at
the end of his fortunes, does he seem to have lost control.

396 EEMINISCENCES

"Rome, Rome, thou art no more!" I believe says
the song. Classic Rome really is no more. It is over-
laid and dwarfed by Modern Rome. Why cannot his-
toric places such as Rome and Venice be kept historic ?
Why must we have a London quarter on the Quirinal
and steamboats on the Grand Canal ? Who now can
meditate upon the ruins of Rome ? The ruins are lost
in the modern city. The aqueducts, the roads, and the
tombs beside the roads alone speak of ancient Rome.
Rome never was the capital of Italy. She was the
capital of the world. For a capital of the world her
position was good. For a capital of Italy it is not.
I can sympathize with Hare's jeremiads,1 though not
from his ecclesiastical point of view. New Italy is the
newest of nations. She should have had a new capital.
A fine site for one would have been the Alban Mount.

To Thomas Arnold the moment on which he first
caught sight of Rome was about the most solemn in his
life. I ought to have shared that great man's feelings,
but I did not. If ever the Papacy was a blessing, or
other than a curse, it must have been in the Middle Ages,
when it balanced, if it did not much temper, feudal
force. But of medieval Rome there is scarcely a trace.
For the ecclesiastical Rome of later days I feel no re-
spect. Nor do the hundred temples of its sacerdotalism
and wafer-worship, with their somewhat meretricious
splendour, greatly impress me. St. Peter's, with its

P See Augustus J. C. Hare's " Walks in Rome," passim. — London :
George Allen ; New York : George Routledge & Sons.]

VISITS TO EUROPE 397

vast and luminous grandeur, must impress every
one; but hardly in a religious way. Besides, here
also you are confronted with false relics and other
lies. It was ancient Rome, I presume, the centre of
conquest and the seat of empire, that stirred Arnold's
feelings most and filled him with almost religious ec-
stasy when he first caught sight of the city. I do not
love conquest ; I believe in nationality; in the emulous
variety of nations; and I doubt the beneficence of any
Empire, even of that of Rome, though of what history
would have been without the Roman Empire we can
hardly form an idea.

There had been one very remarkable addition to the
sights of Rome between my first visit and my second.
Not very far from the Church where, in his shrine of
lapis lazuli and gold, rests the founder of the Society of
Jesus, now stands the statue of Giordano Bruno, with the
inscription "To Giordano Bruno, on the Spot where he
Suffered Death by Fire, the Age which he Foresaw."
The erection of that statue cut Papacy to the heart.
Nor can "Baptist Church," flaunting in large letters on
a building in a Roman street, be agreeable to the Papal
eye.

Roman Catholicism is dead at the root as a system of
belief, besides being weighed down by its load of historic
crime. To its pretensions as a system of morality, the
moral state of Catholic countries of Italy, its centre,
above all, is the decisive reply. Yet it is still, to use
Macaulay's happy phrase, an august and fascinating

398 REMINISCENCES

superstition, and, to simple multitudes, it is the only
spiritual influence and the only poetry of life.

I feel more interest in Florence, that miraculous
city, which with a population never amounting to a
hundred thousand and perpetually torn by faction,
produced such wealth of literature and art, to say
nothing of manufactures and finance. Happy Florence
to have escaped being a political capital of Italy!
Happy Florence in having no coal or anything to turn
her into a manufacturing city ! Art is her proper in-
dustry. Her dower is the sense of beauty which shows
itself in the commonest objects; in the flower-market,
in the very arrangement of goods in the stores. Some
very pleasant days were passed in the Villa Landor,
where, in what was once the abode of that eccentric
and crabbed genius,1 my Cornell friend, Professor Fiske,
was living in elegant luxury and entertaining with
Medicean grace. Pleasant and instructive hours were
passed with Signor Pasquale Villari,2 the eminent Pro-
fessor of history and member of a Senate which is
chosen for personal distinction in the different lines.
Should the crash come which prodigal misgovernment
on one side and the consequent growth of Socialism on
the other seem to threaten, the Senate might prove the
anchor of the storm-tossed State.

p Walter Savage Landor, author of " Imaginary Conversations,"
etc. Born 1775 ; died 1864.]

P Signor Pasquale Vfflari, honorary D.C.L. of Oxford ; honorary
Doctor of Edinburgh and Halle ; Vice-President of the Senate of
Italy ; author of several historical and social works. Born in 1827. J

SMJTH AT 8ivHrr-m> YBAES op AGE.

Photograph by Diion, of Toronto.

CHAPTER XXIII

VISITS TO WASHINGTON

Settling in Canada — Washington —Bancroft — Bayard —The
Pensions Bill — The Capitol — American Oratory — American
Statesmanship — Washington Society — The Party System —
Newspaper Reporters— E. L Godkin.

Two years were spent happily at Cornell in lecturing
to my class in history, watching the vigorous growth
and happy promise of the young University, and en-
joying the society of its good Founder, Ezra Cornell.
Then my strong domestic tastes carried me to Canada
where three branches of my family were settled, and
where I should still be near Cornell.

From time to time, when settled in Canada, I, with
my wife, visited Washington, which was always growing
in brilliancy, architectural and social. It is the only
great city on this continent that is permanently and
securely well governed. Instead of being under an
elective Council of ward politicians, it is under three
Commissioners appointed by the President of the
United States. Here the problem of municipal gov-
ernment, supposed to be insolvable, is solved if other
cities would accept the solution. They will never get
out of the slough of mal-administration and corruption

400 EEMINISCENCES

in which they are all wallowing while they hug the
elective system and government by ward politicians.

A thing that strikes one in the new city is the
predominance of the military element in the statuary of
the squares. Why is it that the Americans, an industrial
people, are such worshippers of military glory? Why
was the figure chosen to stand in front of the White
House the victor, if it could be called a victory, of New
Orleans, ramping on a war-horse when he ought to be
crouching behind a cotton-bale?1 Why have there
been so many military Presidents and nominees for the
Presidency, while England, an old war-power, has had
only one military Prime Minister, and that one chosen,
not on military grounds, but because he was one of the
leading statesmen of Europe?2

I was elected a member of the Cosmos dub, and there
had pleasant and instructive talks. My old friend Mr.
Bancroft had taken up his winter abode in the city,
and I often dropped in to make up a rubber for him in
the evening. Why cannot Progress let whist, the solace
of old age, alone ? Why turn it into bridge whist, or
destroy by the intrusion of mechanical science the in-
terest of planning your own game ? My private con-
viction is that whist, as it was played in my youth, and
as Sarah Battle played it, with ten points and honours,
was really the best of all. It was a happy mixture of

p Andrew Jackson, the seventh President of the United States.
He defeated the English under General Sir Edward Pakenham at
New Orleans in 1815.]

[2The Duke of Wellington, Prime Minister 1829-1830J

VISITS TO WASHINGTON 401

skill and luck, and gave room for interesting vicissitudes
of fortune in the course of a game.

Bancroft had preserved Ms health and his powers of
work into old age by a careful regimen. Like Bethell,
he worked early in the morning. He took regular horse-
exercise till very late in life. When he could no longer
ride, he took to driving, which, as he was apt to let
the reins drop, was rather perilous to himself and to his
companion. When he took my wife out for a drive,
I was glad to get her back safe.

One of my great friends at Washington was Mr,
Bayard,1 a thoroughly high-bred and honourable poli-
tician. He was not the less admirable in my eyes for
having at the outbreak of Secession bravely spoken
against war; though his voice had been drowned in the
roar of onset and he had long suffered in popularity as
having been unpatriotic, when in truth he had behaved
like the best of patriots. One of his claims to my
esteem was that he was a sound free-trader. He was
afterwards Ambassador to England, and there dis-
tinguished himself as an envoy of peace and friendship.
It might be ungracious to say that with the highest of
motives he somewhat overdid the part. An American
Ambassador to England should be cautious how he
allows himself to be brought under the spell of London
Society. He should remember that he is an arnbassa-

t1 Thomas Francis Bayard. He was Secretary of State from
1885 to 1889; appointed Ambassador to Great Britain in 1893.
Born in 1828.]

402 REMINISCENCES

dor, the representative of a separate and occasionally
conflicting interest. I have touched on this point al-
ready in the case of Lowell.

I think it was Bayard that invited me just after the
inauguration of the President to accompany him in a
call at the White House. I demurred, saying that I had
no business or right to intrude. My friend assured me
that the President would be glad to see me. I really
believe he was. The White House absolutely swarmed
with office-seekers, some of whom had come not alone,
but bringing with them a local tail to press their claims,
and the distracted victim of their importunities may
very likely have found relief in turning aside for a few
minutes to talk to a visitor dbout Canadian weather.
A terribly seamy side of American democracy is the
place-hunting. We all know how Lincoln at the su-
preme moment of national peril was distracted by the
ravenous importunities of the place-hunters. "Ah!
It's not the Civil War, it's that Postmastership at Ped-
lington," he cried in his anguish. For ever blessed is
the memory of George William Curtis, the principal
begetter of civil service reform! It is, however, not
wonderful that civil service reform should have a hard
life, as it evidently has, under the party system of Gov-
ernment. Party must have workers, and the workers
must be paid. British Ministers were willing enough
to give up their petty patronage, which was always a
great plague and nuisance to them, while they retained
the great patronage and that which wins the support of

VISITS TO WASHINGTON 403

powerful men, the appointments to Peerages, Baron-
etcies, Knighthoods, Bishoprics, Deaneries, Colonial
Governorships, Indian Viceroyalty, and Irish Lord
Lieutenancy, besides the social grade which hitherto at
least it has been in their power to impart, and the much-
coveted admission to Royal Balls.

I was at Washington when the Pension Arrears Bill
was going through Congress. I was lunching with my
old acquaintance Butler and a party of Congressmen.
I ventured to ask them what they thought would be
the cost. I think they said twenty-five millions of
dollars with a prospect of a speedy decrease. Admira-
tion filled the world when, after the war, the army,
instead of overturning the Constitution and making its
General a dictator, as it had turned its ploughshares
into swords, turned back the swords into ploughshares
and returned generally to the employments of peaceful
life. Nobody could foresee that out of the grave of
the military organization would arise a political organ-
ization styling itself the Grand Army of the Republic
and plundering the nation on a gigantic scale. Thirty-
five years after the end of the war, the country was
paying one hundred and forty millions in pensions, of
the claims for which a large proportion were notorious
frauds. Compared with this, what are the worst cases
of monarchical wastefulness? What was the cost
of that paragon of monarchical wastefulness, Ver-
sailles? Nor was the expense the worst of the evil.
The worst of the evil was the demoralization. Yet not

404 REMINISCENCES

a politician dared say a word, while the platforms of both
parties paid a cowardly homage to the Grand Army
vote and promised a liberal construction of the Pension
Law, that is to say, increased license of public pillage.
There are few things more shameful in the annals of any
nation. The total cost of the war of Secession, when to
the enormous outlay on the war itself, including bonuses
and payments to substitutes, is added the pension,
beggars experience and almost defies calculation. Per-
haps, as I said before, for a Democracy inclined to
Jingoism the cost of war may be a wholesome correc-
tive. Still, the waste is appalling.

Of course I frequented the galleries of the Capitol.
In the Senate you can hear the Debate, which is some-
times worth hearing. In the House, so bad are the
acoustics, so incessant is the noise of talking, moving
about, slamming of desks, and calling of pages, that
hardly any speaker can be heard. It is a babel with a
gavel accompaniment. Order there is none. I have
seen a number of Members leave their places and
group themselves, standing, round a speaker whom
they particularly wished to hear. Mr. Reed;s * sten-
torian voice prevailed over the din. So did that of
Mr. Bryan.2 It may almost- be said that a voice of
thunder is a condition of political eminence. No
ordinary organ will fill the House of Representatives

P Thomas Brackett Reed was Speaker of the House of Repre-
sentatives from 1889 to 1891.]

P William Jennings Bryan, Member of the House of Representa-
tives from 1891 to 1895 ; Democratic candidate for the Presidency in
1896 and other dates.]

VISITS TO WASHINGTON 405

or the Hall of a Convention. Political influence thus
comes to be measured by power of lungs. An Ameri-
can to whom I made this remark answered that it was
the shrill not the loud voice that was best heard. That
may be ; still the power of sound, whether the sound is
that of the drum or of the fife, predominates over that
of sense.

The average of speaking, however, in America, both
in Congress and elsewhere, is far higher than it is in
England. Rhetoric and elocution are parts of American
education. Nor is American oratory in general any
longer vitiated by spread-eagle. In this, as in others,
Americans have found out their weak point. You
must now go very far west, or perhaps south, to meet
with an Elijah Pogram.1 The training, however, has
one bad result, the orator seldom gets rid of the air
of speaking for effect. The great English orators,
nature's elect and pupils, such as Gladstone and Bright,
speak in the accents of nature and to the heart, though
practice in debating societies had marred the freshness
of Gladstone's style. I once heard Everett, whose
platform oratory was the acme of American art. His
language was unimpeachable. But his every word
and not only his every word, but his every gesture, was
unmistakably prepared. He seemed to gesticulate
not only with his hands, but with his legs. He even
planned scenic effects beforehand. Having to deliver
a Fourth of July oration, he introduced a veteran of
P In Diekens's "Martin Clmzzlewit."]

406 REMINISCENCES

1812, put hum in a conspicuous place, and told the old
man to rise to him at his entrance into the Hall. The
old man did as he had been bidden. Everett apos-
trophized him with, "Venerable old man, sit down !
It is not for you to rise to us, but for us to rise to you."
The veteran said afterwards, "Mr. Everett is a strange
man; he told me to rise when he came into the Hall,
and when I did rise he told me to sit down."

I have always had a poor opinion of American states-
manship. In the United States the grocers are states-
men; the statesmen are grocers. The level of political
intelligence among the people is probably higher than
it is in any other country. The aims of the statesmen
are for the most part miserably low and narrow. Their
treatment of the Canadian question, among other
things, is a proof of this. Their attention and energies
have been greatly absorbed by a struggle among a set
of corrupt interests for the bedevilment of the Tariff.
The interests being largely local, politics become pa-
rochial as well as low. The term of the Member of the
House of Representatives is too short for political train-
ing, and that House is a chaos led, if at all, most incon-
gruously by the Speaker, who acts as the head of a
party when he ought to be perfectly impartial. The
exclusion of the Ministers of State from the Legislature
deprives legislation of guidance and divests the Minis-
ters of responsibility. The Ministers are creatures
of a day, going out of office with the President, and
seldom afterwards remaining in public life, so that

VISITS TO WASHINGTON 407

there can be no continuity of policy in the Department
of Foreign Affairs or elsewhere. The Senate being
comparatively permanent, as well as composed of a
rather more powerful class of men than the House,
power gravitates to it, and it seems likely to become
paramount, while it is itself becoming a representation
of log-rolling monopolies. Men whose private business
is important are giving up their places in the House of
Representatives, feeling that their time spent there is
wasted. The weak points of the American Constitu-
tion are beginning to appear. Deference to the false
diagnosis of Montesquieu entered into its construction
and is now interfering with its working as a republican
counterpart of the Constitution of Great Britain.

Such faith as I have in the political future of the
American people was formed by those two years'
residence in a little American town. Ithaca, if a fair
appeal could be made to its good sense, would settle
aright questions in the treatment of which Washington,
under the influence of sinister intents and slavery to
party fails.

The tendency of society at Washington, of Official
and Congressional society particularly, to dress itself
after European Courts and to mimic their etiquette is
manifest and amusing. Still, when I was there, Demo-
cracy continued to assert itself, especially in the famil-
iarity of the people with the head of the Republic. I
attended one of the Presidential receptions at the
White House. It was in the evening. There was an

408 REMINISCENCES

immense attendance of people all in their common dress.
From the time when I fell into the line it took three
quarters of an hour to reach the White House. It
took the same time to get from the entrance to the
White House to the Reception Room, where the name
of each visitor was called by the Marshal, and the Presi-
dent took each in turn by the hand. Sad the plight
of his hand at last must have been. Nothing, however,
could be better than the behaviour of the people.
They moved on quietly in line, showing not the slight-
est sign of impatience. It is doubtful whether a crowd
of the aristocratic society at London would have be-
haved quite as well. We used to hear of scuffles and
of torn dresses in the 'Crush Room' at St. James's.

I was at Washington in 1885 when, in consequence
of the Penjdeh incident,1 Great Britain was on the
brink of a war with Russia. Authentic information
came to me concerning a new military invention which
had been tried in presence of the Russian Ambassador
with success and seemed to be important, I at once
wrote to the Governor-General of Canada 2 offering,
if it was deemed worth while to inquire, to bear any
necessary expense. I communicated also with a mem-
ber of the Government in England who certainly gave
serious attention to the matter. I may mention this,
as this page will meet no eye but my own while I live.
I have not been regardless of my British Citizenship,

t1 An attack, in March, 1885, by the Russian General Komaroff
on a fortified Afghan post.] P Lord LansdowneJ

VISITS TO WASHINGTON 409

though, living long away from my own country in a
country not my own, I have naturally become more
or less a citizen of the world. In Canada I was the
President of the Loyal and Patriotic Union formed
at the time of Mr. William O'Brien's incursion/ to up-
hold the integrity of the United Kingdom, while the
Dominion Parliament and the Ontario Legislature,
with all their loyalty, had been courting the Irish vote
by resolutions in favour of Home Rule, as the Dominion
Parliament has again done. When Summer traduced
England, I, being then in the United States, answered
him,2 and I hope I have never failed in dealing with

P 1886.]

p Through the kindness of Mr. R. C. Edlund, of Cornell Univer-
sity, Ithaca, I learn that : —

"In Volume XIII of the Works of Charles Sumner, published by
Lee and Shepard, Boston, 1880, on pages 53 to 93, there is an address
entitled * Claims on England, — Individual and National,1 with the
sub-title 'Speech on the Johnson-Clarendon Treaty, in Executive
Session of the Senate, April 13, 1869.' Although this speech was
made in Executive Session, it appears that the Senate removed the
injunction of secrecy that is usually placed on speeches so made
and reports of it were extensively printed and circulated."

To this Goldwin Smith replied in a speech at Ithaca on the 19th
of May, 1869, on "The Relations between America and England."
This speech was afterwards printed in pamphlet form by "G. C.
Bragdon, Publisher, Ithaca, N.Y., The Ithaean Office." In a
Preface to this are the following paragraphs : —

"The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
seemed to speak the mind of the Senate and the nation ; and had
his speech been followed by action in the shape of a pressure of his
demands, as the answer of Great Britain could not be doubtful,
the danger of a rupture of friendly relations between the two coun-
tries would have been serious.

"An Englishman resident in America may be an imperfect judge
of the indications of American feeling; but he has the advantage of

410 REMINISCENCES

history to plead the cause of my country where I be-
lieved she was in the right. I could never have said
with Decatur, "My country, right or wrong."

A curious structure is the party system of the United
States. There are two great organizations always on
foot and now recognized by constitutional law, which,
for example, provides that the two parties shall be
equally recognized in the appointments of the Civil
Service Commission. But the principles of each organ-
ization are ambulatory, and a fresh platform is con-
structed before each Presidential election, the planks
being selected with a view to the attraction of votes.
It is possible to trace a connection, though of a very-
tortuous kind, in the principles of the Democratic
party, which having in the time of Jefferson been,
though under a different name, ultra-Democratic,
became that of the slave-owning Oligarchy of the South,
the medium of transformation being the ultra-Demo-
cratic theory of State-right, which sheltered slavery.
The changes, nevertheless, are vital. Nobody would
recognize the identity of the plutocratic Republican
of the present day with the patriotic Republican of
the struggle for the Union. A journal which was for-
merly the Democratic organ of the slave-owning interest
is now the Republican organ of the plutocracy without
feeling the change.

knowing something of both sides : and the danger was to be meas-
ured, not by the feelings or intentions of the American people alone,
but by these combined with the general temper and present mood of
the powerful nation against which Mr. Sumner's speech was made/7]

VISITS TO WASHINGTON 411

I was at Washington at the time of the Half-Breed
rising in the Canadian North- West.1 There was afloat
in the United States a belief that not only the Half-
Breeds but the Indians in Canada had been oppressed
and goaded to rebellion. I was accosted by a reporter,
a young man of gentlemanly manner who introduced
himself as a graduate of a first-class University, and
desired that I would allow him to interview me on the
North- West question. I thought there would be no
harm or danger in telling him that the case of the Half-
Breeds was under investigation, but that to the Indians
the conduct of the Canadian Government had cer-
tainly been just and kind. Next morning, taking up
his paper, I found that I was made not only to say the
opposite of what I had said about the Half-Breeds and
Indians, but to bring forward a fresh charge of mal-
treatment of settlers against the Canadian Govern-
ment, and to quote a letter in support of it; I never
having heard either of the charge or of the letter.
After a Presidential election it was wired from New
York to Canada that I had declared my intention of
calling upon the President-elect and urging the imme-
diate annexation of Canada to the United States. I
had not been in New York for weeks, and it is needless
to say that I never thought of being guilty of such an
impropriety as approaching a President of the United
States on any subject whatever. The British Associa-

P 1884^1885. — This was the rebellion that was led by Louis
Kiel and quelled by General Middleton.]

412 REMINISCENCES

tion, when it first visited Canada, brought with it a
number of trippers whose behaviour was not entirely
worthy of science. Some of these men went to Phila-
delphia, where there was an exposition going on, and
there also got into an altercation with the natives.
The consequence was that, taking up an American
journal, I read that I had written a letter to a Toronto
paper denouncing these people for their behaviour and
branding them as bagmen. I at once sent in a correc-
tion, saying that I had not written or thought of writ-
ing any letter of the kind, and that when the British
Association was in Canada I was attending a Convention
at Chicago. After a long delay, the correction ap-
peared. I sent a disclaimer to Tyndall, who in his reply
said that a thing of the same kind had happened to him
in New York. He had been made to pass a severe
stricture on the fire service, when he had never said a
word upon the subject. I heard of a case in which,
complaint having been made of a totally fictitious ac-
count of an affair of which a reporter had written in
absolute ignorance, the editor's answer was that the
reporter had done his best under trying circumstances.
Let me say for my old friend Mr. Charles Dana,1 of
the New York Sun, that whatever might be his faults,
prone as he pp.rf-.fl.in1y was to extreme prejudices and a
violent expression of them, he had the feelings of a
gentleman with regard to the social honour of the press.

I1 Charles Anderson Dana became editor of the New York Sun
in 1868. Born at Hinsdale, N.H., in 1819J

VISITS TO WASHINGTON 413

I had occasion once to appeal to him on this score, and
he responded most promptly and heartily to the appeal
If anybody had brought Charles Dana a report of what
had been said at a private dinner-table; I think Dana
would have kicked him downstairs. The Press surely
ought to have, and to enforce by common action, its
professional rules of honour.

It is needless for me to add to the flowers of praise
deservedly strewn on the tomb of my friend E. L God-
kin.1 In days in which the question what is behind the
press was of all questions not the least dark or the least
formidable, we always knew that strict integrity and
perfect independence were behind the Nation. Master
of a most telling style, and using it fearlessly in the
cause of what he deemed, and was very seldom mistaken
in deeming, right, he was one of the very best antiseptic
elements in American public life. He of course received
from all wrong-doers an abundant tribute of hatred
and abuse. There never was a more genuine patriot.
Party, popular passion, and advertisers, all of these he
could defy in the interest of the country. He has left
few behind him who can do the same.

p Edwin Lawrence GodMn was born in Ireland in 1831 ; became
editor and proprietor of the New York Notion in 1856, and of the
New York Evening Post in 1881 J

CHAPTER XXIV

VISITS TO THE NORTH-WEST

1870, 1888, 1889

The North-West— Winnipeg— Skye Crofters— Immigration —
Annexation— The Canadian Pacific Railway— The Eocky
Mountains — British Columbia.

I PAID two visits l to that land of miraculous promise,
the North-West, Very impressive was the view of
that unbounded plain, its expanse stretching out like
a sea purpled by the twilight and set off by an electric
light upon some tower in the distance. Very lovely
no doubt is the prairie in the season of flowers. But
it must be trying to the spirits to live in a country
without a hill or a tree, especially on a lonely farm.
Fortunately the pioneer is not afflicted with morbid
sensibilities. The fruitfulness of the soil is extraordi-
nary, and apparently it is inexhaustible. I found no
falling off in the vegetables of a garden which had been
worked for thirty years. But the fertility of the soil
is balanced by the severity of the climate. In harvest
time everybody is trembling for fear of an early frost.

P In 1870 he went to Winnipeg; in 1880 to the Pacific coast.
A third journey was made in 1889, but to what point, I do not
know.]

414

VISITS TO THE NORTH-WEST 415

The intensity of the cold is no doubt mitigated by the
dryness of the air. But it is in vain that the people
conspire as they do to make you believe that forty
below zero is pleasant. The inconvenience, if not the
suffering, must be great. You will not persuade me
that you are in bliss when your breath freezes on your
sheets, or when, after keeping several stoves burning in
your house all night, your bread is frozen till twelve
o'clock next day. Most of the settlers are young, and
their blood is warm.

I had been curious to see the North-West, partly
because I thought that farm-life there would be likely
to change its character. The prairie is specially
adapted to machine farming. It seemed probable that
large farms would pay, while in the long winter and the
great solitudes there would be social cheerfulness in
the staff. The system was tried, and at the Bell farm,
where I was most kindly received, I saw 1400 acres
of wheat in a single field. But the experiment failed,
principally, I believe, owing to the cost of keeping the
staff during the winter.

Young Englishmen of the upper class seemed as a
rule to fail as farmers in the North-West, though they
did better in the ranches. It was said that their har-
vests were remittances. Many of them had drifted
into the Mounted Police; many of them afterwards
drifted into the [South African] Contingent. A farmer
in Canada must work hard, live hard, and bargain
hard. A young English gentleman may do the first at

416 REMINISCENCES

a pinch; the second he does less easily; the third he
cannot do at all.

When I first saw Winnipeg it was in its pioneer phase,
and at the same time in its fit of sickness after the
"boom." In the boom of course sharks had thriven.
One of them played a cunning trick to pass off a lot
upon a greenhorn for many times its value. The green-
horn at first was shy and went away. But he was
followed by a confederate who contrived to speak,
not to him, but in his hearing, of the immense value
of the lot, pretending that he was himself trying to
raise the money to buy it. The dupe slipped away
in a hurry and closed the bargain. Speculation with-
out capital is a walk of industry which many take in
booms and which leads to ruin and disgrace. On the
other hand, there was not the slightest symptom of
anything rowdy or lawless.

I attended the opening of the new-born Legislature
at Winnipeg. The approach of the Lieutenant-Gov-
ernor1 was announced by a series of explosions intended
to represent the firing of cannon, but made, I under-
stood, by the letting off of gunpowder with a hot poker.
There being one or two French Members, I am not sure
which, the Lieutenant-Governor read his speech from
the throne in French as well as in English. I suspect the

pThe Hon. Adams George Archibald, of Nova Scotia. — The pro-
clamation for the admission of the new Province of Manitoba into
the Dominion of Canada was issued on the 23d of June, 1870 ; Mr.
Archibald arrived at Winnepeg and assumed the functions of Lieu-
tenant-Governor on September the 3d of the same year.]

VISITS TO THE NORTH-WEST 417

effect upon the French ears was like that of the Irish
Major's address upon Prince Napoleon, who in reply
deplored his ignorance of "la belle langue Irelandaise."

As an offset to the French of the Irish Major, I may
say that the Prince de Canino1 at a dinner of the British
Association, having to propose the toast of 'Science/
said, "I shall give you one to-ast : May de tree of science
flourish for ever and shower down peas upon the
nations."

I visited the settlement of Skye Crofters. Evidently
it was a miserable failure. The home of these people
had been in a climate mild though moist, and they
had not been farmers but herdsmen, boatmen, fisher-
men, tilling a plot of oats or potatoes with the spade.
Probably they had never handled a plough; a binder
they had never seen. A benevolent lady had sent
them out, as she fondly thought, to the happy land.
The Icelanders, by all accounts, did well. The Men-
nonites, as farmers, better still ; but in their habits of
living they were rather troglodytic, and since they
have got the franchise their votes are said to come to
market in the lump. As I write2 settlers from the
United States are pouring into the North-Western
Territories, which they were sure to do when in Minne-
sota and Dakota land became dear. The North- West
will be American.

P Louis Lucien Bonaparte, the fourth son of Luoien Bonaparte,
Prince of Canino. A French philologist. After 1870 lie lived
chiefly in England. Born 1813; died 1891 J

P This was written in 1903.]

418 REMINISCENCES

Fear of the vast influx of an alien population is
expressed. Fear of a vast alien population will speed-
ily subside when it is proved that the inflowing popula-
tion is not alien, but is identical, to say the least,
with the Canadian, as the population of Scotland has
proved to be with that of England. "Annexation/'
so much dreaded and denounced, what is it, I ask
once more, but the reunion of two great sections of the
English-speaking race ?

In the grounds of the Winnipeg Penitentiary were
to be seen some of the few survivors of the mighty
race of buffalo, the sudden disappearance of which
seems to be one of the most curious things in natural
history. About fifteen years before, Mr, Cornell had
invited me to go with him on a tour through the West,
which I was prevented from doing; and when he
returned he said he was sorry I had not been with hi™,
for he had seen ten square miles of buffalo. Suddenly
the race became extinct, and the true reason of its
extinction I failed to learn. It could hardly have been
all shot in so short a time. Railroads or a new obstacle
.of some kind must have interfered with its necessary
migrations. Its surviving representatives at Winnipeg
were huge antediluvian monsters. One of them came
up to my buggy and looked at it so seriously that the
occupant thought it best to move on.

From Winnipeg to Calgary by the Canadian Pacific
Railway was in those days a weary journey, the dul-
ness of the lonely expanse being broken only by the

VISITS TO THE NORTH-WEST 419

little gophers, which then perked up as the train passed,
but by this time have probably shared the general fate
of aborigines. At long intervals was seen a settler's
cottage, planted in conformity with the strange and
rather cruel regulation of the Company half a mile
off the Railroad. To the constructors of the Canadian
Pacific Railway the praise of enterprise and energy is
due. To Canada the benefit has been questionable.
The Canadian Pacific Railway was not a good coloniza-
tion road. The greater part of the emigrants it carried
over to the Pacific State. The rest were scattered
along a line of eight hundred miles instead of settling
close, as would plainly have been best for them, espe-
cially in such a country. Had the North- West been
left to itself, it would in due time, like the Western
States, have provided itself with railroads according
to the measure of its needs, and probably on a better
plan, without the enormous cost to the country, with-
out, it may be added, the political danger which the
influence of this enormous corporation has entailed.
Too truly the Canadian Pacific Railway has been called
"the Dominion Government on wheels." When we
had a chance of obtaining reciprocity with the United
States, the manager, Van Home, himself an American,1
put forth a hostile manifesto, though his line was
beholden to the United States for its bonding privilege.

P Sir William Cornelius Van Home, K.C.M.G., now Chairman
of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Pacific Railway Com-
pany.]

420 REMINISCENCES

It was not fair to judge the Rockies by a mere pas-
sage through them on the Canadian Pacific Railway.
But to me they were a disappointment. They are
surely not comparable to the Alps. They present
nothing, at least they presented to me nothing, like the
panoramic view from Basle when the evening light is
on the snow peaks. Besides, they lack, what Switzer-
land and Tyrol have in their old towns and castles,
the piquant conjunction of human interest with the
lonely grandeurs of nature. My opinion was little
changed by a week at Banff, and a visit to the Devil's
Lake with its mighty bastions of rock, their feet clad
with the monotonous pine. The boatman who rowed
us on the lake was, I felt sure, from his look and speech
and the manner in which he took the fare, a young Eng-
lish gentleman broken down.

The coast scenery of British Columbia impressed
me more than the Rockies. It is very peculiar as well
as very fine. The vegetation is tropical in luxuriance,
though not in variety, and the pines and cedars are
gigantic. I never saw anything so grand in the way
of trees as the cathedral-like colonnade of mighty pines
and cedars between Vancouver and New Westminster,
unless it were the grove of spruces at Welbeck, the
Duke of Portland's place in England.

Victoria, with its pretty cottages amidst their bowers
of roses, is a charming little place. It seemed free from
the racket of commerce, resting on the little fortunes
made from the gold-washings of former ages. The

VISITS^ TO THE NORTH-WEST 421

general air was repose. A bustling activity seemed to
reign in the Chinese quarter alone. The view of the
American snow-range opposite is very fine, but one
wishes the name were not " Olympian." Perhaps,
however, even false classicism is better than naming
mountains after directors of railway companies. Why
not follow the example of Switzerland with her Wetter-
horn and Jungfrau?

Desperate efforts are made to keep out the Chinese.
The pretexts are social and moral, sometimes religious.
The real motive, of course, is fear of their competition
in the labour market. They will probably force their
way in the end. In the meantime there is exhibited
the curious spectacle of wars made on China for her*'
inhospitality to foreigners, while these foreigners
themselves practise the height of inhospitality to the
Chinese.

The Canadian Pacific Railway was built, and the
Dominion was stretched out to the Pacific, making it,
as Mr. Dunkin said, like seven fishing-rods tied together
by the ends, and depriving it of the last vestige of terri-
torial and economical unity, for the purpose of incor-
porating British Columbia, which threatened, if the
road was not built, to stand aloof from Confederation,
Having been incorporated at all this expense and risk,
British Columbia might almost as well be in another
planet. Some Canadians speculate in its mines; but
nobody knows or cares anything about its politics or
its general concerns. Its politics, if they were known,

422 REMINISCENCES

would not edify; when I asked what they were, the
answer was, "Government appropriations." While I
am writing this there is a turmoil of political discord
and intrigue going on in the Pacific Province, of which
it may safely be said the man in the street of Toronto
could give no account whatever.1

The English look of Victoria was attractive, and I
was thinking of spending some days there and hoping
to make some acquaintances. The Society, I knew,
was Tory, but I thought I might have left my Radical
reputation behind. But on looking into the leading
journal of the place I lighted on an editorial which led
me, having seen the beauties of the place, to return by
the evening boat to Vancouver.

Vancouver was evidently flourishing as a port, but
I cannot help thinking it unlikely that the grand line
of the world's commerce and transportation will be
through the sub-arctic region.

British Columbia has beauty, wealth, much that has
been attracted to it already, while much more must be
attracted to it in time. But the grave question pre-
sents itself: Whose will British Columbia be? Can
American and British Dreadnoughts, even supposing

P June, 1903. — There was a dismissal of a Liberal Prime Min-
ister; an attempt to form a sort of coalition Government by the
leader of the Opposition; resignations of prominent politicians;
a dissolution; a "political contest" which "gradually grew warmer
and warmer" ; and a general election. — See "The Canadian An-
nual Review of Public Affairs, 1903." By J. Castell Hopkins, F.S.S.
Toronto : Ammql Review Publishing Company, 1904. Pages 214,

VISITS TO THE NORTH-WEST 423

them to be united, hold the Pacific? What will be
the limit to the growth of the military power of
Japan? Is it likely that there will be a junction of
Japan with China ? Will Germany, provoked perhaps
by the mischief-making of British Protectionists, throw
herself into the Japanese and Chinese scale? Will
India rise in alliance with Japan and China? It is
hard to discern the future ; specially hard if the greed
of commerce persists in stimulating the passion of war.

CHAPTER XXV

CANADIAN POLITICS

The Relation of Canada to the Imperial Country —(Confederation
— Quebec — Titles for Colonists — Political Parties — Sir John
Macdonald— George Brown— Alexander Mackenzie —Edward
Blake — John Sandfield Macdonald — Joseph Howe — Francis
BQncks — Sir Richard Cartwright— Sir Charles Tupper — The
Destiny of the Colonies —Annexation — " Canada First " — The
Irish Question — Free Trade — Reciprocity — The Temperance
Question— The Patrons of Industry— The Weekly Sun.

CANADA, with its fine-drawn relation to the Imperial
country and the equivocal junction of two not very
friendly races in itself, forms rather a special study for
the Imperialist politician. At the time of the conquest
by Chatham and Wolfe, all in England was boundless
exultation. The object in conquering Canada was to
set the English settlements to the south of it free from
fear of France. Canada having been conquered, the
English colonists, being of the Republican breed, re-
belled against the Mother-country in pursuance of a
quarrel, really trifling, which might have been easily
patched up. Into the war France went on the side of
the United States to avenge her own wrong. That
war was the ruin of French finance, compelled the
French Government to summon the States General,

424

GOLDWIN SMITH AT SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS or AGE.

Photograph by Dixon, of Toronto.

CANADIAN POLITICS 425

and brought on the French Revolution; with all that
followed. The train of consequences may be traced yet
even further. In England the abolition of negro slavery,
which had been fast coming, was put off, and the con-
sequences of its postponement, including the war be-
tween the free and slave States, were entailed.

Since the settlement of the constitution under Lord
Elgin * and the bonfire in the form of the burning of the
Parliament House at Quebec,2 the only real division
that remained was that of the British Provinces from
the French Province, which held and still holds to its
nationality and its Catholicism, though Lord Durham
had regarded the effacement of its nationality as abso-
lutely essential to the completion of his work.

The struggle between the monarchical and the popu-
lar principle of Government ended with the rebellion of
1837. Beaten in the field, the party of popular govern-
ment, aided by the same party in the Imperial country,
triumphed in the political arena. The spasm of re-
action under Lord Metcalfe 8 was the end. Thence-
forth the political history becomes a struggle of parties,
splitting sometimes into sections without distinct
principles or general objects, for power and place. This
ended in a deadlock, out of which a way was found in the
Confederation of all the North American colonies, with

P James Bruce, eighth Earl of Elgin, Governor-General of Can-
ada from 1847 to 1854.]

P April the 26th, 1849J

[* Charles Theophilus, first Baron Metcalfe, Governor-General
of Canada from 1843 till 1845.]

426 REMINISCENCES

a federal constitution.1 The supposed model was Great
Britain. But nothing in the debate shows that the
difference of circumstances between the two countries
was taken into account. The British Kingdom is geo-
graphically united; it is divided at least only by the
narrow Irish Channel. The union of the Canadian
Provinces resembles, as a wit said in the debate, not
that of a bundle of rods, gaining strength by their union,
to which a confederationist had complacently compared
it, but that of seven fishing-rods tied together by the
ends. Such a geographical dispersion seems to pre-
clude identity of interest, and with it unanimity in
council; though about this we shall learn more when
the effects of Western annexation are fully felt. There
are in Canada no social materials for a House of Lords,
nor is there anything like that independent gentry which
has furnished the conservative element in the House
of Commons. The leading men in Canada are com-
mercial, and cannot leave their business offices for
Ottawa ; or if they do, it is on business of their own.

Confederation, when settled itself, could not beget
issues of principle. The contest between parties again
became a struggle of factions for power and place, with
the rancour, intrigue, and corruption inseparable from
such a contest, and with the sort of statesmanship that
it forms.

What is the destiny of Quebec? Durham took it for
granted that Quebec must be absorbed in British Can-

P By the British North America Act of 1867 : 30 and 31 Viet. c. 3J

CANADIAN . POLITICS 427

ada. Instead of being absorbed, Quebec dominates by
the help of venal support in the other Provinces. Her
quasi nationality has now a powerful and chivalrous
champion in Bourassa.1 But the end must come. The
English Provinces and the United States, «to which the
workmen of Quebec go, will have their influence. The
people of Quebec, the peasantry especially, are pious
and devoted to the priesthood, who have hitherto been
their leaders and masters. But Papalism cannot reign
for ever, and when it loses its hold, Quebec's nationality
will fall.

In these movements and the attendant controversies
I supported the policy which I believed to be best for
England as well as for Canada and the continent to
which Canada belonged. England was uppermost in
my thoughts. But I was thus exposed to the ire of
Imperialists, to some of whom the character and man-
ners of the English gentleman were an object rather of
praise than of imitation.

To grace their movement, the Imperial Federationists
brought over a Duke. On a very hot day he was driv-
ing with a party of which I was one. Opposite him sat
a Mayor, who took his hat off. The Duke, taking this

[l Mr. Henri Bourassa was bom at Montreal, 1868 ; elected to
tlie House of Commons, for the County of Labelle, 1896 ; resigned
in 1899, to protest against the sending of Canadian troops to South
Africa, and re-elected by acclamation in 1900 ; also in 1900 and in
1904 ; resigned in 1907 to stand in BeUechasse County against Hon.
A. Turgeon, for the local legislature, and defeated ; elected in 1908,
in St. James division, against Sir Lomer Gouin, Prime Minister, and
in St. Hyacinthe, choosing to keep the latter division.]

428 REMINISCENCES

for an act of social homage, bent condescendingly for-
ward and said, "Pray, Mr. Mayor, keep your hat on."
" Thank your Grace, I was only cooling my head."

I never could see that anything but false ambition and
inflation of vanity came or could come of granting titles
to colonists. The medieval and military title of knight-
hood is grotesquely out of place in a modern and com-
mercial community. Titles of office are all right ; they
increase respect for it. Perhaps titles of mere honour
may have a use; but let them be appropriate; and let
them be bestowed by the community to which those on
whom they are conferred belong. Bestowed from with-
out they not only intoxicate, but estrange. Canada
certainly suffers in the estrangement of her leading men
from their looking to a fountain of honour elsewhere.

With the politics of Canada, otherwise than as a
looker-on and critic, I did not meddle. They were the
politics of party when the cause of party had ceased to
exist, as it did after the Governor-Generalship of Lord
Elgin. In my time there was absolutely no political
issue of any moment, nothing but a struggle for place
carried on by intrigue and corruption, extending tin-
fortunately to legislation and appointments. To carry
through Parliament a Bill * forcing Roman Catholic
schools on two Provinces of the North- West, the Ro-
man Catholic Prime Minister raised the sessional indem-

p He is referring to the so-oaJIed Autonomy Bills of the Dominion
Parliament of 1905, transforming a large portion of the North-West
Territories of Canada into the Provinces of Alberta and Saskatche-
wan.]

CANADIAN POLITICS 429

nities of both Houses of Parliament, created a number
of pensions, and granted a salary to the leader of the
Opposition. To serve a political purpose one who had
not practised law for twenty years was made Chief
Justice. Of legal patronage generally party use was
made, injurious to the independence both of Bench and
Bar. "Graft " was the slang name for corruption among
the people, who complained truly but helplessly that
everything was full of it. At a farmers' picnic I drew
a farmer aside and asked him what was the difference in
principle between his party and the other. He was long
in answering, but at last he replied, "We say the other
fellows are corrupt." The world will not go on in this
way for ever.

Lord Durham's postulate that the French of Quebec
must be anglicized to complete the work of political
fusion had not been fulfilled.1 The French were French
still, socially and politically as well as in language, and
politicians were and still are as much as ever compelled
to court them. Jesuitism, which European morality
even in Catholic Kingdoms had spewed out a century
before, was recognized by Government and reinstated
in its emoluments and its power of killing truth.2

f1 The reference, I think, is to pages 124, et seq., of Lord Durham's
Report (as printed in pamphlet form at Toronto by Robert Stanton
in 1839). I may quote here, as explanation, one sentence : —

"It must henceforth be the first and steady purpose of the British
Government to establish an English population, -with English laws
and language, in this Province, and to trust its Government to none
but a decidedly English Legislature."]

[2 This refers to the rather celebrated Jesuits' Estates Bill, by

430 REMINISCENCES

The separation of the Provinces, among which there
was little interchange of population, the course of mi-
gration being to the States, was a serious political evil.
I do not know at this moment what are the politics, or
who are the political leaders of the Provinces on the
Atlantic or of those on the Pacific coast. The interests
and connections of those Provinces must in part be
nearly as much American as Canadian, the American
tariff notwithstanding.

The great man of Canadian politics, when first I came
to Canada, was Sir John Macdonald,1 who ruled the
country for many years. A very curious and notable
character he was. The study of his life from his earliest
years had been the manipulation of human nature for
the purposes of party. In that craft he was unrivalled.
A statesman in the higher sense he was not, nor an ad-
ministrator. His principles, his economical principles
especially, were the shifts of the hour. Only in his
attachment to the British Crown, and in his determina-
tion, as he said, to die a British subject, could he be said
to be firm. He was personally very attractive, bright,
good-humoured, versatile, capable of being all things
to all men, of talking well on serious and even on literary
subjects to the guests at one end of the table, and crack-

which, in 1888, that Order obtained from the Provincial Legislature
of Quebec the sum of $160,000, together with other sums paid to
Catholic Colleges. — English readers will find a very succinct
account of this affair in the Quarterly Review of April, 1890, Volume
170, No. 340, page 534.]

p Bora at Kingston, Canada, 1815; first Prime Minister of the
Dominion of Canada. Died in 1891.]

CANADIAN POLITICS 431

ing rough jokes or telling risqu$ anecdotes to the guests
at the other end. He was said to be like Disraeli.
There may have been a slight likeness in face. The
dark Highland face has something of Jewish cast.
Other likeness there was none. Macdonald had nothing
of Disraeli's imagination. He more resembled Palmer-
ston as a tactician and a speaker whose object was not
oratorical effect, but the capture of votes. He was not
himself corrupt. It was for the game more than for the
stakes that he cared. But he was unscrupulous in cor-
rupting other men. He decidedly did not love Spar-
tans. He was credited with saying that the perfection
of a ministry would be twelve men, each of whom, if
you liked, you could put into the penitentiary. He
spoke in jest, no doubt ; but in the jest there was a grain
of truth. On the eve of a general election it was pointed
out to him that some of his men were talking Protection-
ism, which, whatever might be its effect in such a coun-
try as the United States, with their vast area of produc-
tion and home trade, would not do for Canada. "No,"
was his reply, "you need not think I am going to get
into that hole." Scarcely two months had passed when
into that hole he got. Rallied by his friend on his
change, he jauntily replied, "Yes, Protection has done
so much for me, that I must do something for Protec-
tion." He was a survivor of the times in which whiskey
played an important part in politics, and he had not
put off the habits of his jovial generation.
Macdonald was not delicate in the choice of his in-

432 REMINISCENCES

struments. An incident which I am going to mention
showed this and at the same time a certain sensitiveness
which he retained after a life which it might have been
supposed would have thoroughly steeled his nerves.
He came to my house for the wedding of his son. On
the evening of his arrival he was in his usual spirits.
Next morning as we drove to the church a cloud seemed
to have come over him. At the wedding breakfast he
sat perfectly silent. When his health was drunk, he
disappointed the company by merely stumbling through
two or three disjointed sentences. He was called up to
reply to another toast, with no happier result. On
my return home I found the Chief of Police waiting at
my door and desiring to see Sir John Macdonald. Those
were the days of Fenianism, and I fancied that this was
some alarm from that quarter. It turned out, however,
that an American l who had served Sir John in some
secret and probably associated with him in some po-
litical business, had quarrelled with him, and having
demanded $3000 of. him was trying to indict him for
perjury and had chosen the day of the marriage for the
service of the writ. The attempt, of course, came to
nothing, but the apprehension of it had evidently been
enough to upset Sir John Macdonald.

There was a rupture between us at last, caused by his
hasty assumption, on newspaper authority, of my con-
nection with a letter from a Canadian to an American,
with which, or anything in its contents, as the recov-

p General Butt Hewson, I believe, was the man who indicted.]

CANADIAN POLITICS 433

ery of a genuine document proved, I had absolutely
nothing to do.1

The professions of George Brown,2 the head of the
Grit party and Macdonald's mortal enemy, were far
more moral than those of Macdonald. Whether he
was a better man may be questioned, while he unques-
tionably was far less attractive and amusing. A Lib-
eral he might call himself; but it could be only in a
party sense. Of liberality of character and sentiment,
of breadth of view or toleration of difference of opinion,
no human being was ever more devoid. Master of The
Globe,3 which then, unhappily for the country, was the
only powerful paper, he used it without scruple or
mercy to crush everybody who would not bow to his
will. For this work he had congenial instruments in his
brother Gordon 4 and his chief writer Inglis,5 a Presby-

p This was in 1901. — The incident is fully explained in pages
501 to 503 of the second volume of Mr. John Mercier McMullen's
"The History of Canada, from its First Discovery to the Present
Time." Third edition. Brockville: McMullen & Co. 1892.]

[2 George Brown was born in 1818 near Edinburgh ; went to
America in 1838; founded The Globe in Toronto in March, 1844;
Radical M.P. for County of Kent (Ontario), 1851 ; M.P. for Lamb-
ton County, 1854 ; for Toronto, 1857-1861 ; for South Oxford, 1863-
1867 ; Prime Minister (for four days) in 1858 ; appointed to the
Senate, 1873 ; died in Toronto, 1880.]

p A daily morning newspaper published at Toronto.]

[4 Gordon Brown, a younger brother. He was born at Alloa,
Scotland, in 1827. He was chief editor of The Globe for many years
before the death of his brother George in 1880, and retained the post
till 1882. In that year he was appointed Registrar of the Surrogate
Court of the County of York, Ontario, in which office he remained
till his death in 1896.]

f Rev. William Inglis was a Presbyterian minister, educated in
Edinburgh, and had been pastor of a congregation near London,
2?

434 REMINISCENCES

terian minister instinct with the spirit of the West-
minster Confession. The headship of a party and the
editorship of a paper ought not to be in the same
hands. When they are, the judge is confounded with
the advocate or with something still more unfair or
bitter. The best of Brown was his fidelity to the cause
of the North during the American war of Secession.
On the other hand, he traded long on the antipathy of
the British and Protestant to the French and Catholic
Province, a very mischievous and unpatriotic line. For
one moment George Brown touched the goal of his am-
bition,1 having in consequence of a mere Parliamentary
accident been called upon to form a Government. But
he immediately fell, raging through his organ against
Sir Edmund Head,2 who had very properly refused him
a dissolution. In his large and burly body dwelt a
strong but thoroughly coarse mind. When pitted
against Sir John Macdonald in the Confederation Gov-
ernment 3 he soon felt his own inferiority and withdrew
to his despotic reign in the office of The Globe. There
is in Mr. Pope's life of Sir John Macdonald an admirable
picture of George Brown as he appeared on the platform.4

Ontario. In the later sixties and seventies he was an editorial writer
on the Toronto Globe, and thus acquired a reputation for culture
and causticity. He was afterwards assistant librarian to the On-
tario Legislature, and occupied that position till his death in 1900.]

I1 July the 31st, 1858.]

P Sir Edmund "Walker Head, Baronet, Governor-General of
Canada from 1854 to 1861. Born 1805; died 1868.]

P Of 1867, after the passing of the British North America Act.]

[* "Memoirs of the Eight Honourable Sir John Alexander
Maedonald^G.C.B., First Prime Minister of the Dominion of Can-

CANADIAN POLITICS 435

The Leader* the Conservative organ, was then in its
last stage of decrepitude. Our hopes of emancipation
and literary decency were excited when The Mail
appeared2 announcing that it would be written by
gentlemen and for gentlemen. But soon those hopes
were dashed. The Mail had hardly run through a dozen
numbers when it proved itself to be a counterpart of
The Globe or worse. It has happily long since changed
hands. I have lived to see a marked improvement in
the Canadian press. The metropolitan organs are both
in character and in literary ability superior to The
Globe and Mail of former days; while the local press,
which used to follow slavishly in the train of The Globe,
has decidedly gained in strength and freedom. The
day of perfect independence, independence not only of
party, but of popular passion and of secret influence,
personal or commercial, can hardly be said yet to have
dawned. Great will be the gratitude to the proprietor
of any journal which can hasten its coming.

Alexander Mackenzie s was a thoroughly honest man,
a faithful servant of the public and steward of the public
interests. He deserves a statue far more than some who

ada." By Joseph Pope. 2 vols. London : Edward Arnold. 1894.
Volume I, pages 320, et seq.]

t1 The Leader, published at Toronto, "was founded by James
Beaty in 1856, and ceased on October 5, 1878.]

P March the 31st, 1872. — The Mail was another Toronto morn-
ing daily.]

P Born near Dunkeld, in Perthshire, in 1822 ; emigrated to Can-
ada in 1842. He was a builder and contractor at Sarnia, in the
Province of Ontario, in 1848. M.P.P., 1861-1867 ; M.P., 1867 ;
Prime Minister, 1873-1878. Died in 1892.]

436 REMINISCENCES

have had one. In fact, he owed his fall from power1
partly to the integrity with which he guarded the public
chest against raiders, while his manner perhaps was
made somewhat repellent by the incessant worrying
which he endured. He also overworked himself by
excessive attention to details. This was the cast of his
mind. He had risen from the ranks, having originally
been a stone-mason. This made him popular with the
Democracy, but a malicious critic might have said that
if his strong point was having been a stone-mason, his
weak point was being a stone-mason still.

John Sandfield Macdonald 2 has a pleasant place in
my memory. He was a thoroughly good fellow, and
honest, though he had to deal with an element which
was difficult to manage by strictly honest methods. I
went to him one day and said, "Macdonald, I have
come to ask you for a place." He looked very glum.
"For two seats/' I said, "in the gallery at the opening
of the Session." The look of painful constraint fled
from his countenance. "The Sergeant-at-Arms will
send you four tickets at once," he said.

Another Canadian politician of mark with whom I
came into contact was Joseph Howe 3 the favourite son

P September the 17th, 1878, when Sir John Macdonald brought
in his protective tariff.]

[z Born at St. Raphael, Upper Canada, in 1812 ; Prime Minister
of Upper Canada in 1862; first Prime Minister of Ontario (1867).
Died 1872.]

P Born at Halifax, N.S., in 1804; a journalist and writer of
much repute in his younger days ; Member in the local Parlia-
ment; also Speaker; Provincial Secretary; Governor of Nova
Scotia in 1873 ; died the same year.]

CANADIAN POLITICS 437

and renowned orator of Nova Scotia. He came to Eng-
land when I was there to demand the liberation of Nova
Scotia from Federation, into which they had been in-
veigled by the black arts of Sir Charles Tupper. Apply-
ing to Lord Campbell/ Howe was by him introduced to
me. He attended a dinner at which the chiefs of the
Liberal party were present, and made a speech somewhat
too eloquent for a rather unimpressionable audience of
old politicians, threatening bloodshed if his Province
were not set free. The Liberals accordingly moved in
Parliament. But scarcely had they done this when the
news came that Mr. Howe was in a Confederation Gov-
ernment.2 His apologists say that he yielded to destiny.
But destiny, if it requires submission, hardly requires
acceptance of place. About Howe's eloquence, it
seems, there could be no doubt, though when I heard
hiTYi it was rather overstrained.

Sir Francis Hincks 3 was our greatest economist and
financier. I always read him with respect and profit.
But his political course had been somewhat tortuous,
and fortune more than once entrapped him into un-
lucky situations.

I felt great respect for the character and abilities of

P I suppose this is William Frederick Campbell, Lord Stratheden
and second Lord Campbell, son of John, the first Baron Campbell,
Lord Chancellor.]

P In 1870 he was appointed Secretary of State for the Five Prov-
inces in the Do-minion of Canada.]

P Born 1807; emigrated to Canada, 1831 ; M.P.,1841; Inspector
General of Public Accounts; Prime Minister, 1851-1854; Finance
Minister, 1869-1873. Died in 1885.]

438 REMINISCENCES

Mr. Huntington.1 In his prosecution of the Pacific
Railway scandal he served the public admirably well,
showing great ability and courage, combined with per-
fect self-command. Indolence, which perhaps had a
physical cause, prevented his doing more than he
did.

Sir Richard Cartwright 2 was a strong man in every
way. For many years he was the doughty advocate
of free trade and reduced expenditure. But in his last
years he sank into an easy chair, and allowed the Gov-
ernment of which he was a member to lay both his great
principles completely on the shelf.

Sir Charles Tupper 3 was a man of extraordinary force
and a thunderer of the platform, though the staple of
his oratory was purely exaggeration, with a large meas-
ure of rather vulgar invective. Unwearied, undaunted,
and unabashed, while he served as the shield-bearer
of Sir John Macdonald, he was very useful to his

p The Hon. Lucius Seth Huntington, Member of Parliament for
the County of Shefford, in the Dominion House. It was Mr
Huntington who, on the 2d of April, 1873, moved "That a Com-
mittee of seven members be appointed to inquire into all the cir-
cumstances connected with the negotiations for the construction
of the Pacific Railway, with the legislation of last session on the
subject, and with the granting of the Charter to Sir Hugh Allan
and others, . . ."]

P The Right Hon. Sir Richard Cartwright, GLCJVLGL, is Minister
of Trade and Commerce for Canada, and has been M. P. for South
Oxford, Ontario, since 1896. Born in 1835.]

P The Honourable Sir Charles Tupper, first Baronet, G.C.M.G-. ;
has held numerous high political posts, including many of Cabinet
rank; High Commissioner for Canada, 1883-1887, and 1888-1896;
Prime Minister of Canada, 1890. Born in 1821.]

CANADIAN POLITICS 439

chief, whose apparently lost cause he did much to
redeem after the catastrophe of the Pacific Railway
scandal.

Of the few people in England who thought about co-
lonial subjects in my day, the general opinion was that
the destiny of the colonies was independence. I
brought that opinion, certainly not one disparaging
either to the colonies or to the Mother-country, with me
to Canada. It drew me to a set of Canadian youths
strongly imbued with it. They made me the President
of their National Club, founded for the union and inter-
course of all patriotic Canadians without distinction of
political party. But on view of the situation, geo-
graphical, racial, social, and commercial, I was led to
the conviction that the separation of the two great
bodies of English-speaking people on the American con-
tinent would not last forever, and that union, free and
equal, was in this case, as it had been in the case of
Scotland and England, the decree of destiny. The
word Annexation, implying a forced submission on the
part of Canada, never passed my lips. That ultimate
union was my opinion I avowed, and it exposed me to
the insults and scurrility of a violent separationist, and,
as it was called, United Empire Loyalist clique which
tried to expel me from the St. George's Society, with-
out success ; though the behaviour of the Club on the
occasion, seeing that I had simply held my personal
opinions and done nothing whatever to compromise the
Club, and that the Club was purely social and benefi-

440 REMINISCENCES

cent, was hardly such as that of English gentlemen
would have been.

That I was at the bottom of the Annexationist move-
ment of 1892 is completely disproved by the very letter
produced in proof of it.1 The movement had its origin
in commercial discontent, as well among the agricul-

P I append the letter : —

"TOKONTO, Dee. 2, 1892.
" THE SECRETARY OF THE CONTINENTAL ASSOCIATION OF ONTARIO :

" Dear Sir. — As the Continental Association does me the honour
to think that my name may be of use to it, I have pleasure in accept-
ing the presidency on the terms on which it is offered, as an honor-
ary appointment. From active participation in any political move-
ment I have found it necessary to retire.

*' Your object, as I understand it, is to procure by constitutional
means, and -with the consent of the Mother-country, the submission
of the question of continental union to the free suffrage of the Cana-
dian people, and to furnish the people with the information neces-
sary to prepare them for the vote. In this there can be nothing
unlawful or disloyal.

" That a change must come, the returns of the census, the condi-
tion of our industries, especially of our farming industry, and the
exodus of the flower of our population, too clearly show. Sentiment
is not to be disregarded, but genuine sentiment is never at variance
with the public good. Love of the Mother-country can be stronger
in no heart than it is in mine ; but I have satisfied myself that the
interest of Great Britain and that of Canada are one.

" Let the debate be conducted in a spirit worthy of the subject.
Respect the feelings and the traditions of those who differ from us,
while you firmly insist on the right of the Canadian people to per-
fect freedom of thought and speech respecting the question of its
own destiny.

"Yours faithfully,

"GOLDWIN SMITH."

See f * The Struggle for Imperial Unity : Recollections and Expe-
riences." By Colonel George T. Denison, President of the British
Empire League in Canada; author of "Modern Cavalry," "A
History of Cavalry," "Soldiering in Canada," etc. London: The
Macmillan Co. 1909. Pp. 174 and 175.— Ed.]

CANADIAN POLITICS 441

turists of Ontario as among the commercial men of
Quebec. I was steadily looking to the interests of
England, which I believed would be not set back but
furthered by the re-union of her progeny.

The continent was one. Social fusion was rapidly
advancing. The commercial union of the continent
dictated by nature only awaited the repeal of unnatural
and iniquitous laws. Drawn to American centres of
employment, Canadians were mingling with the people
of the United States at the rate of twenty thousand in
a year. The churches interchanged pastors. A Cana-
dian clergyman, just after reviling continental union and
its supporters, accepted an American cure. Societies
such as that of the Free Masons crossed the line. The
Canadian Pacific Railroad, Canada's great line of com-
munication, the administration of which, it was pro-
claimed, was to be purely Canadian, soon had an
American President. The Canadian currency was not
pounds and shillings, but dollars and cents. Inter-
marriage was frequent. Circumstance of every sort,
besides race and language, foretold ultimate union.
The attempts of United Empire Loyalism in Canada to
keep alive international antipathy were fruitless.
. At the time of my settling in the country there was
on foot among the younger men a movement called
" Canada First," the tendency, if not the avowed object,
of which was to make Canada an independent nation
linked by affection to the Mother-country. This was
my own idea, as it was that of the British statesmen

442 REMINISCENCES

from whom my opinions had been imbibed, and indeed
of British statesmen generally in my day. It seemed
desirable that there should be two experiments in Demo-
cracy on this continent. I was, besides, attracted by
genuine patriotism and fresh hope. The most active
members of the party were W. A. Foster * and W. H.
Howland2 afterwards Mayor of Toronto, Mr. Foster
being the chief literary exponent. But the guiding
star, the hero of the party, was Mr. Edward Blake3 an
advocate and politician of the highest promise, whose
"Aurora speech"4 had seemed to open a new political

I1 William Alexander Foster, Q.C., a well-known Barrister of
Toronto. Died in 1888.]

[2 William Holmes Howland was born at Lambton Mills, Ont.,,
Sn 1844 ; entered upon a mercantile career early in life ; elected
Mayor of Toronto in 1885 and 1886. Died in 1893.]

[3The Honourable Edward Blake, K.C, Born at Cairngorm,,
Ont., Canada, in 1833 ; M *P. for South Longford, Ireland, from
1892 till 1907.]

[* " The bond that united the Imperialists and the advocates of
independence was national spirit. . . . The greatest intellect of
the Liberal party felt the impulse. At Aurora * (in 1874) Edward
Blake startled the more cautious members of the party by advo-
cating the federation of the Empire, the reorganization of the
senate, compulsory voting, extension of the franchise, and repre-
sentation of minorities. His real theme was national spirit.
National spirit would be lacking until we undertook national re-
sponsibilities. He described the Canadian people as * four millions
of Britons who are not free.' By the policy of England, in which
we had no voice or control, Canada might be plunged into the
horrors of war. Recently, without our consent, the navigation of
the St. Lawrence had been ceded forever to the United States. We
could not complain of these things unless we were prepared to as-
sume the full responsibilities of citizenship within the Empire. The
young men of Canada heard these words with a thrill of en-
thusiasm, but the note was not struck again. The movement

* Aurora is a small town north of Toronto in the Province of Ontario.

CANADIAN POLITICS 443

era and given a terrible shock to the orthodox and
senile Liberalism of Mr. George Brown and the Globe.
I was never a member of the " Canada First " Associa-
tion, and the National Club, of which I was made Presi-
dent, was social, and intended to bring together Cana-
dians of all parties. Nor had I anything to do with the
starting of The Nation,1 though afterwards, when that
journal was in difficulty, I was persuaded for some time
to help it with my pen. I also contributed a few articles
to The Liberal* which was set up by Mr. Edward Blake
as an organ of advanced Liberalism and "Canada
First " sentiment in opposition to The Globe. I should
have done this apart from any special movement of
opinion if it had been only from my desire to restore
the independence of the press. But Mr. Edward Blake
suddenly left his following, let The Liberal die, sur-
rendered to The Globe, took office in the Mackenzie
Government,3 which was formed under the auspices of
George Brown, and left his adherents to the vengeance
of the enemy. That was the end of "Canada First,"
and, as it turned out, of the hope of making Canada
a nation.

apparently ceased, and politics apparently flowed back into their
old channels. But while the name, the organization, and the
organs of * Canada First ' in the press disappeared, the force and
spirit remained, and exercised a powerful influence upon Canadian
polities for many years." — " The Makers of Canada : George
Brown." By John Lewis. Toronto : Morang and Co. Limited.
1906. Page 240. — Ed.]

P A weekly paper published in Toronto in 1874 and 1875J
P The Toronto Liberal;] only existed from January to June, of
1875.] [3 In 1873J

444 REMINISCENCES

Mr. Edward Blake was a man of the highest character,
a powerful advocate, a jurist of repute, and a strong
though prolix speaker. But his career has shown that
he mistook his vocation when he undertook to be a
leader of men. Too much is said about the necessity of
magnetism. A leader may be, as some of the most
powerful leaders — Pitt and Peel — have been, desti-
tute of magnetism, and yet have devoted followers if he
is unselfish and true at heart to his cause, and to his
friends.

More than once, to propitiate the Irish vote, has the
Parliament at Ottawa voted sympathy with the demand
for Home Rule, without, it may safely be said, thinking
carefully about the interest of the Mother-country.
Encouraged by this, one of the leaders of the move-
ment * came here to set on foot an agitation breath-
ing threats against the Governor-General. Lord Lans-
downe, to be out of the way of annoyance, came from
Ottawa to Toronto. In conjunction with the head of
the Orangemen, Mr. E. F. Clarke,2 1 got up a Defensive
League 3 over which I had the honour of presiding, and
which made in the Park at Toronto a strong Loyalist
demonstration. The politicians were nowhere to be
seen. However loyal they might be, they could not

pMr. William O'Brien, founder of the "United Irish League" ;
M.P. for various districts in Ireland since 1883 ; frequently prose-
cuted for political offences.]

[3 Edward Frederick Clarke, a Canadian journalist and politician ;
an M.P. ; once Mayor of Toronto.]

[s" The Loyal and Patriotic Union."]

CANADIAN POLITICS 445

isk the loss of the Irish vote. Painful proofs of the
effect of the party system on political character were
always presenting themselves in Canada and were made
nore signal by the general honesty of the people.

Whether my course on the Irish question was right
Dr wrong, my motives at least were patriotic. I might
smile at charges of disloyalty levelled against me by
men who in the Dominion Government or in the On-
tario Legislature helped to imperil the integrity of the
United Kingdom by pressing Home Rule Resolutions
for the purpose of capturing the Irish vote.

*******

For free trade against protectionism as the cause,
not of a party, but of the whole community and of hu-
manity at large, I felt free as a citizen of the world, and
bound, as a follower and friend of Bright and Cobden,
to do my best. My best I did, as the " Handbook of
Commercial Union"1 will testify, and if the Evil One
was then too strong for us, discussion enlightens and
helps the cause. There is the same battle to be fought
on both sides of the line, and with the same disadvan-
tage, the forces of protectionism being concentrated in
a compact party with a wily leader, while those of free
trade were scattered. A Canadian plunderer of the

P" Handbook of Commercial Union: A collection of papers
read before the Commercial Club of Toronto, with speeches, letters,
and other documents in favor of Unrestricted Reciprocity with the
United States." Preceded by an introduction by Mr. Goldwin
Smith. Edited by G. Mercer Adam. Toronto : Hunter, Rose and
Co. 1888.]

446 REMINISCENCES

people, a man himself living in a fine house, said the
other day that he would like to see a wall as high as
Hainan's gallows between the two parts of a continent
which nature has most manifestly decreed to be com-
mercially one.

It was as an Englishman that I took part in the move-
ment in favour of Reciprocity with the United States,
the manifest dictate, as it seemed to me, of nature
and of the interest of the Canadian people. Every
movement of this kind is in a line with the free-trade
policy which has hitherto been that of Great Britain.
But the league of log-rolling monopolies in the United
States was too strong for us, and too strong for us and
for the real interests of the American and Canadian
people to this hour it remains. Of the ultimate triumph
of those views I feel no doubt.

Another movement, rather social than political, in
which I took part was that of the Liberal Temperance
Union, formed to advocate a more hopeful mode of
dealing with the liquor question than that of the en-
thusiasts who fancied that they could at once extin-
guish by legislation a taste coeval and almost coex-
tensive with humanity. A part of our policy was dis-
crimination in favour of the lighter against the stronger
drinks. With two companions, Mr. Mouat 1 and Mr.
Richardson,2 I went through a campaign against the

P J. Gordon Mouat, a journalist of Toronto. At one time edi-
tor of The Lake Magazine.]

PC. Gordon Richardson, an expert analytical chemist and (I
think) medical man of Toronto.]

CANADIAN POLITICS 447

Scott Act l which was producing the inevitable effects
of extreme prohibitive legislation in contraband trade,
contempt of law, perjury, secret drinking, and prac-
tically increased intemperance. In the upshot, the
Scott Act was repealed in almost every county which
had adopted it by larger majorities than those by which
it had been carried. My campaign showed me a good
deal of the country and of the people, as well as of the
rural hotels of Canada, which, for the most part, at
that time left much to be desired.

I may say that I had called upon Neal Dow2 at Port-
land,3 and had satisfied myself, from the bitterness with
which the good man spoke of the state of things there,
that his system of absolute prohibition had miscarried,
as the general evidence shows. He half in earnest said
he should like to hang a woman who, when her husband
had been imprisoned for a liquor offence, sold some
liquor which he had left in the house to buy herself
bread.

Perhaps the most important, or least unimportant,
of my interventions and meddlings with public affairs
was the sequel of the movement called that of the
Patrons.4 The Patrons were a body of farmers, who,

P This was the popular name of the " Canada Temperance Act'*
(41 Viet. chap. 16), passed in 1878 by the Dominion Parliament
after much petitioning and campaigning by the Temperance Party.
It was a sort of stringent Local Option measure. — Ed.]

p The noted American advocate of the prohibition of the sale of
intoxicating beverages. He drafted the Maine prohibitory law in
1851.]

[» In the State of Maine.] [4 The Patrons of Industry.]

448 REMINISCENCES

with abundant reason, had combined for the protection
of the legislative interests of their order. The move-
ment for a time was very successful; it almost swept
Ontario, and sent a large representation to the Provin-
cial Legislature. But on that floor the Patrons, with
their political inexperience, and their simple-minded
openness to intrigue, were between the two regular
parties as a flock of sheep between two packs of wolves,
and the result was a collapse. The movement had an
organ in The Sun* which was on the point of sharing
the doom of the Association. I rescued it from extinc-
tion, helped to make it the organ of an Association
acting upon the Legislature instead of acting in it, and
contributed regularly letters on general politics signed
"Bystander." Giving my money and my work, I
claimed the privilege of expressing my own opinions,
which, however, were, I believe, essentially the same as
those of my friends and coadjutors in the work, Walter
D. Gregory 2 and Gordon Waldron.3

Alone, or almost alone, I wrote against the attacks
upon the independence of the South African Republic.
Great unpopularity for a time was of course the result.
The people went mad, as they always do when an appeal
is made by the party of war to the savage passions

[* A weekly paper published at Toronto.]

[2 Walter Dymond Gregory, a Barrister and Solicitor of Toronto,
born at Gaundle Farm, Montacute, Somersetshire, England, in 1860 ;
his parents emigrated to Canada nine years afterwards ; he was called
to the Bar in 1887, and has since practised at Toronto.]

P Gordon Waldron, a Barrister and Solicitor of Toronto ; born at
Storrington, Ont., in 1864-1

CANADIAN POLITICS 449

which still lurk beneath the varnished surface of civili-
zation. The Sun for the time lost half its circulation,
though it regained its position and profited ultimately
in every respect by the proof which it had given of its
perfect independence. A journal which sets out to be
independent has no longer to dread the scissors of the
censor, but it must expect to face the madness of the
people as well as the bigotry of party. There is, how-
ever, nothing in my life on which I look back with more
satisfaction than I do to the part played by me, how-
ever feebly, in defence of justice, humanity, the faith of
treaties, national independence, and at the same time
the honour of my country, for ever sullied by foul and
perfidious oppression of the weak.

CHAPTER XXVI

MY LIFE IN CANADA
1871-1910

Marriage— "The Grange"— Our Household— General Middle-
ton — Civic Charities — The Governor-Generalship — The
Athletic Club --literary Opportunities— The University
Question— Sports— Last Days.

IT was in 1871, after spending two years at Cornell,
that I yearned for a rather more domestic life, and
went over to reside with a branch of my family l settled
in Canada. In Canada I was destined finally to make
my home. Four years after my arrival I married 2 my
dear wife Harriet,3 the widow of William Boulton,4 and
with her in The Grange at Toronto the rest of my life
was most happily passed.

Fortune, however, made for me almost an England of
my own in Canada. The Grange at Toronto, with its
lawn and its old elms, is the counterpart in style and

P Mr. and Mrs. Charles Colley Foster.]

p September the 30th, 1875.]

[8 Harriette Elizabeth Mann Dixon, only daughter of Thomas
and Mary Bethia (nfo Homer) Dixon ; she was born at Boston in
1825 and died at Toronto on September the 9th, 1909.]

p William Henry Boulton was the son of D'Arcy Boulton (who
built "The Grange "), and was born in 1812. He was thrice Mayor
of Toronto. Died February, 1874.]

450

THE GRANGE,

Mr, Gold™ Smith's IIOIM at Toronto

MY LIFE IN CANADA 451

surroundings of a little English mansion. It is the only
specimen of the kind that I happen to have seen on this
pide of the Atlantic. There were one or two more in
Toronto, but they have succumbed to progress. The
Grange is an antiquity among mushrooms, having been
built in 1817. It originally stood outside the city,
though now it is in the exact centre. In summer, when
the trees are in leaf, nothing is seen from its door but
a church spire. In such a mansion lived Miss Austen's
Emma., and her father. We had, moreover, a household
of faithful and attached domestics, our relations with
whom were like those of an English family in former
days. The married ones lived, with their children, on
the grounds in four cottages, which they took pride in
making pretty with flowers and creepers, giving an air
of happy life to the place. In summer, only chimes
were wanting to make me fancy that I was in England.
The great elms were a special feature of the place, and
to their whispering under the starlight I owe some
lessons in philosophy.

The Grange contained relics of what for the New
World was the olden time. It is now passing, under
my wife's Will, at my suggestion and with my hearty
concurrence, to the projected Art Museum. Traditions
were attached to it of horses killed by bears in its gar-
den; of a Red Indian presenting himself in the bed-
chamber of its mistress; of British sportsmen losing
themselves in the wood in which the house stood, and
being guided to the house by a light in its windows. It

452 REMINISCENCES

seems to have been a social centre and political rendez-
vous of the Family Compact.1 Among other relics of
an olden time preserved in it were the wine-glasses of
Governor Simcoe,2 without stands, so that you had to
empty them before you put them down. I have seen
at a grand table in Ireland the waiters remaining when
the cloth had been drawn and standing behind the chairs
to fill up the half-empty glass the moment it was put
down.

My wife was an excellent manager, and we had really
the counterpart of an old English household, a thing
rare on this side of the water, rarer in England probably

[**'The designation * Family Compact/ ... did not owe its
origin to any combination of North American colonists, but was
borrowed from the diplomatic history of Europe. By the treaty
signed at Paris on the 15th of August, 1761, by representatives on
behalf of France and Spain, the contracting parties agreed to guar-
antee each other's territories, to provide mutual succours by sea and
land, and to consider the enemy of either as the enemy of both.
This treaty, being contracted between the two branches of the House
of Bourbon, is known to History as the Family Compact Treaty,
and the name was adopted in the Canadas, as well as in the Maritime
Provinces, to designate the combination which enjoyed a monopoly
of power and place in the community, and among the members
whereof there seemed to be a perfect, if unexpressed, understanding,
that they were to make common cause against any and all persons
who might attempt to diminish or destroy their influence. — 'The
Story of the Upper Canadian Rebellion; Largely Derived from
Original Sources and Documents.' By John Charles Dent. C.
Blackett Robinson: Toronto. 1885. — But Mr. Dent's, perhaps,
may be regarded as an ex parte statement. Lord 'Durham, in his
Report, says of the phrase 'Family Compact' that it was 'a name
not much more appropriate than party designations usually are.' "
—Ed.]

P John Graves Simcoe, first Governor of Upper Canada (1792-
1794); afterwards Governor of San Domingo. Born in 1752; died
in!806.J

MY LIFE IN CANADA 453

than it was. Our butler l had been in The Grange for
forty years. A servant 2 with whom I had parted,
thirty years after his departure sent me from England
Christinas holly, which is still stuck over my mantel-
piece.

Marriage settled me in Canada. Transplantation to
England, away from all my wife's connections and
associations, would hardly have been quite consistent
with my wife's happiness, though I am sure she would
have sweetly consented to go with me, and when we
were visitors in England was perfectly at home in all
social circles. She was by birth a Bostonian, and had
been much in Europe.

Whatever might be said, I never had any intention
of entering public life in Canada.3 An overture made

L1 At the time of Goldwin Smith's death, William Chin's term
of service at The Grange was fifty-two years lacking a month.]

[2 James Cooper, coachman. Afterwards in the Royal Artil-
lery, I think.]

[a Mr. Goldwin Smith must have forgotten that on April the
18th, 1874, he wrote from 15, The Crescent, Oxford, in his own
hand to Mr. Charles Lindsey, of Toronto, as follows : —
"My DEAR LINDSEY,
* * * * * * * * * *"

" It is not easy at this distance to see what is going on, but I
fear * Canada First ' has taken the field rather prematurely and got
entangled, by its sense of its own weakness, in equivocal and com-
promising alliances.

" I hold to my intention of getting into the Provincial Parlia-
ment, for a Session or two, if I can ; though no doubt it will be
difficult with George Brown against me. I want to get a little prac-
tical insight into Canadian politics without which I cannot write
about them with confidence. Here I was not in Parliament, but I
was thrown almost from boyhood among public men, which made up
for my want of parliamentary experience in some measure at least.

454 BEMINISCENCBS

me, though the special case was one which called for
consideration, was declined. After settling in Canada^
I declined an invitation sent me on the part of a strong
Liberal constituency in England. It was not likely
that I would seek the suffrages of those to whom I was
a stranger. But as an independent observer and writer
I continued to take 'a lively interest in public affairs.

#####*#

As an Englishman I had now and then to take up the
cudgels for my country. On each of the several oc-
casions on which the British Government was called
upon to negotiate on behalf of Canada with foreign
powers there was an outbreak of discontent at the result,
and England was said to have failed to get justice for her
colony. It was forgotten that the whole responsibility
rested on the Imperial country, and that the colony in
case of war would have been helpless. I took it upon
me to say that the Imperial Government, instead of
neglecting Canadian interests, had* always given them
most anxious attention, and done for them all that
negotiation could do. To Canada, defenceless as this

** You will not proclaim this, of course, but if you should have
an opportunity of doing anything to open the way for me, I will
ask you kindly to bear my wish in mind.

" I should get on very well with M. Cameron, though we may
not agree about the propriety of cutting off Charles the First's
head.

" Ever yours truly,

"GoiiDwiN SMITH.
" CHAS. LINDSEY ESQ."

This is taken from the holograph letter kindly lent me by Mr.
George G. S. Inndsey, K.C., son of its recipient.]

MY LIFE IN CANADA 455

broken line of provinces is, war would inevitably be
ruin.

A most painful incident and one which threw a
glaring light on the system of political party was the
attack on the character of the English General, Middle-
ton * who had commanded against the French Half-
Breed rebels at Batoche.2 The heart of the French at
Quebec had been with their rebel kinsman,3 and though,
to save appearances, two battalions of French militia
were called out, they were never brought into action,
and one at least of the colonels withdrew from his com-
mand, and the execution of Riel was bitterly resented
by the French of Quebec and denounced by their
representatives at Ottawa. To propitiate them an
attack was made in Parliament on General Middleton's
honour. He was accused of having stolen a bale of
furs, of laying lawless hands on a billiard table and a
horse, as well as having maltreated the people. The
poor old soldier, beset by these politicians, was be-
wildered, and in that assembly no one was found to
take his part. He was in peril of his character. I
invited him to my house, got the facts from him, drew
up and printed his case.4 Two of the charges, that of
stealing or permitting to be stolen a billiard table, and

P Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Dobson Middleton, in com-
mand of the Canadian Militia from 1884 till 1890J

p In the French Half-Breed rising in the North-West Territories
of Canada in 1885.]

p Louis Riel, the leader.]

[* In the Toronto Evening Telegram of August the 21st, 1890,
and afterwards privately in pamphlet form and with no imprint.]

456 EEMINISCENCES

that of seizing a horse, were dropped for total lack of
evidence but without pronouncing a verdict of acquittal.
The charge of maltreating the people was declared to
be untrue by the Catholic Bishop of the district. I got
up a public dinner at Toronto for General Middleton,
and so for form the matter ended well. Of the charge
of stealing furs no more was heard in Parliament. It
seems that he had rather hastily allowed a bale of furs
of no extraordinary value belonging to a man who had
gone into the rebel camp to be divided among the
members of his staff. In the old country there is still
something to keep the political game within the bounds
of personal honour.

It is with serener pleasure, however, that I recall
my connection of thirty years with the charities of
Toronto, in which my coadjutor was Mr. J. E. Pell,
Secretary of the St. George's Society, a man who has
spent a long life in the humble and untitled service of
beneficence, a science of which he was the master.
He lived to a good old age,1 and if a memory charged
with recollections of good works could make hrm happy,
he must have been happy in his armchair. With
Tiinri I shared some charitable enterprises, such as the
labour test and the creche, and helped to do the little
that could be done to introduce some sort of organiza-
tion and principle into the chaos of Toronto charities,
an effort in which we had to face the stolid indifference
of the Council and the bigoted opposition of the House

P He died in Toronto in February, 1903.]

MY LIFE IN CANADA 457

of Industry; I am afraid I must add in face of the
general apathy of Toronto wealth, the ears of which
were little open to any appeal of benevolence or social
duty. It was from people of small or moderate means,
whose souls were not enslaved by money, that most
of the support came.

It was remarked on that occasion, and I am afraid
with justice, that Toronto wealth is not munificent.
It certainly is not, compared with the wealth of the
United States. The reason perhaps is, partly at least,
the comparative weakness of patriotic ambition, and
the desire of local gratitude in the colonial breast.
The colonist who is making money looks, perhaps
unconsciously, for social recognition and gratitude, not
so much to the colony in which his money is made, as
to the Imperial country in which he may end his days,
possibly with a title.

Once, however, within my experience the purse of
Dives was opened. I received an invitation to a "con-
ference " about a charity specially patronized by a
Peeress who, with her husband, then Governor-General,
had honoured Toronto with a visit. I went, expecting
what an invitation to a conference implied. Instead
of this, I found myself in a large room full, not of au-
thorities on questions of charity, but of the wealthy
magnates of Toronto. Her Ladyship made a speech
and left the room. Then, instead of a conference about
her charity, there was a call, evidently prearranged,
for a subscription, and in a quarter of an hour or little

458 REMINISCENCES

more there was drawn, in some cases visibly wrung,
from the lords of the dollar a sum the quarter of which
local charity could hardly have coaxed out of them
in a year.

Do what you will, spout loyalty as much as you
please, a dependency is not a nation. Of this the
Governor-Generalship is the symbol, and it is nothing
more. It has not made its influence felt in raising social
any more than it has in raising political character,
or in controlling political action. Ottawa is the seat
of a petty court and of all that a petty court is sure to
generate. The man has not been long enough in Can-
ada to know it well when his term expires. The affec-
tation of Royalty is ridiculous. Lord Dufferin l was
very fond of making speeches, and the editor of a lead-
ing Toronto paper told me that the speeches were sent
on beforehand to the press, marked with "applause."

Of the Viceregal control over political action we have
just had an example in the passing by the Governor-
General of the Act of a Provincial Parliament which
his Minister of Justice, in laying it before him, desig-
nated as "confiscation without compensation/7 and
to force a way for which the Provincial Ministry had
closed the gate of public justice.2

P The first Marquess of Dufferin and Ava : Governor-General
of Canada from 1872 to 1878.]

P The reference is to the case of the Florence Mining Company
(Limited) v. the Cobalt Lake Mining Company (Limited), in
which the ownership of the property was in dispute. (See 18 On-
tario Law Reports, page 275.) The Provincial Legislature passed
two Acts, in effect confirming the" title of the defendants : 6 Edward

MY LIFE IN CANADA 459

My greatest disappointment in the charitable or
benevolent line was the Athletic Club, on the goodly
building of which, now turned into a technical school,
I look with sadness when I pass it. Young men must
have pleasure; and young men in a city where they
have no home will be apt to take to pleasures which
are not healthy. The Athletic Club, social as well as
athletic, was intended to provide healthy pleasure for
our numerous bank-clerks, and other young men em-

VII (1906), Chapter 12; and 7 Edward VII (1907), Chapter 15
— the second, I am informed, while the case was sub judic$. — It
is but fair to state, however, that by the Judgment of the Privy
Council (delivered on March the 18th, 1910), the plaintiffs were
declared not to have proved ownership. — The phrase of the Min-
ister of Justice (the Hon. Allan Bristol Aylesworth) referred to, is
in Ms Report to the Governor-General re the two Ontario statutes
above cited. The sentence in which it occurs reads as follows:
"The legislation in question, even though confiscation of property
without compensation, and so an abuse of legislative power, does not
fall within any of the aforesaid enumeration."

I rather think myself that Mr. Goldwin Smith has also here in his
mind the passing by the Governor-General (in spite of petitions for
Disallowance) of two Acts of the Ontario Legislature having re-
ference to its formation of a so-called Hydro-Electric Corn-mission
for the transmission of electrical power to municipalities, viz. :
"An Act to Validate certain By-Laws . . ." etc. (8 Edward VII,
Chapter 22); and "An Act to Amend an Act . . . to validate certain
contracts ..." etc. (9 Edward VII, Chapter 19); for Mr. Smith
often confounded the two cases both in speech and in writing. —
In the latter of these Acts occur the words "every action which has
been heretofore brought and is now pending wherein the validity
of the said contract ... is attacked or called in question . . .
shall be and the same is hereby forever stayed." (See the columns
of the (Toronto] Financial Post and of the [Toronto] Canada Law
Journal from 1907 to 1910. — Professor A. V. Dicey's Opinion on
both questions, which Mr. Smith obtained, will be found in the last-
named periodical, Volume XLV, Numbers 13 and 14, pages 459,
et seq. July, 1909.)— Ed.]

460 REMINISCENCES

ployed in our commercial institutions. Some of our
best citizens took part in the enterprise. But the com-
mercial magnates, who had a special interest in the
scheme, behaved as, I am sorry to say, was their wont.
The Bank of Commerce alone lent a helping hand.
I cannot pretend that the behaviour of the young men
themselves was very gallant, or that they stood by
those who were struggling and spending money in their
interest as English youths would have done. The
Club was within easy walk of "The Grange/' and I
had imagined myself strolling thither often in old age
and looking on at the enjoyments of youth. But for
my best efforts wasted and a large outlay of money
I had only the consolation of feeling that the failure was
no fault of mine.

A literary field Ontario could hardly be, walled in
as she was by the French Province on one side, on
another by the wilderness which bounds her to the
west, and to the south by the United States. The
literary market of the United States, in spite of the
identity of language, is separate. A little popular
History of the United States x written by me had some
sale. It was an exception which proved the rule. It
had the 'advantage of being written by a neutral, though
one who knew the United States and took a native's
interest in their story. But my life as a literary man

p "The United States: An Outline of Political History; 1492-
1871." By Goldwin Smith, D.C.L. New York and London:
Maemillan. 1901.]

MY LIFE IN CANADA 461

in the higher sense of the term was at an end. My
Oxford dreams of literary achievement never were or
could be fulfilled in Canada. Canadians who seek
literary distinction, as some have done, not in vain,
go to England.

The University question was one in which I naturally
felt great interest. While the University of Toronto,
then King's College, was confined to Anglicans, the
other churches had founded separate universities for
themselves. When that barrier was thrown down,
Bishop Strachan,1 a masterful but wrong-headed man,
led an Anglican secession and founded Trinity.2 The
resources of the Province, which, especially since the
enlargement of the curriculum by the inclusion of
science were not more than sufficient to maintain a
single university on a proper scale, were now scattered
among half a dozen bodies, all with a power of granting
degrees. Visiting one of these, I found a staff of two
teachers besides the head, a library containing two
bookcases, one full of common school books, the other
of Government reports; science represented by a few
instalments on the floor of a hall; and a museum
represented by a small hvrtus siccus, and some geologi-
cal specimens scattered, like the scientific instruments,
on the floor. This institution was empowered to grant
degrees in all the subjects of human knowledge, I

P The Hon. and Bight Rev. J. Strachan, bom at Aberdeen, 1778 ;
went to Canada in 1799 ; joined the Church of England ; Executive
Councillor, 1818; first Bishop of Toronto, 1840. Died 1867.]

p The University of Trinity College, Toronto.]

462 REMINISCENCES

was invited to speak on the question at Trinity, where
I pleaded for combination of resources to sustain one
worthy university and advocated the religious college
in a secular university as the solution of that part of
the problem. My plea was well received. But the
Provost of Trinity about that time was a very excellent
man transplanted late from England, who seemed to
feel that he was in an alien element and to shrink from
closer contact with it. I went on preaching upon the
same text, though Colonel, afterwards Sir Casimir Gzow-
ski1 came to my aid, seeing that great opportunities were
being missed by Canadian youths for lack of a good
school of practical science. At last a legacy left by
Mr. George Gooderham 2 to the Methodist University
at Cobourg on condition of its migration to Toronto
brought about that in favour of which I might have
preached for ever. I enjoyed the success, although the
credit was not mine.

However, in the main the true policy prevailed.
The chief exception was Queen's University at Kings-

p Sir Casimir Stanislaus GzowsM, Z.C.M.G., born at St. Peters-
burg in 1813, a son of Stanislaus, Count GzowsM. Having taken
part in the Polish insurrection of 1830-1831 he was after imprison-
ment shipped to America. There he practised law in Pennsylvania.
In 1842 went to Canada ; took up engineering and was employed
in railway construction and bridge building. Appointed Lieutenant-
Colonel in 1873 ; Honorary A.D.C. to the Queen, 1879. Died 1898.1

[2 George Gooderham, born at Scole, Norfolk, England, in 1830 ;
President of the Gooderham and Worts Distilling Co. ; of the Bank
of Toronto; of the Western Canada Loan and Savings Co.; a
Director of the General Hospital (all of Toronto) ; and a Governor
of the University of Toronto. Died in 1905J

MY LIFE IN CANADA 463

ton, the Principal 1 of which perhaps relieved himself
of a little of his chagrin by a critical article in a London
Review.2 Reconcentration was accompanied by the
admission of science and other utilities. The exclu-
sively classical or mathematical University, though we
may venerate its memory, is a thing of the old time
and the old world.

Besides the part I took in the foundation of the
Athletic Club, I was President for some years of a
Lawn Tennis Club, and always thought it right to do
what I could for the reasonable encouragement of
sports, not forgetting the playing fields of Eton, though
it may be questioned whether Waterloo was won there.
Reasonable sports are good for moral as well as for
physical health. But I hope I never pandered to the
dominant craze for athletics, of which I am afraid
Oxford and Cambridge, Universities of the wealthy,
were the birthplaces, and to which University author-
ities have weakly pandered, betraying thereby their
duty to their students, and to the parents of those
students, who sent them, perhaps at a great sacrifice,

P The Rev. George Monro Grant, born at the Albion Mines,
N.S., 1835; Principal of Queen's College, Kingston, Ont., Canada,
from 1877 till his death in 1902.]

p " Canada and the Empire," by G. M. Grant, in The National
Review for July, 1896. No. 161. Volume XXVII, pp. 673-685. —
Gold-win Smith published " A Reply" in The Canadian Magazine of
October, 1896. Vol. VII, pages 540-544. And to this Principal
Grant answered under the title of "Canada and the Empire: A
Rejoinder to Dr. Goldwin Smith," in The Canadian Magazine of
November, 1896. Vol. VIII, pages 73-78.]

464 REMINISCENCES

to the University, to be trained for intellectual callings,
not for those of porters or stevedores. Mens sana in
corpare $ano9 by all means; but SCMMS means healthy,
not muscular. By this glorification of the animal we
get up a false standard of merit specially misbecoming
a University. The same man can rarely be an athlete
and a good student, since it is from the same fund of
nervous energy that we draw for the work of the body
and for that of the brain. In this highly commercial
age, when success in life means success in making
money, University training has its detractors who tell
you that an office-boy of fourteen is worth more than
a University graduate of four-and-twenty. It will be
difficult to answer this if the graduate has spent his
time in the abnormal development of his muscles;
otherwise we might answer the commercial detractor
by asking what it is that he means by 'life.'
* * *****

My wife's name on the tomb/ my joy departed, I
still did not want to spend the rest of my days in idle
gloom. My eyes were turned to Cornell, one of the
happiest scenes of my life. I was still, for my age,
vigorous and able to hold the pen, which, not the sword
or the spade, had been my instrument of labour. At
Cornell a new building of the University had been called
after my name, and, what was more to the purpose,
teaching in History seemed likely to be of special use
to American youth in the coming time. I might have
P Mrs. Goldwin Smith died on September the 9th, 1909.]

PHOTOGRAPH OP A DEATH-MASK OP GOLDWIN SMITH.

Made by Mr. Walter S Allward, of Toronto, on June the ninth, 1910.

MY LIFE IN CANADA 465

gone down to my grave in honour, as I certainly should
in peace.

That hope was suddenly blighted, that door to a
happy and perhaps not unfruitful old age and exit,
was shut.1 I received a shock which ruined my intel-
lect, my memory, my powers as a teacher. Without
the aid of a first-rate Secretary, I could not have
stumbled on as I have done.

p- He is referring to the accident by which, he broke his hip on
February the 2d, 1910.]

INDEX

Aberdeen, the fourth Earl of, 185;

206; 287.

Abingdon, the sixth Earl of, 53.
Acland, Dr. (afterwards Sir H.), 283.
Adams, Charles Francis, 325; 327.
Africa, South, war in. See Boer war.
"African Confessors/' 109.
Agassis, 372.
Alabama, the, 322.

Albany, H. R. H. the Duchess of, 282.
Albert, Prince. See Prince Consort,

the.

Alboni, Marietta, 151.
Alderson, Georgina Caroline, 164.
Alpine tours, 88; 387
Althorp, Lord, 69.
Amalfi, 394.
America, Civil War in, 221; 238;

319; England's attitude, 323;

327, 328; 333-335; 339-340,
Andersonville prison-camp, 335.
'Annexation, 439, et seq.; 446.
Anti-Corn-Law League, 216 ; 256.
Aram, Eugene, 386.
Arch, Joseph, 13; 228.
Archibald, Adamfc George, 416.
Arnold, Matthew, 70, 71; 151.
Arnold, Thomas, 67; 396.
Arrivabene, 155.

Ashburton, the second Baron, 140.
Ashburton, Lady, 140, et seq.
Astley's, 293.
Athenaeum Club, the, 158.
Athletic Club, the, 459, 460.
Athletics, 367-368; 463-464.
Aumale, due D1, 146.
"Aurora Speech," Mr. Blake's, 442,

443.

Autonomy Bills, the, 428.
Awdry, Sir John, 107,

Bacon, John, 76.
Bagley, Sir Thomas, 215.

Ballinasloe Horse Fair, 309.

Balliol College, 99.

Bancroft, George, 332; 400, 401,

Bar, the, 129.

Bayard, Thomas Francis, 401.

Beaconsfield, Earl of. See Disraeli,
Benjamin.

"Bedgebury," 163.

Bellamy's "Looking Backward," 230.

Bentham, 289.

Bentinck, Lord George, 176; 180,
181; 183; 204; 264.

Beresford-Hope, Alexander J,, 162;
178.

Bernard, Mountague, 51.

Bernhardt, Sara, 151.

Besant, Mrs. Annie, 80.

Bethell, Richard, first Baron West-
bury, 109,

Bismarck, 155; 164.

Blake, Edward, 442, 443; his char-
acter, 444.

Blanc, Louis, 96; 155.

Boardman, Douglas, 378.

Bodley, Sir Thomas, 148.

Boer War, the, 211; 219; 448 et
seq.

Boston, arrival at, 328 et seq.

Boulton, William Henry, 450.

Bourassa, Henri, 427.

Bouverie, Edward Playdell-, 111.

Bowring, Sir John, 289.

Brady and Tate, 4.

Braham, John, 145.

Brain, promise to bequeath, 378.

Breton (his mother's name), 5.

Bridge, 400.

Bright, John, 174; 216; 218; 223;
228, 229; 234; his oratory, 238
et seq.; his character, 239-240;
256; 288; 320; quoted, 358; aa
an orator, 405.

British Columbia, 420 et seq.

Brodrick, G. C., 296.

Brougham, Lord, 25; 156; 229.

467

468

INDEX

Brown, George, character of, 433 et

&eq.; 443 , 453.
Brown, Gordon, 433.
Bruno, Giordano, 397.
Bryan, W. J., 404.
Bryant, W. C., 332.
Buckland, William, 67.
Buffalo, extinction of the, 418.
Bulley, Frederick, 51.
Bulwer-Lytton, first Baron Lytton,

154.

Burghley, 253.
Burke, Edmund, 300.
Burke, T. H., 301.
Burns, Mrs. See Crooks, Miss.
Burrard, Sir George, 274.
Butler, General Ben, 339; 348;

appearance and character, 34

anecdotes of, 350.
Butler's " Analogy," 65.
Bystander, the, 448.

Caen, 93.

Cameron, M.T 454.

Camorra, the, 392.

Campbell, John, first Baron, 157.

Campbell and Stratheden, Lord, 437.

Camp meetings, 376-377.

Canada, 282; English ignorance of,
385 et seq.; the North-West, 414
et seq.; the North-West rebellion,
411; history of, 424-425; con-
stitution of, 425 ; confederation of,
425-426.

"Canada First," 441 et seq.; 453.

Canada Temperance Act. See Scott
Act.

Canadian Pacific Railway, 418 et
seq.; 421; 438.

Canino, Prince de, 417.

Canning, Charles John, Earl, 161;
183; 185; 203.

Canning, Sir Stratford (afterwards
Lord Stratford de Redcliffe), 287.

Canterbury (in New Zealand), 209.

Carabas, Marquis of, 255.

Cardwell, Viscount, 161 ; 185 et seq.;
202; 301-302.

Carlingford, Baron, 144.

Carlisle, the seventh Earl of, 301.

Carlyle, Mrs., 142.

Carlyle, Thomas, 141; 167; 331;
358.

Caroline, Queen, 157.

Carthusian Monastery, 388.

Cartwright, Sir Richard, 438.

Cascadilla, 374.

Cashel steeplechases, 309.

Catholic emancipation, 252.

Catholicism, Roman, 397.

Catholics and Protestants, war be-
tween, 308.

Cavendish, Lord F. C., 301.

Cayuga Lake, 374r-375.

Cecil, Lady, M. A. C. H., 163.

Cecil, Lord Robert. See Salisbury,
third Marquess of.

Chamberlain, Joseph, 210.

Charities, Civic, 456, 457.

Chartists, the, 292, 293,

Chase, S. P., 338.

Cheese fair at Reading, 10.

Chesson, F. W., 362.

Chevening, Lord Stanhope's seat,
147.

Chimney-sweeps, 9.

Chin, William, 453.

Chinese War. See Lorcha War.

Christian Socialists, 361.

Christmas festivities, 7, 8.

Churchill, Lord Randolph, 173.

Circuits, 123.

Civil War, the, in America. See
America, Civil War in.

Clarke, E. F., 444.

Clerical tests, effect of removal of,
381, 382.

Clive, Lord, 282.

Clough, Arthur Hugh, 72, 73.

Clubs, observations on, 158.

Clumber, 191.

Cobalt Lake Mining Co., case of,
458.

Cobden, Richard, 174; 216, 217;
223; 228,229; 232; his character
and temperament, 242-243; his
style, 243 ; the French treaty, 247 ;
quoted, 248 ; burial place of, 250 ;
256 ; quoted, 261 ; his attack on
Peel, 261; his letter to Peel, 265;
320.

Cockburn, Lord Chief Justice, 124;
359.

Coercion Bills, 265; 268; 316.

Coleridge, Edward, 40 ; 201.

Coleridge, John Duke, first Baron,
47; 107; 110.

INDEX

469

Coleridge, Sir John, 116; 123.

College, the, at Eton, 39.

Colonial question, the, 169-170 ; 210 ;
221-222; 245; 424-425 ; 439 ; 454.

Commissions, the University, (i) the
Commission of Inquiry, 98 et seq.;
names of the Commissioners, 101
et seq.; (ii) the Executive Com-
mission, 107 et seq.; the names of
the Commissioners, 107 et seq.;
signing of the document, 112 et seq.

Common Room Society, 282.

Competition-wallahs, 309.

Comyn, Patrick. See Cummin, Pat-
rick.

Conde, Prince de, 160.

Congreve, Richard, 51.

"Coningsby," 162.

Conington, John, 52, 86.

Cook, John Douglas, 162 ; 165.

Cooper, James, 453.

Cope, Sir John, 16 ; 20.

"Copenhagen" ("Wellington's horse),
24.

Cornell, Ezra, 366-370.

Cornell University, 367 et seq.; ar-
rival at, 371 ; site of, ib.; lectures
at, 399; hopes of revisiting, 464.

Corn laws, the, 252 ; 260. See also
Manchester school, the.

Corson, Professor Hiram, 378.

Cory, W. J. See Johnson, William.

Cosmos Club, the, 400.

Courts of law, English, 124.

Coxe, H. 0., 279.

Cradock, E. H., 280.

Cradock, Mrs., 280.

Cranworth, Baron, 313.

Craufurds, the, 159-160.

Crimean War, the, 195; 219; 287.

Criminal cases, appeal in, 125.

Croker, John Wilson, 137.

Crooks, Miss, 391.

Crowder, R. B., 124.

Cummin, Patrick, 150.

Currency, paper, 337,

Curtis, G. W., 372 ; 402.

Czar, Nicholas I. See Nicholas I.

Daily News, The, 168; 170.
Dalhousie, first Marquess of, 185
205.

Dampier, John Lucius, 101,

Dana, Charles, 413.

Darwin's theories, 373.

Davis, Jefferson, 194 ; 324 ; 355.

Deer-shooting, 20.

Delane, J. T., 232 ; 292.

Democracy, 225 ; 233 ; American,

seamy side of, 402.
Demys, the, of Magdalen, 52.
Denison, J. E. See Ossington, first

Viscount.
Denison, J. E., Viscount Ossington,

192.

Denmark, Crown Prince of, 283.
Derby, fourteenth Earl of, 106 ; 180 ;

255; 267.

Desmond, Countess of, 108.
Devrient, 152
Dickens, Charles, 154.
Disestablishment, 196 ; 224.
Disraeli, Benjamin, 106; 148; 155;

161-162; 164; 168; 170-171;

17 5 et seq.; 178-182; as a speaker,

179; his "Life of Lord George

Bentinck," 181; 194; 198; 202;

his letter to Peel, 212-213; his

speech on Peel's reference to this

letter, ib.; his political character.

255; 264; 310.
Dixon, B. Homer, 5.
Dixon, Harriette E. M. See Smith,

Mrs. Goldwin.
Douro, Lady, 23.
Dow, Neal, 447.
Dresden, 90.

Drummond, Edward, 263.
Duff, James Grant, 147.
Dufferin, the first Marquess of, 458.
Dulnnfield, Sir Henry Robert, 12;

159.

Dukinfield, John Lloyd, 12.
Dukinfield, Katherine, afterwards

Mrs. R. P. Smith, 12.
Dukinfield, Lady, 159.
Dukinfield, Sir Nathaniel, 12.
Dundas, Sir David, 134.
Durham, Lord, 429.

Edlund, R. C., 409.

Education Commission, 116; names

of Commissioners, ib.
Education, State-aided, 231.

470

INDEX

Edward VII, King, 191 ; 281.

Electioneering, 294.

Elections, anecdotes of, 296-297.

Elections of 1886, G. S.'s share in,
298-299.

Elgin, the eighth Earl, 204; 219;
289; 425; 428.

EUesmere, the second Earl of, 107.

Emerson, 331.

"Empire, The/' 168; 170.

Engleheart, Sir J. Gardner D., 131.

"Essays and Reviews," 72.

Eton, life at, 35; masters at, 40;
religion at, 42 ; boys, character of,
42; beauty of, 48.

Eveleigh, John, 99.

Everett, Edward, 66; platform ora-
tory of, 405.

Eyre, Governor, 189, 225 ; 357.

Factory, the, and its influences, 327,

328.

Factory Acts, 229.
Factory system, the, 363.
Fagging (at Eton), 35.
Falaise, 93.

"Family Compact," the, 452.
Family likenesses, 329.
Farmers, sixty years ago, 14.
Fairer, the first Baron, 47.
Faucit, Helen, 151.
Fearne, Charles, 121.
Fellows of Colleges, 75.
Fellowships of Magdalen, 73.
Fiske, Daniel Willard, 370; 398.
Florence, 388 ; 398.
Florence Mining Co., case of, 458.
Forbes, J. M., 321 ; 330.
Forbury, the, at Reading, 10.
Forster, W. E.f 316, 317.
Foster, Mr. and Mrs. Chas, Colley,

450,

Foster, W. A., 442.
Fox-hunting, sixty years ago, 20.
Fraser, James, Bishop of Manchester,

15; 20; 119.

Freeman, E. A., 20; 70-71; 277.
Free trade, 183; 216-217; 246;

256-257; 269; 445.
French Emperor. See Napoleon

IIL
Friar Street, Reading, 5. j

Fronde, James Anthony, 72; 167;

175.
Frowd, J, B.f 279.

Gaisford, Dean, 50.

Garibaldi, 155; 220.

Garrison, W. L., 334.

George IV, 316.

Gladstone, W. E,, 38; 101; 105;
161; 179; 185; 193; his advo-
cacy of the cause of the oppressed,
194 ; his attitude on the American
civil war, 194-195; his attitude
on the Crimean War, 195; his
character, ib. ; his disposition, 197 ;
his attitude on the Irish question,
197; as a statesman, ib.; as a
speaker, 198 ; his versatility, 199 ;
his classical studies, ib. ; his writ-
ings, ib.; his Homeric theories,
ib.; his appearance, 200; 203;
234-236; 284-285; 294; 310;
317; 324; as an orator, 405.

Gladstone, Mrs., 200.

Globe, The [TorontoJ, 433, 434; 443.

Godkin, E. L., 413.

Godley, J. R., 169; 209.

Goldwin Smith Hall, 379.

Goldwin, Mr. (G. S.'s mother's
uncle), 5.

Goodall, Joseph, 43.

Gooderham, George, 462.

Good Friday, 8.

Gordon, William, 358.

Graham, Sir John R. G.r 180 ; 185 ;
205.

"Grammar of Assent," the, 62,

"Grange, The" (Lord Ashburton's
House), 140.

"Grange, The" (Goldwin Smith's
House), 450 et seq.

Grant, General IT. S., 135; 339;
his character, 342 et seq.; his
failure as President, 343.

Grant, Rev. G. M., 463.

Granville, the second Earl, 208.

Greek Letter Societies, 368.

Gregory, Walter D.f 448.

Gregory, Sir William, 168.

Greville's "Memoirs," 175; 183;
200.

Grey, the third Earl, 212.

INDEX

471

Griffith, Moses, 279.

Grisi, 152.

Grote, Mr. and Mrs. George, 147.

Guizot, 25 ; 94.

Gully, J. M., 384.

Guy Fawkes's Day, 10.

Gzowski, Sir Casimir, 462.

Hallam, Arthur, 136.

Hallam, Henry, 47 ; 136.

"Hamlet," 152.

Hampden, Renn Dickson, 143.

"Handbook of Commercial Union,"

445.

Hannibal, 395.
Hanover, travels in, 91.
Harcourt, Sir W. G. G. Vernon, 163 ;

281.

Hardinge, the second Viscount, 178.
Hardy, Gathorne, 276.
Hare, Augustus J. C., 396.

Harper, the Reverend , 14.

Harrowby, the second Earl of, 107.
Hastings, Warren, Life of, 167.
Haultain, T. Arnold, 379.
Hawtrey, E. C., 43, 44.
Hayward, Abraham, 148.
Head, Sir Edmund Walker, 434.
Hemming, G. W., 163.
Herald, the New York, 283.
Herbert, Sidney, 161; 176; 185;

202; 260; 291.

Hertford, third Marquess of, 137 ; 179.
Hewson, General Butt, 432.
Eeydukoff, H., 34.
Heywood, James, 100.
Hincks, Sir FM 437.
Hinds, Samuel, 101.
Hodgson, Francis, 43.
Home, Daniel Dunglas, 384.
Home Rule, 196; 234 ; 241; 245;

270; 285; 294; 298; 305; 317;

444,445.

Hook, Theodore, 134.
Hooker, Gen. Joseph, 347.
Hooker, Richard, 79.
Hope, Alexander J. Beresford. See

Beresford-Hope.
Hope, Thomas, 162.
Hopkins, J. Castell, quoted, 422.
Horsman, Edward, 178.
Hospitals, military, 335 ; 352.

Houghton (Monckton Milnes), Lord,

135.

House of Commons, speeches in, 150.
House of Lords, 226.
Household, his father's, 29.
Howe, Joseph, 436 et seq.
Howland, W. H., 442.
Howley, Archbishop, 58.
Hughes, Thomas, 209 ; 361.
Hunter, Sir Paul, 175.
Huntington, Lucius Seth, 438.
Huntley and Palmer, 2.
Huxley, T. H., 199; 138.

Imperial Federation, 222 ; 427.
Indian Mutiny, the, 203.
Inglis, Sir R, H., 132.
Inglis, Rev. Wm., 433.
Ionian Isles, cession of, 168.
Ireland, visits to, 301 ; its beauty and

its people, 302; crime in, 306;

clergy in, 307 et seq. ; constabulary

of, 308; second visit to, 313;

neglect of, by Royalty, 314 et seq.
Irish, character of the, 303.
"Irish History and Irish Character,"

Mr. G. S.'s book on, 235; 304.
Irish question, the. See Home Rule.
Italians, cruelty of, to animals, 393.
Italy, early travels in, 95; second

visit to, 391.
Ithaca, first visit to, 371 ; life at, 374,

375; inhabitants of, 377, 407.

Jackson, Andrew, 333 ; 399.
Jamaica, outbreak in, 357 ; floggings

in, 357 ; committee, 359.
James I, King, 284.
Japan, military power of, 423.
Jelf, W. E., 66.
Jenkyns, Richard, 99.
Jer6me Bonaparte, 24.
Jesuits7 Estate Bill, 429.
Jeune, Francis (afterwards Lord St.

Helier), 101; 102.
"Jingoism," 219.
John of Nepomuk, Saint, 80.
Johnson, Andrew, 349.
Johnson, George Henry SachevereU,

101; 104.

472

INDEX

Johnson, William (afterwards Cory),

47.

Jones, Mrs., of Pantglas, 290.
Jowett, Benjamin, 83; 100; 195.
Judges, their responsibility, 127-128.
"Junius," 109.

Kean, Charles, 152-153,

Keate, John, 40.

Keble, John, 64.

Kell, Robert and Samuel, 326 ; 363.

Kinglake, A. W., 245.

Kingsley, Charles, 20 ; 358.

Knaresborough, 385-386.

Ku-Khix, the, 321.

Labouchere, 195.

Labourers (agricultural), sixty years
ago, 14.

Lake, William Charles, 116; 117.

Landor, Walter Savage, 398.

Lansdowne, Lord, 408; 444.

Lawn Tennis Club, 463.

Lawrence, Mrs. Bigelow, 141.

Lawrence, Sir John, 309.

Layard, A. H., 170.

Leader, the, 435.

Lee, General Robert Edward, 341 ; his
character, 347 ; as a soldier, 348.

Le Marchant, Denis, 156.

Leo XIII, Pope, 393.

Leopold, Prince, 160 ; 282.

"Letters of Runnymede," 161 ; 178 ;
179.

Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, 107;
108; 199.

Lewis, John, quoted, 443.

Liberal, the [Toronto], 443.

LiddeU, H. G., 101 ; 103,

Lincoln, Abraham, 320; 321; 334;
second election of, 336; his ig-
norance of money matters, 338;
340 ; his character and appearance,
354 et seq.; as a statesman, 355.

Lincoln's Trm, 121.

Lind, Jenny, 82; 151; 152.

Lindsey, Charles, Gold-win Smith's
letter to, 453.

Lindsey, George G. S., 454.

Linwood, W., 52.

Literature, Canada as a field for,

460.

Littlemore, 61.
Liverpool, Earl of, 324.
London, life in, 132 et seq.
Longfellow, H. W., 331.
Longley, C. T., Archbishop, 107.
Long Marston, 5.
Lorcha War, 288.
Loring, Charles, 328.
"Lothair," quotation from, 171; 182.
Louis Napoleon. See Napoleon III.
Lowe, Mrs., 312.
Lowe, Robert (afterwards Viscount

Sherbrooke), 309 ; appearance and

character, 311 ; as a talker, 311 ;

anecdotes of, 311 et seq.
Lowell, J.R., 332; 372.
Loyal and Patriotic Union, the, 409 ;

444.

Lushington, Stephen, 158.
Lyndhurst, Baron, 156.
Lyons, Admiral Lord, 28 ; 290.
Lyons, the first Earl, 353.
Lyttleton, the fourth Baron, 199.
Lytton, Bulwer. See Bulwer.

Macaulay, 132; 167; quoted, 397.

" Macbeth," 153.

Macdonald, Sir John A., 341 ; 430

etseq,; 434.

Macdonald, John Sandfield, 436.
Mackenzie, Alexander, 435; his

character, manner, and work, 436.
Mania, the, 391, 392.
Magdalen College, 51; Fellows of,

55; revisited, 381.
Mail, the [Toronto], 435.
Maine, Sir Henry, 163.
Malmesbury, third Earl of, 168.
Manchester School, the, 174; 215;

its creed, 220; 287.
Manners, Lord John (sixth Duke of

Rutland), 162.
Manning, Henry Edward, Cardinal,

62.

Mario, 152.
Marx, Karl, 327.
Maule, William Henry, 128.
Maurice, Frederick Denison, 362.
May Day, 9.
Maynooth, 304; 308.

INDEX

473

Mazzini, Giuseppe, 96 ; 155.
McDonnell, Sir Alexander, 202 ; 304.
McMullen, John Mercier, 433.
Meade, Gen. George Gordon, 347.
Melbourne, Lord, 46.
Memory, remarks on, 34.
Mennonites, 417.
Merchant Shipping Act, 188.
Metcalfe, Lord, 425.
Metternich, Prince, 87.
Miall, Edward, 116-120.
Middleton, General, 411 ; 455.
MiU, John Stuart, 359 ; 360.
Milman, Henry Hart, 4 ; 136 ; 199.
Milnes, Monckton. See Houghton,

Lord.

Milton, John, 240.
Miracles, 394.
Mitchell, Colonel, 178.
Mitford, Miss, 25.
Monkton Farley (or Farleigh), 32,
Moriarty, Bishop, 308.
Morley, Viscount, 194; his portrait

of Cobden, 242 ; quoted, 259; 261;

264; 270.

Morning Chronicle, the, 161.
Moray, due DE, 146.
Morris, John Brande, 65.
Mortimer House, 13 ; 272 ; 380.
Mortimer Parish, 13.
Mouat, J. G., 446.
Mowbray, Sir John, 27; 380.
Mozley, James, 56.
Muller, Max, 272; 276.
Mummers, 7.

MundeUa, A. J., 172; 294r-295.
Murat, 393.
Murchison, Sir Roderick Impey, 29 ;

67; 138 etseq.; 288.
Mutiny, the Indian. See Indian

Mutiny, the.

Naples, 392.

Napoleon Bonaparte, likenesses of,

24 ; appearance of, #>.
Napoleon III, 155; 220; 247; 287;

289; 291; 325.
Nation, The New York, 413.
Nation, The [Toronto], 443.
Naushon, 330.
Neale, Sir H. B., 273.
New Year's Day, 8.

Newcastle, the fourth Duke of, 37,
Newcastle, the fifth Duke of, 106;

116; 119; 161; 176; 185; 201;

291.

Newman, Francis, 61.
Newman, John Henry, Cardinal, 61 ;

167.

Newman, Thomas Harding, 60.
"Newmanism," 80; 382.
Newspaper reporter, anecdote of,

333.

Niagara, Cobden's remark on, 224.
Nicholas I, Czar, 139; 287.
Normandy, tour in, 92.
Norton, Charles Eliot, 329.
Notarbartolo, 391.
Noyes, J. H., 375.

O'Brien, William, 409.

O'ConneU, Daniel, 178; 264.

Odessa, siege of, 291,

O'Hagan, first Baron, 202; 304; 313.

O'Leary, Arthur, 313.

Oneida Community, the, 375-376.

Opera, the, 151.

Oratory, English and American, 405 ;
Parliamentary, 149.

Oriel College, 99.

Oronyatekha, 283.

Osier, Professor, 272.

Ossington, first Viscount, 149.

Oxford (the University), life at, 52-
53; before reform, 67; 98-99;
the curriculum, 68 ; undergraduate
life at, 69 ; after reform, 113-114;
society at, 275 ; revisited, 380-381.

Oxford (the University), the Com-
mission of Inquiry and the Ex-
ecutive Commission. See under
Commissions, the University.

Oxford University Bill of 1854, 105;
106-107.

Oxoniensis, letters of, 101.

Owen, Robert, 376.

Owen, Sir Richard, 138,

Pakington, J. S., 166.
Palermo, 391.
Palizzolo, 392.
Palmer, Fyshe, 2.

474

INDEX

Palmer, Roundel. See Selborne, first
Earl of, 55.

Palmer, William, 56.

Palmerston, Lord, 166; 170; 218;
224; 266; 284; 288; 289; 324.

Paris, comte DE, 146.

Parke, Sir James, 123.

Parker, Charles Stuart, 177-205.

Parliament. See House of Commons.

Parnell, 316.

Parr, Samuel, 53,

Parr, Thomas, 108.

Parsons, hunting, 19.

Parsons, sixty years ago, 14.

Party system, the, 299; 410; in
America, 334 ; in Canada, 425.

Pasquale, Villari, 398.

Patrons of Industry, the, 447.

Pattison, Mark, 84; 85; 100; 278.

Pearson, Mrs., 290.

Peel, Sir Robert, 161; 174; 175;
180; 194; 203-205; 207; speech
referring to Disraeli's request for
place, 213 ; 248-249 ; burial place
of, 250; political character, 250-
251; 255; 256 et seg.; financial
policy, 260; attitude of leaders
of Corn Law League towards, 262 ;
and Cobden, quarrel between, 262-
263 ; character of, 264 ; and Cob-
den, reconciliation of, 265; 317.

Peelites, the, 185; 200; 287.

Pell, J. E., 456.

Penjdeh incident, 408.

Pension system, the Army, 403-404.

Pensions Arrears Bill, 403.

Perugia, 95.

Peter the Great, 231.

Phelps, Samuel, 153.

Phoenix Park, 301 ; 314; 315.

Pigott, E. F. Smyth, 150; 154.

Playdell-Bouverie. See Bouverie.

Plumptre, Frederick Charles, 41.

Plunket, first Baron, 208.

Poe, Edgar Allan, 332.

Pompeii, 387.

"Pop" at Eton, 38.

"Popanilla." See "Voyage of Cap-
tain PopaniUa."

Pope, Joseph, 435.

Portland, the fifth Duke of, 192.

Potter, Thomas Bayley, 257; 322;
326.

Powell, Baden, 101.

Prague, 80.

Prairie, the, 415.

President, the, of the United States,

a presentation to, 402.
Prince Consort, the, 45 ; 181 ; 281 ;

324.

Prince Imperial, the, 291.
Prince of Wales (afterwards King

Edward VII), 315.
Pritchards, a Welsh family, 5.
Property, private ownership of, 232.
Protection, 183; 185; 217.
Proudhon, 232.
Psi Upsilon Society, 370.
Public School, the, influence of, 119-

120.

Pullman, 327.
Pusey, E. B., 62.
Pym, John, 240; 250.

Quakerism, 240-241.
Quarterly Review, quoted, 345.
Quebec, destiny of, 426, 427.

Rachel, 151.

Railway, the Great Western, 280.

Ravenna, 95; 390-391.

Reade, Charles, 56.

Reading (the town), 1-11 ; 380.

Reading parties in the long vacation,

69.

Rebellion, Canadian Northwest, 455.
Reed, Thomas Brackett, 404.
Reform Bill (of 1832), 10, 11 ; 225.
Reid, Wemyss, 211.
"Relations between America and

England, The," 409.
Reporters, newspaper, 411.
Richardson, C. Gordon, 446.
Richmond, George, portrait-painter,

159,

Riel, Louis, 411 ; 455.
Ring, Dr.r 7.
Rintoul, R. S., 165.
Ristori, 150.
Riviere, Briton, 131.
Robert the Devil, 93.
Rockingham, 300.
Rocky Mountains, the, 420.
Roebuck, J. A., 172; 208; 294.

INDEX

475

Rogers, Sir Frederic, 169, 209. ]

Rogers, J. E. T., 84; 277. j

Rogers, Samuel, 133.

Rogers, William, 117.

Rolleston, George, 277.

Rome, Classic and Modern, 395.

Rosebery, the fifth Earl of, 209.

Routh, Martin, 51 ; 53 ; 381.

Ruloff, 386.

Ruskin, 358 ; 389.

Russell, Alexander, 204.

Russell, Dr. Charles William, 202;
304; 307.

Russell, Sir Henry, 26,

Russell, Lady, of Swallowfield, 365.

Russell, Lady (wife of Lord John
Russell), 198.

Russell, Lord John (first Earl Rus-
sell), 24, 25; 100; 106; 133; 179;
207; 225; 266; 325.

Sackvflle-West, Mortimer, first Baron,

148.

Sadleir, John, 187.
Sadler's Wells, 152.
Saffi, Count Aurelio, 96 ; 155.
Sage, Henry W., 378.
Saint George's Chapel, funeral at, 46.
Saint Lawrence's Church, Reading, 2.
Saint Mary's, Parish of, 4.
Saint Peter's (Rome), 396-397.
Salisbury, third Marquess of, 163;

178-179; 322; 329.
Saltaire, 327.

Sandars, Thomas Collett, 163.
Saturday Review, The, 162; dinners,

165; 272.
School life, 32.
Schoolmates, 33.
Scott Act, the, 447.
Scott, Rev. William, 163.
Stances, spiritualistic, 382-383.
Secession, 319.
Sedgwick, Adam, 67.
Selbome, first Earl of, 59 ; 198 ; 241.
Sellar, A. C., 295.
Senate, the United States, 404.
Seneca Lake, 374-375.
Senior, Nassau William, 116-117.
Seward, William Henry, 353.
Shaftesbury, the eighth Earl of, 204;

284.

Sheffield, elections at, 172-173, 294-
295.

Sherbrooke, Viscount. Sea Lowe,
Robert.

Sheridan, 341.

Sherman, General, 341 ; 345.

Silchester, 13.

3imcoe, John Graves, 452.

Simpson, Professor, 304.

Skye Crofters, 417.

Slavery, 319 et seq.; 334.

Smith, Arthur, death of, 6 ; 38.

Smith, Assheton, 17.

Smith, Goldwin, boyhood, I et seq.;
goes to school at Monkton Farley,
32 ; goes to Eton, 35 ; leaves Eton,
49 ; matriculates, 50 ; enters Mag-
dalen College, 51 ; takes first-class
honours, 68 ; leaves Magdalen, 73 ;
tutor of University College, 77;
travels on the Continent, 88 et seq. ;
visits Switzerland, io.; the Tyrol,
&., et seq.; spends a summer at
Dresden, 90; visits Prague, #>.;
visits Hanover, 91 ; takes a car-
riage drive through Normandy,
92 et seq. ; visits Caen, 93 ; visits
Falaise, #>.; meets Guizot, 94;
visits Italy, 95; at Rome, #>.; at
Ravenna, ib.; at Perugia, fb.;
at Venice, »&., 96 ; Assistant Secre-
tary to the University Commission
of Inquiry, 102 ; Secretary to the
Commission of Reform, 107;
Member of the Education Com-
mission, 116; studies Law, 121;
goes on Circuit, 123; social life
in London, 132 et seq.; joins the
Saturday Review, 162; appointed
to the Regius Professorship of
Modern History at Oxford, 272;
settles at Oxford, #?.; opposes the
Great Western Railway, 280, 281 ;
takes part in elections, 294 et seq. ;
visits Ireland (1862), 301 et seq.;
(1881), 313 et seq.; speaks on
behalf of the North at Manchester,
322; visits America, 327; visits
Washington, 352; meets Lincoln,
354 ; resigns the Oxford Professor-
ship, 365; lives at Mortimer, ib.;
meets Andrew White, 366 ; arrives
at Cornell University, 371; visits
the Oneida Community, 375;

476

INDEX

attends a camp meeting, 376;
revisits England, 380 et seq. ; visits
Italy, 387 et seq.; at Venice, 389;
at Ravenna, 390 ; second visit to
Italy, 391 et seq.; visits Sicily, 391 ;
at Naples, 392 ; at Pizzo, 393 ; at
Amalfi, 394; at Capua, 395; at
Rome, 396; revisits Washington,
399 et seq.; visits the Northwest
Territories of Canada, 414 et seq.;
at Winnipeg, 416 ; visits the Skye
Crofters, 417; forms the Loyal
and Patriotic Union, 444; joins
the "Reciprocity" movement, 446,
takes part in the Liberal Tem-
perance Campaign, 446, 447 ;
settles in Canada (1871), 450;
marriage, #>.; defends General
Middleton, 455, 456; interests
himself in civic charities, 456 ;
founds the Athletic Club, 459 ;
460 ; advocates university cen-
tralization, 461 et seq.; patronizes
athletics, 463 ; his accident, 466.

Smith, Mrs. Goldwin, 450; death of,
464.

Smith, Henry, 276.

Smith, Dr. Richard Pritchard (Gold-
win Smith's father), his second
marriage, 12; retires, 13; death
of, 365.

Smith, Mrs. R, P. (Goldwin Smith's
mother), death of, 6.

Smith, Sydney, 134 ; 136.

Smoking, 21.

Socialism, 228-229.

Society, rural, sixty years ago, 15,
16.

Soult, Marshal, 45.

South African War. See Boer
War.

Spectator, The, 165.

Spence, James, 320.

Spencer, Bishop, 58.

Spencer, Herbert, 139, 140.

Spiritualism, 383 et seq.

Spithead, 274.

Sports. See Athletics.

Sprague, Professor and Mrs., 375.

Squires, sixty years ago, 15-

St. Helier, Lord. See Jeune, Fran-
cis.

Stanhope, the ffith-Earl, 133; 146;
'

Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn, 77; 100;

102, 152; 255; 344.
Stansfield, Sir James, 155 ; 215.
Statesmanship, American, 406, 407.
Stephen, James Fitzjaxnes, 117; 133;

167.

Strachan, Bishop, 461.
Strahan & Paul, 289.
Strathfieldsaye, 21.
"Strawberry Hill," 144 et seq.
Stubbs, William, 84; 277.
Students, American, 369.
Suffrage, the, 225.
Sumner, Charles, 344 ; 409.
Sun, the New York, 413.
Swindon, 281.
Syracuse (the Sicilian), 95.

Tait, Archbishop, 101 ; 103; 196.

Talfourd, Sir T. N., 26.

Taylor, Bayard, 372.

"Tea, Afternoon," the old-fashioned,

280.

Teck, Prince, 313.
Telepathy, anecdote of, 273.
Temperance movement in Ontario,

the, 446.

Temple. See Templer, John Charles.
Temple, Frederick (Archbishop), 72.
Templer, John Charles, 122.
Tennyson, 142; 288.
Thackeray, W, M., 137.
Theale, parish of, 55.
Theatre, the, 150.
Thessiger, Frederick, 166.
Thirlwall, Bishop, 82.
Thomas, George Henry, 345.
Thomasson, Thomas, 228; 364.
Thomson, William, 285.
Tichborne Case, 70.
Tietjens, Teresa, 151.
Times, 281 ; 315.
Titles of honour, 428.
Tractarian movement, the, 60.
Trade unions, 228.
Trent affair, the, 324.
Trevelyan, Sir Charles, 203.
Trials, notable, 125-127.
Tupper, Sir Charles, 437 ; 43&
Twisleton, Edward, 107; 109.
Twiss, Travers, 86.
Tyndall, John, 138.

INDEX

477

Union League, the, 322.

Unions, Trade-, 295.

"United States, The" (Goldwin

Smith's book) ,460.
Universities, Canadian, 461 et seq.;

Universities, contrasted, 368.
University. See under ** Oxford"

and under '* Commission."
University College, Common Room

of, 75.

University Reform, 73.
Upton Manor House, 14.
Urquhart, David, 136.

Vancouver (British Columbia), 422.
Van Home, Sir W. C., 419.
Vaughan, Henry Halford, 93; 274;

275.
Venables, George, 163; epitaph on,

165; 331.
Venice, 389.
Verhuel, Admiral, 291,
Verney, Lady, 93.
Victoria (British Columbia), 420,

421, 422.
Victoria, Queen, 45; 46; 155; 179;

181; 314.
Villiers, C. P., 260.
"Vivian Grey," 255.
"Voyage of Captain Popanilla, The,"

180; 182.

WaJdegrave, Frances, Lady, 144 et

seq.

Waldron, Gordon, 448.
Walker, Thomas, 170.
Walrond, Theodore, 219.
Walsingham, Sir R, portrait of, 148.
Walter, Count of Mantes, 93.

Walter, John, 27.

Ward, Sally. See Mrs. Bigelow Law-
rence.

Ward,W.G.,61; 63; 73.
Warde, John, 12; 17.
'Warfare of Science and Religion,"

66.

Waring, George, 278.
Warren, T. Herbert, 381.
Washington (the city), 352; 399;

society at, 407.
Waterloo, battle of, 38; 160.
Wayte, S. W., i05,
Webster, Daniel, 45.
Weekly Sun, the [Toronto], 448.
Welbeck, 192.
Wellesley, Gerald, 22.
Wellington, the first Duke of, 21;

102; 290; resemblance to Grant,

344.

Wellington, the second Duke of, 24.
Whist, 400.

White, Andrew D., 66; 366; 370.
White House, a presentation at the,

402; reception at, 408.
Wigan, A. S., 151.
Wilberforee, Samuel, Bishop of Ox*

ford, 63; 83; 143.
Wader, Professor Burt G,, 378-379.
William the Conqueror, 93.
William III, 175.
William IV, 45.

Williams, Edward Vaughan, 123.
Williams, Monier, 276.
Wilson, J. M., 278.
Winkworth, Mr. and Mrs., 364.
Winnipeg, 416.
Wolseley, Lord, 189.
Woman suffrage, 360.
Wright, Mrs. Atkins, 1.
Wyburnbury, 5.

Yarmouth (Isle of Wight), 274.

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