Southern Branch 
 of the 
 
 University of California 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 Form L 1 
 
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 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 1922 
 
 23 
 
 MAR 2 1 1924 
 APR 4 1924 
 APR 2 11924 
 
 7 1927 
 
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 APR 20 1929 
 14 1931 
 
 1939 
 SEP 1 1 J957 
 
 5m-8,'21
 
 EMINENT PEESONS
 
 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 BIOaEAPHIES 
 
 REPKINTED FROM TEE TIMES 
 
 VOLUME I 
 1870 1875 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 AND f)e Zime0 OFFICE, PRINTING HOUSE SQUARE 
 
 1892 
 
 All rights referred
 
 C T 
 \ \ 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 COUNT DB MONTALEMBEIIT . 1 
 ME. CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 THE EARL OF CLARENDON . ' . 16 
 SIR FREDERICK POLLOCK 
 SIR JOHN HERSCHEL 
 
 MR. GROTE ... 37 
 
 SIR JOHN BURGOYNE ... 43 
 
 MR. CHARLES BABBAGE . 57 
 
 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON . 63 
 
 LORD MAYO ... 76 
 JOSEPH MAZZINI 
 
 LORD BALLING AND BULWER . 92 
 
 CHARLES LIVVER . 101 
 
 NAPOLEON III. > .106 
 
 LORD LYTTON . .147 
 
 BARON LIEBIG . 152 
 
 MR. MACREADY . . 157 
 
 MANZONI . I 60 
 
 LORD WESTBURY . .162 
 BISHOP OF WINCHESTER ..... 168
 
 vi CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SIR EDWIN LANDSEER ..... 178 
 
 SIR HENRY HOLLAND ... . 186 
 
 JOHN STUART MILL . . . . .195 
 
 DR. LIVINGSTONE ... . . . . 225 
 
 M. VAN DE WEYER . . 237 
 
 SIR WILLIAM FAIRBAIRN ..... 244 
 
 M. GCIZOT . ..... 247 
 
 BARRY CORNWALL ...... 264 
 
 CANON KINGSLEY ...... 268 
 
 LORD ST. LEONARDS ...... 279 
 
 SIR ARTHUR HELPS ...... 289 
 
 REAR-ADMIRAL SHERARD OSBOIIN . . . 295 
 
 BISHOP THIRLWALL .... . 303 
 
 SIR CHARLES WHEATSTONE . 308
 
 COUNT DE MONTALEMBERT 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, MONDAY, MARCH 14, 1870 
 
 THE generation of men who illustrated the literary and 
 political history of France for no inconsiderable portion of the 
 present century is fast disappearing. Not long since Berryer, 
 full of years, but with mental powers hardly impaired, was 
 taken away ; soon after Lamartine, who had, however, long 
 survived himself, was laid in his grave ; and now we have to 
 record the loss of another gifted person, younger than either, 
 but who for nearly thirty years filled a high place in the 
 public eye as a writer and an orator. 
 
 Charles, Count de Montalembert, whose long sufferings have 
 just terminated in death, sprang from an ancient family of 
 provincial nobility for centuries settled in Poitou. One of his 
 ancestors, Andre de Montalembert, Sire d'Esse, the companion 
 in arms of Francis I., fought at Landrecy, on the Sambre, against 
 Charles V., and fell before Therouanne. His great uncle, Marc 
 Rene, Marquis de Montalembert, had served with much dis- 
 tinction in the Seven Years' War, and, in spite of the opposition 
 of the military engineers of the period, succeeded in introducing 
 important improvements in the art of fortification. He died in 
 1800, senior General in the French Army. 
 
 Count Rend de Montalembert quitted France, with so many 
 others of his order, in 1792, and joined the corps of emigrants 
 commanded by his father. When the army of Condd was 
 broken up, after Haguenau and Bentheim, he entered the 
 English service, and took part in the campaigns of Egypt, India, 
 . ~ VOL. I & B
 
 2 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 and Spain, where he obtained the rank of Colonel. He returned 
 to France on the second Restoration ; was raised to the peerage 
 in 1819 ; and was sent in 1626 as Ambassador to Sweden, 
 where he remained till the overthrow of Charles X. He 
 survived the July Revolution but one year. His son Charles 
 was born in England in 1810, his mother being a Scotch lady, 
 named Forbes. When quite a young man he formed an 
 intimate acquaintance with the Abbe" Lamennais, then the 
 ardent advocate of an alliance between Catholicism and Demo- 
 cracy, and started a journal, the Avenir, as their organ. They 
 entered upon a fierce contest with the University of Paris, 
 denounced its monopoly of education, and, to prove the 
 superiority of their system, Montalembert, in conjunction with 
 Lacordaire, opened a "free school" without the license of the 
 authorities. Lacordaire, who had given up the Bar and taken 
 orders four years previously the Council of Advocates not 
 having acceded to his request to be allowed to act at once as a 
 priest and a barrister was then chaplain to the College of 
 Henri IV. The Avenir, which the three friends conducted, had 
 for its device "God and Liberty, the Pope and Liberty," and 
 defended not only religious, but civil and political freedom, as 
 perfectly compatible with Catholicism. The paper was not 
 destined to a long existence. The vehemence of its animad- 
 versions brought it into trouble. It was prosecuted, and the 
 principal editor, Lamennais, then Ultramontane, had to appear 
 before the Assize Court of Paris, where he defended himself. 
 On the other hand, Montalembert had to answer in the 
 Correctional Police Court for the heinous offence of setting up a 
 school without the Minister's permission. Before the proceedings 
 commenced his father died, and Montalembert succeeded to the 
 peerage. He claimed his right to be tried by the Chamber of 
 which he was a member, and pleaded his own cause in a speech 
 giving promise of future excellence. The law, however, was 
 precise ; he was guilty of having taught children their letters 
 without official permission, and was condemned to pay the 
 minimum fine of lOOf. On attaining the legal age he took his 
 seat as a Peer of France (1835), and the first speech he made in 
 the Chamber brought him into collision with the Ministry ; 
 it was against the laws restricting the liberty of the Press, 
 known as the Laws of September, introduced by the Cabinet of 
 which M. Thiers was a member immediately after the Fieschi
 
 COUNT DE MONTALEMBERT 3 
 
 attempt, as the "exceptional laws" were by the Imperial 
 Government after the crime of Orsini. 
 
 The doctrines which Lamennais, Lacordaire, and Montalem- 
 bert defended with so much energy and eloquence in the Avenir 
 the union of Catholicism and Democracy found but little favour 
 at Rome in those times of revolution, and the friends resolved 
 to proceed thither and plead their cause in person. After some 
 delay the doctrines which Lamennais exaggerated were repro- 
 bated by Gregory XVI. in the Encyclical of June 1835, as 
 they had been three years before. Lacordaire and Montalembert 
 submitted to the judgment of the Pope ; but Lamennais 
 revolted, and from that day all intercourse ceased between him 
 and his two friends. Montalembert the first of his race, as he 
 has more than once said, whose weapon was the pen betook 
 himself with characteristic ardour and perseverance to study the 
 ideas and manners of the Middle Ages, which always had a 
 great charm for him. In 1836 he published his first import- 
 ant work, the Life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and, with 
 reference to the animated debate in the Chamber of Peers on 
 the relations between Church and State, produced an elaborate 
 pamphlet, the Manifesto Catholique. The following year he 
 made his three famous speeches in the Chamber of Peers against 
 a Bill introduced by M. Villemain, then a member of the 
 Cabinet, on the liberty of the Church, the liberty of instruction, 
 and the liberty of the monastic orders. It was on this occasion 
 that he declared himself the defender of the Society of Jesus ; 
 and in his last speech on that occasion he uttered the words 
 which have been since so often quoted by adversaries as well as 
 friends as indicative of his aristocratic and religious predilec- 
 tions " We are the sons of the Crusaders ; and the sons of 
 the Crusaders will never, never give way before the sons of 
 Voltaire." 
 
 In 1845 he founded the " Committee of Religious Associates " 
 with a view to the elections, and exerted himself to the utmost 
 to procure the return of candidates of his own way of thinking. 
 Long before the easy subversion of the Orleans Monarchy he 
 predicted the triumph of Radicalism as the result of the contest 
 between the Government and the nation, and, as its inevitable 
 consequence, the loss of French liberty. The catastrophe of 
 February completely justified his warnings. Montalembert, 
 who, with all his family traditions, was not, strictly speaking, a
 
 4 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 Legitimist any more than an Orleanist or a Republican, but a 
 lover of liberty, had no alternative but to accept the new 
 Government as the only one which at that moment had a chance 
 of restoring order. In the general elections of 1848 he pre- 
 sented himself as candidate in the department of the Doubs, 
 where his family possessed considerable property. He was 
 returned the last on a list of eight, by 23,000 ; and, as every 
 one expected, took his place with the Conservative majority. 
 Generally supporting the majority, he yet voted against the 
 decree banishing the Orleans family. On the other hand, he 
 voted with the Left against the re-establishment of the money 
 guarantee exacted by the Republican Government from the 
 journals ; against martial law while the Constitution was under 
 discussion ; against the impeachment of Louis Blanc ; and. 
 finally, he refused his approbation to the elaborate Constitution 
 of 1848. Among his happiest efforts at that time was his 
 speech on the despatch of the Duke d'Harcourt, then Envoy to 
 Rome, giving an account of the murder of the Pope's Minister, 
 Rossi, on the steps of the Roman Assembly, while that Assembly 
 continued its deliberations and affected not to notice it in its 
 minutes, as if it were an unimportant and ordinary incident 
 It is hardly necessary to say that he gave his hearty approbation 
 to French intervention in favour of the Pope, and to the military 
 expedition to Rome. 
 
 When the elections for the Legislature which succeeded the 
 Constitutional Assembly came on, Montalembert was returned 
 at once in two departments, the Doubs and the Cotes du Nord. 
 In the Legislature he often came into collision with Victor Hugo, 
 who had just been elected the tenth representative on a roll of 
 twenty-eight, from the Seine, and who, after being made a Peer of 
 France by Louis Philippe, had taken up Democratic and Socialistic 
 doctrines. The contest was unequal ; Montalembert, who had 
 his resources always at hand, was ever ready for either attack or 
 defence, whereas his antagonist required a long time for pre- 
 paration. One of the most brilliant speeches made by Monta- 
 lembert in those days was on the motu proprio of the Pope. It 
 was while a member of the Commission charged with preparing 
 the law of the 31st of May, which placed certain restrictions on 
 the exercise of universal suffrage, that he used the words of 
 which he was so often reminded afterwards, that " a Roman ex- 
 pedition " was indispensable to the interests of France. In the
 
 COUNT DE MONTALEMBERT 5 
 
 beginning of 1851 the hostility which had long existed in a 
 latent state against the President of the Republic became 
 aggravated. Montalembert, whose nature revolted against what 
 he thought injustice, from whatever quarter it came, voted 
 frequently against his own party in defence of Louis Napoleon, 
 disclaiming at the same time all ideas of being either his adviser 
 or his confidant. He was simply, he said, an impartial witness 
 in his behalf, and he strongly denounced the conduct of those 
 who were undermining his legitimate authority as a " stupid and 
 inexcusable ingratitude." He was one of the promoters of the 
 plan for revising the Constitution, and was named on the Com- 
 mission charged with preparing it. M. de Tocqueville was 
 the reporter. 
 
 It is certain that a coup d'etat had been expected by 
 Montalembert. When it did come, however, he protested 
 against the arrest and imprisonment of the representatives. He 
 was named by the President member of the Consulting Commis- 
 sion preliminary to the Council of State, and at once elected 
 Deputy for the Doubs to the new Legislative Chamber. He 
 was, however, grieved and indignant at the decree confiscating 
 the property of the Orleans Princes ; and that act, and perhaps 
 also the influence of his political friends, soon detached him 
 from the Government and drove him into opposition. The 
 same year he was elected to the French Academy in place of M. 
 Droz. His address, which was replied to by M. Guizot, was an 
 eloquent eulogy on his predecessor, and as eloquent an invective 
 against the revolution. In 1854 a confidential letter which he 
 wrote to M. Dupin, commenting severely on the subserviency 
 of the Chamber, was by some strange indiscretion published in 
 the Belgian papers. It gave great offence to the Chambers ; 
 authority to prosecute him was demanded and granted, but it 
 came to nothing. In the general elections of 1857 Montalem- 
 bert, who was now looked upon as the declared adversary of the 
 Empire, was defeated in his own department. This defeat 
 closed his Parliamentary career. His exclusion from an arena 
 for which he was so eminently fitted, and the tame submission 
 of men who, not long before, were reckless agitators, aroused in 
 him a bitterness of feeling which he rarely restrained. The 
 laws of the Newspaper Press prevented him from openly 
 criticising the Government, but his feelings found vent in an 
 article on the Indian debates in the English Parliament,
 
 6 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 published in the Correspondant, a monthly periodical, the organ 
 of the Liberal Catholic party, and through the thin veil of 
 insinuation the praises of English institutions were in reality a 
 satire on those of France. He was prosecuted on the usual 
 ground of having used language tending to excite hatred against 
 the Imperial institutions, bringing the laws into contempt, and 
 attacking the rights which the Constitution had conferred upon 
 the Sovereign. He was convicted, and sentenced to six months' 
 imprisonment and a fine of 3000f. An appeal was lodged in 
 the Superior Court ; but the judgment was confirmed as regarded 
 the first two counts, the fine was maintained, and the term of 
 imprisonment was reduced to three months. No one believed 
 that either for six or for three months the Emperor would allow 
 such a man to be sent to prison for such an offence. Im- 
 mediately after the first Court pronounced judgment, a few lines 
 in the Moniteur announced that His Majesty had remitted all 
 the penalties. Montalembert was just the man to be deeply 
 mortified at what he considered a design to " dishonour " him ; 
 and it was not without difficulty that he was dissuaded from 
 declaring publicly that he would accept no favour of the sort. 
 Not long afterwards he was again prosecuted for an article in 
 the same periodical on the Imperial policy towards the Pope. 
 
 Montalembert's first work, La Vie de Sainte Elisabeth de 
 Hongrie, published in 1830, has gone through eight or ten 
 editions, has been abridged, and illustrated several times. A 
 work on Art (1829), a pamphlet on the duties of Catholics and 
 on the liberty of instruction, three speeches delivered in the 
 Chamber of Peers, a pamphlet on questions relating to Catholics, 
 and on Catholic interests in the nineteenth century, comprise, it 
 is believed, what had appeared from his pen before his admission 
 to the Academy. Since then we have had his volume on the 
 Political Future of England (1855) ; Pie IX. et Lord Palmerston 
 (1856) ; a pamphlet on Poland, Une Nation en Deuil (1861) ; a 
 biographical sketch of Lacordaire ; the pamphlet L'Eglise Libre 
 dant FEtat Libre, le Vape et la Pologne, besides divers articles in 
 the Encyclop&ie Catliolique and the Correspondant, to which he 
 was, when his health permitted, an assiduous contributor. But 
 the work to which he devoted all his energy, for which he had 
 laid up large stores of erudition, and which he hoped would take 
 a prominent place in the literature of his country, is his history, 
 Let Moines de f Occident depuis iiaint Benoit jusqu'a Saint Bernard,
 
 of which, five volumes have already appeared. The two countries 
 for which he ever felt deep sympathy and affection were Poland 
 and Ireland. The cause of Poland he had pleaded from the first 
 moments of his appearance as a public character. He visited 
 Warsaw a short time before the last insurrection, and recorded 
 his impressions of what he witnessed in the Correspondant. 
 Ireland he had visited many times. The first was when quite a 
 young man, and a mind like his could not fail to be struck by 
 the desperate fidelity of the Irish people to the faith of their 
 fathers. He was touched, too, by the reception he met with 
 during his lengthened tours, wherever he presented himself. 
 
 With some passing outbreaks of irritation at certain acts of 
 her foreign policy, Montalembert felt the highest admiration for 
 England and English institutions. Edmund Burke he looked 
 upon as the greatest philosophical statesman of ancient or modern 
 times, and as a giant in intellect. Indeed, the feeling he 
 cherished towards the great Irishman was one of enthusiastic 
 veneration. Those who visited him in the Rue de Bac may 
 have remarked the engraving of Burke which hung in his study, 
 and from which he seemed to draw inspiration. In some parts 
 of his own speeches one is occasionally reminded of the compass, 
 copiousness, flexibility, and fire which he so admired in the 
 author of Reflections on the French Revolution. 
 
 The first symptoms of the malady which has ended fatally he 
 attributed to the anxiety of mind and the worry and fatigue he 
 was exposed to in his efforts to stem the revolutionary torrent of 
 1848. A few years ago he contemplated a visit to the United 
 States, but he was compelled to forego that pleasure. For more 
 than five years he was, with some intervals, a sufferer; but 
 during these intervals he received the visits of his friends, and 
 conversed with his usual animation. He had lately lost all hope 
 of a permanent cure, but he bore his long illness with fortitude, 
 and he contemplated the result with quiet submission to the will 
 of Providence. All the consolation that the tender affection of 
 his family, the sympathy of numerous friends, and even of 
 political adversaries, could give, he had.
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS 
 LEADING ARTICLE, FRIDAY, JUNE 10, 1870 
 
 ONE whom young and old, wherever the English language is 
 spoken, have been accustomed to regard as a personal friend is 
 suddenly taken away from among us. Charles Dickens is no 
 more. The loss of such a man is an event which makes 
 ordinary expressions of regret seem cold and conventional. It 
 will be felt by millions as nothing less than a personal bereave- 
 ment Statesmen, men of science, philanthropists, the acknow- 
 ledged benefactors of their race might pass away, and yet not 
 leave the void which will be caused by the death of Dickens. 
 They may have earned the esteem of mankind ; their days may 
 have been passed in power, honour, and prosperity ; they may 
 have been surrounded by troops of friends, but, however pre- 
 eminent in station, ability, or public services, they will not 
 have been, like our great and genial novelist, the intimate of 
 every household. Indeed, such a position is attained not even 
 by one man in an age. It needs an extraordinary combination 
 of intellectual and moral qualities to gain the hearts of the 
 public as Dickens has gained them. Extraordinary and very 
 original genius must be united with good sense, consummate 
 skill, a well-balanced mind, and the proofs of a noble and affec- 
 tionate disposition before the world will consent to enthrone a 
 man ns their unassailable and enduring favourite. This is the 
 position which Mr. Dickens has occupied with the English and 
 also with the American public for the third of a century. If 
 we compare his reputation with that of the number of eminent 
 men and women who have been his contemporaries, we have 
 irresistible evidence of his surpassing merits. His is a depart-
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 ment of literature in which ability in our time has been 
 abundant to overflowing. As the genius of the Elizabethan age 
 turned to the drama, so that of the reign of Victoria seeks 
 expression in the novel. There is no more extraordinary pheno- 
 menon than the number, the variety, and the general high 
 excellence of the works of fiction in our own day. Their 
 inspirations are as many as the phases of thought and social 
 life. They treat not only of love and marriage, but of things 
 political and ecclesiastical, of social yearnings and sceptical 
 disquietudes ; they give us revelations from the empyrean of 
 fashion and from the abysses of crime. Their authors have 
 their admirers, their party, their public, but not the public of 
 Dickens. It has been his peculiar fortune to appeal to that 
 which is common to all sorts and conditions of men, to excite 
 the interest of the young and the uninstructed, without shocking 
 the more refined taste of a higher class and a more mature age. 
 Thus the news of his death will hardly meet the eye of an 
 educated man or woman who has not read his works and who 
 has not been accustomed to think of him with admiration and 
 friendly regard. 
 
 To the survivors, at least, there is something terrible in 
 sudden death, and when we hear that Dickens is gone we 
 cannot but recall how Thackeray died before him, also in the 
 vigour of age, and apparently in the fulness of health. Dickens 
 has lived longer than his great rival, for he was born only a 
 year after, and he has survived him several years. But he has 
 been cut off while still in what may be called middle age. He 
 was born in February 1812, and has consequently not long 
 attained his fifty-eighth year. As men live and work now, 
 this is an u,ge which would give the hope of many years of 
 successful exertion, to be succeeded by a period of honoured 
 repose. But we have this consolation, that the life of Dickens 
 has been long enough to allow full scope for his genius, and to 
 enable him not only to earn, but to enjoy his fame. In this 
 respect his career has been extraordinary. He was one whose 
 marvellous powers were developed early, and he attained the 
 highest eminence in the first years of his literary career. It is 
 certainly a wonderful phenomenon that a book like Pickwick, 
 the pages of which overflow with humour, and are marked in 
 every sentence with the keenest observation of men and things, 
 should have been produced by a young man of twenty-four. After
 
 10 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 the light but clever Sketches by Jioz, Dickens began Pickwick in 
 1836, and finished it in the course of the succeeding year. 
 We are inclined to think that this, the first considerable work 
 of the author, is his masterpiece ; but, whatever may be the 
 world's decision on this point, it can hardly be doubted that the 
 prize must be given to one of the group of fictions which he 
 produced within the first ten or twelve years of his literary 
 life. Nicholas Xickleby teems with wit, and the characters, 
 with one or two exceptions, are life-like in the extreme. Oliver 
 Tvrist everybody knows ; Martin Chuzzhicit is excellent, and 
 the American portions are not only the most amusing satire 
 that has been published in the present age, but fill ua with 
 wonder that the peculiarities of thought, manner, and diction 
 of a people should be so surely seized and so inimitably ex- 
 pressed by a young writer who had been only a few months 
 in the country. 
 
 In this marvellous precocity of genius Dickens formed a 
 contrast to some of those with whom a comparison naturally sug- 
 gests itself. Scott was thirty-four years old before he published 
 his first great poem, the Lay of the Last Minstrel, and it was nearly 
 ten years afterwards, in 1814, that he made his experiment as 
 a novelist with Waverley. So, too, Thackeray, though known 
 for some time in the field of literature, made his first great 
 success with Vanity Fair when no longer a young man. Of 
 Dickens it may be said, also, that his early books show no 
 signs of juvenility. When young in years he showed the 
 mental balance of an experienced writer. And yet what 
 freshness and vigour there were in those wonderful serials 
 which, about the time the present Queen came to the throne, 
 changed the popular literature of the day ! When that young, 
 unknown author appeared on the field he was at once hailed as 
 the new chief of popular fiction. It is a long time ago, but 
 our older readers will remember the excitement caused by the 
 Pickvnck Papers. The shilling numbers of Boz carried every- 
 thing before them. They were read here by tens of thousands, 
 though the reading public thirty years ago was not what it is 
 now ; and they were reprinted in every possible form in America. 
 In fact, half the newspapers in the States transferred them 
 to their columns bodily the day after their arrival. This 
 popularity they fully deserved. They are among the few books 
 of the kind that one can return to again and again, or, having
 
 ME. CHARLES DICKENS 11 
 
 opened at any page, can read straight on, carried forward by a 
 sense of real enjoyment. The best characters stand out in real 
 flesh and blood, and in this respect are superior to those of Thack- 
 eray, which, though excellently designed, show too much the art 
 of an able sketcher from artificial types. For this reason, Thack- 
 eray, though he has always maintained his hold on the London 
 world in which his personages figure, has never come near to 
 Dickens in popularity with the great mass of the people. The 
 characters of Dickens have been accepted by all men's discern- 
 ment as the true reflection of human nature ; not merely of 
 manners or costumes. Squeers is to everybody the low, 
 tyrannical schoolmaster ; Bumble the representative of parochial 
 pomposity ; Mrs. Gamp is the type of her vulgar, hard-hearted 
 sisterhood. Perhaps a more signal proof of the genius of Dickens 
 is the manner in which his style and diction have penetrated 
 into the ordinary literature of the country. So much has 
 become naturalised and is used quite unconsciously that it is 
 only by re-reading those earlier works which most impressed 
 his contemporaries that one becomes aware how great has been 
 their influence. 
 
 We cannot conclude these remarks without paying a tribute 
 to the moral influence of the writings of which we have spoken. 
 Mr. Dickens was a man of an eminently kindly nature, and full 
 of sympathy for all around him. This, without being paraded, 
 makes itself manifest in his works, and we have no doubt 
 whatever that much of the active benevolence of the present 
 day, the interest in humble persons and humble things, and 
 the desire to seek out and relieve every form of misery, is due 
 to the influence of his works. We feel that we have lost one 
 of the foremost Englishmen of the age. There are clever 
 writers enough, but no one who will take the place, literary 
 and social, that belonged to him. It was but the other day 
 that at the Royal Academy banquet he made the best speech 
 of the evening, in matter, language, and manner. His powers 
 as an actor are well known, though, of late years, they have 
 been only exhibited in the narrower field of public readings. 
 He was made to be popular, and, even irrespective of his 
 literary genius, was an able and strong-minded man, who 
 would have succeeded in almost any profession to which he 
 devoted himself. We can but condole with the public on his 
 sudden and premature loss.
 
 12 EMINENT I'ERSONS 
 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 1870 
 
 The mere announcement that Charles Dickens is dead re- 
 |>eats the common sentence passed on all humanity. Death has 
 once again demanded its own, and made a claim which all men 
 must sooner or later meet. We forget how many mortals 
 breathe their last in every minute according to the calculations 
 of statistical authorities. Sufficient unto the day is the evil 
 thereof, and Thursday, the 9th day of June 1870, will be an 
 evil day in the memories of all who can appreciate true genius 
 and admire its matchless works. We have had greater writers 
 both in poetry and prose, but they were not of our day and 
 generation. For us just now this loss is our greatest. It 
 would have been great at any time from the moment when he 
 turned with aversion from the drudgery of a solicitor's office, 
 amid the forebodings of his friends, and thenceforward rose in 
 the clear light of literature, until he soared in the sunshine of 
 success far above all his fellows. There are minds of such 
 jealous fibre that the very merits of an author, his mightiest 
 gifts and his most special talents, only serve as food on which 
 to nourish their prejudices. Such are they who, while forced to 
 admit the wit, humour, and power of Charles Dickens, always 
 added, " but he was vulgar." Yes, in one sense he was vulgar ; 
 he delighted in sketching the characters not of dukes and 
 duchesses, but of the poor and lowly. He had listened to 
 their wants and sorrows, seen them in their alleys and garrets, 
 had learnt their accents and dialect by heart, and then, with a 
 truth and liveliness all his own, he photographed them in his 
 immortal works. In that sense alone was Charles Dickens 
 " vulgar." He was of the people, and lived among them. His 
 was not the close atmosphere of a saloon or of a forcing house. 
 In the open air of the streets, and woods, and fields, he lived 
 and had his being, and so he came into closer union with 
 common men, and caught with an intuitive force and fulness 
 of feature every detail of their daily life. His creations have 
 become naturalised, so to speak, among all classes of the com- 
 munity, and are familiar to every man, high or low. How 
 many fine gentlemen and ladies, who never saw Pickwick or 
 Sam Weller in the flesh, have laughed at their portraits by 
 Charles Dickens. How many have been heartbroken at the
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS 13 
 
 sufferings of Oliver, been indignant at the brutality of Bill 
 Sykes, wept over the fallen Nancy's cruel fate, and even 
 sympathised with the terrible agony of Fagin in the con- 
 demned cell, who but for Charles Dickens would never have 
 known that such sorrows and crimes, such cruel wrongs, and 
 such intensity of feeling existed in those lower depths of 
 London life, far above which, like the golden gods of Epicurus, 
 they lived in careless ease till this great apostle of the people 
 touched their hearts and taught them that those inferior beings 
 had hearts and souls of their own, and could be objects of 
 sympathy as well as victims of neglect. 
 
 We have heard it objected also by gentlemen that Charles 
 Dickens could never describe " a lady," and by ladies that he 
 could never sketch the character of " a gentleman " ; but we have 
 always observed that when put to the proof these male and 
 female critics failed lamentably to establish their case. We are 
 not sure that Charles Dickens's gentlemen were all as well 
 dressed as those who resort to Poole's temple of fashion, or that 
 his ladies were always attired in the very last fancy of Worth. 
 Dress is no doubt what may be called in the catechism of 
 gentility the " outward and visible sign " of a gentleman, just 
 as the outward fashion of a lady is shown by her dress ; but 
 even these are nothing if that " inward and spiritual grace " 
 which is characteristic of the true gentleman and real lady be 
 wanting, and in that grace, however negligent they may be in 
 their attire, the ladies and gentlemen in Charles Dickens's works 
 are never deficient. We are not denying that the true type of 
 gentle life is to be found in the upper classes. Far from it. 
 We only insist, when we are told that Charles Dickens could 
 not describe either a lady or a gentleman, that there are ladies 
 and gentlemen in all ranks and classes of life, and that the 
 inward delicacy and gentle feeling which we acknowledge as the 
 only true criterion of the class may be found under the smock- 
 frock of the ploughboy as well as beneath the mantle of an 
 earl. 
 
 When a great writer, on his deathbed, was with his last 
 breath instructing his children in the secret of his success, he 
 said " Be natural, my children, for the writer that is natural 
 has fulfilled all the rules of art." And this was pre-eminently 
 the case with Charles Dickens. His great characters have 
 struck fast root in the hearts of his countrymen, for this, above
 
 14 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 all other reasons, that they are natural natural both relatively 
 to the writer who created them and to the station in life in 
 which they are supposed to live. Like the giant who re- 
 vived as soon as he touched his mother earth, Charles Dickens 
 was never so strong as when he threw himself back on the 
 native soil of the social class among which he had been born 
 and bred, whose virtues, faults, and foibles he could portray with 
 a truth and vigour denied to any other man. That he was 
 eminently successful may be proved by his works. He is 
 gone, indeed, but they remain behind and will long speak for 
 him. Every day will only add to the universal feeling that 
 he wrote not for this age alone, but for all time, and that 
 this generation, in losing sight of him, will hardly look upon 
 his like again. 
 
 That he was eminently truthful, trustworthy, and self- 
 denying can be gainsaid by none. But of the man himself, 
 apart from the writer, it is as yet too soon to speak. We live 
 too close to the man to be able to discriminate his excellence, 
 which will live for ever, from his faults, which will be forgotten 
 ere the year is out. In this the world is very charitable. It 
 has no memory for small errors ; they wane and perish while 
 the pearl which they encrust and perhaps concejll grows day by 
 day more truly orient, and increases with value as generation 
 after generation vanishes away. 
 
 Nor do we know why we should repine at the manner of his 
 death. It was said of old that those whom the gods love die 
 young. If it cannot be said that Charles Dickens died young, 
 he has departed from among us at least at an earlier age than 
 many who were at least not more than his equals in fame. 
 Happy, no doubt, he was in that he was snatched away in a 
 moment of time. He died without a pang, and the victim to 
 no lingering disease. That still and solemn voice to which we 
 must all one day listen whispered to him " Come," and he went 
 His work was done on earth ; and in the fulness of his labours, 
 though not of his years, he obeyed the summons, and departed 
 from among us without a murmur. In this working country, 
 and especially in this working age, which incessantly proclaims 
 the worth of labour as its watchword, it is something to mark 
 the career of one who still toiled on, and not the less patiently 
 and earnestly for his triumphs, till, when the shout of victory 
 was ringing in his ears, he was cut off in an instant, like a flower
 
 MR. CHARLES DICKENS 15 
 
 of the field, so that when people rose up and looked to see the 
 news of the morning, a sudden affliction fell upon them as they 
 read that a great master of English had passed away from them 
 at nightfall, and that the magic pen of Charles Dickens would 
 write no more.
 
 THE EARL OF CLARENDON 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, TUESDAY, JUNE 28, 1870 
 
 WITH the single exception of Mr. Gladstone himself, there is not 
 a member of the great Liberal party whose loss will be more 
 keenly felt than that of Lord Clarendon, who has been for more 
 than thirty years one of the most influential of our public men, 
 both at home and abroad, where his name is regarded with more 
 than ordinary respect Though he never had a seat in the 
 House of Commons, he held a variety of offices in the Govern- 
 ment, from almost the lowest to almost the highest ; in all of 
 which he displayed abilities of a very high order. 
 
 The Right Hon. George William Frederick Villiers, Earl of 
 Clarendon, of Clarendon, near Salisbury, and Baron Hyde, of 
 Hindon, in the county of Wilts, K.G., G.C.B., etc., was born in 
 London, on the 26th of January 1800. He was the eldest son 
 of the late Hon. George Villiers (who died in March 1827), by 
 the Hon. Teresa Parker, daughter of John, first Lord Boringdon, 
 and" sister of the first Earl of Morley. He succeeded to the 
 family honours, as fourth Earl, in December 1838, upon the 
 death of his uncle, John Charles, third EarL He entered the 
 diplomatic service at an early age, and was attached to the 
 Embassy at St. Petersburg as far back as the year 1820. Three 
 years later he was appointed a Commissioner of Excise, and was 
 employed in Ireland for two or three years we believe in 
 1827-29 in arranging the union of the English and Irish 
 Excise Boards. In 1831 he was sent to France for the purpose 
 of negotiating a commercial treaty. In discharging the duties 
 of these, comparatively speaking, subordinate posts, he showed 
 so much judgment, discretion, and energy that, in September
 
 THE EARL OF CLARENDON 17 
 
 1833, he was accredited by Lord Grey's Administration as Envoy 
 Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of 
 Madrid. His residence in Spain in that capacity was coincident 
 with the warfare which raged in that unfortunate country 
 between the Queen's party or Constitutionalists known also as 
 Christines and the adherents of the Pretender, Don Carlos. 
 It would be impossible to give here a history of that sanguinary 
 war ; but it may safely be said that, placed in a post which 
 required the greatest tact, firmness, and discretion, our Minister 
 acquitted himself with the greatest honour, not only to his own 
 personal character, but to the country which he represented. 
 He was largely instrumental in procuring, in April 1834, the 
 signature of the Treaty concluded in London, which was known 
 as the " Quadruple Alliance," on account of the four contracting 
 parties, England, France, Spain, and Portugal. The object of 
 this Treaty w r as the pacification of the two kingdoms of the 
 Peninsula ; under its articles Spain and Portugal mutually 
 engaged to assist each other in the task of expelling from their 
 respective territories Don Carlos and Dom Miguel. France 
 bound herself to second their efforts in any way she could, and 
 England undertook to co-operate by employing a naval force on 
 the Portuguese and Spanish coasts. Such being the case, the 
 position of the British Envoy at Madrid became one of extreme 
 difficulty and delicacy, the more so as France showed herself, if 
 not lukewarm in the matter, at least far less disposed than 
 England to take active measures in support of the objects of the 
 Alliance. The advice of Mr. Villiers, therefore, was eagerly 
 sought, and received with corresponding deference by the Spanish 
 Government. Indeed, it is asserted by one biographer that, 
 "for the fact that the war did not become one of actual ex- 
 termination, the Spanish and Portuguese nations were indebted 
 to his unceasing exertions to enforce, upon the Christines more 
 especially, the impolicy of carrying out the lex talionis, and the 
 necessity of conducting their military operations according to 
 the practice of civilised nations." It was also mainly through 
 his efforts that England was successful in negotiating with Spain 
 a treaty for the more effectual abolition of the slave trade in the 
 Spanish Colonies, a measure to which that most Christian 
 Government up to that time had refused to listen, but which, 
 as soon as it was ratified, was hailed with delight by the 
 philanthropists of this country. 
 
 VOL. I o
 
 18 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 The services of Mr. Villiers in his diplomatic capacity were 
 cordially approved by Lord Melbourne, then at the head of the 
 Government at home, who conferred on him the Grand Cross of 
 the Order of the Bath, while Lord Palmerston, at that time 
 Minister for Foreign Affairs, in his place in the House of 
 Commons, on the 19th of April 13J, bore personal witness to 
 the fact " that the respect Spain entertained for this country 
 was very much owing to the able and judicious conduct of the 
 British Minister at Madrid ; and that the high character which 
 that Minister had personally established, joined with the good 
 faith which the British Government had observed in its deal- 
 ings, had indeed rendered the character of an Englishman a 
 passport through Spain." A higher testimony to personal 
 worth could scarcely have been given, or a higher compliment 
 paid to official ability. 
 
 At the beginning of the year 1839, having recently suc- 
 ceeded to his uncle's title, Lord Claren5on resigned his post at 
 Madrid, and came to London to take his seat in the House of 
 Lords. In the mouth of July following, the conduct of the 
 British Government and their representative in Spain having 
 been severely commented upon by the late Lord Londonderry, 
 a speech was elicited from Lord Clarendon, which proved that, 
 though not, of course, an accomplished debater, he could state a 
 case so clearly and effectively as to command the attention and 
 the sympathy of his audience. On this occasion his speech con- 
 tained a masterly exposition of the policy which had been 
 followed in dealing with the tanglotl web of Spanish affairs, in 
 which he declared that ngjjreater mistake could be made than 
 to suppose the people of the Peninsula unfit for freedom or 
 radically opposed to a Liberal and enlightened form of Govern- 
 ment, and that whatever changes had lately been made had 
 produced, at all events, some measure of free discussion, public 
 opinion, popular representation, and a free Press. He added 
 that, in spite of the desolation caused by war, Spain was at 
 that moment laying the foundation of a future prosperity such 
 as die had never seen before ; that life and property were 
 more secure ; that the revenues of the Crown were greater by a 
 half than previously ; that a new and numerous class of pro- 
 prietors had been created by the sale of national property ; that 
 capital was beginning to flow in wholesome and useful channels ; 
 that education and agriculture were both steadily advancing ;
 
 THE EARL OF CLARENDON 19 
 
 and that under a Sovereign who would rule constitutionally and 
 allow the people free and Liberal institutions, Spain would 
 become a most serviceable ally to England. How far these vatici- 
 nations have been realised and how far they have been falsified 
 by the course of subsequent events our readers are pretty well 
 able to judge for themselves. But, be this as it may, Lord 
 Clarendon's popularity did not cease with the termination of 
 his diplomatic career at Madrid. As soon as the speech of 
 which we have given the substance reached the Peninsjila, a 
 gold medal was struck in his honour, and in recognition of his 
 services to the cause of constitutional freedom in that country. 
 A meeting, too, was held at which it was resolved that the 
 speech should be forthwith translated into the Spanish language, 
 and circulated as widely as possible throughout Spain. It was 
 also subsequently resolved to present Lord Clarendon with a 
 handsome work of art in perpetuam rei memoriam. 
 
 In the following January, upon some changes being effected 
 in Lord Melbourne's Cabinet, Lord Clarendon was appointed to 
 succeed Lord Duncannon in the office of Lord Privy Seal, and 
 in the October of the same year he succeeded Lord Holland in 
 the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster. There is not, 
 however, much to say about him in either of those not very 
 laborious or very responsible posts, except that as a Cabinet 
 Minister he rendered good service to the feeble Administration 
 of which he had become a member so shortly before its fall. 
 In little more than a year and a half after his joining the 
 Cabinet came the general election of July 1841 ; the resigna- 
 tion of the Whig Government followed only a few weeks later, 
 and the accession of Sir Robert Peel and the Conservatives to 
 power with a majority of nearly a hundred votes in the House 
 of Commons. 
 
 Having been at all times favourable to. the principles of 
 Free Trade, as soon as he saw that Sir Robert Peel was becom- 
 ing convinced of their truth, Lord Clarendon, though firmly 
 adhering to his own party, gave a hearty support to the 
 commercial policy which that statesman inaugurated. Of the 
 repeal, the total repeal, of the Corn Laws, there had never 
 been a more staunch and persistent advocate than his brother, 
 Mr. Charles Pelham Villiers, the member for Wolverhampton ; 
 and when that crowning act of legislation was brought forward 
 for discussion in the House of Peers, Lord Clarendon accom-
 
 20 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 panied his vote for the measure by a speech of great ability. 
 It was but natural, therefore, on the return of the Liberals to 
 office in 1846, with Lord John Russell at their head, that Lord 
 Clarendon was appointed President of the Board of Trade, and 
 in the following year he was entrusted with the important post 
 of Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. In spite of the famine, caused 
 by the failure of the potato crop, which, having begun in 1846, 
 in 1847 was almost universal, he entered on his Viceroyalty 
 under the most favourable auspices. His nomination was con- 
 sidered as one of the most popular appointments made by the 
 new Premier ; and we have Lord Brougham as our authority 
 for saying that the feeling of the Irish towards their new Lord- 
 Lieutenant was one not of " eulogy or praise," but of " venera- 
 tion and almost worship." He at once exerted himself to 
 mitigate the sufferings of the people by organising machinery 
 for their relief, and for administering that relief in such a way 
 as to give the full effect at once to the contributions of private 
 charity and to the beneficent intentions of the Legislature. His 
 popularity, it is true, was to some extent diminished by the 
 agitation of the " Young Ireland " party, who were tempted to 
 the very verge of treason by the success of the Paris Revolution 
 in February 1848; and the "veneration" and "worship" of 
 the Celtic part of the population gave way to another set of 
 feelings towards him, both personally and officially, when Mr. 
 Smith O'Brien, having risen in arms against the Queen, was 
 ignoininiously defeated in a cabbage garden, arrested, tried for 
 high treason, and condemned to death. The sentence, however, 
 as our readers will remember, was subsequently commuted to 
 transportation for life, a punishment to which O'Brien's 
 fellow-conspirators, Messrs. Meagher and Mitchell, were also 
 sentenced. It is much to Lord Clarendon's credit that he was 
 able in such troubled times to vindicate the law without appeal- 
 ing to the Legislature for any extraordinary coercive powers. 
 It will be remembered also that, in suppressing these seditious 
 outbreaks among the misguided Celtic peasantry, Lord Clarendon 
 most wisely declined the proffered services of the Orange Lodges. 
 With similar firmness and impartiality, shortly afterwards, he 
 superseded Lord Roden and two other members of Orange 
 Lodges in the Commission of the Peace, on account of the 
 " untoward " affair in the pass of Dolly's Brae. His conduct as 
 Lord- Lieutenant in this transaction was severely questioned at
 
 THE EARL OF CLARENDON 21 
 
 the time in the House of Peers, not only by Lord Roden's 
 friends, but by the late Lord Derby ; but Lord Clarendon's 
 reply was a masterly vindication of the impartial policy pur- 
 sued by the Irish Executive. It cannot, however, be said that 
 when he laid down his viceregal office he was the idol of the 
 multitude or the object of its unreasoning " veneration and 
 worship," as he had been four or five years before. It is, 
 perhaps, the necessary penalty for every Irish Viceroy, however 
 popular his administration may have been at first starting, to 
 find that the public favour is of but very brief duration, and 
 that as soon as ever duty brings him into conflict with either 
 the Orange interest on the one hand, or that of Rome or 
 Ribbandism on the other, he is denounced and held up to the 
 opprobrium of a fickle and excitable mob ; and Lord Clarendon's 
 Irish experiences differed little from those of every other Viceroy 
 during the present century who has endeavoured to do his 
 duty to the country honestly and impartially to the country 
 itself, and not to a party or a faction. 
 
 That, in spite of his supersession of Lord Roden as a 
 magistrate, Lord Clarendon did not lose the respect even of Lord 
 Roden's champion, Lord Derby himself, was very markedly 
 shown, as we shall see, on a subsequent occasion. In February 
 1853 he was appointed Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs 
 in the Cabinet of Lord Aberdeen; th"at post being vacated by 
 Lord John Russell, after he had held it scarcely two months ; 
 and it fell to his lot in this capacity to direct the several in- 
 tricate and difficult negotiations of the British Government 
 with France, Austria, Prussia, Sardinia, and Turkey, which the 
 Russian War entailed. When the Aberdeen Ministry fell, in 
 the spring of 1855, Lord Derby was commanded by Her 
 Majesty to construct a Cabinet ; and on this occasion the 
 Tory chief expressed a strong desire to leave the direction of 
 Foreign Affairs in the hands of Lord Clarendon. Lord Derby 
 was unable to form a Cabinet, and Lord Palmerston, who then 
 succeeded to the helm, in reforming the Cabinet of Lord Aber- 
 deen, very naturally handed back the portfolio of Foreign 
 Affairs to Lord Clarendon, who in that capacity and as British 
 Plenipotentiary signed the Treaty of Peace which was negotiated 
 in Paris at the commencement of the following year. His 
 services on that occasion elicited the highest praise both in 
 Parliament and from the Press, and it was said that he was
 
 22 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 offered, but declined, the coronet of a Marquis. He continued 
 to hold the direction of Foreign Affairs until the retirement of 
 his chief in 1858. In 1864 he rejoined Lord Palmerston's 
 third Ministry as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster ; but re- 
 sumed his former post as Foreign Secretary in the following 
 year, under the Administration of Lord RusselL Remaining 
 out of office with his party during Lord Derby's last Ministry 
 and that of Mr. Disraeli, he returned in December 1868, on 
 the formation of the Gladstone Cabinet, to the office which he 
 held to the last, and with which his name will hereafter be 
 chiefly identified. 
 
 The retrospect of so long a public and official life as that of 
 Lord Clarendon is full of instruction and interest. Four times 
 in succession did he fill the office of Secretary of State for 
 Foreign Affairs, and Mr. Gladstone's is the sixth Liberal 
 Cabinet in which he held a prominent post. For nearly half 
 a century he has taken a part more or less direct in the 
 diplomatic service of the country ; and his name, therefore, is 
 well known in every Court and capital of the world. His 
 principal qualification for the posts he filled was, perhaps, his 
 unwearied industry. Probably there never was a harder 
 worker. He wrote with extraordinary facility as well as 
 felicity, and his correspondence embraced all sorts and conditions 
 of men, and included in its range every variety of subject He 
 was an admirable talker, and, what is possibly equally rare, a 
 most patient listener. If anything were to be learnt from the 
 most tedious visitor, he suppressed all sign of weariness, followed 
 him through every irrelevant excursion, brought him back 
 dexterously to the point, and elicited the one grain of worth 
 from whole bushels of chaff. But we should do him injustice 
 if we enlarged only on his rare power of listening. He was a 
 master of the art of conversation. No man was more gay. 
 more " light in hand," none more full of happy illustrations, of 
 pleasant anecdote collected in a wide experience of society, no 
 one could put a whole argument into an epigram more neatly, 
 or, where the occasion required, could deliver himself with 
 greater weight of authority. Lord Chesterfield described the 
 great Duke of Marlborough as secure of victory whenever he 
 could meet his opponent either in the field or the Cabinet, 
 and Lord Clarendon was equally persuasive. Many a difficult 
 qxiestion, with Sovereigns as well as Ministers, was debated over
 
 THE EARL OF CLARENDON 23 
 
 a cigar, and the advantage generally rested with Lord Clarendon. 
 It was his misfortune that he was never in the House of 
 Commons. In that great school of eloquence he would have 
 learnt the power of making the keen wit and exquisite facility 
 of illustration which shone so brightly in private influence a 
 large assembly and command the sympathies of his countrymen. 
 In the Lords there is not much scope for eloquence ; and though 
 he was never deficient when a course of policy had to be ex- 
 plained or defended, and could hold his own on such occasions 
 even against such giants as Lord Derby or Lord Ellenborough, 
 he seldem intruded upon that apathetic audience, which, much 
 as it relishes intellectual attainments in private, seems always to 
 discourage the display of them in its debates. But by those 
 whose good fortune it has been to know Lord Clarendon in the 
 unrestrained intercourse of private life he will ever be re- 
 membered, not only as the great Minister, the intimate friend 
 of Sovereigns, and the depositary of their confidences, but as 
 the most genial of companions and the staunchest of friends, 
 ever ready to cheer by his sympathy or to assist by advice 
 derived from an almost unexampled experience and a most 
 intimate knowledge of mankind and of affairs. By them 
 his memory will be long cherished, and they will not fail to 
 hand down to a succeeding generation the record of the 
 qualities which in their time have won such high distinction 
 for him whom the elders among them preferred to call " George 
 Villiers." 
 
 Sprung from the brother of George Villiers, Duke of 
 Buckingham, Lord Clarendon traced his descent in the female 
 line from Edward Hyde, the celebrated Lord Chancellor Claren- 
 don of the time of Charles II. (who was the grandfather of two 
 Queens Consort of England), through the granddaughter of 
 Henry, last Earl of Clarendon of that line, who married the 
 Hon. Thomas Villiers, a younger son of William, second Earl of 
 Jersey. This Thomas Villiers was in 1776 created Earl of 
 Clarendon, and he was grandfather of the Minister now deceased. 
 His Lordship was sworn a Privy Councillor in 1840, and 
 nominated a Knight of the Garter in 1849.
 
 24 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 LEADING ARTICLE, TUESDAY, JUNE 28, 1874 
 
 Only last week Lord Clarendon, though yielding somewhat 
 to the infirmities of age, was before the world, an able, active, 
 and vigorous Minister, and to-day men will be discussing his 
 acts as those of an historical character. He has passed away 
 suddenly, with the reins of office in his hands, with his facultii-- 
 undecayed and his reputation undiminished. It is better to end 
 so to be a political personage up to the hour of dissolution, 
 and not one whose deeds have to be gathered from Annual 
 Registers or the conversation of older men. To a quick and 
 proud genius there is something unutterably painful in the 
 reflection that some day it may be said of him, " Superfluous 
 lags the veteran on the stage." Lord Clarendon probably 
 thought as little of fame as is possible with a man who knows 
 that his name must be long before the world. But, if we 
 may venture to divine his sentiments, he would have wished to 
 die, as he has died, in harness, and to be to the last a Minister 
 of England. 
 
 Lord Clarendon had reached the term which in ancient days 
 was assigned as the limit of man's active and useful life. But 
 many a man in our generation keeps his health and his faculties 
 to those fourscore years which were said of old to be but labour 
 and sorrow, and when we hear that a statesman or a lawyer is 
 seventy years of age, we do not at all figure to our minds a 
 decrepit body or a failing mind. This was eminently exemplified 
 in Lord Clarendon. He was born in the year 1800, an epoch 
 distinguished by the birth of a band of gifted men, of whom 
 some have passed away, while others, whose names will readily 
 occur to our readers, remain behind to add to the dignity and 
 reputation of Parliament But from his despatches, his conversa- 
 tion, or his method of conducting business, no one would have 
 supposed that he had exceeded the age at which all mental 
 functions are most powerful. As a general rule, the sphere of 
 a man's activity is fixed by the time he is forty. Rarely does 
 it happen that the most energetic spirit enters on an entirely 
 new career when once middle life is attained. But in the path 
 which has once been chosen a man works more energetically, 
 more systematically, and more successfully in late middle age 
 than in any former period of life. This is the age in which a
 
 THE EARL OF CLARENDON 25 
 
 really able man acquires a love of work, which overmasters 
 every other sense of enjoyment. The passions are passing 
 away ; pleasure, in the sense of amusement and distraction, 
 ceases to attract ; curiosity has been satisfied, and the concentrated 
 energies of the soul are thrown into the employment which has 
 become the ruling passion. Experience and acuteness derived 
 from the past unite with this obstinate assiduity in enabling the 
 worker to master his business with a quickness that seems like 
 intuition, and thus it continually occurs that we find old men 
 who, by the number of hours they work and the results they 
 attain, shame their younger colleagues. Lord Palmerston had 
 this devotion to work, and so had Lord Clarendon. To the last 
 he was as large in principles, as accurate in details, as prompt 
 in action, as if he had been fifty instead of seventy. Take, for 
 instance, the matter of the Greek Brigands. It is well known 
 that Lord Clarendon felt acutely the murder of our country- 
 men. He was anxious lest it should be thought he had left 
 any means unemployed to save them. But, if there were any 
 misgivings, they must have been dispelled by the papers 
 published on the subject. Whoever else was apathetic, there 
 was one who was zeal incarnate, and that was Lord Clarendon. 
 Whoever else might endeavour to evade action, Lord Clarendon 
 was urging despatch and tearing to shreds the excuses put forth 
 for leaving things alone. 
 
 Lord Clarendon was a man such as the highest type of 
 official life in England produces. He was one who was trained 
 in public employments ; not one of those who rise irregularly 
 to greatness by success in Parliament. He was never in the 
 House of Commons, and it is impossible to deny that this 
 was a disadvantage to him. But he received an education 
 which in its own line was not inferior to that of Parliament. 
 He was bred to diplomacy, and while quite a boy was an 
 attache at St. Petersburg. On his return we find him at work 
 in the Excise, then, as now, an important part of our financial 
 system. In neither of these departments could the young Mr. 
 Villiers make much show, but in either he could obtain ap- 
 preciation. The merits of a young and attentive diplomatist are 
 not widely rumoured, but they may be discovered by those 
 whose good word is fortune. Mr. Villiers was content to be 
 known as an able public servant in his own sphere, and he 
 does not appear to have sought Parliamentary life. The
 
 26 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 Whig Cabinet understood his merits, and at the early age of 
 thirty-three he was sent to Spain as Minister Plenipotentiary. 
 From that time he was sufficiently before the country to be 
 associated with the chief political names of the day ; his advance 
 in employment and in fame was steady, and without retro- 
 gression. One of his greatest achievements was the government 
 of Ireland at the time of the troubles of 1848. At that con- 
 juncture there may not have been more danger than during 
 the late Fenian conspiracy, but there was undoubtedly more 
 alarm. This was caused by the crash of thrones all over the 
 Continent, the outburst of Socialist passion in the great cities of 
 Europe, and also by the attitude of our own English democracy 
 which was then very bitter, vicious, and destructive. It was 
 imagined by many who were by no means alarmists that the 
 State would have at once two hostile classes on its hands, one in 
 each island, and that these would be supported by foreign 
 sympathy, if not by something more. Lord Clarendon never 
 lost his head in Ireland. He was never frightened, and con- 
 sequently he was never cruel. He brought the offenders one 
 after another to justice, and amid all the menaces of the time 
 the juries duly convicted them, and they were removed from 
 the place where they were dangerous. In the Kussian War, 
 again, he worthily supported the honour and interests of this 
 country, and though the chief State papers of the time pro- 
 ceeded from the lucid pen of M. Thouvenel, he sat in the 
 Congress which closed the war as the chief British representa- 
 tive, and may thus be said to have reached the height of his 
 own political fortunes. Since that time that is, during the 
 last twelve years he has been the ruling mind in our relations 
 with Foreign Powers. Since Lord Aberdeen no Minister had 
 been so intimate with so many Sovereigns, and thus he was 
 more than once enabled to smooth over dissensions which were 
 tending to become dangerous. A notable instance of this 
 occurred of late, when he acted as intermediary between the 
 King of Prussia and the Emperor Napoleon, and was enabled to 
 convey personal assurances which assuaged the jealousy of the 
 French and the corresponding suspicion of the Prussians. In 
 fact he had become, if not the Nestor of diplomacy, at any rate 
 one old enough and respected enough to take a high personal 
 position in dealing with men both at home and abroad. An 
 ordinary man could never have attained this position, nor
 
 THE EARL OF CLARENDON 27 
 
 could even a mere politician, however clever. There is a 
 class of men who will get up any subject, and who probably 
 might know the geography of Europe or Asia better than all 
 the school of Palmerston and Clarendon. But, without the 
 brilliancy, the geniality, the working power which such men 
 as he we to-day lament possessed, these attainments are useless, 
 and the world soon perceives how feeble is the devourer of 
 Blue-books in comparison with large-hearted and truly statesman- 
 like men.
 
 SIR FREDERICK POLLOCK 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24, 1870 
 
 IN the career of the ex-Chief Baron Pollock, who was taken 
 from among us yesterday, as in the careers of Lord Tenterden, 
 Lord Eldon, and Lord St. Leonard's, we see an illustration of 
 the fact that the highest honours of the legal profession lie 
 open in this country, not to a privileged few, but to the sons 
 of that middle class which forms the sinews and strength of the 
 nation. 
 
 Some eighty years ago a certain Mr. David Pollock, of 
 Scottish extraction, kept a saddler's shop in the neighbourhood, 
 of Charing Cross. He was a worthy and successful man of 
 business, and he married a Miss Sarah Parsons, a lady of 
 remarkable energy and force of character. By her he became 
 the father of a young family, three of whom in succession rose 
 to distinction in the world they were, first, the Lite Sir David 
 Pollock, Chief Justice of Bombay, who died many years ago ; 
 the third, Field-Marshal Sir George Pollock, is best known as 
 the hero of the Khyber Pass and of Cabul ; and the second was 
 the Chief Baron who died yesterday. 
 
 The Right Hon. Sir Frederick Pollock, late Lord Chief 
 Baron of Her Majesty's Court of Exchequer, was born at his 
 father's house, in the parish of St. Martin' s-in-the-Fields, on the 
 23rd of September 1783. Having received his early education 
 under private instructors, he was sent, at the age of fifteen or 
 sixteen, to complete it at St Paul's School, over which the late 
 Rev. Dr. Roberts then presided as " High Master." Here he dis- 
 tinguished himself above his fellows both in classics and 
 mathematics ; and when, in 1802, he exchanged St. Paul's
 
 SIR FREDERICK POLLOCK 29 
 
 School for the wider theatre of Trinity College, Cambridge, he 
 found that his high reputation for hard work, and for learning, 
 too, had preceded him to the banks of the Cam. Here he came 
 out first in every successive College examination ; and in 1806 
 he closed a very brilliant undergraduate career by "going out" 
 as Senior Wrangler and first Smith's Prizeman. In the follow- 
 ing year he was elected to a Fellowship in his College, and he 
 proceeded M.A. in due course. 
 
 He had already apparently made choice of the law as his 
 future profession, for we find him called to the Bar in Michael- 
 mas Term 1807 at the Middle Temple, the working man's 
 Inn of Court, as it has been happily called. Bringing to his 
 aid great mental powers and a capacity for work which was as 
 untiring as it was characteristic of the man, he soon found he 
 had an extensive and very lucrative practice both in London 
 and in the provinces. He went the Northern Circuit, on which 
 he occupied a prominent place at a time when it boasted such 
 brilliant leaders as Scarlett, Campbell, and Brougham, who 
 were all his seniors. Here his success was owing not so much 
 to any showy qualities or attractive powers as a speaker, for 
 these he never possessed, as to the extraordinary reputation for 
 industry and general ability which had followed him from 
 Cambridge to London, and from London to the great cities of 
 the north, supported and confirmed as it was by the accurate 
 and extensive legal knowledge which he displayed on every 
 occasion on which his services were called for. Hence he had 
 many clients from the very outset, and never knew what it was 
 to sit waiting for a brief. His business in the courts of 
 Westminster, always select and lucrative, grew more and more 
 extensive, and after a successful practice of some twenty years 
 he obtained the well-earned dignity of a silk gown, being made 
 a King's Counsel in 1827. From this time forward his pro- 
 gress was still more rapid than before ; for many years he 
 engrossed the leading business of his circuit, and found himself 
 retained in nearly every cause of importance. " Attorneys, and 
 suitors," says one who knew him well at this period, "alike 
 thought themselves safe when they had secured his services, and 
 not uufrequently were left lamenting when they were told 
 that their adversaries had forestalled them." 
 
 From the legal to the senatorial side of Westminster Hall is 
 only a natural transition with most able and ambitious lawyers,
 
 30 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 who, as a rule, seldom reach the highest honours of their 
 profession until they have gone through an apprenticeship, 
 shorter or longer, in St. Stephen's. Accordingly, in 1831, Mr. 
 Pollock offered himself as a candidate in the Tory interest for 
 the borough of Huntingdon, and had the good luck to be 
 elected. 
 
 He was again chosen at the dissolution which followed on 
 the passing of the first Reform Bill in the following year, and 
 continued to be rechosen by his steady admirers and faithful 
 friends, the burgesses of that quiet borough, and almost invari- 
 ably without a contest, until his retirement from Parliamentary 
 life on his promotion to the judicial bench. 
 
 The accession to power of Sir R. Peel, towards the close of 
 the year 1834, was the signal for the promotion of Mr. Pollock, 
 to whom was offered the post of Attorney-General under the 
 new Administration. It is needless to add that he accepted the 
 offer, and was honoured with the customary knighthood. He 
 did not, however, long enjoy his post ; Sir Robert Peel found 
 it impossible to carry on the Government in the face of an 
 adverse majority, and resigned with his party. Sir Frederick 
 Pollock now returned to his former practice in the courts, hold- 
 ing meantime his seat as M.P. for Huntingdon ; and when his 
 chief returned to Downing Street, at the head of a majority of 
 ninety, in 1841, it followed as a matter of course that Sir F. 
 Pollock should be reinstated in his former position. He accord- 
 ingly resumed his functions as Attorney-General, and continued 
 to hold that office until the year 1844, when he succeeded his 
 old friend and companion on circuit, the late Lord Abinger 
 better known, perhaps, now by his old name of Sir James 
 Scarlett as Chief Baron of the Exchequer. At the same time, 
 in conformity with precedent, he was sworn a member of the 
 Privy Council 
 
 As Chief Baron he showed himself an excellent judge sound, 
 safe, sensible, able, and indefatigable, ever ready at his post, and 
 inflexible in the discharge of his judicial duties. His legal 
 merits were enhanced by his personal worth, his scrupulously 
 honourable character, and his uniform courtesy and kindness to 
 all with whom he was brought into contact, from the highest to 
 the lowest During his career of Chief Baron he presided at 
 several criminal trials of more than ordinary importance, includ- 
 ing those of the Mannings for murder, of Muller for the murder
 
 SIR FREDERICK POLLOCK 31 
 
 of Mr. Briggs at Hackney, of Kohl for murder in the following 
 year, and of Mullins for the murder of Mrs. Elmsley. On all 
 these occasions he exhibited the highest qualities of a judge, 
 firmness, patience, clearness in his explanation of the points of 
 law which arose, and a lucidity in his summiugs up which was 
 beyond all praise. 
 
 It was owing to the weight of eighty-three years and the 
 natural desire to rest which is incident to all men, after a long 
 life of labour, and one in which mental and bodily activity were 
 combined, that in July 1866, on the return of the late Lord 
 Derby to office, Sir Frederick Pollock resigned his office of 
 Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and retired upon the judicial 
 pension to which he had long before been entitled. At the 
 same time he accepted a baronetcy. Perfectly versed in all the 
 antiquated refinements of old-fashioned special pleading, he saw 
 with contentment a new and improved system take its place 
 in 1852, and recognised in the latter the natural corollary of 
 the changes introduced into the process of the courts by the 
 County Courts Act of 1847. But, Tory as he was, he never 
 allowed either the one measure or the other to interfere with 
 the discharge of his duty, or to shock his personal and profes- 
 sional preference for the system to w T hich he had so long been 
 accustomed. His leaning was ever to the side of substantial 
 justice rather than to mere technical accuracy ; and, while 
 sensible of the scientific value of the latter object, he never 
 allowed it to interfere with the higher claims of the former. To 
 this desire of securing the triumph of right and the punishment 
 of wrong must be attributed that apparent readiness to take a 
 side which has sometimes been brought against the departed 
 judge by captious critics ; but even in this failing, if such it was, 
 he ever " leant to virtue's side " ; and if, in his anxiety to place 
 the salient points of a case well before a jury, he was sometimes 
 led to sink in a measure the Judge in the Advocate, it must be 
 owned that his charges were for the most part as solemn and 
 impressive as they were clear and effective. For instance, during 
 Miiller's trial, it will be remembered by all who were present 
 how his emphatic eloquence moved the deepest feelings of the 
 audience, among whom every sound was hushed and every nerve 
 was painfully strained as the full force of some apparently 
 trivial point of evidence was pointed out and its bearing 
 explained to the jury, on whose verdict hung the life of the
 
 32 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 criminal. In a different way his dealing with the Alexandra 
 case was equally noticeable. Though repeatedly pressed to do 
 so, he refused to sign a bill of exceptions to what he had not 
 said, or to certify that he had directed the jury in words which 
 he had never used. The result was that the Crown lawyers 
 were defeated and the prosecution failed. 
 
 The name of Sir Frederick Pollock may not go down to 
 distant posterity as one of the great original lawyers of the 
 nineteenth century, but his memory, as a man and as a judge, 
 will long be cherished with affection and respect by the legal 
 profession. His name is linked with no one great legal measure, 
 no important judicial change ; but it will long furnish an 
 incentive to the diligent study of the law, the upright and 
 honourable practice of legal labour, and the persevering and 
 successful pursuit of its rewards. 
 
 Sir Frederick Pollock in the later years of his life applied 
 practically to more than one branch of scientific pursuit the 
 mathematical principles which he had imbibed at Cambridge. 
 Thus, for instance, he took the greatest interest and delight in 
 the pursuit of photography, and was one of the very best 
 amateur photographers of our time. He was an active member 
 of the Council of the London Photographic Society, over the 
 meetings of which at King's College he would frequently preside 
 down to a very recent date. He also contributed several papers 
 upon his favourite study to the Philosophical Transactions of the 
 Royal Society. 
 
 Like his old personal friend but political antagonist, " plain 
 John Campbell," he was verging on fifty when he first entered 
 Parliament, and was actually far gone into the " sere and yellow 
 leaf" of ordinary men when he took his seat upon the judicial 
 bench ; but there was no "sereness" or "yellowness" in him. 
 He rejoiced in an old age of " ever green " health and strength, 
 and at upwards of eighty years of age could boast, if any man 
 could, of the metis sana in corpore sano. To the very last he 
 retained his kindliness of heart, untainted and uncorroded by 
 all that he must have seen in his long and active life of the 
 weak and warped side of human nature ; and his genial and 
 lively humour was as playful during the last Guildhall sittings 
 at which he presided as when he first made his appearance at 
 the Bar, or took his seat upon the Bench in the Court of 
 Exchequer.
 
 SIR JOHN HERSCHEL 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, SATURDAY, MAY 13 1871 
 
 EUROPEAN Science has lost one of her illustrious members in the 
 person of Sir John Herschel, whose death we recorded briefly 
 in our columns yesterday, at the age of seventy-nine. 
 
 Sir John Frederick William Hersehel, F.R.S., etc., was the 
 son of that eminent astronomer, Sir William Herschel, who just 
 ninety years since discovered the Georgium Sidus, or Uranus, 
 as it was called at first, but which is now known by the name 
 of its discoverer the planet Herschel. His mother was Mary, 
 daughter of Mr. Adee Baldwin, and he was himself born at 
 Slongh, Buckinghamshire, on the 7th of March 1792. He 
 received his early education privately, under a Scotch mathe- 
 matician named Rogers, from whose hands he passed to St. 
 John's College, Cambridge, where he took his Bachelor's degree 
 in 1813, coming out as Senior Wrangler and first Smith's 
 Prizeman. In the same year he published his first work, A 
 Collection of Examples of the Application of the Calculus to Finite 
 Differences. In 1819 he commenced a series of papers in the 
 Edinburgh Philosophical Journal on miscellaneous subjects in 
 physical science, and in 1822 communicated to the Royal 
 Society of Edinburgh a paper on the absorption of light by 
 coloured media, which will be found in the ninth volume of the 
 Transactions of that Society. He spent a great part of the years 
 of 1821-23, in conjunction with the late Sir James South, in 
 making a number of observations on the distances and positions 
 of numerous stars, a full account of which is to be seen in Part 
 III. of the Philosophical Transactions for 1824. In the follow- 
 ing year he began to re-examine the numerous nebulae and 
 
 VOL. I D
 
 34 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 clusters of stars which had been discovered by his father. On 
 this work he was employed for eight years, and its results will 
 be found in the volume of the above-mentioned work for 1832. 
 The catalogue includes upwards of 2300 nebulae, of which 525 
 were discovered by Sir John himself. It may be added that 
 while engaged upon this work he also discovered between three 
 and four thousand double stars, which are described in the 
 Memoirs of the Astronomical Society. These observations were 
 made witli an excellent Newtonian telescope, 20 feet in focal 
 length and 18 J inches aperture ; and "having obtained," to use 
 his own words, " a sufficient mastery over the instrument," he 
 conceived the idea of employing it in the survey of the 
 southern heavens. 
 
 Accordingly, he left England in November 1833, and reach- 
 ing the Cape in January 1834, fixed his residence in the 
 neighbourhood of Table Bay. He there set up his instruments, 
 and was shortly able to commence a regular course of " sweep- 
 ings " of the southern heavens. His observations were continued 
 till May 1838, the whole of the expense attending them being 
 borne by Herschel himself. The interest felt by the scientific 
 world of Europe and America in the progress of his labours was 
 very great, and from time to time curiosity was gratified by 
 accounts of some of the observations conveyed to friends by 
 letter; but it was not until 1847, some years after his return 
 to England, that the collected digested results of his four years' 
 residence at the Cape were published in regular form, when he 
 published his volume entitled Results of Astronomical Observations 
 made during 1834-S8 at the Cape of Good Hope, being the Comple- 
 tion of a Telescopic Survey of the Whole Surface of the Visible 
 Heavens, commenced in 1825. Although the astronomer's main 
 object in the southern hemisphere, as in the northern, had been 
 the detection of new and the re-examination of old nebulae, his 
 observations extended themselves so as to include all the objects 
 for which his position was favourable. Indeed, not only was a 
 mass of new observations appertaining to the southern heavens 
 added to astronomical science by the survey, but many of the 
 extreme speculations of the elder Herschel and others relative to 
 the highest problems of astronomy were reviewed afresh in 
 the light of the new observations. The substance of these has 
 since been incorporated in all the more recent works of general 
 astronomy. Besides his astronomical labours at the Cape, he was
 
 SIR JOHN HERSCHEL 35 
 
 always ready to give the colonial authorities his advice and aid 
 on scientific and educational matters. It is to him that the Cape 
 colonists are mainly indebted for the very perfect system of 
 national education and public schools which they now enjoy, 
 and which he was enabled to carry out through the sagacity and 
 liberality of the late Sir George Napier, at that time Governor, 
 and of his Colonial Secretary, Mr. Henry Montagu. 
 
 It is worthy of remark, says a writer in the English Gyclopcedia, 
 that Herschel's residence at the Cape was productive of benefits 
 not only to astronomy, but also to meteorology. "While occupied 
 there, he suggested a plan of having meteorological observations 
 made simultaneously at different places a plan subsequently 
 developed at greater length in his Instructions for Making and 
 Registering Meteorological Observations at Various Stations in 
 Southern Africa, published under official military authority in 
 1844. He had already received from the hands of King William 
 IV. the Hanoverian Guelphic Order of Knighthood, and on his 
 return to England in 1838 he was received with every possible 
 public honour. During his absence in the southern hemisphere 
 the Astronomical Society had voted to him their Gold Medal in 
 1836. Two years later, on the occasion of the coronation of 
 Queen Victoria, he was created a baronet. In 1839 he was 
 made an honorary D.C.L. of Oxford University, and there was 
 a proposal, which he declined, to elect him to succeed the late 
 Duke of Sussex in the presidential chair of the Royal Society. 
 In 1842 he was elected Lord Rector of Marischal College, 
 Aberdeen. In 1848 he was President of the Royal Astronomical 
 Society, and in the same year the society voted him a testimonial 
 for his work on the southern hemisphere. Having by that 
 time completed the digest and publication of his observations 
 at the Cape during the preparation of which, however, he had 
 published various incidental papers in the Transactions of the 
 Astronomical Society he was free to pass to other labours. Of 
 these the most important of a literary kind was his work entitled 
 Outlines of Astronomy (enlarged from his former treatise in 
 Lardner's Cyclopaedia), which he published in 1849. In the 
 same year he edited a collection of papers by various authors, 
 published by authority, and entitled A Manual of Scientific 
 Inquiry, prepared for the Use of Her Majesty's Navy, and adapted 
 for Travellers in General. In December 1850, when the 
 Mastership of the Mint was converted from a Ministerial into
 
 36 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 a permanent office, it waa conferred upon Sir ' John Herschel, 
 and this post was retained by him till 1855, when he resigned 
 it on account of ill-health, and Professor Graham, the eminent 
 chemist, was appointed his successor. 
 
 Sir John Herschel was the author of the articles on " Isoperi- 
 metrical Problems " and " Mathematics " in the Edinburgh 
 Encyclopedia, and of " Meteorology " and " Physical Geography " 
 in the Encyclopedia Britannica (the last two of which have 
 been republished separately), and also of several articles on 
 scientific subjects in the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, which 
 were collected and published in a separate form in 1857, 
 together with some of his lectures and addresses delivered on 
 public occasions. He besides occasionally contributed to Good 
 Words some popular papers on the wonders of the Universe ; 
 and some two or three years ago he gave to the world, in the 
 pages of the Cornhill Magazine, a poetical version of part of the 
 Inferno of Dante. He was also one of the too numerous trans- 
 lators of Homer. 
 
 Sir John Herschel was an honorary or corresponding member 
 of the Academies of St. Petersburg, Vienna, Gottingen, Turin, 
 Bologna, Brussels, Naples, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and of almost 
 all other scientific associations in England and America. To his 
 other honours was added that of Chevalier of the Prussian Order 
 of Merit, founded by Frederick the Great, and given at the 
 recommendation of the Academy of Sciences at Berlin. We 
 regret that the limited space at our disposal prevents us from 
 giving a more detailed account of the scientific labours of Sir 
 John HerscheL Few philosophers of an age which has produced 
 a Faraday and Brewster have attained distinction equal to 
 that which he earned for himself. His mathematical acquire- 
 ments and his discoveries in astronomy, in optics, in chemistry, 
 and in photography were all of a very high order, and such as, 
 aided by an admirable style, secured for him the widest reputa- 
 tion among men of science, both at home and abroad ; while his 
 numerous popular writings have contributed largely to the 
 diffusion of a taste for science and an acquaintance with its 
 principles among our countrymen.
 
 MR. GROTE 
 OBITUAEY NOTICE, MONDAY, JUNE 19, 1871 
 
 DEATH has robbed the country of one of its chief literary orna- 
 ments, and the spirit of a great historian has departed from 
 among us. George Grote died yesterday morning after a 
 lingering illness. He was descended from a family of German 
 extraction, and was grandson of a London banker, who, in 
 conjunction with George Prescott, founded the house which was 
 well known as Prescott, Grote, and Co. He was born in 1794 
 at Beckenham, in Kent, and having been educated at the 
 Charter House, entered his [father's counting-house in the 
 sixteenth year of his age. But the young Grote had a soul 
 above banking, respectable and useful as that pursuit un- 
 doubtedly is. He devoted his leisure hours to the study of 
 the classics, became a profound Greek scholar, and when quite 
 a young man made it one of the objects of his life to write a 
 history of Greece. It was already known in 1823 that the 
 young banker had begun the preparations for his work, which 
 lasted till the period of the first Reform Bill, when they were 
 interrupted for a time. That interruption was caused by the 
 triumph of Whig principles in Lord Grey's Government, for 
 Mr. Grote was a Whig and something more. He was the 
 philosophic Radical of those days. Before the triumph of 
 Reform he had combated the views of Sir James Macintosh 
 in a pamphlet, had written an. essay on the Essentials of 
 Parliamentary Reform, and was in all respects and on all 
 questions a very advanced Liberal. After the passing of the 
 Reform Bill, Mr. Grote was returned for the City of London in 
 1832, a seat which he retained till 1841. Those who can
 
 38 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 remember the debates and sessions of those days will not fail 
 to recall Mr. Grote's annual motion on the ballot, which he 
 brought forward year after year with a perseverance which, 
 when he left the House, he bequeathed to the late Mr. Henry 
 Berkeley, on whom the mantle of his tenacity, though not 
 perhaps of his genius, descended. Now that the ballot has 
 been made a Cabinet question, and we are all so advanced as 
 to see that, after all, there is not so much harm in it, though 
 it is so " un-English," it is difficult to realise the acrimony with 
 which the ballot was attacked in the first days of Reform. 
 Great political capital was made out of the impracticable Mr. 
 Grote and his ballot-box, for the young banker not only 
 advocated the ballot, but had invented a ballot-box on philo- 
 sophic principles, in which a needle played a great part How 
 many laughs were raised by able writers against Mr. Grote and 
 his plan of secret voting by " acupuncturation " it is now need- 
 kss to .inquire. Like many a man who has been first in the 
 flfeld in any Subject, he met with ridicule instead of respect ; 
 but it is not a little remarkable that just as he is dying, full of 
 honours won in other studies, the system of voting which he 
 advocated with such waste, as it then seemed, of energy and 
 logic, should be on the eve of passing as a Cabinet measure by 
 a Liberal Government. 
 
 In 1841 Mr. Grote, wearied with the want of sympathy 
 which the Reformed Parliament showed for his Philosophic 
 Radicalism, retired from the representation of the City of London, 
 and thenceforth lived for literature alone. His political and 
 religious principles remained the same, but they were tempered 
 and softened by a genial, classical spirit, so that we of this new 
 generation have known him only as a most accomplished scholar, 
 and as a thoroughly just and generous man. As soon as he left 
 Parliament Mr. Grote returned to his Greek history with re- 
 newed energy. His friends were sure that his great work would 
 be a masterpiece ; they were only afraid, so deeply were the 
 foundations laid, and so vast was his store of accumulated 
 material, that they should never see the first story emerge from 
 the ground, much less behold the whole fabric a finished structure. 
 So it was that in the interval between 1833 and 1841, while 
 Mr. Grote was in Parliament, Dr. ThirlwalTs History of 
 Greece appeared, an excellent work in itself, and no mere 
 stop-gap, but of which we believe its author said at the time
 
 MR. GROTE 39 
 
 that he would never have written it had he thought that Grote's 
 History would ever appear. But at last, in 1846, the first 
 volume of the promised History did appear, and it was 
 finished in 1855. It was received with universal applause, which 
 was all, perhaps, the greater because those who were wont to 
 scoff at the " Philosophic Radical " were forced to confess that 
 he had ripened into a consummate historian, and that his great 
 work was one of which all parties and sections of English life 
 might be proud. Of course, there were some who did not agree 
 with it, or rather with whom it disagreed men of the old 
 absolute Mitford stamp, who had been disgusted with Thirlwall, 
 and were naturally still more disgusted with Grote. Then there 
 were scholars like Sliilleto, who attacked Grote's scholarship, and 
 others who thought him too gentle towards Cleon, too hard upon 
 Socrates, and too lenient towards the Sophists. But where are 
 all these objectors now ? Lost in the universal esteem in which 
 Grote's History of Greece is held. All that can be said of 
 these mutterers is that they have protested and passed away. 
 Nor is it out of place to remark that the work was as well received 
 abroad as at home. In Germany we might even say better, for 
 there were more minds in Germany capable of appreciating the 
 breadth and depth and length of the plan on which the book 
 was written and the stupendous learning and labour with which 
 it was executed. Mr. Grote's History was speedily trans- 
 lated into German, and so great was his reputation abroad that 
 long before a volume of it appeared we find the great Niebuhr 
 recommending a friend, to whom he had given a letter of intro- 
 duction to Grote, to secure, if possible, proof-sheets in advance 
 of the work, in order that he might translate it into his own 
 language. 
 
 But it is not our purpose to write a review of Mr. Grote's 
 History. It is towards the man rather than his works that pur 
 thoughts turn. We pass on with the wish that Mr. Grote had 
 continued his History to the Successors of Alexander, and traced 
 the fortunes of their dynasties a dark period sadly in want of a 
 philosophic historian to enlighten it. On that History many 
 would have been content to rest, but the motto of Mr. Grote's 
 life was " Work." No sooner was the History finished than the 
 indefatigable author turned to another branch of Greek literature. 
 By nature rather, we believe, an Aristotelian than a Platonist, 
 Philosophy, and, before all, Greek Philosophy, was his darling
 
 40 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 subject He threw himself on Plato first, and his work, Plato 
 and Other Companions of Socrates, was completed and published 
 in 1865 to show the mastery which its author had acquired over 
 the thoughts as well as the deeds of Greece. With parts of it, 
 indeed, as with his appreciation and apology for the Sophists, 
 in which he has lately met with an able adversary in Professor 
 Jowett, it is an open question whether we can agree. But it is 
 not so much agreement as ability and an ingenious method 
 which we seek in philosophic discussion. That method, coupled 
 with a laborious learning which leaves no authority unsifted or 
 untried that can throw any light on the subject, we find in Mr. 
 Grote's Plato, and it must always be a matter of regret that 
 his Aristotle, on which he had bestowed equal pains, and of 
 which one volume, we believe, is ready for the press, must re- 
 main an unfinished work. 
 
 But it is not only as a laborious student, a learned historian, 
 and a profound philosopher that Grote lived and died. He did 
 other work in his generation, and he did it well. It was his 
 privilege to outlive ridicule in other matters besides the ballot 
 Those who can remember his Parliamentary career can also 
 recall the vigour with which he advocated the interests of 
 University College and the University of London, when the one 
 was branded by an opprobrious nickname, and the other was 
 but a nursling compared with the vigorous manhood to which it 
 has now attained. It is very easy to praise the University of 
 London now, when it is a recognised institution of the land, 
 when it is famous for the searching nature of its examinations, 
 is represented in Parliament, and has a large and powerful body 
 of graduates. But Mr. Grote was its champion when it had none 
 of these advantages to boast of and was ridiculed as the Godless 
 University. From first to last he has been the presiding genius 
 over both those liberal places of education, which contrast 
 favourably with other places of liberal education which affected 
 to despise them. Over the University of London Mr. Grote 
 perpetually watched. He was its Vice-Chancellor, and on him 
 devolved most of the labour of managing its affairs. He was 
 always ready to draw up its reports with his own hand, to 
 consider new propositions as to its examinations, and to 
 support and strengthen it with his countenance and advice. In 
 him the University has lost a Vice-Chancellor whose loss will 
 only be truly appreciated when the duty of finding a fitting
 
 MR. GROTE 41 
 
 man to fill his place has to be discharged. Nor was he less 
 indefatigable in the responsible position of a Trustee of the 
 British Museum, never sparing himself, even when his health 
 failed, and always sacrificing his ease and comfort for the sake 
 of that noble institution. To these three objects, together with 
 his Aristotle, the last years of his laborious life were devoted, 
 and when, two years ago, Mr. Gladstone, in the exercise of the 
 prerogative of the Crown, offered Mr. Grote a peerage, the 
 answer of the veteran historian and philosopher was that, how- 
 ever flattered he might feel at the offer of the Premier, he felt 
 bound to spend all the time at his disposal in the discharge of 
 his duties as Trustee of the British Museum and Vice-Chancellor 
 of the University of London. That was his fitting sphere of 
 action. As to the House of Lords, he had no inclination to 
 enter it as an idle member of the Senate. 
 
 In private life Mr. Grote was one of the most amiable and 
 charming of men. His intellect, indeed, to the last, was strong 
 as a giant, but his manner was as modest as a child. He was 
 singularly unselfish and simple-minded. There was an exquisite 
 courtesy in his address, a stately politeness in his mien, which 
 reminded one of Sir Charles Grandison and the days of the hoop 
 and minuet. You saw at once that you had before you not only 
 a profound philosopher, but also a most perfect gentleman. 
 Caring much for others and little for himself, always ready to 
 listen to those to whom it was worth while to listen, he lived 
 among us the very pattern and model of modest merit. Shrink- 
 ing from no duty for which he felt himself fit, and seeking no 
 honour or applause from men, he has departed full of years and 
 fame, an example to all students, whether of history or philo- 
 sophy, to seek the truth, and when they have found it to tell it 
 boldly, without fear or favour. The loss of such a man at any 
 period of our history would be a grievous blow to literature, 
 but it seems irreparable at a time when real learning is at so 
 low an ebb in England, and when the pursuit of any study for 
 its own sake, and not for any base and ulterior object, is an 
 exception so rare as to be scarcely credible to a short-sighted 
 and time-serving generation. 
 
 Mr. Grote was a member of the French Institute, and also of 
 many foreign academies and learned societies. In 1820 he 
 was married to Miss Harriet Lewin, the second daughter of a 
 Kentish gentleman. By this lady, who is well known by her
 
 42 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 Life of Ary Scheffer and other excellent works, and who 
 survives him, he has left no issue. But of such a man the 
 best progeny are his works, and by them the name of George 
 Grote will be kept famous so long as the English language 
 lasts.
 
 SIR JOHN BURGOYNE 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, MONDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1871 
 
 IF the venerable and gallant officer whose name stands prefixed 
 to this memoir was not at his death the senior officer in our 
 military service, at least, since the decease of Lord Gough and 
 Sir de Lacy Evans, he had seen more years of hard work and of 
 active service, both military and civil, and had lived a life of 
 more uninterrupted labour, than any other member of the 
 profession. He died on Saturday last, and happily not before 
 he had attained to all the honours which are open to the army, 
 with the single exception of a peerage. When he retired from 
 active employment he had already held a commission for just 
 seventy years, and he lived long enough to enjoy for some time 
 the repose which, as a miles emeritus et rude donatus, he was so 
 well entitled to claim. 
 
 John Fox Burgoyne was the son of the Right Hon. John 
 Burgoyne, whose name was well known to the public nearly a 
 century ago, not only as a public man, a member of Parliament, 
 and a dramatic writer, but also as the " best-abused " man of 
 his day. He commanded the forces in America in 1777, and 
 led an expedition into Canada which was intended as a bold 
 movement against the insurgents; but, in consequence of a 
 misadventure, and from not being supported by General Howe, 
 as intended, was forced to surrender to the Americans. He 
 was also severely assailed by " Junius " as a political adherent of 
 the Duke of Grafton. We believe that there is some uncertainty 
 as to who was the mother of the future Field-Marshal, for he 
 was born in 1782, and his father's wife, Lady Charlotte Burgoyne, 
 a daughter of the noble house of Stanley, had died several years
 
 44 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 before that date. Little, therefore, is known about his early 
 years, save and except the fact that he received his second name 
 after the celebrated Charles James Fox, who was his godfather 
 and one of the most intimate personal and political friends of 
 his father. To Eton he was sent at an early age ; but all that 
 is known of him at Eton is that he did not care much for 
 Latin verses, his constructive genius taking quite a different 
 turn from his very childhood ; and that he was " fag " to 
 the historian Hallam, with whom he kept up an acquaintance 
 which lasted until the death of the latter. Possibly, too, he 
 cared less for his father's dramas than for his military achieve- 
 ments ; for before long he was transplanted to the Military 
 Academy at Woolwich, where he went through the usual 
 course of mathematics and fortification. On the 29th of 
 August 1798 he was gazetted to a lieutenant's commission in 
 the Royal Engineers. 
 
 In April 1800 Burgoyne sailed in the memorable expedition 
 sent to the Mediterranean under Sir Ralph Abercroinbie, to 
 counteract the designs of the great Napoleon. Proceeding to 
 the Mediterranean, he took an active part in the blockade of 
 Malta and the capture of Valetta, which, after a stubborn 
 resistance on the part of the French, placed the citadel of the 
 Mediterranean in the hands of England. In 1806 we find him 
 actively employed in Sicily ; in the same year he embarked as 
 Commanding Engineer with the expedition to Egypt, under 
 Major-General Mackenzie Fraser, and was present at the capture 
 of Alexandria and the siege of Rosetta. His spirited conduct 
 on these occasions attracted the notice of the Commander-in- 
 Chief, won especial mention in the despatches sent home to the 
 Horse Guards, and still further increased the already high 
 opinion which was entertained at home of the ability, zeal, and 
 professional skill of the young engineer. At the close of the 
 last -mentioned expedition Sir John Moore applied for his 
 services, and he accordingly returned to Sicily in the autumn. 
 We next find him employed for a short time in Sweden, whence 
 he was transferred to Portugal ; was present throughout the 
 entire campaign, and finally shared with his lamented chiefs the 
 memorable retreat on Corunna, where he formed one of that 
 melancholy party which laid Sir John Moore in his hastily-dug 
 grave. In the last-named affair Captain Burgoyne, for such was 
 now his rank, was ordered to blow up the bridge at Benevento,
 
 SIR JOHN BURGOYNE 45 
 
 so as to stop the advance of the French ; but in order to detain 
 them as long as possible, and to give more time to the British 
 troops, he was instructed to delay firing the mine until the very 
 last moment. The French advanced parties held the further 
 end of the bridge at the moment when he exploded the charge, 
 which completely destroyed the structure. Again, in the retreat 
 before Messana to the lines of Lisbon, he received orders to blow 
 up Fort Conception as soon as the French advanced in force ; 
 but, in order to check their passage as effectually as possible, he 
 was ordered on no account to allow himself to be deceived by 
 any detachment, but to remain steady until the main body of 
 the French moved up. This operation, like the one before 
 mentioned, required much coolness and nerve, as well as great 
 professional skill ; and it is almost needless to add that it was 
 completely successful. 
 
 After a short absence Burgoyne was ordered to join the army 
 under Sir Arthur Wellesley in Spain, where he was actively 
 employed until the close of the war. There was not a siege in 
 which he did not take an active part, and there were few battles 
 where he was not under fire. He took part in the passage of 
 the Douro, the battle of Busaco, the two sieges of Badajoz, the 
 siege and battle of Salamanca, the battle of Vittoria, the siege of 
 San Sabastian, the action of the Bidassoa, the battle of Nivelle, 
 the passage of the Adour, the blockade of Bayonne, etc. It is 
 well known that the sieges in the Peninsula did not offer much 
 opportunity for testing the professional merits of the corps of 
 engineers, as, on account of the want of sappers and miners, 
 and the scarcity of every requisite for such an undertaking, 
 they were forced to convert the sieges into what the French 
 term attaques brusques, and our army paid dearly in loss of 
 life for our neglect of the scientific branches of the service. 
 Nevertheless, the British engineers were as abundant in readiness 
 of resource, in zeal, and gallantry, as they were deficient in 
 materiel ; and it was noted as a remarkable fact that, in spite of 
 the total want of everything necessary for regular siege operations, 
 the self-same fortresses in the Peninsula, when attacked by the 
 British and garrisoned by the French, fell in a much shorter 
 time than when attacked by the French and garrisoned by the 
 Spaniards, and that, too, although the French engineers possessed 
 a supply of all or most of those means in which the English 
 were so deficient. Burgoyne, who attained the rank of Colonel
 
 46 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 during the war, was first or second in command of the engineers 
 at most of the sieges of the Peninsula. The Duke of Wellington 
 frequently expressed a very higli opinion of his military capacity, 
 and more seriously than in jest used to say of him in reference 
 to that diffidence and modesty which always marked the man 
 and showed rather than hid his merits, " If Burgoyne only knew 
 his own worth as an officer, there would be no one in the army 
 to equal him." 
 
 Within a few months of the close of the war in the Peninsula, 
 Colonel Burgoyne, ever active and indefatigable, was again " in 
 harness," being appointed Commanding Engineer of the expedi- 
 tion to New Orleans under General Sir Edward Pakenham. 
 Here he found repeated opportunities of gaining distinction ; 
 his spirited conduct at an attack on the enemy's entrenched 
 position, and at the siege of Fort Bowyer, brought his name 
 more prominently forward than ever, and materially advanced 
 his professional prospects. He was highly complimented by the 
 commander- in -chief of the expedition, and his services were 
 more than once acknowledged and recommended to the notice 
 of the authorities at home by General Sir John Lambert in his 
 despatches. 
 
 It was by an accident, or rather we should say, perhaps, by a 
 freak of fortune, that Burgoyne was not present on the field of 
 Waterloo. The gallant Sir Thomas Picton, who had learnt his 
 value in the Peninsula and who appreciated his merits as highly 
 as his old friend and chief, Sir John Moore, was desirous of 
 securing the services of so able an officer for the army in Flanders, 
 and, it is said, made a formal application to the Government 
 with this view ; but for some reason or other, possibly because 
 the post had already been promised to an officer with higher 
 connections and greater family influence, the Master General of 
 the Ordnance withheld his sanction from the application, and 
 the opportunity was lost to Burgoyne of bearing his part in the 
 crowning victory. He could well afford to lose the laurels 
 which he might have gathered there ; for, with the single 
 exception of Waterloo, there was not one great or important 
 action in the entire war, from its beginning to its end, in which 
 Burgoyne did not bear a part Disappointed, however, as he 
 must have been, we find him within one short month after the 
 battle once more serving actively under the orders of his great 
 commander ; for he joined the Army of Occupation at Paris in
 
 SIR JOHN BURGOYNE 47 
 
 the middle of July, and remained there from that time until the 
 close of the occupation. 
 
 To a soldier of less energetic disposition and less active and 
 indefatigable habits than the late Field-Marshal, it is more 
 than probable that the peace of forty years which followed on 
 the victory of Waterloo would have represented a long period 
 of comparative ease and retirement. But Colonel Burgoyne 
 was far too active and zealous for anything of the kind ; he 
 easily and cheerfully adapted his energies to other work, and 
 rendered good service to the country at large in a purely civil 
 capacity. Idem pacis erat mediusque belli. For some thirteen 
 or fourteen years between 1830 and 1845 he held the appoint- 
 ment of Chairman of the Board of Public Works in Ireland ; 
 and by the engineering operations which he planned and 
 carried out during that critical period, he very considerably 
 benefited Ireland, and especially the Irish poor. In 1845, at the 
 suggestion, we believe, of the Duke of Wellington, he was selected 
 by the Government to fill the responsible position of Inspector- 
 General of Fortifications a post for which it was generally 
 acknowledged at the time that he was admirably qualified. 
 And the appointment was more than justified by the result, 
 for it was while he held this post that he addressed to the 
 Duke of Wellington his memorable official letter upon the 
 defenceless state of our national coasts and seaports after that 
 long interval of peace and inactivity. The Iron Duke took the 
 matter up with a zeal and energy proportioned to its intrinsic 
 importance ; the question was discussed in Parliament and in 
 the Press ; and large sums of money were voted by Parliament 
 for the purpose of making good the deficiencies and omissions 
 of bygone years. 
 
 In the year 1847 "the Famine" broke out in Ireland, with 
 fever and other ills in its train, as usual ; and Sir John Bur- 
 goyne we so call him henceforth, as some years previously he 
 had been invested with the riband of a Knight Commander of 
 the Bath was appointed to conduct and organise the Commis- 
 sion for the relief of the distress in that part of the United 
 Kingdom. Of this Commission he was the life and soul ; and 
 none laboured more diligently or perseveringly to insure its 
 efficiency. The Irish are not, at the present time at least, a 
 very grateful people ; but if they were capable of travelling 
 back in their memories for a quarter of a century, they would
 
 48 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 feel and express, we think, some little gratitude to Sir John 
 Burgoyne for his labours among them in mitigation of their 
 sufferings. 
 
 But it was not in Ireland only that Sir John Burgoyne 
 showed himself willing to employ his time in the discharge of 
 such civil duties as " Commissions," which, after all, must have 
 been dull and tame work for one who had commanded at a score 
 or so of sieges. In such Commissions he rarely or never refused 
 to bear his part, when called upon to do so ; and the public call 
 came to him pretty frequently. Indeed, it was remarked rather 
 pithily some years ago by a contemporary that " it would be 
 difficult to mention a public undertaking of any importance from 
 the Commission on the Penny Postage Scheme to those on 
 Westminster Bridge and the Great Exhibition, with which Sir 
 John Burgoyne has not had some connection more or less 
 prominent." It was also well known to his friends that he was 
 constantly employed by the Government in many confidential 
 transactions, the nature of which at the time was never allowed 
 to transpire. In a word, there never was a more useful civil 
 servant of the Crown than Sir John Burgoyne, or one whose 
 wide range of military experience could be more readily made 
 available for the benefit of the public at large. 
 
 We now pass to another, and perhaps the most important 
 chapter in the career of Sir John Burgoyne we mean the part 
 which he played in the Russian War. When in the winter of 
 1853-54 it became evident, not only to diplomatists, who were 
 in the secret, but also to the world at large, that Russia " meant 
 mischief," and was bent upon disturbing the peace of Europe, 
 Sir John Burgoyne was sent to Constantinople to report upon 
 the measures necessary for the defence of the Ottoman Porte, as 
 the English and French Governments had not up to that time 
 come to a determination to send out to the East a force sufficiently 
 large to undertake more important operations. As soon, how- 
 ever, as the gallant General returned to Europe the real state of 
 the case was made known ; the Government was not long in 
 making up its mind, and Sir John was appointed Lieutenant- 
 General on the Staff of the Army of the East. It would be easy 
 enough to dash off the rest of the Crimean story in a few short 
 words, merely saying that to Sir John Burgoyne was entrusted 
 the management of the landing of the British forces on the 
 shores of the Crimea ; that he suggested the flank movement to
 
 SIR JOHN BURGOYNE 49 
 
 the southern side of Sebastopol ; that from the first he pointed 
 out the Malakoff as the key of the entire position ; that he con- 
 ducted the siege operations before Sebastopol up to the middle 
 or end of March 1855, when he was recalled to England, leaving 
 to Sir Harry Jones to complete the work which he had 
 originated. But this, though true so far as it goes, would 
 scarcely be an adequate account of the Crimean services of the 
 subject of this memoir. It may safely be asserted that what- 
 ever were the shortcomings of the leaders of the British army 
 itself, the Engineers, under Burgoyne, from the very commence- 
 ment of the campaign, may claim for themselves the credit of 
 having given what proved to be the right advice at the critical 
 moment with respect to the landing at Eupatoria, and it is well 
 known that their advice was but the echo of that of Sir John 
 Burgoyne. The French officers and a portion of the English, 
 including Sir George Brown, were in favour of attempting a 
 landing at the mouth of the Katcha. Sir John Burgoyne, 
 however, objected to the spot, and at first stood almost alone 
 in his objection ; for his keen and experienced eye detected it 
 to be, from its configuration, a hazardous place for disembark- 
 ing troops, and he suggested instead the spot which was 
 afterwards agreed upon by both armies. Again, when the 
 landing had been successfully accomplished, and the battle of 
 the Alma had been won, the next step was to attack Sebastopol. 
 An investment of the place with the forces which the allies 
 had at that time brought into the field was quite out of the 
 question, and the main point for consideration was on which 
 side the attack should be made. Here, again, the eye of our 
 able engineer officer discerned the true course to be followed. 
 The French were in favour of attacking the city on the side 
 nearest to themselves ; but Sir John Burgoyne showed that 
 even if that side, which was the least strongly fortified, were 
 taken, the task of besieging the city would really have to be 
 begun de novo, and urged that the true base of operations in 
 the present case was the fleet, as more easily moved than the 
 army ; and that the dangers of a flank march such as that 
 which brought us to the plateau above Balaklava were largely 
 outweighed by its advantages. The disadvantage of the north 
 side lay in the fact that the army could not have covered its 
 base of operations, so that communication with the fleet was 
 always liable to be cut off by works thrown up by the enemy. 
 
 VOL. I E
 
 50 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 Although the position was only defective at this period, a 
 few weeks later it would have been positively dangerous, for 
 the Russians had developed such an unexpected force at the 
 period of the battle of Inkerman that they could have thrown 
 up entrenchments, and blocked up the allied army on the 
 narrow promontory between the Belbec and Sebastopol, and 
 the safety of the whole force would have been seriously com- 
 promised. The army was saved from this danger by the flank 
 march to the south ; and it will be remembered that the 
 principal reason given by Sir John for this movement waa 
 that the allies could take up a very strong position on the 
 south side of the harbour, which would cover all the bays from 
 which they would derive their supplies. The correctness of 
 this reasoning was shown by the fruitless efforts afterwards 
 made by the enemy to force the positions at Balaklava and at 
 Inkerman. Again, when the army had advanced thus far, the 
 proper work of the engineer officers commenced, for they had 
 to determine which was the most vulnerable portion of the 
 fortress, and against which, therefore, the chief efforts of the 
 allies should be directed. Here, again, the superior genius 
 of British engineering was vindicated by Sir John Burgoyne ; 
 for, while our allies desired to attack the town itself, he 
 pointed from the first to the Malakoff as when taken involving 
 the fall of the city. We are all aware that the plan of the 
 French was adopted at first, and we are also well aware with 
 how little success, and how great a loss of lives and of money 
 it cost England. But at length, though not until the gallant 
 old general had returned home, both the English and the French 
 commanders came round to his view, and, concentrating their 
 whole strength on the Malakoff, took it by assault With the 
 Malakoff the key of Sebastopol passed into the hands of the 
 allies, and Sebastopol fell, thus justifying Burgoyne's predic- 
 tion to the very letter, for the fall of that tower rendered the 
 other fortifications untenable. Indeed, from first to last, 
 whatever amount of success attended the expedition to the 
 Crimea would appear to have been due, to say the least, as 
 largely to Sir John Burgoyne as to any other single individual. 
 By the landing at Eupatoria not only was the disembarkation 
 of our troops effected in security, but a lodgment was made in 
 the rear of the enemy. Lord Raglan acknowledged in the 
 noblest manner how much he was indebted to the advice and
 
 SIR JOHN BURGOYNE 51 
 
 assistance of Sir John Burgoyne at the battle of the Alma ; 
 and it has been stated that he addressed a despatch to the 
 Horse Guards requesting that he might be promoted to the 
 rank of General, and that his promotion should date from the 
 time of the battle itself. At the battle of Inkerman Burgoyne 
 was again in action, and Lord Raglan in his despatch on that 
 occasion once more acknowledged the great assistance which he 
 received from his experience and counsel. 
 
 It was indeed unfortunate for the British army, much more 
 than for the Field-Marshal whose loss we are lamenting, that 
 precisely at the time when the superiority of his judgment in 
 engineering matters was beginning to be recognised, and his 
 plans had come to be adopted, the authorities at home resolved 
 on his recall, and so one of the most meritorious officers in our 
 army was thrown over as a victim to popular discontent. Ac- 
 cordingly, he returned to England, leaving to others to gather 
 the laurels which he had planted and to some extent reared. 
 
 The rest of Sir John Burgoyne's story is soon told. Not 
 long after the fall of Sebastopol he was advanced to the rank of 
 full General, he was created a Baronet of the United Kingdom, 
 and appointed Colonel Commandant of the Royal Engineers. 
 Oxford conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil 
 Laws, the Council of the Royal Society elected him one of their 
 Fellows, and the Emperor of the French and the Sultan of 
 Turkey respectively nominated him a Grand Knight of the 
 Legion of Honour and a member of the Order of the Medjidie 
 of the First Class. These were tardy honours, but he lived 
 long enough to rejoice in such acknowledgments of his merits, 
 however slow they were in coming. At a subsequent date Sir 
 John Burgoyne received from his Sovereign the baton of a Field- 
 Marshal, and from the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common 
 Council of London the freedom of the city in a casket of gold. 
 
 On the death of Lord Combermere he was appointed to the 
 digniiied office of Constable of the Tower of London, together 
 with that of Lord-Lieutenant and Gustos Rotuloruin of the 
 Tower Hamlets. It will be remembered, too, that some years 
 since he was selected by Her Majesty for the honour of heading 
 a mission to Paris in charge of the funeral car of the great 
 Napoleon, which he presented to the Emperor in Her Majesty's 
 name. He was one of the active members of the committee of 
 the National Red-Cross Society for aiding the sick and wounded
 
 52 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 in war ; in that capacity he moved one of the resolutions on 
 the occasion of the public meeting by which the movement was 
 inaugurated ; and this was, we believe, almost the last occasion 
 on which he appeared in public. 
 
 The late Field-Marshal, besides his letter to the Duke of 
 Wellington already mentioned, was the author of a pamphlet of 
 great value on Army Reform, as also of a treatise on the 
 Blasting of Rocks, and of several important papers on military 
 affairs in the professional papers of the Royal Engineers. He 
 contributed, moreover, several interesting and valuable papers 
 to the magazines of the day upon subjects connected with the 
 army in general, and with his branch of the service in particular. 
 He enjoyed the most perfect health and strength until he had 
 long passed the age of fourscore years ; and when nearer ninety 
 than eighty he liked to put in an appearance among the visitors 
 at the Harrow Speeches or the 4th of June at Eton. He 
 married in 1821 Miss Charlotte Rose, the daughter of a Nairn- 
 shire gentleman, by whom he had a family of seven daughters 
 and a son. 
 
 The heir to the baronetcy was the late Field-Marshal's only 
 son, Captain Hugh T. Burgoyne, R.N., who was an Officer of 
 the Legion of Honour and one of the first recipients of the 
 Victoria Cross in 1857. He commanded the " Wrangler " gunboat 
 at the capture of Kinburn ; and was drowned in Her Majesty's 
 ship "Captain" in September 1870. His death, without issue, 
 causes the title of his gallant father to become extinct. 
 
 Sir John, indeed, never recovered the severe shock caused by 
 this terrible loss. He was taken seriously ill with the malady 
 called eczema, but in the beginning of August rallied wonder- 
 fully, to the surprise of his medical attendants, and was able to 
 leave his room for several days, remaining up for some nine or 
 ten hours daily. On Thursday last, however, he was taken 
 worse again, at his house in Pembridge Square, and from that 
 time he gradually weakened until 11.30 on Saturday morning, 
 when he passed away, without a sigh, in perfect peace. 
 
 LEADING ARTICLE, MONDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1871 
 
 We lament to-day a loss which will not only be deeply felt 
 as a public and private grief, but which deprives the nation of 
 one of those venerable names which reflect alike the honour and
 
 SIR JOHN BURGOYNE 53 
 
 the experience of the past upon a young and progressive present. 
 In Sir John Burgoyne we lose one of the most valued among 
 the few remaining links which unite us with the age of England's 
 greatest fame and most splendid achievements. To most men 
 now living the days of Nelson and Sir John Moore, of Sir 
 Arthur Wellesley, and of General Bonaparte are marked 
 at once with all the grandeur and with all the distance of 
 history. In recent discussions on the English army we have 
 spoken and thought of those days as the times of our ancestors, 
 and, in alternating fear and hope, have questioned whether we 
 have suffered the traditional decay of later generations. Critics 
 have spoken of the great Continental struggle as of a period too 
 far removed from us to afford any indication of the present 
 powers of the British people, and have treated its agencies as 
 not less effaced than its results. The wonderful material and 
 political changes effected since Waterloo deepened this depression, 
 and rendered it difficult to avoid the feeling that we were really 
 in a new world. But Sir John Burgoyne was a living witness 
 to the comparative nearness of that great past, and taught us 
 that there was in reality no gulf between its heroes and " such 
 mortals as we are now." Born seven years before the first 
 French Eevolution, he was a student at Woolwich before 
 Wellesley had won Assaye, before Nelson had fought the 
 battle of the Nile, before Napoleon had shaken Europe, and 
 while the very nature of the coming age was yet immature and 
 incredible. It is difficult to realise the immense and varied 
 experience which passes away with such a man. We have to 
 strain our reflections and quicken our imaginations in order 
 to appreciate the course of the vast drama of this century, and 
 to realise the true meaning of its movements. It requires an 
 immense effort to bring together under one view the gigantic 
 upheavings of its earlier scenes and the apparently new creations 
 of later years. But in Sir John Burgoyne's mind all these 
 events, from the moment when the fountains of the great deep 
 were broken up, were present as the experience of a single life, 
 and fell naturally into their places as parts of one familiar 
 history. Such a man is one of the most precious of national 
 possessions, even apart from his more personal worth. 
 
 Sir John Burgoyne, however, had been no idle spectator of 
 the memorable period of the French Revolution, and was not a 
 mere passive reflector of their scenes. He could claim to have
 
 54 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 borne a great part in them, and few soldiers in any age or 
 country have sustained such varied and prolonged activity. 
 There are not a few men, indeed, still living who date their 
 commissions from the time of the great war ; but Burgoyne 
 had been an actor in what now seems the legend of Sir John 
 Moore, and had been high in command in the corps of 
 Engineers throughout the memorable operations of the Penin- 
 sular War. He was at the two sieges of Badajos and com- 
 manded at San Sebastian, and was, in fact, the Duke's most 
 trusted engineer officer. He was disappointed in a share of 
 the glories of Waterloo ; but his connection with the history of 
 the army was soon resumed and never again interrupted. Not 
 a moment of his life was unemployed. * During the peace he 
 found honourable occupation in those civil services which 
 engineer officers have so abundantly rendered to the country ; 
 and at length, in 1845, he found the opportunity by which his 
 career was to be chiefly illustrated. He was appointed by the 
 Duke of Wellington Inspector-General of Fortifications, and 
 his energy instantly roused the nation from a dangerous 
 lethargy, and started us on a course which we have been 
 pursuing with increased activity ever since. He called the 
 attention of the Duke to our defenceless condition in the event 
 of any hostilities with a foreign country. The Duke's letter, 
 in reply, at the commencement of 1848, set in motion a 
 military revival, which from that time has been growing in 
 strength. At that time it was the commander-in-chiefs com- 
 plaint that we could not rely on more than 5000 men in the 
 gravest emergency ; we were able the other day, without the 
 least difficulty, to bring together in high efficiency a larger 
 British force than the Duke himself ever commanded. It is 
 impossible to say how much was due to the opportune initiative 
 then given by Sir John Burgoyne, or in how great a degree 
 we owe it to him that we have passed in such security through 
 the storms of the last quarter of a century. Within a very few 
 years we found ourselves at war with the vastest of European 
 empires, and had we not been awakened in time we might have 
 found ourselves unable at the critical moment to maintain our 
 policy and our interests. In that war Sir John Burgoyne was 
 accorded the confidence which was due to his ability and 
 experience. He inevitably bore in some measure the brunt of 
 the disappointment which our first blunders occasioned ; but it
 
 SIR JOHN BURGOYNE 55 
 
 is due to his memory now to acknowledge that he received at 
 the moment but scant justice. The inefficiency of the army at 
 the outbreak of the Crimean War must in great measure be 
 attributed to that very neglect from which Sir John Burgoyne 
 had endeavoured to arouse us ; while his engineering skill and 
 strategical judgment were, on the whole, justified by events. 
 His services were, however, recognised at the time by his 
 military superiors, and were soon duly acknowledged by the 
 nation at large. For the last few years he has enjoyed not 
 merely the veneration due to a distinguished soldier of the past, 
 but the respectful attention accorded to the wisdom which is 
 gained by great ability amid great deeds. No name was more 
 honoured or beloved in the ranks of the army, and he seemed 
 to be ending his days surrounded with all that age and fame 
 can desire, when his life was darkened by the terrible disaster 
 which robbed him of a gallant and only son. The commander 
 of the " Captain " promised to renew in the sister service the 
 renown of his father, when he was suddenly snatched from our 
 hopes. Sir John Burgoyne never recovered the shock, and 
 before he passed away on Saturday he had outlived not merely 
 a past generation, but the hopes of his own family. 
 
 It is much to say of a man who had reached so venerable an 
 age that we can ill afford to lose his counsels. But it was his 
 most honourable characteristic that he retained, almost to the 
 last, the energy which had distinguished him throughout his 
 career. As late as the recent session he entered with moderation 
 and acuteness into the controversy respecting the abolition of 
 purchase, and published some valuable observations in these 
 columns. His mind was too active to allow him ever to become 
 a mere upholder of old traditions, or to be distrustful of the 
 present and the future. He was capable of bringing the light 
 of his experience to illustrate the needs of the day, and of 
 guiding as well as of accompanying our progress. The moment 
 at which he has left us has seen his advice of twenty-five years 
 ago for the first time carried out in earnest. He leaves us with 
 substantial fortifications, designed in great measure by himself, 
 with an army equal in numbers to any possible demand, fairly 
 entered on a course of thorough training and organisation, and 
 with a fleet at all events superior to any that can be brought 
 against it. It may be said of him, in short, in a degree which 
 can be said of few men, that he has done his work. He did
 
 56 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 not live to continue the traditions of a past age in vain ; the 
 spirit of the Peninsular army has by his influence been preserved 
 to the present, and we hope we have the right to believe that 
 the army of 1871 will not be found unworthy of Sir John 
 Burgoyne.
 
 ME. CHARLES BABBAGE 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, MONDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1871 
 
 OUR obituary column on Saturday contained the name of one 
 of the most active and original of original thinkers, and whose 
 name has been known through the length and breadth of the 
 kingdom for nearly half a century as a practical mathematician 
 we mean Mr. Charles Babbage. He died at his residence in 
 Dorset Street, Marylebone, at the close of last week, at an age, 
 spite of organ-grinding persecutors, little short of eighty years. 
 
 Little is known of Mr. Babbage's parentage and early youth, 
 except that he was born on the 26th of December 1792, and 
 was educated privately. During the whole of his long life, even 
 when he had won for himself fame and reputation, he was 
 always extremely reticent on that subject, and, in reply to 
 questioners, he would uniformly express an opinion that the 
 only biography of living personages was to be found, or, at all 
 events, ought to be found, in the list of their published works. 
 As this list, in Mr. Babbage's own case, extended to upwards of 
 eighty productions, there ought to be no dearth of materials for 
 the biographer ; but these materials, after all, as a matter of 
 fact, are scanty in spite of an autobiographical work which he 
 gave to the world about seven years ago, entitled Passages in tlie 
 Life of a Philosopher. 
 
 At the usual age Mr. Babbage was entered at the University 
 of Cambridge, and his name appears in the list of those who 
 took their bachelor's degree from Peterhouse in the year 1814. 
 It does not, however, figure in the mathematical tripos, he 
 preferring to be captain of the poll to any honours but the 
 senior wranglership, of which he believed Herschel to be sure.
 
 58 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 While, however, at Cambridge, he was distinguished by his 
 efforts, in conjunction with the late Sir John Herschel and 
 Dean Peacock, to introduce into that university, and thereby 
 among the scientific men of the country in general, a knowledge 
 of the refined analytic methods of mathematical reasoning which 
 had so long prevailed over the Continent, whereas we in our 
 insular position, for the most part, were content with what has 
 been styled "the cramped domain of the ancient synthesis." 
 The youthful triumvirate, it must be owned, made a successful 
 inroad on the prejudices and predilections which had prevailed 
 up to that time. Keeping this object steadily in view, in the 
 first place they translated and edited the smaller treatise on the 
 calculus by Lacroix, with notes of their own, and an appendix 
 (mainly, if not wholly, from the pen of Sir John Herschel) upon 
 finite differences. They next published a solution of exercises 
 on all parts of the infinitesimal calculus, a volume which is still 
 of great service to the mathematical student, in spite of more 
 recent works with a similar aim. To this publication Mr. 
 Babbage contributed an independent essay on a subject at that 
 time quite new, the solution of functional equations. 
 
 By steps and stages, of which the records at our command 
 are scanty, these pursuits gradually led Mr. Babbage on to that 
 practical application of mathematical studies which may justly 
 be considered to be his crowning scientific effort we mean, of 
 course, the invention and partial construction of the famous 
 calculating engine or machine which the world has associated 
 with his name. As a writer in the Dictionary of Universal 
 Biography remarks : 
 
 " The possibility of constructing a piece of mechanism capable 
 of performing certain operations on numbers is by no means new ; 
 it was thought of by Pascal and geometers, and more recently 
 it has been reduced to practice by M. Thomas, of Colmar, in 
 France, and by the Messrs. Schiitz, of Sweden ; but never before 
 or since has any scheme so gigantic as that of Mr. Babbage 
 been anywhere imagined." 
 
 His achievements here were twofold ; he constructed what he 
 called a difference engine, and he planned and demonstrated the 
 practicability of an analytical engine also. It is difficult, perhaps, 
 to make the nature of such abstruse inventions at all clear to 
 the popular and untechnical reader, since Dr. Lardner, no 
 unskilful hand at mechanical description, filled no less than
 
 MR. CHARLES BABBAGE 59 
 
 twenty-five pages of the Edinburgh Review with but a partial 
 account of its action, confessing that there were many features 
 which it was hopeless to describe effectively without the aid of 
 a mass of diagrams. All that can here be said of the machine 
 is that the process of addition automatically performed is at the 
 root of it. In nearly all tables of numbers there will be a law 
 of order in the differences between each number and the next. 
 For instance, in a column of square numbers say, 9, 16, 25, 
 36, 49, 64, 81, etc. the successive differences will be 7, 9, 11, 
 13, 15, 17, etc. These are differences of the first order. If, 
 then, the process of differencing be repeated with those, we 
 arrive at a remarkably simple series of numbers to wit, 2, 2, 
 2, 2, etc. And into some such simple series most tables resolve 
 themselves when they are analysed into orders of differences ; 
 an element an atom, so to speak is arrived at, from which by 
 constant addition the numbers in the table may be formed. 
 It was the function of Mr. Babbage's machine to perform this 
 addition of differences by combinations of wheels acting upon 
 each other in an order determined by a preliminary adjustment. 
 This working by differences gave it the name of the " Difference 
 Engine." It has been repeatedly stated that the construction of 
 this machine was suddenly suspended, and that no reason was 
 ever assigned for its suspension. But the writer in the 
 Dictionary already quoted above thus solves the mystery in 
 which the matter has hitherto been shrouded : 
 
 " In spite of the favourable report of a commission appointed 
 to inquire into the matter, the Government were led by two 
 circumstances to hesitate about proceeding further. Firstly, 
 Mr. Clements, the engineer or machinist employed as his 
 collaborateur, suddenly withdrew all his skilled workmen from 
 the work, and, what was worse, removed all the valuable 
 tools which had been employed upon it." An act which 
 is justified as strictly legal by Mr. Weld in his History of 
 the Royal Society, though a plain common- sense man of the 
 world may reasonably doubt its equity, as the tools them- 
 selves had been made at the joint expense of Mr. Babbage and 
 the Treasury. " Secondly," says the same authority, " the 
 idea of the Analytical Engine one that absorbed and contained 
 as a small part of itself the Difference Engine arose before Mr. 
 Babbage." Of course he could not help the fact that "Alps 
 upon Alps should arise " in such matters, and that, when one
 
 60 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 great victory was achieved, another and still greater battle 
 remained to be faced and fought. But no sooner did Mr. 
 Babbage, like an honest man, communicate the fact to the 
 Government than the then Ministers, with Sir Robert Peel and 
 Mr. H. Goulburn at the head of the Treasury, took alarm, and, 
 scared at the prospect of untold expenses before them, resolved 
 to abandon the enterprise. Mr. Babbage, apart from all help 
 from the public purse, had spent upon his machine, as a pet 
 hobby, no small part of his private fortune a sum which has 
 been variously estimated between 6000 and 17,000. And 
 so, having resolved on not going further into the matter, they 
 offered Mr. Babbage, by way of compensation, that the Difference 
 Engine as constructed should remain as his own property an 
 offer which the inventor very naturally declined to accept. 
 The engine, together with the drawings of the machinery con- 
 structed and not constructed, and of many other contrivances 
 connected with it, extending, it is said, to some 400 or 500 
 drawings and plans, was presented in 1843 to King's College, 
 London, where we believe they are to be seen in the museum, 
 bearing their silent witness to great hopes dashed down to the 
 ground, or, at all events, to the indefinite postponement of their 
 realisation. 
 
 In speaking at this length of Mr. Babbage's celebrated 
 machine, we have a little anticipated the order of events, and 
 must return to our record of the leading facts of his life. In 
 the year 1828 he was nominated to the Lucasian Professorship 
 of Mathematics in his old university, occupying in that capacity 
 a chair which had once been held by no less a man than Sir 
 Isaac Newton. This chair he held during eleven years. It was 
 while holding this professorship, namely, at the general election 
 of November 1832 which followed on the passing of the first 
 Reform Bill that he was put forward as a candidate for the 
 representation of the newly-formed borough of Finsbury, stand- 
 ing in the advanced Liberal interest, as a supporter not only of 
 parliamentary, financial, and fiscal reform, but also of "the 
 ballot, triennial Parliaments, and the abolition of all sinecure 
 posts and offices." But the electors did not care to choose a 
 philosopher ; so he was unsuccessful, and we believe never again 
 wooed the suffrages of either that or any other constituency. 
 
 We have mentioned the fact that Mr. Babbage was the author 
 of published works to the extent of some eighty volumes. A
 
 MR. CHARLES BABBAGE 61 
 
 full list of these, however, would not interest or edify the 
 general reader, and those who wish to study their names can 
 see them recorded at full length in the new library catalogue of 
 the British Museum. Further information respecting them will 
 be found in the twelfth chapter of Mr. Weld's History of the 
 Royal Society, which we have already quoted. One or two of 
 them, however, we should specify. The best known of them all, 
 perhaps, is his Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, a work designed by 
 him at once to refute the opinion supposed to be implied and 
 encouraged in the first volume of that learned series, that an 
 ardent devotion to mathematical studies is unfavourable to a 
 real religious faith, and also to give specimens of the defensive 
 aid which the evidences of Christianity may receive from the 
 science of numbers, if studied in a proper spirit. 
 
 Another of his works, which has found a celebrity of its own, 
 is a volume called the Decline of Science, both the title and the 
 contents of which give us reason to believe that its author 
 looked somewhat despondingly on the scientific attainments of 
 the present age. The same opinion was still further worked 
 out by Mr. Babbage in a book on the first great exhibition, 
 which he published just twenty years ago. Another of his 
 works which deserves mention here is one on the Economy of 
 Manufactures, which was one result of a tour of inspection which 
 he made through England and upon the continent in search of 
 mechanical principles for the formation of logarithmic tables. 
 
 It is about forty years since Mr. Babbage produced his tables 
 of logarithms from 1 to 108,000, a work upon which he 
 bestowed a vast amount of labour, and in the publication of 
 which he paid great attention to the convenience of calculators, 
 whose eyes, he well knew, must dwell for many hours at a time 
 upon their pages. He was rewarded by the full apprecia- 
 tion of his work by the computers not only of his own, but of 
 foreign countries ; for in several of those countries editions from 
 the stereotyped plates of the tables were published, with trans- 
 lations of the preface. Notwithstanding the numerous logarith- 
 mic tables which have since appeared, those of Mr. Babbage are 
 still held in high esteem by all upon whom the laborious 
 calculations of astronomy and mathematical science devolve. 
 
 Mr. Babbage was one of the oldest members of the Koyal 
 Society at the time of his death ; he was also more than fifty 
 years ago one of the founders of the Astronomical Society, and
 
 62 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 he and Sir John Herschel were the last survivors of that body. 
 He was also an active and zealous member of many of the 
 leading learned societies of London and .Edinburgh, and in 
 former years at least an extensive contributor to their published 
 Transactions. His last important publication was the amusing 
 and only too characteristic autobiographical work to which we 
 have already referred as Passages in the Life of a Philosopher.
 
 SIR EODERICK MURCHISON 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, MONDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1871 
 
 SIR RODERICK IMPEY MURCHISON, Bart., K.C.B., LL.D., D.C.L., 
 F.R.S., etc., was the eldest son of a gentleman of ancient family, 
 and, indeed, of noble Highland extraction the late Mr. 
 Kenneth Murchison of Tarradale, in Ross-shire, North Britain. 
 His mother was Barbara, eldest daughter of the late Mr. 
 Kenneth Mackenzie of Fairburn, in the same county, and sister 
 of the late Sir Alexander Mackenzie, Bart., of Fairburn. He 
 was born at his father's home in the Highlands 19th February 
 1792, and received his early education as a boy at the grammar 
 school attached to the cathedral of Durham. Thence, in due 
 course, having made up his mind to follow the military profes- 
 sion, he was removed to the Royal Military College at Great 
 Marlow. The family traced their descent from one Murdo 
 M'Colman, who followed one of the Irish Fitzgeralds into 
 Scotland towards the close of the thirteenth century, and whose 
 descendants, living at Achtertyre in Lochalsh, held under the 
 Mackenzies, Lairds of Kintail (afterwards Earls of Seaforth), the 
 castellanship of the stronghold of Eilan Donnan, a post which 
 became hereditary in their clan. The last who held this post 
 was the great-great-grandfather of the baronet, whose eldest son, 
 John, was killed in 1715 at the battle of Sheriff Muir, while 
 serving as a major in the Stuart army. The uncle of this John 
 Murchison was the Colonel Donald Murchison so celebrated for 
 defending Kintail and Lochalsh for six years after the battle of 
 Sheriff Muir against the forces of George I. and George II., and 
 to whose memory, in testimony of the loyalty of his ancestors 
 to the ancient royal family, Sir Roderick Murchison not long 
 ago erected a monument in Lochalsh.
 
 64 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 Alexander of Achtertyre, the grandfather of the late Sir 
 Roderick, lived to upwards of ninety years of age, and his eldest 
 son, Kenneth, the father of the baronet, born in 1751 (the 
 family having got into difficulties owing to the part they took 
 in the rebellions), was educated with a view to medicine in 
 Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London, went to India in the Company's 
 service, and served under Warren Hastings. Being an excellent 
 classical scholar, he became the great friend of Sir Elijah Impey, 
 Sir Kichard Sullivan, Governor Hornby, the Chief of the Mac- 
 gregors, and many other notabilities, and having been resident 
 at Lucknow, he amassed what was then considered a good fortune, 
 and returned to Europe in 1786. 
 
 After travels in Italy and France, he purchased the estate 
 of Tarradale, in Ross-shire, from his maternal uncle, Mackenzie 
 of Lentron, and as he married Miss Barbara Mackenzie, the 
 eldest daughter of Roderick Mackenzie of Fairburn and Strath- 
 connon, in Ross-shire, the first issue of that marriage was called 
 Roderick, after his maternal grandfather, whose eldest son, 
 Alexander, afterwards well known in the British army, of 
 which he died the senior General, was a Baronet and Knight 
 Grand Cross of the Guelphic Order. 
 
 But to return to the immediate subject of our memoir. 
 Having pursued his studies for a few months at the University 
 of Edinburgh, he obtained a commission in the army in 1807, 
 and joining his regiment the following year, served in the 36th 
 Foot with the army in Spain and Portugal under Lord Welling- 
 ton, afterwards on the staff of his uncle, General Sir Alexander 
 Mackenzie, and lastly as captain in the 6th Dragoons. He took 
 an active part in several of the most important battles in the 
 war, and earned the reputation of a brave and able officer. He 
 carried the colours of his regiment at the battle of Vimiera, and 
 afterwards accompanied the army in its advance to Madrid and 
 its junction with the force under Sir John Moore, and shared in 
 the dangers and retreat at Corunna. At the end of the war his 
 active mind needed employment, and he began to turn his 
 attention in earnest to the pursuit of geological studies, which 
 had attracted his mind as a child. It is not a little singular 
 that the life-long devotion of Sir Roderick Murchison to practical 
 science should have arisen out of an accident if there is such 
 a thing as accident in the world. The late Sir Humphry Davy 
 meeting him as a guest at the house of the late Mr. Morritt, of
 
 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON 65 
 
 Rokeby, and seeing that he had a taste for physical science, 
 suggested to him that he should attend the lectures at the Royal 
 Institution, and follow them up by a series of practical experi- 
 ments on his own account. He resolved to follow this advice, 
 and, besides attending these lectures, he placed himself under 
 the private instruction of the late Mr. Richard Phillips, F.R.S. 
 In 1825 he was elected a member of the Geological Society, and 
 in the next year added to his name the honourable letters 
 "F.R.S." His first contribution to science was a paper read by 
 him before the Geological Society in 1825 on "The Geological 
 Formation of the North-West Extremity of Sussex and the 
 adjoining parts of Hampshire and Surrey," which was published 
 in the Society's Transactions (vol. ii.) Thus, after having 
 served his country as a soldier, to use the words of a writer in 
 the North British Review, 
 
 " Murchison brought into the field of science all the ardour 
 of his profession, and after twenty years of patient, unremitting, 
 and unnoticed toil, he placed himself in the highest ranks of 
 modern geologists. When the more recent formations of the 
 earth's surface had been well and patiently investigated, and it 
 had been placed, beyond a doubt that their age could be 
 determined by the fossils embedded in them, it became a pro- 
 blem of the deepest interest to extend the same law to the 
 deeper and older sedimentary deposits, to trace the later forma- 
 tions downward to the oldest, to describe the formations which 
 contain the earliest traces of organic life, and to distinguish the 
 strata which compose them from those which had been 
 deposited at an era when no living thing moved upon the face 
 of the waters." 
 
 As early as the year 1830 or 1831 after a long series of 
 inductive researches, which he always verified by constant 
 experiments Mr. Murchison applied himself to a systematic 
 examination of the older sedimentary deposits in England and 
 Wales ; the result was that, after five years of patient labour, 
 he brought forward and succeeded in establishing the acknow- 
 ledged truth of what geologists know as the " Silurian System." 
 But we are anticipating. 
 
 His next researches were made in Sutherlandshire, where he 
 
 examined the coal strata, and showed that it was a member of 
 
 the Oolitic series ; and in the following year he again visited 
 
 the Highlands in company with Professor Sedgwick, when they 
 
 VOL. I p
 
 66 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 succeeded (says a writer in the English Cyclopaedia) in showing 
 that the primary sandstone of M'Culloch was nothing more 
 than the true old red sandstone, now also called " Devonian." 
 The result of these researches was read before the Geological 
 Society, and published in its Transactions (vols. ii. and iil) In 
 1828 he resolved to extend his researches abroad, and to study 
 the extinct volcanoes of Auvergne and the geology of the north 
 of Italy. A portion of the results of his tour on this occasion, 
 in which he was accompanied by Mr. (now Sir Charles) Lyell, 
 was the publication of a memoir on the subject, partly read 
 before the Geological Society, and partly published in the New 
 Edinburgh Philosophical Journal. The subjects of these memoirs 
 were the excavation of valleys, as illustrated by the volcanic rocks 
 of Central France and the tertiary strata of Southern France. 
 
 Mr. Murchison, thus prepared by observations on various 
 portions of the crust of the earth, resolved to devote himself 
 again to the study of the geology of Great Britain itself. Under 
 the advice of the late Dean Buckland, he next explored the vast 
 and regular deposits of remote periods, which are most promin- 
 ently seen in Herefordshire and on the borders of Wales, and 
 which he afterwards called the Silurian system, after the 
 Silures, who inhabited that part of our island. These researches 
 he followed up by others in Pembrokeshire, to the west of 
 Milford Haven, and the results of his generalisations respecting 
 the antiquity of the Silurian system, as underlying the 
 " Devonian " system, were made public at the meeting of the 
 British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1831, 
 and subsequently published in the Transactions of the Geological 
 Society, and in a large work on the Palaeozoic Geology of 
 England and Wales, which was issued from the Press in 1859. 
 
 Further geological investigations in Devonshire and Cornwall 
 followed, in the course of which, aided by Professor Sedgwick, 
 Murchison definitely ascertained that the stratified rocks of 
 those two counties are the equivalents of the old red sandstone, 
 and gave them the name of " Devonian." The writer in the 
 English Cyclopaedia says : 
 
 "In 1835 and 1839 two journeys were performed by Mr. 
 Murchison and Professor Sedgwick for the purpose of verifying 
 certain propositions advanced by the former into the Rhenish 
 Provinces, including the Hartz district and Franconia on the one 
 aide, and Belgium and the Boullonnais on the other; in the
 
 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON 67 
 
 latter of these they were accompanied by M. de Verneuil, who 
 in 1840 was invited by Mr. Murchison to assist him in explor- 
 ing the geological structure of Russia, at that period very little 
 known. They visited the banks of the Eivers Volkoff and 
 Siass, and the shores of Lake Onega, then proceeded to Arch- 
 angel and the borders of the White Sea, and followed the River 
 Dwina into the government of Vologda. After traversing the 
 Volga, they returned by Moscow to St. Petersburg, examined 
 the Valdai Hills, Lake Ilmen, and the banks of the rivers which 
 they passed. Mr. Murchison returned to England in 1840 ; 
 but having, together with M. Verneuil, been invited by the late 
 Emperor Nicholas to superintend a geological survey of 
 Russia, the two geologists returned to St. Petersburg in the 
 spring of 1841, and, being joined by Count Keyserling and 
 Lieutenant Kotsharof, they proceeded to explore the Ural 
 Mountains, the southern provinces of the Empire, and the coal 
 districts between the Dnieper and the Don. In 1842 Mr. 
 Murchison travelled alone through several parts of Germany, 
 Poland, and the Carpathian Mountains, and, with the same 
 object of rendering his great work on the Geology of Eastern 
 Europe as perfect as possible, he explored in the summer of 
 1844 the Palaeozoic formations of Sweden and Norway. After 
 his return to England he completed, in 1845, in conjunction 
 with M. Verneuil and Count von Keyserling, his magnificent 
 work on the Geology of Russia and the Ural Mountains. This 
 consists of two volumes in quarto : the first relating specifi- 
 cally to the geological part of the subject, consisting of above 
 700 pages ; the second, in the French language, relating to the 
 ' Paleontologie,' occupying more than 600 pages ; the whole 
 copiously illustrated by geological maps and sections, and by 
 accurate figures of organic remains. In 1846, not long after 
 the publication of this work, Mr. Murchison was knighted by 
 Her Majesty, the Emperor Nicholas having previously con- 
 ferred upon him several Russian orders, including that of St. 
 Stanislaus." 
 
 His work on the geology of Russia was afterwards translated 
 into Russian, and published in 1849. 
 
 In the same year Sir Roderick received the Copley Medal 
 from the Royal Society in recognition of his having established 
 the Silurian system in geology. About this time he undertook 
 another (his sixth) visit to the Alps, and on his return published
 
 68 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 a memoir of some 300 pages in the Quarterly Journal of the 
 Geological Society upon " The Geological Structure of the Alps, 
 Apennines, and Carpathian Mountains." In this memoir he 
 establishes the fact of a graduated transition from Secondary to 
 Tertiary rocks, and "clearly separates the great Nummulite 
 formation from the cretaceous deposits with which it has been 
 confounded." This work has been translated and published in 
 Italian. 
 
 The next stage in Sir Roderick's scientific researches is so 
 purely technical that it must be told in the words of the Cyclo- 
 padia already quoted above : 
 
 "The uppermost series of the Palaeozoic rocks, reposing 
 immediately upon the carboniferous system, consists of those 
 formerly known in England as the lower new red sandstone, and 
 the magnesian limestone and marl-slate. Sir R. Murchison 
 having satisfied himself that they constituted one natural group 
 only, which from its organic contents must be entirely separated 
 from all formations above, proposed in 1841 that the group 
 should receive the name of the ' Permian system,' from its 
 extensive development in the ancient kingdom of Permia, in 
 Russia, and this denomination has been universally adopted by 
 geologists. In a memoir produced in 1855, in conjunction with 
 Professor Morris, on the German Palaeozoic rocks, he has 
 returned to the subject of the Permian system, and shows that 
 there is no break between it and the lowest system of the 
 mesozoic strata the triassic which succeeds it in the ascending 
 series ; a fact which harmonises, it has been remarked, with an 
 hypothesis in palaeontology enunciated by the late Professor 
 Forbes that has not yet received the attention it merits." 
 
 In 1854 Sir Roderick published his best known work, 
 Siluria ; or the History of the Oldest Known Rocks containing 
 Organic Remains, with a Brief Sketch of the Distribution of Gold 
 over the Earth. This volume includes a general view of the 
 structure of the earth's crust, and more particularly of the more 
 ancient series of strata, of which the Silurian system is the 
 lowest ; and a summary of the author's general views of the 
 geological science, including the points on which, as is well 
 known, he differed from his friend, Sir Charles Lyell, and from 
 Professor Sedgwick. These may be seen briefly stated in an 
 article in the North British Review, from which we make the 
 following extract :
 
 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON 69 
 
 " At the time when the term ' Silurian ' was applied, it was 
 believed that the great slaty masses of North Wales, which had 
 been under the survey of Professor Sedgwick, but whose fossils 
 had not been made known, were inferior in position to the 
 formations which had been classed and whose fossils had been 
 identified as Silurian. This belief continued to be in force 
 when the large work entitled the Silurian System was published 
 (1839) ; the supposed lower rocks having been termed Cambrian 
 in 1836 by their explorer, Professor Sedgwick, it being then 
 presumed that they would prove to contain a distinct group of 
 organic remains. When the masses, however, to which the 
 name ' Cambrian ' had been given were examined in detail by 
 the numerous geologists of the Government Survey, and were 
 thus for the first time placed in correlation with the previously 
 established Silurian strata, it was found that the great and 
 apparently chaotic pile of Snowdon, though full of porphyry 
 and other igneous rocks, was nothing more than the absolute 
 physical equivalent of the Llandeilo formation of the Lower 
 Silurian, and hence these gentlemen, with the entire approval of 
 (the late) Sir H. T. de la Beche . . . restricted the term 
 ' Cambrian ' to the underlying grauwacke without fossils. 
 Silurian fossils being alone found in what were called Cambrian 
 rocks, the opinion expressed by Sir R. Murchison after his first 
 return from Russia ' that the so-called Cambrian rocks which 
 contain fossils are merely geographical extensions (under those 
 different mineral characters so admirably described by Professor 
 Sedgwick) of the Lower Silurian deposits of the typical region 
 ... in Shropshire and the adjacent counties' must be regarded 
 to be fully verified. But it has been truly remarked that all 
 territorial designations in geology can only be provisional, and 
 that the dawn of an era in the science is already perceptible 
 when the terms ' Silurian ' and ' Cambrian ' must both be merged 
 in some purely philosophical appellation." 
 
 There is one other subject, however, in connection with 
 which the name of Sir Roderick Murchison will long be 
 remembered in the world of science and of commerce, and that 
 is the discovery of the gold fields of Australia. When an 
 ancient philosopher was reproached with the fact that all his 
 science had done him no pecuniary good, he replied, as we learn 
 from Aristotle's Politics, " that money-making was not that to 
 which men of science directed their energies." But Sir
 
 70 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 Roderick could boast that his own geological researches did add 
 to the wealth, if not of himself, at all events of the nation, and 
 especially of our colonial population. The first actual discovery 
 of tangible gold in Australia may possibly have been made by 
 Count Strzelecki, as asserted in the English Cyclopaedia, or by 
 Mr. Hargreaves, or possibly by shepherds before either the one 
 or the other name was noised abroad ; but for Sir Roderick 
 Murchison must be claimed the credit of having inferred the 
 presence of gold in the Australian mountain ranges, from the 
 analogy which their formation bore to the Ural Mountains, with 
 the physical outlines of which he had made himself familiar, 
 quite apart from any knowledge of the fact that gold had been 
 picked up on the Australian continent ; and not only for this 
 discovery ought his name to be remembered, but also for having 
 endeavoured though, it must be owned, with very little success 
 at the time to awaken the attention of the Home Government 
 to the great importance of the subject to the interests of our 
 colonies in the Southern hemisphere. 
 
 Sir Roderick, having acted for five years as Secretary of the 
 Geological Society, became President of that body in 1831-32, 
 and again in 1842-43. He was one of the few scientific men 
 who responded at once to the call of Sir David Brewster in 1830 
 to join in establishing the British Association for the Advance- 
 ment of Science, of which for several years he acted as General 
 Secretary, and over whose meeting at Southampton in 1846 he 
 presided. He has from year to year taken the most active part 
 in the business of the geographical section at its annual 
 meetings, and has communicated very many important papers 
 on these occasions. In 1844 he was elected President of the 
 Royal Geographical Society, was re-elected in the following year, 
 and again in 1852 and in 1856. He has held the presidential 
 chair of that society down almost to the present time, having 
 been succeeded only a few months ago by Sir Henry Rawlinson; 
 and his zeal and energy in supporting the cause of his friend 
 and fellow-countryman, Dr. Livingstone, and the persistent 
 faith in his safety which he has always felt and expressed when 
 the most sanguine have been doubtful and downhearted, will 
 long be remembered. Indeed, by his letters in our columns, 
 and in those of our contemporaries, upon the exploration of 
 Central Africa, he had almost come to be regarded by the public 
 as a sort of standing counsel on the subject of Dr. Livingstone,
 
 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON 71 
 
 and also upon the value of the researches of Speke, Grant, and 
 Baker in investigating the sources of the Nile. His energy in 
 advocating the search after Sir John Franklin, and his successful 
 appeal for the erection of a monument to that enterprising 
 explorer, Lieutenant Bellot, of the French Navy, are among the 
 proofs of his entire and hearty self-devotion to such good 
 causes. 
 
 The memoirs and other contributions of Sir Roderick 
 Murchison to science, which have been published in the 
 Transactions of the Geological and other learned Societies, are 
 said to exceed a hundred in number. 
 
 The later years of Sir Roderick Murchison's life have been 
 devoted, like the earlier, to labour and hard work, and the 
 recent Blue-book upon Coal contains the results of much 
 thoughtful study and research by him. In 1855 he succeeded 
 the late Sir Henry de la Beche as Director of the Museum 
 of Practical Geology, in Jermyn Street, which has owed its 
 efficiency for the last fifteen years very largely to his energy and 
 constant attention. It is almost needless to add that he received 
 recognition of his discoveries in science from the Universities of 
 Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin, by the bestowal on him of their 
 honorary degree ; and that he was a member of nearly all the 
 learned societies upon the Continent, including the Imperial 
 Institute of France. He was also one of the Trustees of the 
 British Museum, and Director-General of the Geological Survey 
 of the United Kingdom. 
 
 In 1863 Sir Roderick Murchison was nominated a Knight 
 Commander of the Order of the Bath (Civil Division), and in 
 the following year he received the prize, named after Baron 
 Cuvier, from the French Institute, and at home the Wollaston 
 medals, in recognition of his contributions to geology as an 
 inductive science. To this it should be added that in 1859 he 
 was rewarded by the Royal Society of Scotland with the first 
 Brisbane gold medal for his scientific classification of the 
 Highland rocks, and for the establishment of the remarkable 
 fact that the cardinal gneiss of the north-west coasts is the oldest 
 rock in the strata of the British Isles. He was created a baronet 
 in January 1866.
 
 72 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 LEADING ARTICLE, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1871 
 
 Yesterday we had to discharge the melancholy duty of 
 summing up the achievements of two distinguished Englishmen 
 taken from us almost simultaneously. It would be hard to 
 find an instance of a closer parallel, combined with stronger 
 contrasts, than the lives of Murchison and Eabbage present. 
 These men were born almost at the same time, and, after a 
 career in each case of high renown, they died within four days 
 of each other. Both were devoted to science, both made 
 memorable discoveries, both carried their work up to the latest 
 period of life, and both attained eminence and fame. On the 
 other hand, one was successful, popular, and fortunate almost 
 beyond example, while to the other even his scientific triumphs 
 seemed to become occasions of disappointment. Something of 
 this contrast may have been due to the nature of their respective 
 studies, but more, perhaps, to their respective characters, and to 
 the infallible action of disposition or position in social life. In 
 the end Sir Roderick Murchison departed full of honours as of 
 years, and numbering his friends by hundreds in every capital 
 of Europe, while his equally able and laborious contemporary 
 died in comparative isolation and obscurity. 
 
 In truth, even if Mr. Babbage's temper had been less 
 captious, his studies were not of a kind to be easily popularised. 
 Geology, as we all know, is the favourite science for all public 
 discourses from an evening lecture to a congressional address. 
 It combines easily with excursions, picnics, and holidays. Its 
 doctrines up to a certain point are readily impressed on the mind 
 and recognised as true. The history of our earth is essentially 
 an attractive history, and it is not absolutely necessary to study 
 it very deeply. The Silurian, Devonian, and Permian systems, 
 by the discovery or establishment of which Sir Roderick 
 Murchison's reputation was made, are the studies of a life for 
 the learned, but everybody can understand and appreciate the 
 demonstrations and conclusions out of which the discoveries 
 gradually arise. It was not so with the pursuits of Mr. 
 Babbage. In one of the most mysterious chapters of Zanoni, 
 Lord Lytton begins to introduce the reader to the secret pro- 
 perties of numbers as affecting the arts of magic, but he suddenly 
 breaks off into asterisks and leaves the tantalised reader with
 
 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON 73 
 
 the fragment of a tale. The science of numbers, into whatever 
 fields it may be carried, was the science to which Mr. Babbage 
 devoted his days ; but, wonderful as the results of his labours 
 may have been, they could never, from the very nature of 
 the case, be made popular. That they ever brought hii| 
 indeed, the distinction which was certainly his right was o\ 
 mainly to the strange shape which one of his inventioi 
 accidentally assumed. Arithmetical calculations must ne 
 sarily be uninteresting to the multitude, but when people wergj) 
 told that a machine had been invented for working out thesfft 
 calculations by means of wheels or watchwork, the idea was ^ 
 once comprehensible and marvellous. In reality " Babbage's< 
 Machine " scarcely admits of simple or popular description, > 
 but the mere fact that inanimate metal could be made to 1 C/5 
 perform the subtle work of man's brain .came home to the^ 
 public mind as a thing to be remembered for ever. There was; ^" 
 truth, too, in the story. Though Mr. Babbage's instrument' S^ 
 was repudiated by the Treasury, the idea of such a machine in 
 a more manageable form has since been turned to account and 
 utilised in Government offices. Mr. Babbage's merit consisted 
 in discovering that certain properties of numbers admitted of 
 calculation or treatment by a purely mechanical process, and 
 then in devising the machinery required. Except, however, for 
 the miraculous aspect of this particular exploit, the name of 
 Babbage would perhaps be little known beyond scientific circles. 
 Logarithms and insurance tables are highly useful, but not very 
 agreeable reading, and it is hardly surprising that a man 
 absorbed in such compilations should have become somewhat 
 irritable under not wholly imaginary persecutions. 
 
 It must be taken, we suppose, as a characteristic of our 
 national institutions that both Babbage and Murchison failed 
 to interest the Government of the day in the discoveries they 
 announced. There is really no telling what might have been 
 the fruits of the calculating machine, as developed and perfected 
 under the hands of its own inventor, but Sir Robert Peel 
 certainly no timorous or unpatriotic Minister thought the 
 resources of the British Empire unequal to the completion of 
 this extraordinary engine, and so the work was stayed. Just 
 so did Sir Roderick Murchison in vain predict the gold 
 discoveries of Australia, and urge the importance of the question 
 on Ministerial minds. He argued, from analogies of formation
 
 74 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 and character, that the Australian mountain ranges must, like 
 the Ural Mountains, contain mines of gold ; but even gold itself, 
 it seems, may be bought too dear if purchased at the expense 
 of State action. Sir Roderick, however, lived to see all his 
 speculations realised without anybody's aid, and perhaps without 
 anybody's loss ; but Mr. Babbage was mortified by finding the 
 fruits of his labours sacrificed to what he naturally considered a 
 mean spirit of economy. He had expended upon his machine 
 no inconsiderable portion of his own patrimony, but the Govern- 
 ment, notwithstanding, or, perhaps, in consequence of the 
 magnitude of the prospect, declined to become responsible for the 
 future charge, and so the drawings of this marvellous invention 
 now repose in the obscurity of a metropolitan museum to testify 
 to after ages the ways and the wisdom of our own time. 
 
 Perhaps something of the singular difference in the fortunes 
 of these two men may be traced to the contrasts of their early 
 life and work. Mr. Babbage, as soon as he became anything, 
 became a mathematician, and, with the exception of a hasty dash 
 into politics, never became anything else. Sir Roderick 
 Murchison was once a soldier, coming of a good soldierly stock, 
 and never thought of geology till he was full thirty years old. 
 While young Babbage was an undergraduate at Cambridge, 
 absorbed in what were then the only studies of the place, and 
 occupied only with the idea of substituting analysis for synthesis 
 in mathematical reasoning, young Murchison was fighting in 
 the Peninsula under Sir John Moore and Lord Wellington, 
 learning the lessons taught by a great war and acquiring the 
 manifold experience of a military life. Such a training gave 
 him a wonderful advantage, if not in science, at any rate in 
 society. He had studied men as well as books, and had seen 
 the countries and customs of strange people while the Cambridge 
 mathematician was intent only on the symbols of algebra. In 
 the one case an experienced and well-connected soldier became, 
 almost by accident, a popular geologist ; in the other, a student 
 of numbers pursued his researches in arithmetic with a single- 
 minded and never-swerving application to the one subject before 
 him. When Babbage was foiled in his desire to benefit his age, 
 he made of the disappointment a personal as well as a public 
 grievance ; but the neglect of the great prediction of gold in 
 Australia never seems to have in the least embittered the mind 
 of Murchison. Above all, Murchison had such a genial power
 
 SIR RODERICK MURCHISON 75 
 
 of sympathy that the triumphs of others became his own. No 
 better evidence can be needed of his generous and expansive 
 intellect than the manner in which he identified himself with 
 the fortunes of his friend Livingstone, and clung so tenaciously 
 to his faith in the traveller's return. That, indeed, represents 
 the last phase of his life, and with that subject on his mind he 
 rested from his labours. His contemporary rests also, not, 
 perhaps, with less real right to renown, but after a career 
 strangely inferior in what the world regards as fortune or 
 success.
 
 LORD MAYO 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1872 
 
 YESTERDAY afternoon the terrible news was flashed to London 
 that the Right Hon. Richard Southwell Bourke, Earl of Mayo, 
 Her Majesty's Viceroy in India, had been assassinated last 
 Thursday by a Mahommedan convict at Port Blair, in the 
 Andaman Islands. 
 
 The murdered earl, who was the eldest of the seven sons of 
 Robert, fifth Lord Mayo (for some years one of the Representative 
 Peers for Ireland), was born in the city of Dublin on the 21st 
 of February 1822, so that he was within a few days of com- 
 pleting the fiftieth year of his age. His mother was Anne 
 Charlotte, only child of the late Hon. John Jocelyn, and 
 granddaughter of Robert, first Earl of Roden. He was educated 
 at Trinity College, Dublin, where he took his degree as Bachelor 
 and Master of Arts in the regular course, and was created a 
 Doctor of Laws in 1852 ; he was for a short time a Gentleman 
 of the Bedchamber to the late Lord Heytesbury while that 
 nobleman held the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland, and entered 
 Parliament at the general election of 1847 in the Conservative 
 interest as one of the members for the county of Kildare, in 
 which a large portion of the estates of the Bourkes is situated. 
 He did not, however, again contest that county in 1852, but 
 was content to sit during the next Parliament as member for 
 the borough of Coleraine. He continued to represent Coleraine 
 down to the general election of 1857, when he transferred his 
 services to the electors of Cockermouth, in which borough the 
 interest of the Wyndhams, with whom he was connected by 
 marriage, was paramount Here he enjoyed a secure seat,
 
 LORD MAYO 77 
 
 representing that constituency down to the year 1868, when he 
 accepted the Governor -Generalship of India. He was Chief 
 Secretary for Ireland under Lord Derby's first Administration 
 from March to December 1852, again under his second Ad- 
 ministration in 1858, and for a third time in 1866. 
 
 Lord Mayo's accession to the family honours in the month 
 of August 1867 did not remove him from the House of 
 Commons, as he was not a Peer of England or of the United 
 Kingdom. 
 
 Lord Mayo was a popular and influential member of the 
 Lower House, and he had shown considerable capacity for 
 public business in his administration of Irish affairs ; but his 
 nomination by Mr. Disraeli to the important post of Viceroy of 
 India certainly came as a surprise upon the world. It is only 
 fair to say that Lord Mayo amply justified his nomination, and 
 that he proved himself an able as well as a popular Governor- 
 General. It fell to his lot to encourage the development of the 
 railway and telegraph systems, and to preside at the opening of 
 those very lines to which Lord Dalhousie looked forward so 
 earnestly and so confidently as the material guarantees of our 
 dominion in Asia ; and in the encouragement of education and 
 of commercial and mining enterprise he could not well be 
 surpassed. He had not been many months in India when our 
 own correspondent at Calcutta wrote of him in the following 
 terms : 
 
 " Lord Mayo promises to be as popular in India as his 
 friends at home expected. Since he landed at Bombay, and 
 especially in his replies to addresses from the public bodies of 
 Calcutta since he became Governor-General, he has shown great 
 tact and bonhomie not unaccompanied by dignity and a due 
 sense of responsibility. Socially his popularity is likely to be 
 always great, whatever his administrative ability may prove to 
 be. He has restored the old regime which prevailed in 
 Government House in Lord Dalhousie's days. Lord Canning, 
 as you are aware, made no personal friends, and had few 
 attached admirers till the last year of his life. Even had he 
 not been essentially cold, almost to repulsiveness, in his dis- 
 position, the crisis with which he was called to deal would have 
 sufficed to isolate him. All the love and admiration of the 
 public were accordingly directed to his wife, who was looked on 
 as the very noblest English lady who ever adorned Anglo-
 
 78 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 Indian life. Lord Elgin talked platitudes on principle, and 
 rather outraged experienced officials by declining to discuss any 
 Indian question with them. Sir John Lawrence was, even in 
 Government House, the man of the people ; his triumphs were 
 of a very different order from those of society. The very 
 opposite of Lord Elgin in this respect, it was his habit to 
 neglect all for the one man in the room with whom a talk 
 would be most profitable. In utter ignorance of the fact, too, 
 his social arrangements for two or three years were not very 
 fortunate, and his popularity suffered. All this has been 
 changed. The style of the ' Castle ' reigns in Government 
 House, and many are delighted with the change. It will be 
 Lord Mayo's own fault if he does not achieve at least an 
 average reputation as Governor-General of India." 
 
 He married, in October 1848, the Hon. Blanche Julia 
 Wyndham, fourth daughter of George, first Lord Leconfield, by 
 whom he has left a family of two daughters and four sons, all 
 under age. He is succeeded in his titles and estates by his 
 eldest son, Dermot Robert Wyndham, Lord Naas, a cornet in 
 the 10th Hussars, who was born in July 1851, and was educated 
 at Eton. 
 
 The Bourkes of County Kildare, whom Lord Mayo repre- 
 sented, have been connected by the ties of family and property 
 with that county ever since the "troubles "of 1641, when their 
 ancestor, John Bourke, a son of Bourke of Monycrower, County 
 Mayo, and a descendant of the Bourkes of Ballinrobe, and 
 having held a captaincy of Horse under Lord Ormonde, settled 
 at Kill, County Kildare. His son became "of Palinerston," 
 near Naas, which is still the seat of the family ; and his grand- 
 son, the Right Hon. John Bourke, of Kill and Monycrower, was 
 raised to the Irish Peerage as a Baron, and subsequently ad- 
 vanced to the Viscountcy and Earldom. The third Lord Mayo 
 became in his day Archbishop of Tuam, and his son, the grand- 
 father of the late Governor-General, was Bishop of Waterford 
 and Lismore down to his decease in November 1832. 
 
 LEADING ARTICLE, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1872. 
 
 A great calamity has befallen the State. Lord Mayo, 
 Governor-General of India, was assassinated on the evening of 
 the 3th inst., at Port Blair, in the Andaman Islands. The
 
 LORD MAYO 79 
 
 murderer is stated to be an Afghan convict named Shere Ali, 
 who had been convicted of murder by the Commissioner of 
 Peshawur in 1867, and sentenced to transportation for life. 
 He rushed upon the Governor-General in the dark, as he was 
 about to enter a boat, and stabbed him twice ; the wounds 
 proved fatal in a few hours. Lord Mayo has fallen a victim to 
 his own energy and zeal for the public service. After having 
 made himself acquainted with the most important districts of 
 India, in the course of his three years' rule, and impressed both 
 European and native with the conviction that he was deter- 
 mined to see and able to judge for himself, Lord Mayo pro- 
 posed to visit British Burmah, and its flourishing capital, 
 Rangoon. In the Bay of Bengal lie the Andaman Islands, 
 which have for some years been used as penal settlements for 
 Indian malefactors. It may be that the visit of Lord Mayo 
 was connected with the complaints of a too lax discipline which 
 had reached the Government from these settlements. The 
 convicts were said to have far too much liberty and far too 
 little work ; they were constantly unruly, and were allowed to 
 indulge in strong drink. Lord Mayo, according to the telegram, 
 had inspected the several stations in the Settlement, and was 
 returning to his ship, when the assassin attacked him. It 
 appears to be the custom when a convict has served a certain 
 time to release him from hard labour, to give him partial 
 freedom, and allow him to work at a trade. If the murderer 
 had been thus released it would account for his being at large 
 on the beach, and also for his possession of a deadly weapon. 
 But, as he only came to the Settlement in 1869, and was a con- 
 victed murderer, it is scarcely credible that his punishment had 
 been so soon remitted. 
 
 It would be useless to dissemble the painful impression this 
 act is likely to produce in India and at home. People will at 
 once ask whether it is the offspring of vengeance or of fanaticism. 
 Coming close upon the murder of Mr. Justice Norman, it may 
 arouse a suspicion that, though no actual conspiracy exists 
 among the Mussulmans of India, there is a freemasonry of 
 hatred which may at any time have dangerous consequences. 
 On such a subject it is impossible to speak with any confidence, 
 but it will occur to all of us, after the first shock of the 
 intelligence is over, that there is nothing in this crime which 
 need cause political apprehension. The murderer is a Mussul-
 
 80 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 man, and comes of one of the most fanatical races with which 
 we have to deal. But he is also a convict, a man already con- 
 demned for shedding blood, and consequently one whose par- 
 ticular and exceptional criminality may be presumed. It is 
 evident that he can have had nothing to do with any late 
 development of fanaticism, for he was convicted in 1867, and 
 has been on the islands since 1869. His crime was probably 
 the vengeance of a ferocious ruffian who finds that the chief of 
 the Government which transported him and made him work is 
 for a moment in his power, and who can listen to nothing but 
 the frenzy within him. We fear it will be necessary to take 
 precautions against assassins for some time to come, for one 
 crime of this sort produces another ; but that the present 
 murder has any political significance, or indicates any common 
 movement of Mussulman fanaticism, we see no reason to 
 believe. 
 
 The tribute paid to Lord Mayo's merits by the Duke of 
 Argyll and Mr. Gladstone in their respective Houses last 
 evening will receive a warm assent from every one who has 
 followed his course in India. He has succeeded far beyond 
 the expectations entertained of him even by his own friends. 
 As a hearty, genial Parliamentary politician, with readiness, 
 observation, and a taste for hard work, he served as Chief 
 Secretary for Ireland in each of the three recent Conservative 
 Governments. In 1867, as Lord Naas succeeded his father as 
 Earl of Mayo but as an Irish Peer, he still retained his seat in 
 the House of Commons for the English borough of Cocker- 
 mouth. In 1868 he was appointed Governor-General of India, 
 amid a good deal of hostile criticism. Mr. Gladstone succeeded 
 almost immediately, but wisely confirmed the appointment, and 
 from that time to his untimely death the India office, under the 
 Duke of Argyll, has worked in perfect harmony with Lord 
 Mayo. To this the Duke bore witness yesterday, " I never had 
 the honour of Lord Mayo's acquaintance," he says, " but we 
 came into office at almost the same time, and I am happy to 
 say that from that time our connections have been most friendly, 
 and I may say most cordiaL I think I may go further, and 
 say that there has not been one very serious difference of 
 opinion between us on any question connected with the govern- 
 ment of India." The Duke of Argyll proceeded to say that, 
 in the opinion of Her Majesty's present Ministers, the conduct
 
 LORD MAYO 81 
 
 of Lord Mayo in his high office amply justified the choice of 
 their predecessors. These are not words of conventional eulogy. 
 The Duke of Argyll and his council, and all interested in 
 Indian affairs, know that Lord Mayo has proved an excellent 
 viceroy. His more valuable qualities have been developed by 
 the exigencies of his great office to a higher degree than in the 
 comparative obscurity of Parliamentary life. He set to work 
 with extraordinary vigour to make himself master of every 
 administrative detail, and to leave his mark on India. Conquest 
 was over ; the turn of material improvement and social progress 
 had come. Lord Mayo saw this and acted upon it. In every 
 department of Government his independence of thought, and 
 his habit of examining everything for himself have begun to 
 produce fruits. He has turned the attention of his Government 
 to the encouragement of agriculture ; he has worked at the 
 development of a railway system which should be specially 
 fitted for the country. His dealings with the natives, high and 
 low, have been unexceptionable. He has received the princes 
 in becoming state, and with the dignified courtesy which makes 
 so deep an impression on the Asiatic. He had lately held some 
 of the most imposing Durbars that had ever been seen in India. 
 In these ceremonies he was as successful as the most distin- 
 guished governors of the old school a "Wellesley or a Hastings. 
 At the same time, he fully recognised the rights of the popula- 
 tion in the native states to a beneficial exercise of the tutelage 
 we have assumed over them. In India mere non-interference 
 will not suffice. There, at least, it is not true that the best 
 Government is that which governs least. The initiative must 
 come from above, and the Government is the real source of all 
 reforma There has never been a period more fertile than the 
 present in schemes of social improvement, and in these enter- 
 prises Lord Mayo has taken not only formally, but actively the 
 leading part. 
 
 And now he is cut off on the shores of a convict settlement 
 by the hand of an obscure criminal ! The Governor-General 
 had just returned from the North-West Provinces, where he had 
 been encircled with all that the world can produce of pomp and 
 display ; he had entertained a neighbouring potentate at Calcutta 
 with viceregal splendour, and had embarked for the Andamans, 
 a few years since the haunt of pirates, now the dens of ruffians 
 still more ignoble and brutal. But, at least, he died in the 
 VOL. i o
 
 82 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 service of his country. He is the first in the glorious list of 
 Indian viceroys who has perished by direct violence ; but, to say 
 the truth, India has been a fatal field of late for statesmen. 
 The Marquis of Dalhousie, after ruling for nearly eight years 
 with a vigour which will long be the subject of controversy, 
 returned home in shattered health, and soon passed away. 
 Lord Canning came home only to die. Lord Elgin died in a 
 little village of Cashmere. Lord Ellenborough, who ruled 
 thirty years ago, died the other day. Lord Lawrence, the 
 immediate predecessor of Lord Mayo, now alone remains of the 
 Indian viceroys of our time.
 
 JOSEPH MAZZINI 
 
 WE have to announce to-day the death of a man who in his 
 time has played a most singular part upon the theatre of European 
 politics ; one whose name has for years been regarded as a 
 symbol of revolution, or rather of republicanism ; one in whose 
 personal character there were many fine and noble qualities ; 
 but still a man who was feared even more widely than he was 
 loved, and one whose departure from the scene of action, to say 
 the least, will be no unwelcome news to several crowned and 
 discrowned members of the family of European sovereigns. He 
 was the man who ever " troubled Israel " by his ceaseless efforts 
 in the cause of republicanism, and now at length he is at rest 
 He died on Sunday at Pisa. 
 
 ' Joseph or, to give him his Italian name, Giuseppe Mazzini 
 was born at Genoa, -where his father was a physician of note and 
 of good private means. The year of his birth is variously given 
 as 1806, 1808, and 1809. ^Be this as it may, he was an only 
 son, and his early education was conducted with great care and 
 pains by his parents, who sent him to one of the public schools, 
 and afterwards to the university of his native city. In youth 
 he was noted for the warmth of his friendships, the strength 
 and determination of his will, and the susceptibility of his 
 feelings. From childhood, it is said, sentiments of social equality 
 were fostered in him by his parents. As a youth he was intended 
 for the legal profession ; but the strong Liberal opinions he had 
 imbibed as a child, and his conviction that the oppressed 
 condition of his country called for men of action and public 
 spirit, and that a noble course lay open before any one who would
 
 84 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 give himself up, heart and soul, to the work of reforming her, 
 led him to devote himself to a political career. In his ardent 
 aspirations for the national unity of Italy, it seemed to him that her 
 deliverance from foreign tyranny was to be achieved only by a 
 return to the republican glories of ancient times. His patriotic 
 enthusiasm in this direction was fostered by his early studies, 
 which developed in him a passionate idea of the glories of a 
 republic, and by the success which he had achieved in literature 
 while still little more than a youth. In 1827 appeared his 
 maiden essay, " Dell' Amor Patrio di Dante," which was 
 published in a Liberal journal, the Subalpino. This led him 
 to contribute other historical, philosophical, and critical papers 
 to the Antologia of Florence and the Indicatore Genovese. But 
 the authorities, perceiving that the periodical literature of Italy 
 was becoming far too strongly tainted with advanced Liberal 
 opinions, suppressed these journals, and hoped, no doubt, thereby 
 to have silenced their writers also. 
 
 This result, however, by no means followed ; they were 
 gagged for the moment, but their voice was left to find an 
 utterance elsewhere. - About the year 1830 Mazzini was 
 affiliated to the secret society of the Carbonari, and this affilia- 
 tion was the introductory step to his subsequent political life;- 
 he was active, able, bold, and impetuous, and he soon rose into 
 a position which gave him great influence in the councils of 
 that body. At one time it appeared as if his career was likely 
 to be cut short, for he was betrayed by a Piedmontese spy, 
 arrested, and detained for six months as a prisoner in the 
 fortress of Savona. - He was set free at the end of that time 
 only on condition of quitting Italy, and he came out of captivity 
 to begin a life of u exile and apostleship," as he termed it, by 
 founding the association of La Giovine Italia, and starting at 
 the same time, and under that same title, at Marseilles, a 
 monthly journal, the chief end and aim of which was the 
 J " regeneration " of Italy. J It was about this time, too, that he 
 addressed to Charles Albert the celebrated letter which drew 
 down on him a sentence of perpetual banishment from his 
 native country.v 
 
 It must be owned, however, that " Young Italy " was an 
 improvement on the Carbonarism which it superseded ; at all 
 events it was more humanitarian more catholic in its scope. 
 In addition to the republican union of all Italy under one'
 
 JOSEPH MAZZINI 85 
 
 common system of law, and the extinction of all foreign rule, 
 the general principles of this new league enforced on its members 
 the duty of working for the common " moral regeneration " of 
 Italy and the establishment of political equality, not in the 
 Italian Peninsula only, but throughout Europe and the world. 
 Its watchword was " Liberty, Equality, and Humanity " ; its 
 motto, " God and the People " ; the_white, red, and green were 
 adopted as their tricolour ; and it was said that henceforth 
 education and insurrection were to supersede assassination as 
 their arms of attack. 
 
 Mazzini was the life, soul, and centre of this formidable 
 League, which soon spread through the capitals of Europe a 
 network of similar associations, each modified so as to suit the 
 requirements of the several nations. '. Mazzini found himself 
 speedily banished from Marseilles, and for several months he 
 was forced to live in concealment ; Still the " Giovine Italia " 
 was not without its effects. Its first fruit was a revolutionary 
 expedition into Savoy, which was organised at Geneva, but 
 defeated by the royal troops. For his own ascertained share 
 in the affair Mazzini was sentenced to death in the Sardinian 
 courts, but he managed to keep his head on his shoulders, and 
 to live to recommence his revolutionary enterprise with renewed 
 vigour and with enlarged aims.^ His " Young Italy " having 
 been suppressed at all events for a time he now founded in 
 Switzerland another association, which he called " New Europe," L 
 based on the principles of European rights and the widest 
 enfranchisement of the people, vln 1837 he quitted Switzer- 
 land and took up his abode in London, which subsequently, for 
 many a long year, he made, for the most part, his headquarters 
 of operations in the Italian cause. - He took, it is almost need- 
 less to say, a very prominent part in the great European crisis 
 of 1848-^-a crisis which, no doubt, he helped as largely as any 
 other man to bring about. -In February 1849 he was elected 
 a member of the Tuscan Provisional Government, and in the 
 following month he was chosen one of the triumvirate of Rome 
 amid the rejoicings of Italy. His presence at Rome was the 
 more welcome because his ideas had long preceded him thither, 
 and, indeed, may be said to have aided in that revolution of 
 which Rome was then the triumphant scene. 
 
 It has been the fashion to consider Mazzini as a simple 
 destructive, as a man able and willing to pull down, but not
 
 86 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 to build up. It deserves, however, to be remembered in his 
 favour that, true to the best part of the principles propounded 
 in the literature of his " Young Italy," Mazzini's tenure of the 
 supreme authority at Rome was marked by such wisdom and 
 moderation, and attended with such consequent success, as to 
 elicit a public tribute of admiration from the lips of so con- 
 servative a statesman as Lord Palmerston. ^^He was the main- 
 spring of the defence of Rome against the French ; and on the 
 surrender of that city Mazzini quitted Italy and took up his 
 abode at Lausanne, in Switzerland. 
 
 At this period he made his name famous in France by 
 addressing to M. de Tocqueville and other French statesmen 
 some most bitter and reproachful letters on the high-handed 
 policy pursued in that country ; and finding his Continental 
 residence too hot to hold him, he returned to London, not, 
 however, with any idea of abandoning his long-cherished hopes 
 for Italian unity. It was at his instigation that the insurrec- 
 tions at Milan in 1853, and in Piedmont some three or four 
 years later, were attempted. ^In 1859, while lending the whole 
 weight of his influence to the revolutionary movements in Italy, 
 he opposed with vigilance and foresight the threatened pre- 
 dominance of France in the south of Europe, and refused to 
 v place faith in the Liberal programme of the French emperor. 
 The Sicilian expedition of 1860 owed perhaps as much to the 
 subtle prudence and secret organisation of Mazzini as to 
 the personal heroism of Garibaldi, \rwith whom at one time, 
 shortly after the return of the Austrians to Milan, he wandered 
 about as a volunteer. How far it is true that in the course of 
 subsequent events he helped on the cause of Italian unity, as 
 his friends assert, or how far, by his impracticability, he stood 
 in the way of the realisation of Italian hopes, we must leave 
 the future historian to decide. ~His warm advocates, however, 
 do not scruple to assert that, " as the price of seeing an Italy 
 strong enough to live her own life even under a monarchical 
 form of government, he willingly renounced the far dearer 
 dream he had ever cherished of a united Italian Republic." ^ 
 
 Of late years Mazzini's health was such as to help to keep 
 him in comparative seclusion, although he still contrived to 
 exercise a considerable, though silent, influence on the affairs 
 of the Continent. Once, at least, he was elected by Messina 
 as its representative, but he declined or neglected to take his
 
 JOSEPH MAZZINI 87 
 
 seat, and his election consequently was declared informal. 
 Early in the present year he took up his residence at Geneva, 
 where he was recently described as very feeble, shattered in 
 health, and able to walk about on bright sunny days only by 
 the help of a stick. 
 
 Mazzini was a copious writer. The list of his works fills 
 nearly ten pages of the catalogue of the British Museum. A 
 perfect master not only of Italian but of French and of English 
 literature, he became years ago a commentator upon Dante, the 
 author of works on philosophy, and a constant contributor to 
 some of the most thoughtful periodical literature in Paris and 
 in London. ^ He could spare time from his philosophic study 
 to provide for the relief and education of the poor Italian 
 organ-boys who wander about the streets of London ; and he 
 would turn from the warfare of politics to write in his Apostolato 
 Popolare, for the benefit of Italian workmen, sermons " On 
 the Duties of Man." ^There is no more masterly analysis of the 
 faults and shortcomings of the economic and socialist schools 
 than that which he contributed some years ago to the columns 
 of the People's Journal, or any more profound criticism on 
 Thomas Carlyle's writings than that which is said to have 
 proceeded from his pen in the Westminster Review. His works 
 have been collected by Daelli of Milan into twelve volumes, 
 which, if not already published in a complete form, are shortly 
 to appear, with a dedication to Garibaldi. 
 
 -'In private life Giuseppe Mazzini was accomplished and 
 courteous, and gifted with a genial manner, which won regard 
 almost instantly, at least unconsciously. In London he lived 
 in the humblest manner, occupying often only a single room, 
 and generously bestowing the earnings ofyhis pen on the cause 
 which ever lay nearest to his heart. ^Tlis tall, gaunt form, 
 long face, and high, narrow forehead must be familiar to many 
 of our readers ; and, whatever we may think of his political 
 opinions, few will be disposed to question the sincerity, even 
 to fanaticism, of his devotion to one idea the cause of Italian 
 unity. 
 
 LEADING ARTICLE, TUESDAY, MARCH 12, 1872 
 
 A telegraphic despatch from Pisa announces the death of 
 Mazzini in that city on Sunday. Only a few days ago a report
 
 88 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 was in circulation that the veteran agitator was preparing for 
 one of his insurrectionary incursions into the north of Italy. 
 He had been for many months residing at Lugano, in the Swiss 
 Canton Ticino, prostrated by an illness from which he was not 
 expected to recover. It is not unlikely that, in the apprehen- 
 sion of his approaching end, he resolved upon one more attempt, 
 however desperate, by which he might prove his perseverance 
 to the last in his self-appointed mission. He probably set out 
 in a sinking condition, and succumbed on the way. If such 
 was the case, Mazzini may be said to have died as he lived a 
 conspirator to his closing day ; conspiring now against Italy, as 
 for so many years he conspired for Italy. More than forty 
 years ago Mazzini's earliest essays in the Florence Antologia 
 were hailed as the development of a new intellectual life in 
 Italy. His depth of thought, his earnest, impassioned manner, 
 his emphatic and almost mystical language, and his warm, 
 expansive sympathy with all that was great and good, took the 
 hearts of his young contemporaries by storm, and made of him 
 one of the leading lights of the age before even his name was 
 known to his readers. Had his lot fallen on quiet times, and 
 had he limited his aspirations to such influence as the pen 
 alone could exercise, he might have left a conspicuous mark on 
 his age and country, and his name would now be pronounced 
 with reverence and sorrow. But he deemed himself " a man 
 of action," and set up as a leader and ruler of his fellow-beings ; 
 though he was a solitary man, who knew little of the world 
 about him, and was incapable of looking out of himself. 
 
 Mazzini grew up with a generation of Italians whom the 
 revival of a " Kingdom of Italy " under the first Napoleon had 
 taught to dream of a resurrection of their country. He has 
 been credited with originating the idea of a united Italy, though 
 his merit, perhaps, consisted only in his firm faith that it would 
 eventually be realised. /The idea is as old as Dante, Machiavelli, 
 and Alfieri ; and Mazzini was still almost in his infancy when 
 men as high-minded as himself died for it. Nor was he a man 
 above expedients ; he was not throughout an uncompromising 
 Republican. His very first address was to Charles Albert of 
 Savoy ; his first schemes were how to gather Italy under the 
 sceptre of a constitutional king. Charles Albert was as true- 
 hearted a patriot as Mazzini himself. But he had at his 
 accession in 1831 the Austrian's foot on his neck. Louis
 
 JOSEPH MAZZINI 89 
 
 Philippe sent him word that "he had trouble enough with his 
 own constitution in Paris, without making himself the 
 champion of a constitution in Turin." Charles Albert, in 
 Mazzini's estimation, lacked faith, as well he might, considering 
 that his alternative lay "between the dagger of the Republicans 
 and the chocolate of the Jesuits." Charles Albert lacked faith 
 in 1831 ; so did Pius IX. in 1847, when Mazzini appealed to 
 him " to be a believer." '^Mazzini alone had faith, and he was 
 sure he could remove mountains ; but they were mountains in 
 labour, and the world knows what became of thenV.' For above 
 thirty years Mazzini strove to " make " Italy. He bade his 
 countrymen put no faith in princes. "-He wrote on his banner 
 " God and the People." He proclaimed a Republic ; an Italian 
 Republic ; a Universal Republic ; a Young Italy, with a whole 
 sisterhood of young nations. ^ Politics were with him of less 
 moment than social questions ; moral problems of less conse- >^ 
 quence than the religion he had discovered for himself. 
 Country and humanity were with him blended in one in- 
 divisible idea. Of that idea he alone sounded the depth. He 
 was its high priest ; he wrestled hard with himself to give it 
 utterance both in learned and popular writings, but it has 
 remained a riddle, if not to all, at least to the vast generality of 
 mortals. Of one thing alone he was sure that he could be no 
 man's fellow-worker either in thought or action. Men might 
 learn from him, serve under him, sacrifice themselves for him, 
 but they could have nothing in common with him. With such 
 a cast of mind, and with warm and generous impulses, it can 
 be easily understood that there was nothing Mazzini would not 
 attempt ; nothing that he could achieve. He had " the 
 peoples " with him. What forces could France, or Austria, or 
 the whole world muster against him ? The world well knows 
 the results of his campaigns his attack on Savoy, the Bandiera 
 tragedy at Naples, that of Pisacane in Sicily, the riots at Milan, 
 the wanton bloodshed at Genoa, the hundred plots baffled by as 
 many treasons, the many ventures to which Mazzini committed 
 all who believed in him. 
 
 Yet how many were they who to the very last believed in 
 Mazzini ? His faith forty years ago was in " Young Italy." 
 He taught his disciples to look with contempt upon every man 
 above thirty or forty years of age. But Young Italy with gray 
 hair, Young Italy on the wrong side of sixty, exercised as
 
 90 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 irresistible a fascination on inexperienced youth as when he 
 first shone among his exiled countrymen at Marseilles, and his 
 pale, ascetic, but transcendently bright countenance, his inspired 
 language, his loving address, made his enthusiasm irresistibly 
 catching. No man won so many admirers as Mazzini, and yet 
 secured so few friends, v If we except a few devoted English- 
 women, there is hardly a human being whom long familiarity 
 had not estranged from Mazzini. 'With manners consummately 
 affable and courteous he combined an overweening conceit and a 
 narrowness and bigotry of view which hardly tolerated inde- 
 pendent minds. He was a lonely genius, all apart from the 
 common ways of other mortals, spurning the suggestions of the 
 plainest common-sense, professing to do all for his fellow-beings, 
 yet nothing with them or by their aid. -/Of the different ranks 
 of society he from the first proscribed the highest. Then he 
 quarrelled with the middle classes. The lowest alone, the very 
 dregs, were Mazzini's own " people " ; they alone were un- 
 corrupted, incorruptible. Later in life, however, faith even in 
 them died away in the heart of the Democrat, and with candid 
 contempt he repudiated the Paris Commune. He gave up the 
 hope of ever being a prophet in his own country in his own 
 age ; his only trust was in a coming generation, where the 
 germ of his idea could alone attain full development 
 
 v Mazzini was disappointed in his own Italy the Italy of the 
 present day an Italy to which, indeed, he gave a mighty im- 
 pulse, but which has been " made " as it is without him, " made " 
 in spite of him. V He was never very warm in his praise of 
 living friends, and he was apt to denounce as adversaries all 
 who were so unfortunate as to differ from him. -^He was sure 
 that " Charles Albert had betrayed Italy ; that Victor Emmanuel 
 would also end by betraying her." Upon the strength of these 
 convictions he mined the ground in the rear of the Piedmontese 
 army in Lombardy in 1848 ; and, even after the formation of 
 the Italian kingdom, he was more indefatigable in his attacks 
 on the king's troops at Milan or Genoa than even on the 
 Austrians at Venice or the French at Rome. Freely re-admitted 
 to his country, and elected to the House of Deputies, he chose 
 an exile's lot, in consistency with his Republican faith, regardless 
 of the wounds his declaration inflicted on Saffi, on Fabrizi, on 
 a hundred of his former Republican associates, who looked upon 
 Republicanism as a means, not as an end, and who thought
 
 JOSEPH MAZZINI 91 
 
 they could best serve their country by aiding, not by thwarting, 
 the Government it had chosen for itself. Even with Garibaldi, 
 who had been his right arm at Rome, and had followed his for- 
 tunes in a hundred enterprises, Mazzini seemed determined not to 
 die in peace. The controversy with which these two champions 
 of Democracy and their partisans lately filled the Italian news- 
 papers has contributed, by revealing the impracticability of their 
 different political theories, to rally the people round the king's 
 Government more efficiently than any wise or liberal measure of 
 the Government itself." Yet there is no doubt that Mazzini and 
 Garibaldi had each his own great mission to fulfil/and the valour 
 and wisdom displayed by the short-lived Roman Republic of 
 1849 did almost as much to raise the Italians in their own and 
 their neighbours' estimation as the exploits of the Piedmontese 
 army in the Crimea and Lombardy, or the political and 
 diplomatic achievements of the great Piedmontese statesman. 
 Unfortunately, few are the men " happy in the opportunity of 
 death " ; fewer still those who know when they have reached 
 the zenith of their orbit, and when it becomes them to with- 
 draw from the world. Who shall tell how much better it would 
 have been for Garibaldi and Mazzini, as well as for Italy, if the 
 former had never left Caprera after he took leave of the king 
 to whom he had made a present of the two Sicilies, and if the 
 latter had come back from Italy to his books and his friends in 
 London, and desisted from those insurrectionary attempts which 
 were sometimes tragical, sometimes ridiculous, when made 
 against Austria, but which became simply criminal when 
 directed against Italy ?
 
 LORD BALLING AND BULWER 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, MONDAY, JUNE 3, 1872 
 
 LITERARY and political aspirants of forty-five years ago may 
 remember three competitors, constantly together, who attracted 
 attention by their social position, their personal gifts, and their 
 easy, careless, unmistakable air of latent superiority. They 
 had hitherto done little or nothing to distinguish them from 
 other young men of promise, although they looked and talked 
 as if they could do anything or everything when they chose to 
 set about it But they had turned aside from college honours ; 
 they would hardly take the trouble of getting up a subject for 
 a debating club ; and the most admiring of their contemporaries 
 would have been startled to be told that this sauntering, pleasure- 
 loving, pococuranti trio were to become, one, Lord Chief Justice 
 of England, the mainstay and ornament of the Judicial Bench ; 
 another, an eminent statesman and one of the most popular 
 writers of the age ; the third, the representative of Great 
 Britain as chief of some half-dozen embassies in succession ending 
 with Constantinople, and a successful author to boot We need 
 hardly say that we are speaking of Sir Alexander Cockburn, 
 Lord Lytton, and his elder brother, Lord Dalling and Bulwer, 
 familiarly known as Henry Bulwer, whose character has just 
 been brought within the recognised domain of biography by 
 death. If not the most distinguished, it was certainly not the 
 least remarkable of the three careers ; and proves, perhaps, more 
 strikingly than either of the others what volition and energy 
 can effect when ambition or the love of fame has become the 
 master passion, and a well-defined object is in view. 
 
 His birth and parentage are well known. Although a
 
 LORD BALLING AND BULWER 93 
 
 second son, he inherited a considerable fortune from a grand- 
 mother. He was educated at Harrow and Cambridge, which he 
 left without taking a degree, and became a cornet in the Life 
 Guards. But nature never meant him for the military pro- 
 fession, and finding the regimental duties very little to his taste, 
 he speedily sold out, and, after an expedition which produced 
 his Autumn in Greece, became a diplomatist. He was attached 
 to the Berlin Embassy in 1827, and, taking Paris in his way, 
 won there between 6000 and 7000 at play. This he 
 adroitly converted into the starting-point and foundation of 
 his diplomatic fortunes. There was then a whist-playing set 
 at Berlin, mustering principally at Prince Wittgenstein's, and 
 including the leading personages of the Court The high stakes 
 (500 louis the rubber was not uncommon) kept the members of 
 the English Embassy aloof, with the exception of Bulwer, who 
 fearlessly risked his recently-acquired capital Although by no 
 means a first-rate whist player, he eventually came off a winner, 
 and from the incidental gossip of princes and ambassadors at 
 the card-table he learnt a great deal about more important 
 matters from which his official superiors were shut out. He 
 was transferred from Berlin to Vienna, and from Vienna to the 
 Hague, from which, in 1830, when the Belgium Revolution 
 broke out, he was despatched to watch its progress and report 
 on the probability of its success. In the performance of this 
 duty he attended a public meeting, at which a well-known 
 English Radical presented himself, and told the assembled 
 Belgiums that, come what might, they might reckon on the 
 support of his countrymen. Bulwer rose directly afterwards to 
 say that he himself, the member of an embassy, was no great 
 things, pen de chose that his friend was nothing and nobody, 
 and that the patriots whom he had the honour to address had 
 better rely on their own patriotic efforts than on the promises of 
 English co-operation made without the semblance of authority 
 by this gentleman. 
 
 His reports were so far satisfactory that, when Belgium became 
 a kingdom, he was made Secretary of Legation at Brussels, 
 where he subsequently acted as Charge d' Affaires. While the 
 settlement of Belgium was still pending, he made an arrange- 
 ment with the late Lord Pembroke for a seat in Parliament for 
 the borough of Wilton, which he helped to disfranchise by his 
 on the second reading of the first Reform Bill in 1831.
 
 94 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 This act of self-sacrifice was not approved by the electors, who 
 would have nothing more to say to him at the ensuing election, 
 whereupon he got chosen for Coventry, which he represented 
 till the dissolution of 1832. He sat for Marylebone from 1833 
 to 1837, and made two or three speeches, especially one on 
 Spanish affairs, in 1836, which rescued his irregular and 
 intermittent Parliamentary career from the imputation of having 
 been mute or commonplace. 
 
 Book XII. of his Life of Lord Palmerston is headed : 
 
 " I go to Constantinople as Secretary of Embassy State of 
 things there Characters of Khosreo and Keschid Pashas 
 Position of Mohemet Ali in Egypt." 
 
 This book might pass for a chapter of his own autobiography 
 a characteristic and most amusing one. Nothing can be 
 better than his account of the way in which he contrived to get 
 a commercial treaty from the Porte, or the sketch of that 
 preoccupation of the ambassadorial mind which left the field 
 free for the operations of the secretary : 
 
 " A new rumour was every day in circulation. The French 
 and English ambassadorial residences were then fixed within 
 a stone's throw of each other, at Therchia, a small village 
 fronting the entrance into the Black Sea ; and the two am- 
 bassadors, Admiral Poussin and Lord Ponsonby, each went to 
 his window on getting out of bed, the one at six in the morning, 
 the other at six in the afternoon, prepared to see without 
 surprise the Russian fleet anchored under their eyes. It was, 
 perhaps, the only point on which these representatives of the 
 two countries agreed." 
 
 The treaty was quietly settled and signed before the French 
 Embassy, who had been long manoeuvring for a similar one, 
 were aware that it was in progress ; and Bulwer had the 
 gratification of announcing it to the French Secretary, "a 
 charming man, who sang beautifully, was very gallant, and 
 excelled in calembourgs," and had declared the treaty an 
 impossibility : 
 
 French Secretary. " Is it possible, my friend, that you have 
 played us such a trick." 
 
 Bulwer. " What trick ? We have only found possible what 
 you believed impossible." 
 
 French Secretary. " But what is to be done ? " 
 
 Bulwer. " Nothing more easy, my dear fellow ; here is a
 
 LORD CALLING AND BULWER 95 
 
 copy of our treaty, do you get another copy made and signed 
 to-day, and then let the journal at Smyrna (a journal in the 
 French pay) say that this happy result was entirely brought 
 about by Admiral Poussin's influence and your great knowledge 
 of commercial affairs." 
 
 The best of the joke was that the French Secretary followed 
 this advice to the letter, and got the entire credit of both 
 treaties with his countrymen. 
 
 In May 1839 Bulwer was transferred from Constantinople to 
 the more important place of Secretary of Embassy at Paris. 
 Our ambassadors have or had a knack of being absent from 
 their posts at critical moments, and it so happened that he was 
 Charge d'Affaires during the Eastern complication of 1840-41, 
 which threatened at one time to culminate in a European 
 war. His correspondence with Lord Palmerston (given in the 
 Life) is full of interest. His instructions were to discover, if 
 possible, the real intentions of the French Government. M. 
 Thiers's game was to avoid commiting himself to anything that 
 could be construed into an ultimatum, and Bulwer used to 
 relate a curious illustration of his method of evading re- 
 sponsibility. The scene is a long room or gallery at Autun, 
 in which the English Secretary and the French Premier are 
 walking up and down, in grave and animated converse. " Well 
 then," said Bulwer, by way of arriving at a result, " I am to 
 tell my Government that your intentions are hostile if the four 
 Powers adhere to their policy." " Non, mm ami, pas pre- 
 cisdment ; wus direz seulement que vous I'avez lu sur ma figure." 
 This comes nearer to Sir Stafford Northcote's " understanding of 
 a promise " than anything else recorded in diplomacy. 
 
 Some years before (1834) Bulwer had published his France: 
 Social, Literary, Political, which was followed in 1836 by his 
 Monarchy of the Middle Classes books which, besides being 
 replete with acute observation and fine criticism, may still be 
 consulted with advantage for the valuable information which 
 they convey. By the time he had lived another year in France 
 he had completed his knowledge of the country and the people ; 
 and few Englishmen of our day knew them better, for he had 
 not limited his intercourse to the upper or the political class. 
 He knew both the grand monde and the demi monde ; he was on 
 the most intimate terms with all the authors and journalists of 
 note ; and one of the most 'celebrated of Georges Sand's novels
 
 96 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 (Mauprd) was currently reported to have been suggested or 
 inspired by him. Alluding to the influence of successive male 
 friends on this lady's writings, Madame Emile Girardin (n& 
 Delphine Gay) remarked that she was an illustration of Buffon's 
 maxim, " Le style c'est I'homme." 
 
 Lord Aberdeen, who had replaced Lord Palmerston at the 
 Foreign Office in September 1841, was so pleased by his 
 reports that he requested their continuance during the presence 
 on duty as well as during the absence of his chief ; and in 
 November 1843 he gave the best proof of appreciation and 
 approval by naming Bulwer Minister Plenipotentiary at Madrid. 
 Here he did good service by arbitrating between Spain and 
 Morocco, and, had his counsels been followed, it is quite con- 
 ceivable that the famous Spanish marriages might never have 
 come off ; for, acting on an erroneous estimate of the situation, 
 Lord Palmerston (who had returned to office in 1846) backed 
 the wrong candidate, and forwarded M. Guizot's views instead 
 of counteracting them. " Nescia mens hominum fati svrtisque 
 futures." Who would have thought that these marriages, which 
 threatened to set the world in arms, would turn out of no 
 historical importance whatever, or that the dynasty they were 
 to make all-powerful by the union of the two Crowns would be 
 uncrowned and in exile within two years ! 
 
 Bulwer's Spanish mission came to an untimely and disagreeable 
 end in 1848, when Narvaez made him quit the country at a 
 moment's notice on a simulated charge of complicity with the 
 insurgent Liberals ; and his summary dismissal was first made 
 known by his arrival to report himself at the Foreign Office. 
 Lord Palmerston was not the man to throw over a subordinate 
 whose only transgression consisted in carrying out his instruc- 
 tions with spirit by remonstrating against the high-handed and 
 arbitrary courses of the reactionary faction at Madrid. The 
 cause of the expelled Minister was made the cause of the 
 country ; and England remained unrepresented at the Spanish 
 capital till the mutual exasperation had cooled down. In the 
 course of the diplomatic correspondence caused by this affair, 
 the Due de Sotomayer (the Spanish Secretary for Foreign 
 Affairs), who had lived on terms of intimacy with Bulwer, 
 thought proper to allude to a delicate matter, of a strictly 
 private character, in a way which Bulwer deemed personally 
 offensive, and, under the advice of Count D'Orsay, he had
 
 LORD DALLIXG AND BULWER 97 
 
 written a letter for the express purpose of provoking a challenge, 
 when two English friends (the late Charles Greville being one), 
 who fortunately became aware of his intention, intervened, and 
 saved him from what might have proved a grave and (for an 
 English public man) very damaging indiscretion. Only just 
 before, however, two foreign Ministers, with two colleagues for 
 seconds, had fought a duel at Madrid. 
 
 In December 1849 Bulwer was named Minister Pleni- 
 potentiary at "Washington, where he raised an enduring 
 monument to his diplomatic ability by the Clayton-Bulwer 
 Treaty. "We have now before us one of his last letters, dated 
 " Rhoda-on-the-Nile, 17th February 1872," in which he writes : 
 
 " I do regret indeed not being in England. The prophecy I 
 made in withdrawing my motion about America has been too 
 closely fulfilled. Of course the time to settle the question was 
 when every sensible man in the United States was disgusted 
 by Sumner's speech. By allowing it to lie on the public mind, 
 it sank into it and has become now a semi-national theory. 
 How when our only inducement to make a treaty was to set 
 this claim for indirect damages at rest we could frame one 
 which opened it is to me miraculous. How they could in- 
 troduce into such a document the term ' growing out of,' which 
 would hardly occur to any one but a market gardener, is also a 
 marvel. As to the confidence displayed to American statesmen 
 when I had to make a treaty with them, I took the trouble 
 of going over all their own treaties, and, in important passages, 
 I only used such words as they had used in the sense in which 
 they had used them. Then, when they began their usual dis- 
 putes about interpretation, I quoted their own authority. All 
 their own newspapers acknowledged I was right, and that I 
 had outwitted Clayton, who died, they said, in consequence." 
 
 It is some comfort to think that, if the Supplemental Treaty 
 should pass, neither General Grant, nor Mr. Fish, nor General 
 Schenck is likely to die of mortification at having been out- 
 witted by our diplomatists. 
 
 Bulwer was Minister at Florence for about three years, 
 beginning with 1852. In 1855 he was employed on a mission 
 for the settlement of the Danubian Principalities ; and in 1857 
 he was appointed Ambassador at Constantinople in succession to 
 Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, who exercised an amount of influence 
 to which no representative of a European Power has attained 
 
 VOL. I H
 
 98 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 since, or is likely to attain again, partly owing to force of 
 character, and partly to the state of things then, differing so 
 greatly from the present. Turkey is now practically, if not 
 formally, placed under the guardianship or tutelage of the five 
 Powers (Austria, Prussia, Russia, France, and England), and no 
 one of them could dictate or sway the counsels of the Sublime 
 Porte as England occasionally did prior to the Crimean War. 
 The position of Bulwer is correctly described in the Conversations- 
 Lexicon, where he is termed " the prop and pillar of the Palmer- 
 stonian policy in the East." 
 
 He was intensely sensitive to cold, and an amusing story is 
 told of a contest, nearly ending in an open rupture, between 
 him and the French Ambassador touching an open window at 
 his back, which he insisted on having shut. The climate of 
 Constantinople during more than half the year was his constant 
 subject of complaint, and his resignation in 1866 was principally 
 owing to an intimation that the public service might suffer from 
 the prolonged periods of absence which he required. Those who 
 saw him for the first time during the hist ten or fifteen years 
 would have wondered how any sustained intellectual or physical 
 exertion was possible with such a frame. Yet the projects he 
 conceived, the literary works he executed, the journeys he under- 
 took in his decline, might have tasked a strong man in his 
 maturity. He vividly recalled Dryden's lines on Shaftesbury : 
 
 A fiery soul, which working out its way, 
 
 Fretted the puny body to decay, 
 
 And o'er informed the tenement of clay. 
 
 But Bulwer's soul was more restless than fiery ; he could 
 not exist without movement and agitation ; fix him to a spot, 
 forbid excitement, and he would have passed away like that 
 Dutch Governor (mentioned by Washington Irving) who pined 
 away so imperceptibly, that, when he died, there was nothing of 
 him left to bury. Yet the puny invalid, who may have been 
 seen shivering in autumn on the Bosphorus, spent a cold winter 
 month in canvassing Tamworth, and came back the better for it, 
 proving that, frail as he was, he had more of the malade ima- 
 ginaire about him than he would allow. The Greek doctor who 
 long formed part of his establishment openly protested, " Moi, 
 Monsieur, lui faire de idles ordonnances ! ma tdche journaliere <?ed 
 de Femptcher de prendre de la medicine" Richelieu signing death
 
 LORD BALLING AND BULWER 99 
 
 warrants with one foot in the grave ; Pitt vomiting behind the 
 Speaker's chair by way of preparation for the greatest of his 
 speeches ; Scott dictating romances with the cramp in the 
 stomach which made him roll about in agony these were 
 nothing to Henry Bulwer going down to the House of Commons 
 with a hectic suffocating cough to make a speech on the Irish 
 Church, which there was no imaginable necessity for his making, 
 and which was inaudible to more than the ten or dozen members 
 who closed up to him. These heard enough to convince them 
 that, given the physical requisites, his speech would have proved 
 an undeniable success. 
 
 Our high general estimate of his writings has been expressed 
 from time to time on the successive appearances of his works. 
 They are incomplete in many respects, especially as regards 
 artistic finish, but most of them, especially the latest, derived a 
 marked value and attraction from the circumstance that the 
 author had been practically conversant with affairs, that he had 
 been mixed up with the events he describes, that he had made, 
 or assisted in making, as well as written, history. 
 
 Among his many personal gifts was one which almost excep- 
 tionally distinguished him. His temper was perfect, and it was 
 not a temper painfully formed by habits of self-restraint. It 
 arose from genuine sweetness of disposition, from unaffected 
 amiability, from a kind, gentle, affectionate nature. When, he 
 mingled in the polemics of diplomacy or literature he wielded 
 the weapon of controversy like a small sword, and " never carried 
 away a heart-stain on the blade." His grace, his tact, his refine- 
 ment of tone, his high-bred manner made him a general favourite 
 in society ; and what Scott says of Rashleigh Osbaldistone's con- 
 versation may be said of Bulwer's : 
 
 " He was never loud, never overbearing, never so much 
 occupied with his own thoughts as to outrun either the patience 
 or the comprehension of those he conversed with. His ideas 
 succeeded each other with the gentle but unremitting flow of a 
 plentiful and bounteous spring ; while I have heard those of 
 others, who aimed at distinction in conversation, rush along like 
 the turbid gush from the sluice of a millpond, as hurried and as 
 easily exhausted." 
 
 Bulwer always talked his best, and always took up by pre- 
 ference the topics on which mind could meet mind and glowing 
 thoughts or sparkling fancies might be struck out He was past
 
 100 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 sixty-eight when he died, but his vivacity was unabated, his 
 vitality seemed unimpaired, and those who knew him best were 
 so accustomed to see him overcoming matter by mind, that they 
 were no less startled than saddened by the announcement that 
 the most delightful of companions, the truest and most sym- 
 pathising of friends, was taken from them.
 
 CHARLES LEVER 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, FRIDAY, JUNE 7, 1872 
 
 WHEN a novel-writer drops off in the fulness of years he may 
 find old admirers to lament him, but generally he will be 
 scarcely missed by the public. The waning of his popularity 
 has followed on the flagging of his powers, until the decrease of 
 the one has been even more rapid than the decay of the other. 
 His day is gone by ; his place has been filled by younger and 
 fresher men, who are catering for the fashion of the hour and 
 the capricious tastes of the libraries. It is rarely we have to 
 regret a man whom exceptional gifts have saved from the 
 common fate of his fellows, but such a man the novel -reading 
 world has lost in Charles Lever. For some forty years Mr. 
 Lever had been writing with slight intermission, producing 
 book on book and scattering magazine articles broadcast. Yet 
 the early liking of many of us has only ripened with long 
 acquaintance, and we venture to say thousands of readers of all 
 ages are deploring his loss as a personal misfortune. Nor are 
 the reasons for this perennial popularity of his far to seek. Not 
 only was he blessed with a fund of intense youthful vitality, 
 which, after standing the drain of a lifetime, still freshened the 
 accumulating experiences of age ; not only could you trust his 
 equal talent to turn out work far more entertaining than the 
 average ; not only could you count absolutely upon his tact and 
 versatility to save him from the deadly sins of dulness and 
 monotony, but he contrived to tone his subjects and his style 
 down to his years, and so, as his admirers grew older like him- 
 self, he carried the mass of them along with him. He supplied 
 the place of the powers which decay with youth by the use of
 
 102 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 those which strengthen and develop with maturity, and, while 
 always remaining himself, lie satisfied a more practical and 
 critical age. Sensation, more or less pronounced or subdued, 
 pervaded and flavoured everything he wrote. But the sensation 
 of the social and political sketches which formed the staple of 
 his later works differed as widely from the wild and extravagant 
 action of his earliest novels as one of his hackneyed old diplo- 
 matists from one of his harebrained light dragoons. In each of 
 his books there was a happy blending of something to suit itself 
 to every taste, and so the good-humoured man of the world was 
 read and liked to the last 
 
 Lever was born in Dublin in 1809. He was educated for a 
 physician, and, we believe, took medical degrees both at Trinity 
 College, Cambridge, and Gottingen. In the cholera year of 
 1832 he was appointed to an extensive district in the north of 
 Ireland, and he probably reproduced his dispensary experience 
 later in the Martins. Afterwards he exchanged that temporary 
 appointment for the post of physician to the Legation at Brussels. 
 It will be seen that he commenced his cosmopolitan education 
 early. But being born an Irishman, with a superabundance of 
 Irish life and humour, it was only natural his genius should 
 first break ground where it did. Ireland, as it then was, 
 offered a congenial field which was irresistibly tempting. It 
 was a land of strange contrasts, to which absence doubtless lent 
 a certain picturesqueness. It was a land where indigenous 
 drollery seemed to flourish the more luxuriantly for the poverty 
 of the soil and the people, and where erratic genius might run 
 riot among the merry savages who inhabited it to his heart's 
 content. Above all, it was a land as much beyond the range of 
 well-regulated English ideas as beyond the pale of English law 
 and order. It was difficult, perhaps, to caricature the extra- 
 ordinary reality, yet so long as the novelist preserved the local 
 colouring he could take very much what liberty he pleased in 
 his sketches. Accordingly, Lever poured out one after another 
 what we may call his first cluster of novels Harry Lorrequer's 
 Confessions, Charles ffMalley, Jack Hinton, Tom BurJce, The 
 CPDonoghue. His Irishmen naturally took to the army, while 
 the English fine gentlemen in the service were ordered or 
 exiled to Ireland. What scope for " situations " ! From the 
 first page to the last we were swept along in a whirlwind of 
 ceaseless action, among love-making, fighting, drinking, droll
 
 CHARLES LEVER 103 
 
 songs, rich practical jokes, racy dialogues. You Lad no time 
 left you to cavil or to criticise, and it was just as well, for 
 neither the episodes nor incidents would bear chilly analysis. 
 Over a tissue of brilliant impossibilities and improbabilities the 
 author contrived to throw a certain air of reality, and when you 
 came breathless to the end, you had identified yourself as abso- 
 lutely with the fortunes of the hero as ever you did with those 
 of Sindbad and Aladdin. No man ever wrote with more sus- 
 tained animation. His buoyant exuberance of spirits went on 
 working at the same high pressure pitch without the slightest 
 appearance of effort. No better novels of the sort were ever 
 written, except, perhaps, the parodies which came from the pen 
 of Thackeray. 
 
 But, after all, a little writing of that sort goes a long way. 
 It is hard to elaborate happy variations on the rough practical 
 jokes of the college and barrack. Duels and battles greatly 
 resemble each other, and, thanks to Lever himself, even wild 
 Irish scenes had come to lose their novelty. No man was 
 quicker to perceive when he was beginning to bore his public. 
 He shifted his ground at once, although at first he shifted it but 
 slightly, and with the Knight of Gwynne and Arthur O'Leary he 
 bridged the gulf between his first set of novels and his second. 
 Mr. O'Leary carried his Irish habits of mind and thought abroad 
 with him, and brought them to bear upon foreign people, places, 
 and institutions. The result, in Arthur O'Leary, was a combina- 
 tion of quaintness and freshness which should have made more 
 of a success than it did. But the novel wanted what we may 
 call the more glaring merits to which Lever had accustomed his 
 readers, and we fancy it proved something of a failure. If 
 action, however, jolted or lagged in Arthur O'Leary, it was 
 sufficiently accelerated in the books which immediately followed. 
 Extravagance culminated in the autobiography of Con Cregan, 
 perhaps, on that account, the most characteristic of all Mr. 
 Lever's works. The incident on which the plot turns was well- 
 nigh as extravagant as any instance of treasure trove in the 
 Arabian Nights, and yet it is scarcely more unnatural than the 
 manner in which the self-taught hero's education keeps pace 
 with his advancing fortunes. But all that only conspires to 
 glorify the peculiar talent of the artist. He assists the faltering 
 imagination with the apparent accuracy of his general informa- 
 tion and his realistic minuteness of detail, and he interests you
 
 104 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 in his fairy talc until you accept it all as sober history. But 
 even while hurrying with his heroes all over the world he 
 seldom altogether lost sight of his own special domain. As Con 
 Cregan was born in Ireland, and returned thither when he had 
 become a wealthy man, so did Ireland witness the fortunes and 
 misfortunes of Roland Cashell. Having wrought the Gil Bias 
 vein, if not exhausted it, Lever calmed down towards his final 
 style, and thenceforth he selected his plots and personages from 
 themes and circles that are practically inexhaustible. He took 
 to the political and social novel, or rather, we should say, per- 
 haps, he reverted to it once and for all, for the Knight of Gwynne 
 was decidedly of that character. But the Knight of Gwynne 
 was purely Hibernian, while the Dodd Family, the Daltons, etc., 
 were distinctly cosmopolitan. Even in such books as the 
 Martins and Davenport Dunn the Irish of the tale were sent on 
 their travels abroad, and introduced to a good deal of life on 
 the Continent. Then we were presented to that gallery of 
 portraits of foreign princes, ambassadors, Queen's messengers, and 
 travelling English that were to be multiplied indefinitely. 
 From 1842 to 1845 Lever had conducted the Dublin University 
 Magazine. Latterly he had lived much abroad, and particularly 
 in Italy, where Spezzia and Florence were his home for long. 
 Moving so much about the Continent, with keen powers of 
 observation and a retentive memory, of course he collected all 
 " the properties " that might serve to put his pieces effectively 
 on the stage. If he acquired an intimate knowledge of men 
 and things, it must be owned he hazarded extraordinary liberties 
 with probabilities on the strength of it. With the most natural 
 air in the world he seemed to presume on the innocence of his 
 readers. There was a lightness of touch that carried off his 
 extravagance, and he frothed up his sensation so briskly that 
 one was always ready to swallow it. More than once he made 
 a decided failure. His A Day's Ride is said seriously to have 
 depressed the circulation of the periodical it appeared in ; it is 
 certain the editor resorted to the very unusual step of adver- 
 tising the day on which the novel would be completed. That 
 Soy of Norcott's was decidedly below the average level of his 
 works, bearing all the marks of extreme hurriedness of execution. 
 But take his works as a whole, we repeat that seldom has so 
 prolific a writer maintained to the end a popularity so slightly 
 impaired. Even Lord Kilgobbin, his latest work, except in its
 
 CHARLES LEVER 105 
 
 melancholy preface, shows few signs either of the author's years 
 or of the painful rheumatic gout from which he was suffering 
 when he wrote it. 
 
 We have left ourselves no space to speak of 'Lever as the 
 literary politician, and it is the less necessary that the " O'Dowd 
 Papers," which up to the other day were a leading feature in 
 Blackwood, must be familiar to every one. Novelists of one sort 
 or another we have in superabundance, but we cannot hope soon 
 to replace the brilliant essayist, whose light, yet trenchant 
 humour sparkled so brightly to the last. To both Blackwood 
 and the Gornhill Magazine Mr. Lever was a frequent contributor, 
 and several of his novels passed originally through the pages of 
 these periodicals. Nor did he greatly relax his industry in con- 
 sequence of the official appointments he has held latterly, having 
 been appointed by the Derby Ministry to the Vice-Consulship 
 of Spezzia in 1858, whence in 1867 he was transferred as 
 Consul to Trieste. Of the voluminous library of fiction he has 
 produced in the course of his busy life, many works will doubt- 
 less go the common way of three-volume novels. But there are 
 also many of them which will continue to be read, if they do 
 not precisely rank as English classics.
 
 NAPOLEON III. 
 LEADING ARTICLE, FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 1873 
 
 IN the singular career of the late Emperor, as in that of most 
 remarkable men, there are breaks which divide it into distinct 
 periods without injuring the general dramatic unity. He was 
 born seemingly to greatness. Apparently it threatened to elude 
 him. He struggled after it in the face of adverse circumstances 
 from the time he attained to years of discretion. He partly 
 achieved it, partly had it thrust upon him, and after a success 
 which should have satisfied his wildest dreams, he ended his 
 active life an exile, as he had begun it. It would not be 
 enough to say that Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was born 
 in the purple. His cradle was at the Tuileries Palace, in the 
 closest vicinity to the throne. He was the youngest son of 
 Louis, King of Holland, and of Hortense Beauharnais, the 
 Empress Josephine's daughter. His father was Napoleon's 
 third brother ; but the descendants of Joseph were excluded 
 from the succession by their sex, and those of Lucien by the 
 disfavour under which that stern Republican had fallen ; so 
 that, at the date of Louis Napoleon's birth, the 20th of April 
 1808, the heir-apparent was sought among the scions of the 
 younger branch. Whether, in the event of the Emperor's dying 
 without a son, preference would have been given to Louis 
 Napoleon over his elder brother Napoleon Louis, and what 
 reasons might have determined such choice, it would now be 
 useless to inquire. Suffice it to know that the Emperor evinced 
 a strong predilection in favour of this younger son of his step- 
 daughter Hortense. u His name," we are told, " was written 
 down at the head of the family register of the Napoleon
 
 NAPOLEON III. 107 
 
 dynasty." His baptism was put off for more than two years 
 and a half, till the 1 Oth of November 1810, when the Emperor 
 and his newly-married Empress, Maria Louisa, soon to be a 
 mother, held him at the font ; and although the birth of the 
 King of Rome, five months later, disappointed the hopes of his 
 immediate succession, the infant of Hortense still held for seven 
 years a most important position in his uncle's household, and 
 was treated with all the honours due to an heir presumptive. 
 He was seven years old when he stood by his uncle's side at the 
 great gathering on the Champ de Mai, during the Hundred 
 Days, and, after Waterloo, he clung to his uncle's knees when 
 the Emperor left La Malmaison, struggling against separation, 
 as if instinct had told him that with the Emperor his own 
 fortunes and those of the House were overshadowed. 
 
 The young Prince, reduced, with his mother, to a private 
 station, spent eight years then at the Augsburg Gymnasium ; 
 then six more as a student under domestic tutors at the Castle 
 of Arenenberg, in the Canton of Thurgau, on the Lake of 
 Constance ; became proficient in history and mathematics, skilful 
 in fencing, horsemanship, and swimming, and curious about 
 military affairs ; joining the ranks of the Swiss Militia, and 
 making the acquaintance of the Federal General Dufour. Next 
 to the pale reminiscences of court pageantries in his early 
 childhood, nothing, perhaps, so powerfully contributed to form 
 the character of the future Emperor as the influence of the 
 mother in whose house he grew up as an only child. The 
 marriage of Hortense with Louis Bonaparte was, by his con- 
 fession, " forced and ill-assorted." Seven months before the 
 birth of their third son the royal couple parted never to be 
 reunited. It was not without contention that the ex-King of 
 Holland, now Duke of Saint Leu, made good his claims to 
 his elder son, leaving the younger in the undisputed possession 
 of the mother. Charmed as she seemed with her retirement at 
 Arenenberg, Hortense, however, not unfrequently spent the 
 winter in Italy, chiefly at Rome. It was not under the ascend- 
 ency of such a mother that the aspiring youth could learn 
 resignation to a humble lot. Louis Napoleon was taught to 
 look for a change with as full a confidence as he would expect 
 daylight at the close of the natural period of darkness. It 
 little mattered when, where, or by what means the turn in his 
 fortunes might come. Enough that an opening would be made.
 
 108 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 The man was there, he would not have to wait long for the 
 hour. 
 
 The July Revolution in Paris was hailed as the dawn, but it 
 was only a momentary and deceitful twilight The Prince's 
 advances met with no favour from the men at the head of the 
 movement in France, but a chance soon offered itself in Italy. 
 The outbreak in the Roman States in February 1831 found 
 both the sons of Hortense in arms under the Italian tricolour. 
 There was a bloodless campaign a mere promenade under 
 Sercognani from Foligno to Otricoli ; then a journey to Forli, 
 where the elder brother died of the measles on the 17th of 
 March. Louis Napoleon, attacked by the same complaint at 
 Ancona, was tended by his mother, smuggled away to Marseilles 
 and Paris, and hence, after vain endeavours to obtain a resting- 
 place, conveyed, a convalescent, to Arenenberg. On the down- 
 fall of the Italian cause, the Prince was seized with enthusiasm 
 for Polish independence. He travelled through Germany on 
 his way to Warsaw, but the tidings of the final catastrophe met 
 him in Saxony, and for four years, from 1832 to 1836, he was 
 forced back to his life of expectant leisure on the Bodensee. 
 While, in all probability, the future candidate for power, at 
 this early stage of his career, sought only for distinction as a 
 soldier and a patriot, more than one short cut to fortune seemed 
 to present themselves to him. At Foligno and Forli he was 
 emphatically hailed as " the Prince " ; Polish generals tempted 
 him with the proffered command of their legions ; at the 
 London Conference his name, it is said, was brought forward 
 as a candidate for Belgian royalty, and he was even, it would 
 be difficult to say with what truth, put down among the suitors 
 for the hand of Maria da Gloria of Portugal. Any ambitious 
 views of that nature he, however, invariably disclaimed. To 
 struggling nations he would only bring a volunteer's sword ; 
 and as to France, " the hope to be able to serve her as a citizen 
 and soldier was in his eyes worth more than all the thrones in 
 the world." 
 
 His devotion to France, however, was stimulated by other 
 considerations than those of disinterested patriotism. The 
 Duke of Reichstadt had died at Schonbrunn, and the Prince 
 was now the acknowledged head of the Napoleon dynasty. 
 Notwithstanding the greatest dissimilarity of mind and heart, 
 his intense admiration for his uncle led him to a strange
 
 NAPOLEON III. 109 
 
 identification of himself with the great conqueror. His landing 
 at Cannes, and "the flight of the Imperial eagle from steeple to 
 steeple till it folded its wings on the towers of Notre Dame," 
 were, he thought, feats only to be tried again to meet with the 
 same success. Nor was he altogether out of his reckoning.. 
 From 1831 to 1848 Bonapartism in France had made common) 
 cause with Kepublicanism. The first empire, it was argued, 
 had been an era of war and despotism ; but it had peace and 
 freedom in reserve. There was no limit to which " Napoleonic 
 ideas " could not be stretched ; no degree of perfectibility in- 
 compatible with their full development. Of these ideas the 
 young enthusiast at Arenenberg made himself the high priest 
 and interpreter with an earnestness of faith of which he was, 
 possibly, the first dupe. Those ideas, it must be borne in 
 mind, were not altogether peculiar to the Prince. They were 
 the great delusion of the age. The memory of the first 
 Napoleon was no sooner released from the pressure under which 
 the senseless reaction of the Bourbons vainly attempted to hold 
 it than it was idealised into a myth. Napoleon was no longer 
 the man of the Dix-huit Brumaire, of the Levee en masse. 
 What men remembered of him were the Code Civil, the Alpine 
 roads, the Legion of Honour. His name was, above all things, 
 associated with the liberal Acte Additionnel of 1815. He was 
 the man with whose good intentions the courtyard of the villa 
 at Longwood was paved. It was from this Prometheus bound 
 that the young Pretender professed to hold his commission. 
 He came to repair and to fulfil ; he stood forth as the redeemer 
 of the great man's dying pledges, the executor of his last will 
 and testament. Louis Philippe, who dreaded the Pretender, 
 and honoured him with the crown of proscription, was all the 
 time playing into his hands. From beginning to end the July 
 Monarchy laboured at the apotheosis of Imperialism. Aware 
 of the nature of the people's complaint, their rulers hoped to 
 overcome it by administering to it homoeopathically. 
 
 They inoculated the virus already creeping in the nation's 
 veins. From the restoration of the bronze statue on the top of 
 the Vendome column in 1831 to the laying of the granite 
 coffin beneath the dome of the Invalides in 1840, France was 
 being turned into a vast Napoleonic monument. The Press 
 teemed with little else but Napoleonic literature. The attack 
 on the Strasburg barracks in 1836, and the landing at Boulogne
 
 110 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 in 1840, were only egregious blunders in so far that they took 
 France by surprise. There was neither preparation nor oppor- 
 tunity. Nations are not easily roused in cold blood. Popular 
 movements must be in a great measure dependent on time and 
 place. It was not because the Prince had any reason to believe 
 that he would be particularly welcome in Alsace or in Picardy 
 that he made choice of a city on the Rhine or of a seaport on 
 the Channel. It was because those places happened to be each 
 at a different period nearest at hand the one nearest to him 
 as he came up from Switzerland, the other opposite to him as 
 he steamed from the English coast. The precedent at Cannes 
 bewildered him. He acted in obedience to that blind idolatry 
 of his uncle, to that servility of imitation, which, as may be 
 seen in the sequel, marred not less than it made him. Stras- 
 burg and Boulogne were in every respect poor parodies of the 
 return from Elba. There were also clearly a rehearsal of the 
 coup d'etat on a small scale. In 1836 and in 1840 Louis 
 Napoleon had forgotten all his disclaimers of 1831. He no 
 longer aspired to the glory of a mere French citizen and soldier 
 of France. He was already a full-grown Caesar, not with the 
 tricolour merely, but with the crown, sceptre, and eagle. His 
 notions about the sovereignty of the people were sufficiently 
 plain and consistent. The people were to be free free to 
 choose him. At Strasburg and Boulogne he evidently took the 
 nation's consent for granted. His appeal was to the soldiers ; 
 his faith was in them. Had the barracks realised his expecta- 
 tion, had his cry " Vive I'Empereur ! " found an echo in the 
 ranks, the plebiscite would have followed as a matter of 
 course. 
 
 Those miserable failures at Strasburg and Boulogne darkened 
 the prospects of Bonapartism apparently for ever. They deprived 
 the Pretender of all initiative in revolutionary movements. 
 Henceforth the Prince would have to watch the tide. The 
 quarry might be his yet, but only when others had struck it 
 down for him. Those very failures, however, were instrumental 
 in revealing, no less than in forming his character. Placed in 
 the power of his enemies, after Strasburg, from the 30th of 
 October to the 21st of November 1836, and, after Boulogne, 
 from the 4th of August 1840, to the 25th of May 1846, he 
 gave proof of fortitude and dignity. In his intercourse with his 
 captors, judges, and gaolers, he managed to have himself treated
 
 NAPOLEON III. Ill 
 
 as a monarch, though a vanquished one. He repaid Swiss 
 hospitality by a spontaneous departure from Arenenberg in 
 August 1838, when the gallant Confederacy professed its 
 readiness to run the risk of a quarrel with France for his sake. 
 Neither his six years' confinement in a State fortress his 
 (i course of studies at the University of Ham," as he termed it, 
 nor the two distinct periods of his not ungenial exile in London 
 1830 to 1848, and 1846 to 1848, were lost upon him. Amid 
 the gloom of a captive's life, as among the dissipations of a 
 small if not quite select society, the activity of his mind was 
 uncommon. He studied England ; he conceived for this country 
 that quiet but steady attachment which seldom fails to spring 
 up in the heart of those who spend a summer and winter among 
 us. Among the French the Prince generally sought tools and 
 accomplices ; of the English he made friends and companions. 
 He was staunch rather than choice in his connections. The con- 
 sciousness of the loftiness of his ends rendered him indifferent 
 to the lowness of his means. The best instrument in the 
 schemer's hand was the most passive, hence, if necessary, the 
 most unscrupulous. His knowledge of men seldom failed him, 
 and commensurate with his knowledge was his indulgence to 
 their foibles and his sympathy with their moods. He accepted 
 devotion with all its burdens and drawbacks. He was a friend 
 a toute tfpreuve. A partisan might have to be disavowed, but no 
 one was ever sacrificed ; nor was the least act of kindness shown 
 to the Pretender in adversity ever forgotten by the Sovereign in 
 his prosperity. 
 
 Eighteen hundred and forty-eight came. The faint-hearted- 
 ness of a King and the infatuation of a Minister left France to 
 her own mastery. A handful of dreamers and schemers pulled 
 down the whole social edifice. From February to June of that 
 year the disorganisation, though less violent and bloody, was far 
 more thorough than during the worst period of the Reign of 
 Terror. In an evil day France had been taken by surprise. 
 On the morrow she was appalled at the results of her own 
 supineness and improvidence. On the third day she was anxious 
 for reaction, on the lookout for a man who could save society. 
 That task was morally fulfilled by Lamartine with happy phrase ; 
 materially by Cavaignac with an awful massacre. By biding 
 his time Louis Napoleon reaped the benefit both of the poet's 
 and of the soldier's work. In February he made a tender of
 
 112 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 his services ; but in April and in June he still declined the 
 seats which were offered to him in the National Assembly. On 
 the memorable 10th of April, as the world remembers, Prince 
 Louis Napoleon was still doing duty as special constable in 
 King Street, St. James's. He " wished to undeceive those who 
 charged him with ambition," but he " would know how to fulfil 
 any duty which the people might lay upon him." He said this 
 on the 15th of June ; ten days later the revolution was crushed. 
 On the 26th of September he crossed the Channel and made his 
 first appearance in the Assembly. Clear as the ground was 
 before him, actively as his friends exerted themselves on his 
 behalf, he still felt his way cautiously, almost timidly. Re- 
 publicanism was in the mouth of all ; monarchic restoration in 
 the hearts of most men. Lamartine, Cavaignac, any of the so- 
 called Republicans du lendemain would keep the seat warm for 
 a Prince, either of the elder or of the younger Bourbon branch : 
 but Louis Napoleon, if he took it, would be sure to keep it for 
 himself. Hence, there was doubtless considerable mistrust of 
 and ill-will towards him. Aware of this feeling, and with little 
 confidence in his debating powers, the Pretender limited himself 
 to a defensive policy in the Assembly. His rare attempts to 
 speak were neither brilliant nor successful. He sat down un- 
 moved, in sullen, silent discomfiture, trusting to the prestige of 
 his uncle's name to plead his cause among the people. Whether 
 dictated by choice or necessity, his course was the wisest On 
 the 10th of December 1848 Cavaignac had a million and a 
 half of the people's votes for the Presidency of the Republic. 
 Prince Napoleon had above six millions. Upon that vote the 
 supreme power of the JPretender could have been legally and 
 peacefully founded for ever. Up to the close of the year 1848 
 no good whatever was known about the newly-elected President 
 Ridicule is apt to kill the most honourable names in France, 
 and the Prince's name was only associated with the farces of 
 Strasburg aud Boulogne. The vast majority of the national 
 representation, the whole wealth and worth of the country, were 
 dead against him ; yet the mass of the people had, with very 
 little solicitation, and hardly any exertion on his part, pronounced 
 for him. Henceforth the President had possession nine-tenths 
 of the law on his side. 
 
 For the best part of the next two years the President and 
 the still hostile Assembly were busy with the task of killing
 
 NAPOLEON III. 113 
 
 the dead. Republicanism had no friends, and no quarter was 
 to be given to it. All efforts were turned to the re-establish- 
 ment of that compact, centralised administration which, in 
 normal times, constitutes the strength and pride of France. 
 The sword of the State was being tempered ; no matter who 
 might be destined to wield it, every one was interested in the 
 keenness of its edge and the sharpness of its point. In the 
 meanwhile, however, its hilt was in the President's hand, 
 and every repressive measure tightened his grasp upon it. 
 Louis Napoleon was sure that the " union of the two powers 
 legislative and executive was indispensable to the tranquillity 
 of the country." The Assembly perceived, too late, that the 
 President was bringing his theory into practice. They strove 
 to limit his powers, to circumscribe his influence ; they at- 
 tempted to curtail his expenditure ; they set up a permanent 
 committee ; they proposed to take from him the command-in- 
 chief of the army, and to invest it with the President of 
 the Assembly. Goaded into action by imminent danger, the 
 so-called "old parties" Bourbonists and Orleanists were 
 accused of a design to hasten a Restoration, which, if not abso- 
 lutely impossible, was at least premature. In their visits to 
 Claremont after Louis Philippe's death, and to Wiesbaden at 
 the time of the Count de Chambord's stay in that place, the 
 friends of the exiled princes were supposed to be negotiating a 
 fusion between the two branches of the Bourbon family a 
 negotiation which remains unfinished to the present time. 
 Changarnier, the General in command of the army of Paris 
 and of the National Guard of the Seine, was pointed out as the 
 French monk who was to enable the legitimate dynasty to come 
 by its own again. There may have been much or little in 
 these surmises, but Louis Napoleon knew how to make the most 
 of them. The President fought his battles with indifferent 
 success in the Chamber, but his very defeats paved the way for 
 his victories in the country. Nothing could be more daring 
 than his self-assertion ; nothing more open than his plans of 
 operation. The Bonapartist conspiracy embodied in the Soci^te' 
 du dix De'cembre was carried on with the cards on the table. 
 " In extreme danger," says the President, " Providence not 
 unfrequently trusts one man with the safety of all." At the 
 reviews of St. Maur and Satory the soldiers hailed the 
 President with that cry of " Vive I' Empereur ! " to which the 
 
 VOL. I I
 
 114 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 garrisons of Strasburg and Boulogne had refused to respond 
 years before. 
 
 From the beginning of 1851 everything was being made 
 ready for a final conflict Early in January Changarnier was 
 removed from his command. In October and November the 
 President laid his ultimatum first before his Ministers, then 
 before the Assembly. He proposed the repeal of the law of 
 31st May 1850, by which universal suffrage had been restricted. 
 "That measure," said the President, "was tantamount to the 
 disfranchisement of three million electors." Had even the law 
 really had such sweeping effects the President had but little to 
 fear from an appeal to the people. Had even that law been in 
 force in December 1848, the balance of the votes would still 
 have been decisive in his favour. Nothing, however, but the 
 certainty of an overwhelming majority could allay his appre- 
 hensions. To insure it he resolved on the coup d'dtat of the 
 2nd of December. He laid a violent hand on his most dreaded 
 opponents. He dispersed the less dangerous. He dissolved the 
 Assembly and the Council of State. He abrogated the law of 
 31st May and re-established universal suffrage. He then called 
 together the " Comitia of the nation." In the meantime he 
 declared Paris in a state of siege ; he deluged its streets with 
 blood ; he terrorised France by wholesale transportation. He 
 finally asked for a sanction or condemnation of his deed of 
 violence. Seven millions and a half of Frenchmen against 
 little above half a million gave sentence in his favour. 
 
 The second Napoleon had thus his Deux D&embre, as the 
 first had his Dix Huit Brumaire. The elevation of Louis 
 Napoleon under any circumstances appeared so certain that one 
 is almost tempted to fancy that wanton display of uncalled-for 
 energy to have only been prompted by the nephew's blind 
 obligation to tread in his uncle's footsteps. Every subsequent 
 act of his, at any rate, was sheer repetition. From the 2nd of 
 December 1851, to the same day and month of the following 
 year, the Imperial Revolution went through the same phases 
 which it exhibited from the 10th of November 1799 to the 
 18th of May 1804; only the more recent catastrophe was limited 
 within a narrower cycle. There was the same impatient stir in 
 the Departments ; the same obsequious solicitations of the 
 Senate ; the same martial pageantries on the Champ de Mars ; 
 the same triumphal progress of the Csesar. The Constitution
 
 NAPOLEON III. 115 
 
 was a paltry copy. The history on the coins was identical. 
 Even the fortuitous coincidence of the assassin's dagger and of 
 the infernal machine was not wanting. It was only in the 
 number of votes that the new generation outdid the old. 
 
 And now, at last, Louis Napoleon was back at the Tuileries. 
 It would be to little purpose if we were to endeavour to realise 
 his sensations, as, at the mature age of forty-four, the pale 
 reminiscences of thirty-seven years since crowded upon him on 
 the threshold of that lately desecrated palace. Verily, the 
 man's faith had its reward. That faith which never forsook 
 him at the gloomiest periods of his career ; that faith which, at 
 a distance, raised a sneer at his expense, yet cast a magnetic 
 spell over all who came within his reach that faith proved to 
 have been founded on unerring instincts. The Pretender's 
 claims were admitted. He had aimed no higher than his 
 stubborn will could lift him. That intense yearning by which 
 the uncle had been haunted all his lifetime had certainly fallen 
 to the nephew, whatever other parts of the rich inheritance 
 might have been denied to him. The words by which that 
 undefmable feeling found utterance in the strain of the Italian' 
 poet apply with equal force to the two aspiring relatives. There 
 was in both cases " the stormy, trembling joy of a great purpose, 
 the longing of a heart fretting as it impatiently thirsted for 
 empire, and attaining it at last, and grasping a prize for which 
 it had seemed madness to hope." 
 
 In the magnitude of the result people easily lost sight of the 
 means by which it had been achieved. The cold shiver which 
 had followed closely upon the revolutionary fever heat of 
 1848 had scarcely passed away three years later, and under its 
 'fit men were ready to go any length in the way of reaction. 
 The cry was everywhere for strong government ; and, somehow, 
 the coup d'etat, whatever might be the grounds of justice or 
 expediency on which it was made to stand, was hailed as 
 evidence of its author's energy, and accepted as a pledge of 
 social security. The hand which had displayed so much vigour 
 in seizing the reins of government might surely be relied upon 
 to hold them with equal firmness. Even for men swayed by 
 more rigid notions of right and wrong, the moral question how 
 the supreme power had been obtained was absorbed in the other 
 far more momentous problem what uses it would be put to ? 
 The ends of Providence are often fulfilled in inscrutable ways ;
 
 116 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 and it little mattered, after all, by what means another Napoleon 
 had ascended the throne of France, if men could only ascertain 
 how much of the good or the evil of the old Napoleonic era 
 would be reproduced in the new. 
 
 We have already expressed our opinion that the nephew 
 carried the worship of the uncle's memory to the verge of 
 superstition. He was, however, aware that there was a weak 
 no less than a strong side to old Imperialism. He announced 
 the coming not of the Caesarean but of the Augustan Age. The 
 second empire brought not a sword but peace. In the mind 
 of the French people the mere reappearance of the Eagle, the 
 revival of the name of Napoleon, constituted a victory over 
 allied Europe. The Deux Decembre had avenged Waterloo. 
 France had broken through the dynastic arrangements of 1815, 
 and her ancient enemies had not a word to say against her 
 achievement. This negative homage being paid to her vanity, 
 France had no longer an interest in the disturbance of the 
 common tranquillity. Questions about natural frontiers, about 
 oppressed nationalities might, indeed, arise ; but moral ascend- 
 ency could now, perhaps, accomplish more than the edge of 
 the sword. France would be no less true to her mission 
 because she put off its fulfilment by violent means till she was 
 convinced of the inefficiency of all other arguments. There 
 was, at the outset, perfect harmony between the views of the 
 French people and those of their new Sovereign with respect to 
 foreign politics. There was faith in the undisputed, though 
 pacific, ascendency of the Empire over the council of nations, in 
 the necessity for a revision of existing treaties, for a remodelling 
 of the map of Europe, for the emancipation of enslaved nations, 
 for the protection of minor States, of those especially which had 
 shown the greatest devotion to the cause of Imperial France 
 and had been involved in its downfall ; of States like Belgium, 
 Denmark, and Saxony ; of nations like Italy and Poland. 
 Over and above these general French sympathies, the Emperor 
 brought with him, as peculiar to himself, a genuine regard for 
 England, our own estimate of the true basis of national great- 
 ness, our notions of a free commercial policy. It is not a little 
 remarkable that the first enterprise of real magnitude in which 
 France was engaged, after panting for so many years to avenge 
 Waterloo, should have been planned in concert with the very 
 country upon which vengeance for that defeat was to be mainly
 
 NAPOLEON III. 117 
 
 wreaked. Yet the Crimean War of 1854 was waged not only 
 in obedience to what the majority of the French people were 
 inclined to consider as English views, but also in subservience 
 to what they regarded as English interests. It was the 
 Emperor's own war, and Napoleon only brought it to a sudden 
 end when we refused to mix up with the original quarrel those 
 French schemes about Poland and the Rhine in which he found 
 it difficult to withstand his people's aspirations. Against the 
 same rock were wrecked, in later times, 1864, all hopes of a 
 cordial co-operation of the two great Western Powers in behalf 
 of invaded Denmark. As to the immediate relations between 
 the two nations, there is no doubt that against the half- 
 smothered animosities of French Chauvinism nothing availed us 
 so much as the Emperor's stout determination, not only not to 
 be driven into hostilities, but to strengthen the bonds of amity 
 with us at any price. Neither the vapouring and blustering of 
 the Press nor the famous address of the colonels was able to 
 shake the Emperor's determination to maintain the cordial 
 understanding between the two countries ; and the conclusion 
 of the Commercial Treaty and the abolition of passports in 
 favour of English travellers must be traced to his sole initiative. 
 Equally sincere and unbounded was the Emperor's sympathy 
 with the land which had witnessed his earliest exploits Italy ; 
 and he never, perhaps, spoke more in earnest, never did greater 
 justice to the generosity of his impulses, than when in 1859, 
 calling upon the Italians to be men, he offered his help to free 
 their country from the Alps to the Adriatic. The scheme of 
 the unity of the Peninsula did not, indeed, appear practicable 
 to him any more than to some of the wisest and noblest Italian 
 Liberals ; and he, doubtless, conceived that the independence of 
 Italy, although it might imply the complete severance of that 
 country from Austria, need not, therefore, exclude some bond 
 of alliance between the freed nation and its deliverer a bond 
 of alliance which might easily have been strengthened into a 
 compact of indirect allegiance. In all this, however, the welfare 
 of Italy, as he understood it, was the object nearest to the 
 Emperor's heart ; and, with a self-denial of which, in trying 
 moments, he never failed to give evidence, and with respect to 
 which his cold and deliberate nature stands forth in strong 
 contrast with the wilful and headlong character of his uncle, 
 he gave up his own opinions in deference to those of the Italians ;
 
 118 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 he accepted "accomplished facts," and not only never willingly 
 opposed the spread and growth of Italian nationality, but 
 actually screened it from the attacks to which, in its helpless- 
 ness, it would repeatedly have succumbed. 
 
 True, he extinguished the Roman Republic in 1849 ; he 
 exacted the cession of Savoy and Nice in 1860 ; he accepted 
 from Austria the temporary gift of Venetia in 1866, and he 
 re-occupied Rome in 1867. All these, however, were not the 
 spontaneous acts of the Emperor's own mind. He was in- 
 fluenced by what he considered due to French susceptibilities ; 
 to the claims of the great nation to her " natural frontiers " ; 
 to her jealousy of her immediate neighbours ; to her assumption 
 of paramount authority as universal arbitrator ; finally, to her 
 half -chivalrous, half -selfish pretensions as eldest daughter of 
 the Church. By most of these considerations he was also and 
 much more forcibly moved in the policy he pursued with 
 respect to Germany. That the instinct of union was at work 
 across the Rhine as well as south of the Alps the Emperor was 
 fully aware, and he was also convinced that what the German 
 nation firmly and unanimously willed it was not in the power 
 of French jealousy to gainsay. He had been somewhat awed 
 by the attitude of Germany, both in the full tide of his success 
 after Solferino and in the furtherance of his designs in behalf 
 of Poland and Denmark. It was not by opposing German 
 union, but by taking advantage of German disunion, that the 
 Emperor hoped to secure the command. When the Germans 
 had torn each other to pieces, when the victor lay on the battle- 
 field as exhausted as the vanquished, to snatch from their grasp 
 that Rhenish frontier which would free France from all un- 
 easiness in that quarter would prove, as the Emperor conceived, 
 no more impracticable an undertaking than it had been to 
 rectify the border-line on the Italian side. The conditions 
 which were peremptorily laid down at Plombieres need hardly 
 be as much as hinted at Biarritz. In Italy it was the help of 
 France that was solicited. In Germany all that was required 
 of her was neutrality. Mere looking on would do as much for 
 her in the second case as stout fighting had done in the first 
 In all these calculations the Emperor relied on " the irresistible 
 logic of events." But events were too quick for him. Germany 
 achieved her unity in 1866 ; and France came in too late to 
 claim her share of the spoil.
 
 NAPOLEON III. 119 
 
 Before Sadowa and Nikolsburg the Emperor's European 
 policy appeared faultless in the eyes of the vast majority of the 
 French people. But the first check naturally prompted a 
 review of its course from the outset, and encouraged that 
 criticism which is always extremely easy after the event. The 
 main difficulty for the Emperor lay between conceding too- 
 much or too little to the warlike and domineering spirit of the 
 French nation. The French had hailed with satisfaction the 
 Bordeaux announcement of October 1852, that "the Empire 
 was Peace " ; but they were no less delighted with the subse- 
 quent assurance that " not a gun should be fired in Europe 
 without the assent of the Tuileries." France had no objection 
 that " the universe should be tranquil," but only on condition 
 that " she herself should be contented." The third Napoleon 
 was called upon to exercise by mere moral ascendency that 
 sway over the European councils which the first failed to 
 establish by might of arms ; and for many years there is no 
 doubt that he acquitted himself of the task with unparallelled 
 success. But he pressed that success beyond its due limits ; 
 he fretted himself about congresses and conferences, the only 
 object or result of which was to be the enhancement of his own 
 importance. There is no doubt that he suffered the notion 
 that it was at all times necessary to busy and, so to say, to 
 amuse the French people to gain too strong a hold upon his 
 fancy. The scheme of diverting public attention from domestic 
 affairs by distant expeditions to China, Japan, Syria, and, 
 finally to Mexico, had little to recommend it on the score of 
 originality. The rulers who preceded Napoleon III. had found 
 a vent for the superfluous activity of French enterprise in 
 Algeria, and it was only unfortunate that the gradual pacifica- 
 tion of that colony should have deprived the second empire of a 
 convenient safety-valve so near home. Most of the Emperor's 
 Quixotic undertakings beyond sea proved, as was to be 
 expected, barren of results, but one, as might have been feared, 
 turned out fatal. The project of a Mexican Empire, the scheme 
 of the exaltation of the Latin races on the American continent, 
 would have been sheer failures, even if the Emperor's belief 
 that the breach in the United States was incurable had been 
 correct ; for a European Power has little chance of obtaining a 
 footing anywhere across the Atlantic, except as a tool in the 
 hands of some of the native factions, and these turn out mere
 
 120 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 (quicksands under those who would build upon them. But the 
 result of the Mexican experiment was not brought even to this 
 test. The Americans recovered sufficient strength to make a 
 stand for the Monroe doctrine ; and France had to back out of 
 her Mexican position with a hurry in which her very dignity 
 was not consulted. 
 
 Independently of success, however, it may be fairly admitted 
 that the general tendency of the Emperor's foreign policy was 
 moderate and pacific ; but it would not be equally easy to clear 
 it altogether from the charge of disingenuousness and irre- 
 solution. The Emperor's diplomacy was unlike that of any 
 other man. No sovereign ever came to the throne with so 
 large a crowd of ready-made agents and advisers ; none attained 
 power by so long a series of underhand manoeuvres. Louis 
 Napoleon had been for half his life a conspirator. Necessity, 
 no less than habit, made him a plotter on the throne. Bent 
 upon bringing into his hands all legislative and executive 
 authority, upon exacting from all and each of his subordinates 
 the fullest responsibility to himself alone, the Emperor had, 
 properly speaking, no Ministers, but simply heads of depart- 
 ments, blind and passive tools to be taken up or cast off at his 
 own pleasure. But, behind his responsible Cabinet, behind his 
 acknowledged Council of State, there was always a little knot of 
 more trusted and devoted instruments, chosen chiefly among the 
 faithful followers of the Pretender's obscure fortunes, men upon 
 whom, in the gloomy isolation of absolute power, he must needs 
 rely for his knowledge of that public opinion to which he 
 denied all free utterance, and among whom he must seek such 
 executors of his will as would rather guess than question his 
 motives men who would allow him all the merit of success, 
 and take upon themselves all the blame of miscarriage ; men 
 between whom and himself there must be such a bond of free- 
 masonry as to give them the intimate consciousness of their 
 employer's unfailing support, even under the cloud of his 
 affected displeasure or the storm of his formal disavowal. It 
 was in obedience to these necessities, created no less by the 
 origin than by the nature of his government, that the Emperor, 
 in his relations with foreign states, was frequently induced to 
 give preference to indirect and clandestine negotiation ; to 
 intrust to extra-official agents messages unmeet for the convey- 
 ance of regularly-accredited envoys ; to reserve for unwitnessed
 
 NAPOLEON III. 121 
 
 interviews the transaction of affairs of which no tangible 
 document should be allowed to remain. Not satisfied with 
 these not very dignified acts, which for some time established 
 his credit for consummate dexterity, the Emperor also seemed 
 to stake his reputation on a suddenness of action commensurate 
 with his maturity of deliberation. He was perpetually taking 
 the world by surprise. A Government ushered in by a coup 
 d'&at was carried on by a succession of coups de theatre. 
 Whether a declaration of war was to be conveyed in a New 
 Year's greeting to a foreign ambassador, or peace to be pro- 
 nounced in an after-dinner speech to a provincial magistrate, 
 whether the revelation of the Imperial mind was to take the 
 shape of a mysterious pamphlet, or whether his mind was to be 
 intimated in a familiar letter the aim as well as the result 
 invariably was to give the Emperor's policy a " sensational " 
 character. " The Emperor," as his flatterers observed, " allows 
 himself no rest." Perpetual activity and almost actual 
 ubiquity seemed to be as indisputable attributes of an imperial 
 providence as omniscience and omnipotence. "Wherever the 
 Emperor might go he must be in pursuit of some hidden 
 object ; his simplest act must proceed from some far-fetched 
 motive. A morbid expectation was created to which it daily 
 became more difficult to minister. The Emperor's speech and 
 his silence were invested with an equally awful significance. 
 Such overweening assumption must, however, be borne out by 
 deeds of corresponding magnitude. The mere prestige of moral 
 ascendency is soon brought to the test of material success. The 
 world grew tired of all that solemn emphasis and oracular 
 ambiguity. It looked for the results of all that profound 
 statecraft, and saw it foiled by Cavour's superior cunning ; 
 thwarted by Bismarck's steadier resolve ; it saw it wrecked 
 against the Pope's passive obstinacy ; it saw it everywhere 
 frustrated by the combination of unforeseen circumstances, by a 
 series of irresistible catastrophes. It heard it acknowledging 
 the force of a fatal necessity by alluding to the presence of dark 
 spots on the horizon. And it was, be it observed, not so much 
 to error of judgment as to infirmity of purpose that the 
 repeated failures of the Emperor were imputed. Hesitation 
 and inconsistency were the bane of his political conduct. He 
 would have been equally powerful to create a United or a 
 Federal Italy. He might as easily have upheld as pulled down
 
 122 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 the Papacy. He might have checked all Germany in the 
 Danish War of 1864. He might have backed one half of it 
 against the other half during the seven weeks' campaign of 
 1866. He might have done much less in Mexico or he could 
 have gone much greater lengths against the United States. His 
 fault consisted in an excess of caution and circumspection. He 
 seemed everywhere to arrive one day too late, and only to 
 make up his mind when he had missed his opportunity. 
 His Ministers were twitted in the legislature by emboldened 
 opponents, who asserted that " there was not one fault left for 
 the Imperial Government to commit," and thus challenged 
 them, as it were, to remain in office without a vital change in 
 their policy. Two courses were open to the Emperor Napoleon 
 after Sadowa to make up by brute force what he had lost by 
 unsuccessful manoeuvre, or else to acquiesce in the inevitable, to 
 put a cheerful countenance on a losing game, and even to claim 
 credit for a consummation which he had been unable to prevent. 
 For nearly two years the Emperor wavered between the two 
 resolutions. To rush into war before Nikolsburg or after 
 Prague was declared to be impossible, owing to the unreadiness 
 of the French military forces. Yet to accept and even to 
 applaud the rise of a rival nation close on the Rhine frontier, 
 especially after all that had been said about territorial compen- 
 sations, natural boundaries, and popular aspirations, was, 
 perhaps, to inflict too sore a wound on French susceptibilities. 
 Hence there began that tentative, faltering, fidgetting policy ; 
 those abortive negotiations at Berlin, at the Hague, at Munich, 
 at Vienna ; those mysterious journeys and ominous interviews, 
 which at first bewildered and dismayed, and at last half amused, 
 half wearied Europe. At Paris and at Lille the Emperor 
 talked of peace. At Luxembourg, Salzburg, Copenhagen, he 
 sought allies, and nursed pretexts for war. Unequal for single- 
 handed action, France affected to look for confederates. The 
 real object was, if not to win partisans, at least to gain time ; 
 but both purposes were defeated. France revealed her unpre- 
 pared condition at the same time that she widened and 
 completed her isolation. War, except on the most hazardous 
 conditions, was clearly out of the question. Could, then, the 
 Emperor resolve on peace 1 Peace he could certainly have with 
 the world if he could only have it with France. The Emperor 
 Napoleon was not cast in the mould of heroic conquerors. He
 
 NAPOLEON III. 123 
 
 was cold, cautious, even to the extreme of moral timidity. He 
 had no love for war, at least for war's sake and on a large scale. 
 He had a great respect for " the odds " in any game. He never 
 would launch France on an equal duel with Germany. The 
 difficulty lay in preventing France from dragging him into such 
 a war against his better judgment. All his sayings and doings 
 since Sadowa had but one object to humour, to soothe, to 
 reassure French opinion. Faith in his infallibility, he con- 
 ceived, was shaken in others as well as in himself ; that his 
 wonted good fortune had to some extent forsaken him, that 
 black spots were looming in the horizon, he had himself deemed 
 it necessary to avow. It was now important for him to allay 
 the apprehensions he had himself created, to restore the 
 confidence which his words had undermined as much as his 
 deeds. 
 
 The real question, however, lay in the estimate the Emperor 
 could arrive at with respect to the state of public opinion. He 
 had lived for many years away from the throne ; he was a 
 man of the world, a cool, shrewd observer, and might form a 
 correct judgment of whatever came before his eyes. But for the 
 last twenty years he was labouring under the " curse of kings." 
 He had deprived France of free utterance. He must either take 
 her at a rude guess or see her through the medium of that 
 cumbrous scaffolding of official administration which he had 
 reared between himself and the nation instead of the regular 
 edifice of a responsible government. Besides the France he 
 had studied in the writings of M. Thiers, or in the Memorial de 
 Sainte HZlene, or that he had contemplated through the bars of his 
 prison windows at Ham, he only knew the France which Messrs. 
 de Horny, Persigny, or, at the utmost, Messrs. Billault and 
 Rouher chose to describe to him ; a France more Imperialist 
 than the Emperor, more illiberal than the Deux Decembre. The 
 only safety out of his embarrassing position could be found in 
 his abdicating absolute power. Atonement for the errors of the 
 past could best be made by relinquishing undivided responsi- 
 bility for the future. To make up to the nation for its some- 
 what tarnished glory abroad it was before all things advisable to 
 restore its liberties at home. His first movement upon having 
 to acknowledge " the force of irresistible circumstances " was to 
 throw himself upon his people. The first result of the disaster 
 of July 1866 was the letter of January 1867.
 
 124 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 Between the "elected of December," however, and the 
 millions of his electors there was a conditional, though an irre- 
 vocable, compact. The French nation or, at least, that part 
 of it which constituted a majority resulting from the experiment 
 of universal suffrage had accepted its ruler on his own terms. 
 The alternative lay between order and freedom, and he said, 
 " Order at all events ; Freedom whenever it might be." As a 
 President and as an Emperor, Napoleon always deemed the per- 
 fection of government to lie in the combination both of legis- 
 lative and executive power in the same hand. His notions of a 
 Constitution were those of the Consulate and the first empire, 
 and he seemed to forget that the concentration of all power in 
 one hand had only been deemed advisable by the first Napoleon 
 when he aspired to grasp France as a sword, and that the system 
 had broken down, by confession of ita original inventor, towards 
 the close of his reign. With a new empire, which was to be 
 " Peace," there was no longer a necessity for the same strong 
 military organisation ; and liberty should, therefore, have been 
 compatible with it But the tendency of the people, like that 
 of their ruler, at the time was towards energetic repression. 
 Society had to be saved. War to the bitter end was to be 
 waged not against foreign enemies, but against domestic parties. 
 Even for such a war a Dictatorship was found indispensable. 
 The State was constituted in the shape of a pyramid, with 
 nothing between the electing masses at the base and the elected 
 autocrat at the point. Yet something like regret and misgiving 
 seemed at times to assail the Sovereign in the awful solitude of 
 his elevation. It was not for his own sake, not from personal 
 ambition, he hinted, that so unbounded a power had been placed 
 in his hands. He held it simply on trust. The people's 
 liberties were only in abeyance. Indeed a show was made now 
 and then of slackening the reins of government Imperialism 
 was described as by its nature progressive. It was considered 
 as a temporary structure a means to an end ; the application 
 of force to the establishment of legal authority. When the end 
 was attained, when order could be pronounced quite safe, the 
 superstructure should be removed, and the "crowning of the 
 edifice " would follow. 
 
 It is difficult to' say to what extent the Emperor deceived 
 himself or others. But, whatever his intentions might be, they 
 could not be carried into effect without far greater resolution
 
 NAPOLEON III. 125 
 
 than seemed at any time to be at his command. His rule had 
 sprung from the masses ; it was identified with the multitude. 
 He had ascended the throne as the " Working Man's Friend ; 
 the Emperor of the Peasant." The millions who reigned 
 through him were not as ready to resign their supremacy as he, 
 perhaps, might have been. The Senate consisted of his own 
 nominees ; the Legislative body was elected by constituencies 
 over which his Administration was supposed to exercise almost 
 absolute control. But there was in that Senate, in that Elective 
 Assembly, in that Administration, in that vast mass of voters, a 
 party, a vastly predominant party, which would stand up for 
 Imperialism even against the Emperor. With such a constitu- 
 tion as the Emperor framed mere legislative improvement must 
 needs be illusory. It was impossible to get over the fact that 
 in a State like the France of the present day the mass of the 
 nation overrode its intelligence ; the body crushed the soul. 
 The reign of the upper and middle classes had come to an end 
 in that country with the first and second revolution. It was 
 now the turn of the multitude, and the only question was 
 whether the government should be in the hands of a mere mob 
 or in that of a mob-delegated despot. With all its purple and 
 gold, the Imperial Government was heir to the communistic 
 notions of the Red Republican regime. The Emperor's mission 
 was to tax the rich for the benefit of the poor. By his arbitrary 
 control over the price of bread, by his promotion of public 
 works, the Emperor was perpetually bringing back his authority 
 to its original sources. Put that authority to the test of a 
 hundred elections, and the suffrage would always give the same 
 results. 
 
 This assurance of almost boundless popular support was a 
 source of weakness no less than of strength. With the excep- 
 tion of a few ambitious statesmen, and still fewer more or less 
 devoted friends of the fallen dynasties, there were no elements 
 for wholesome legal opposition in France. Hence the various 
 proposals of the Emperor for an extension of constitutional 
 liberties could hardly find sufficient support from the enlightened 
 classes to overcome the mutinous ill-will of the mob majority. 
 It required the personal influence of the Sovereign to force even 
 such paltry measures as the Press and -Public Meetings Bill 
 through a Legislature otherwise too ready to endorse all other 
 Imperial acts of home and foreign policy.
 
 126 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 A government placed so widely above all check or hindrance 
 had it certainly in its power to achieve much, and twenty years 
 of Imperial rule have not been without most splendid results 
 for the general welfare of France. Within ite own boundaries 
 the country had never known a period of greater material pro- 
 gress. Beyond them, till very recent times, it had exercised an 
 ascendency grounded on a moral prestige more than commen- 
 surate with its actual strength. The recognition of the advant- 
 ages of Prussia's military system came most inopportunely for 
 the Emperor to confirm a favourite saying of his, " That a 
 nation's influence is gauged by the number of soldiers it can 
 bring into the field." The Army Bill was, no doubt, a disas- 
 trous measure for him, but he had been drifting into a most 
 difficult dilemma. He had to choose between resigning himself 
 to a condition of comparative weakness, which must infallibly 
 be exposed sooner or later, and a measure that levied " a tribute 
 of blood " on the classes where he found his warmest supporters. 
 The dilemma was a difficult one. The Emperor had, indeed, 
 asserted his ascendency by a pretension of controlling circum- 
 stances which had passed almost unchallenged. He had biassed 
 the policy of Europe by merely indicating the attitude of France. 
 But the state of affairs had been insensibly shifting, until hu 
 had become conscious of a pressure he was powerless to resist. 
 He had been led by Cavour, and the astuteness of the Italian 
 statesman had betrayed him into positions where his only safety 
 lay in pressing onwards. Now he was being forced by Bismarck. 
 As Germany grew strong, Europe was threatened with a change 
 of masters, and it seemed that in the future the impulses in 
 European politics might come as probably from Berlin as from 
 Paris. The Emperor's sense of the change was indicated by his 
 language. He affected to consider the disruption of the German 
 Confederation as a weakening of Germany. One of those 
 inspired pamphlets that appeared from time to time traced the 
 parallel between the first and the second empires to the 
 advantage of the latter. Napoleon III. and his uncle had been 
 revolving in identical historical cycles. But the pamphleteer 
 stopped short in his comparisons. He neglected to point out 
 that Sadowa, with its disclosures more than its successes, was 
 the Moscow of that second empire which was paying the 
 penalty of the domineering pretentious of the first The Seven 
 Weeks' War demonstrated the results of that military system
 
 NAPOLEON III. 127 
 
 which France had forced upon Prussia after the crowning victory 
 of Jena. Now the Emperor recognised that, thanks to the 
 apathy or irresolution he had certainly not borrowed from his 
 uncle, the regular standing armies of France had to count with 
 a nation of civilian soldiers, trained, armed, and organised. He 
 felt there was truth in the invectives of those political opponents 
 who, appealing to the pride of France, told him he had blun- 
 dered away France's commanding influence. It must be proved 
 sooner or later whether he or they were in the right, and, with 
 a belief in his destiny which had begun to falter, he set himself 
 to prepare for the inevitable test. 
 
 At that time, too, he was already a prey to the painful 
 malady to which he yesterday succumbed, and no doubt bodily 
 suffering enfeebled the resolution which, had once been believed 
 indomitable. Radical and Republican pamphleteers and 
 journalists gloated over his ailments in language that outraged 
 decency and humanity. Rochefort's Lanternes became a feature 
 in Parisian life ; the noble, turned socialist, shot his daily flight 
 of poisoned arrows, and respectable Paris laughed, as its wont 
 is, forgiving the coarseness of the scurrility for the sake of the 
 keenness of the sarcasm. It became clear that things were 
 ripening for a crisis, unless the credit of the Emperor was to 
 be saved by his death ; yet none but fanatic Red Republicans, 
 ready to believe in everything they longed for, could have 
 fancied the end of the Empire so imminent. 
 
 The year 1868 must have been one of great searchings of 
 heart at the Court of the Tuileries. The interview of the 
 German Emperors at Salzburg, although followed by all manner 
 of satisfactory assurances, kept minds uneasy as to the new 
 relations of France with her neighbours, and stimulated the 
 audacity of those reckless men who fish for profit and popularity 
 in troubled waters. Ugly omens multiplied towards the close 
 of the year, urging the Emperor towards some decided if not 
 desperate resolution. The incident in the Hall of the Sorbonne, 
 when, at the distribution of prizes, young Cavaignac refused to 
 receive his at the hands of the Imperial Prince, must have 
 shaken the Emperor's faith in the hold Imperialism had on the 
 upper classes, while of a sudden the turbulent democracy 
 discovered a martyr in Baudin, one of the victims of the 
 coup d'etat, and even the eminent veteran Berryer contributed 
 a letter and a subscription to the agitation.
 
 128 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 The Emperor's resolution was taken. He would use his 
 personal power and what remained of his prestiye to promulgate 
 a scheme of comprehensive constitutional reform. Judging by 
 the course of events, we may well doubt whether the resolution 
 would have served him had he taken it earlier. As it was, he 
 was late then, as he had so often been before. It seemed as if 
 he was graciously making a gift of the power he felt slipping 
 through his fingers ; and after all, the gift, such as it was, was 
 in a degree illusory. For the future his Ministers were to be 
 responsible to the Chambers ; they were to be chosen by the 
 party that commanded a Parliamentary majority, they were to 
 hold office by the votes of the House, as in England. But so 
 long as the Empire maintained its traditional electoral machinery 
 the Emperor assured himself an enormous working majority, 
 happen what might. The masses of the rural voters were 
 drilled by obsequious Prdfeta on their promotion, and the 
 different circumscriptions were manipulated, so that in most 
 instances the votes of the stolid and loyal country should swamp 
 those of the feverish radical towns. In the towns, if the voters 
 were not bribed, and bought with hard cash, they were 
 delicately conciliated by the concession of serviceable public 
 works town-halls, lines of railway, free bridges. The 
 autocratic empire had consolidated its popularity on a system 
 of corruption ; it would have been simply suicidal had it 
 reformed and become pure all of a sudden. There had been 
 another unlucky coincidence for the shaking Empire. The 
 Assembly had been dissolved, and there had been a general 
 election. Of course the Government obtained its commanding 
 majority ; but, unfortunately, Paris and the great cities had 
 returned Opposition members as a rule. The logical deduction 
 was obvious the intelligence of the country is opposed to 
 Imperialism, and the Opposition represents a moral force out of 
 all proportion to its numerical strength. It is notorious that 
 in France the inert masses are swayed to one side or the other 
 as they receive the impulse, and it became clear that any day 
 an accident might derange the existing equilibrium. The 
 various chiefs of the Opposition attacked, with the whole weight 
 of their eloquence and their influence, the vicious electoral 
 system that made politics a comedy and falsified opinion. 
 Excited mobs in the town shouted for the Republic and 
 Rochefort. The Emperor was being forced towards abdication
 
 NAPOLEON III. 129 
 
 or a coup d'etat. He decided again for the coup d'e'tat, but 
 this time it was altogether a constitutional one. Caesar proposed 
 a " senatus consultum" \vhich resigned the power he had held in 
 trust into the hands of the people, from whom it had flowed 
 originally, and charged responsible Ministers with the exercise 
 of the people's authority. The staunch Imperialist Ministers 
 shook their heads at this putting new wine into old bottles. 
 Rouher, Duruy, Lavalette, and Baroche resigned. Prince 
 Napoleon made a remarkable and characteristic speech, which 
 gave some colour to the theory of certain political seers that, 
 with the assent of the head of his house, he held himself in 
 reserve in case of a political catastrophe that should prove fatal 
 to his cousin. The Prince approved the measure in the main, 
 although, in his opinion, it was not sufficiently thorough. He 
 avowed that he was not one of those who believed the Empire 
 incompatible with the most absolute liberty, and he boldly 
 touched all those burning topics which the official orators had 
 carefully shunned. It was remarked at the time that the daring 
 speaker had a long interview immediately afterwards with his 
 Imperial cousin, and it was understood that they separated on 
 the most cordial terms. It is probable the Emperor, having 
 lost self-confidence, was in painful uncertainty as to the direc- 
 tion in which unforeseen circumstances might hurry him. The 
 Home Minister, M. Forcade de la Roquette, proclaimed the 
 programme of the Court in language sufficiently precise. The 
 Empire hoped to succeed in solidly founding liberty, where the 
 Governments of the Restoration and of July had failed, "because its 
 principle is stronger and more popular ; because it rests upon 
 the national will, several times proclaimed ; and because it 
 defies surprises." At that moment it felt so strongly that its 
 existing titles were discredited that already it was thinking of 
 a fresh appeal to the democracy ; while it was the suspicion of 
 surprises in store that had suggested its present attitude. 
 Weakened and compromised by the secessions, the last genuinely 
 Imperialist Ministry resigned, and the Emperor had recourse to 
 the flexible Liberals, as represented by Emile Ollivier and his 
 colleagues. 
 
 We may judge him with tolerable confidence after the event, 
 and, enlightened by results, we may estimate pretty fairly the 
 formidable difficulties against which he precipitated himself. 
 The fact remains that at that time men who would rather have 
 
 VOL. I K
 
 130 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 been rid of the dynasty believed it so firmly established that the 
 best and most patriotic course was to come to an understanding 
 with it. Men patriotic or ambitious, like Ollivier, Buffet, and 
 Daru, accepted office and undertook the execution of the new 
 programme. Yet the signs of the times were thickening. Not 
 the least significant was the retirement of Haussmann, whose 
 magnificent schemes half developed, and arrived at a stage 
 where perseverance might have been the truest economy had 
 so terribly embarrassed the finances of the capital. It was an 
 acknowledgment that the Empire had reached the limits of its 
 lavish expenditure, and pushed to an extreme the fatal principle 
 of national workshops. Yet it was plain that if the men who 
 had so long been subsidised became idle, needy, and discon- 
 tented, the streets of the capital would be crowded with 
 turbulent e'meutiers, ready to swell the ranks of the Reds, and 
 to force the hand of the Government when prudence and 
 patriotism should alike suggest a cautious game. A sinister 
 incident occurred on the very day when the Chambers met the 
 new Ministers. Prince Pierre Bonaparte shooting Victor Noir 
 at Auteuil threw a weapon into the hands of the Red Re- 
 publicans, which they were not slow to lay hold of. Rochefort's 
 language in his Marseillaise exceeded all measure. Noir was 
 made a martyr, and the Empire was in more imminent danger 
 on the day of his funeral than men suspected at the time. 
 Had Rochefort been as daring in action as in speech, had his 
 nerves not failed him before the starting of the funeral cortege, 
 and had the impetuous Flourens taken his place at its head, it 
 is hardly doubtful that there would have been a sanguinary 
 collision in the Champs Elyse"es. The Empire would have 
 triumphed for the day, for it was well prepared. But in its 
 discredited condition a second carnage among the citizens of 
 Paris could scarcely have failed to be a fatal defeat for it. 
 
 On the eve of the famous Plebiscite the position of the Ollivier 
 Ministry was more treacherous than ever, and the attitude of the 
 Government was visibly ill-assured. The Ministry trembled 
 between Liberalism and extreme Imperialism, and one of its 
 genuinely liberal measures had terribly multiplied its difficulties 
 by allowing full license of language to all its most unscrupulous 
 enemies. In throwing the rein to the Press, Ollivier had said 
 that they trusted it in future to the control of a healthy public 
 opinion. It is hard to believe that either the Minister or the
 
 NAPOLEON III. 131 
 
 Emperor could have had any such confidence. Opinion had 
 so long heen stifled and gagged that it was debauched and 
 thoroughly diseased. It was inevitable that the regime of 
 repression should be followed by the reaction of excess, and the 
 Empire suffered from the vice of its origin, and paid the penalty 
 of the system by which it had hitherto succeeded. Now that 
 writers could speak out, they reverted with justice to those 
 crimes of the coup d'dtat, when the President, for motives 
 assumed to be purely selfish, had violated the oath of the 
 Constitution, and abused the responsibilities he had solemnly 
 accepted. They raked up the details of all those high-handed 
 proceedings that had necessarily been received at the time in 
 sullen silence. They denounced the sensational foreign policy 
 that had been dictated by dynastical motives. They attacked 
 the luxury and extravagances the people, and especially the 
 middle classes, had been taxed for. They had facts enough at 
 command, which needed scarcely to be distorted or overcoloured 
 to make up a damaging indictment. But they did not stop at 
 facts. They made unsparing use of every calumny and false- 
 hood perverted ingenuity could invent, and the condemnation 
 of Pierre Bonaparte to a simple fine gave the demagogues of the 
 democracy a standing text for philippics against the family with 
 which he had so little in common. The virulent energy of the 
 Opposition Press was swaying opinion ; the organised agitation 
 which was being fed with unfaltering activity might spread from 
 the cities to the Conservative bourgeoisie of the towns, and from 
 the towns to the loyal country people, who were drilled and 
 directed by Prefets and Maires in the country. The Plebiscite 
 was pressed on, lest delay should reduce the GoA r ernment 
 majority. Henceforth the Constitution, drawn in the most 
 democratic sense, was only to be revised by the masses of the 
 people on the initiative of the Sovereign. The Sovereign, in 
 having his election confirmed by an overwhelming assent of his 
 constituents, was to receive a retrospective act of oblivion for 
 all the misdemeanours he had been charged with ; he was to 
 have a deed of indemnity for all the blood and the treasure the 
 Empire had spent at home and abroad. The Emperor had 
 urged on the step with feverish impatience, in opposition, it 
 was understood, to the advice of the Achitophels by whom he 
 had been wont to be guided. He waited the result with intense 
 anxiety, although the vote was a foregone conclusion. With
 
 132 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 his superstitious cast of mind and his belief in destiny, he must 
 have felt he had come to one of the turning points in his career, 
 and no doubt he sought his horoscope in an analysis of the 
 voting list, as soothsayers used to search for the omens on some 
 solemn national ceremony. The omens were sinister, and 
 although there were seven millions of ayes as against a million 
 and a half of noes, the forebodings were confirmed which had 
 induced him to tempt his fate. Not only was the vote against 
 him in Paris and most of the great cities, in the centres of 
 industry, intelligence, and political intrigue, but 50,000 of his 
 soldiers were with the enemy. The shock was severe ; what 
 was Csesar in the face of adverse circumstances if he could not 
 count on the fidelity of the legions ? Nothing could give more 
 striking proof of the extreme impolicy of a measure which 
 invited the soldiers to discuss the conduct of the master who 
 relied upon their bayonets. As one blunder leads on to another, 
 the Emperor, in his haste, advertised to the world his uneasi- 
 ness at this military vote in a letter written to Marshal Can- 
 robert and intended for publication to the army, in which he 
 made ostentatiously light of it. From that time the suspicions 
 that his power was declining turned to convictions confirmed 
 by electoral statistics. It appeared he could not even reckon 
 on that backing from brute force, in the last resort, with which 
 even his enemies had hitherto been inclined to credit him. 
 
 The Plebiscite had been presented to the country as a vote of 
 peace, as the commencement of a new era of sound constitu- 
 tional progress, and as giving a fresh impulse to domestic pros- 
 perity. It is just possible it might have turned out so, had the 
 voting answered the Emperor's hopes or dreams. As it was, it 
 could scarcely fail to prove a vote of war, sooner or later. That 
 jealousy of growing German influence must become a question 
 more dangerous to the dynasty than ever, now that the Emperor's 
 power seemed to be tottering. Now that there was a fronde in 
 the army, must there not be a foreign war to divert the minds 
 of politicians of the canteen ? Almost simultaneously with these 
 events had come a change in the Cabinet, which had been nearly 
 as freely commented on in Germany as in France. Daru and 
 Buffet had retired from the enfeebled Ministry. 
 
 After the Plebiscite the former statesman had been replaced 
 at the Foreign Office by the Due de Gramont. We may be 
 very certain that Napoleon, who had been given to hesitation in
 
 NAPOLEON III. 133 
 
 his best days, was hesitating now more painfully than ever over 
 that question of a war with Germany. But, taking the Gramont 
 appointment in connection with all that followed on it, we can 
 scarcely doubt that at that time he inclined to war. Had it 
 been his settled resolution, or even his ardent wish, to preserve 
 peaceful relations, he could hardly have made so unfortunate a 
 choice. Not only was the Duke by no means the man to direct 
 the Foreign Office, where susceptibilities had become so sensitive, 
 but his Prussian antipathies were notorious. Nor should the 
 fact that he came straight from Vienna have been a recom- 
 mendation in the circumstances. The suspicion that he might 
 have been selected on account of his excellent relations in the 
 Austrian capital would, doubtless, have strengthened the Em- 
 peror's hands had he decided upon war, by giving Europe the 
 idea that Austria was prepared to revenge Sadowa. But if it 
 was desirable to preserve peace, nothing could have been more 
 injudicious than to give Prussia a pretext for taking the initia- 
 tive in war by persuading her that she was threatened by a 
 danger which promptitude might best avert. 
 
 It is idle to speculate on what might have happened had the 
 Emperor decided to play the patriot at all hazards to accept 
 facts abroad, and try to induce his subjects to accept them ; to 
 stake the fortunes of his family on his domestic policy. We 
 have the authority of M. Thiers for asserting that the Empress 
 urged him to make war for the sake of her son, and the assertion 
 seems not improbable. It is certain that a knot of the most 
 Bonapartist of the Bonapartists unceasingly pressed war on him 
 for the most strictly personal reasons. They deluded themselves 
 with the idea of the military preponderance of France ; they 
 believed the victory to be assured beforehand ; the blood and 
 treasure it might cost were nothing to them so long as they were 
 assured a fresh lease of prosperity. The Emperor cannot alto- 
 gether have shared these delusions, although doubtless to some 
 extent he was deceived and willing to be deceived. But the 
 successes that had once been matter of congratulation were now 
 crowding their consequences upon him. He was being driven 
 to seek for safety in provoking Providence ; he was paying the 
 penalties of a political vie orageuse. The coup d'&at had cut 
 him loose from relations that should have been his security in 
 time of danger had he held his throne by a more legitimate title. 
 But his interests already were trending far apart from those of
 
 134 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 his subjects ; the events of the night of the 2nd of December 
 had left him few conscientious advisers, and limited his choice 
 of capable military instruments. He had able creatures and 
 subordinates who were bound fast to him ; but the most eminent 
 politicians of France, the men who might have had the con- 
 fidence of the country, were in opposition or retreat, while dis- 
 interested veterans like Changarnier and Trochu were banished 
 from his councils of war. The interests of an individual and of 
 something far smaller than a faction were to decide on the 
 destinies of the country at the moment when its fortunes were 
 trembling in the balance. But no man, even in that extremity, 
 would have rushed blindly on ruin to escape the dangers which 
 menaced him. Did the Emperor believe he could enter on the 
 war with reasonable hopes of success ? Leboeuf might have 
 deceived him so far with that unhesitating answer " We are 
 ready, and more than ready." But after Leboeuf there should 
 have been no better judge of the situation than the Emperor 
 himself. His muster rolls might have been falsified, yet, all 
 deductions made, he could roughly estimate the effective strength 
 of his forces. At least he knew the numbers Germany could 
 put on foot in a given number of days, for the German military 
 statistics were open to the world, and there was Stoffel at Berlin 
 shrewdly noting everything and duly transmitting his Cassandra- 
 like despatches to Paris. He must have been aware that, unless 
 he could strike before those nine days of mobilisation were 
 accomplished, even Northern Germany would have a great 
 numerical superiority in the field. The probability is that he 
 taxed his ingenuity to combat the remonstrances of his common 
 sense. In trying to deceive himself he had plausible grounds 
 to go upon. There was the reputation of those troops who had 
 been the terror of Europe since the days of his uncle. They had 
 only been repulsed by a combination of all the armies of 
 Europe when exhausted by unparallelled exertions. They had 
 sustained that reputation in his own time, although he might 
 have taken warning from the considerations which persuaded 
 him to sign in haste the unlooked-for peace of Villafranca. 
 Then there were the chassepots, the mitrailleuses, and those new 
 rifled cannon of bronze. Morale and armaments might compen- 
 sate for lack of numbers, fortresses which could not be taken 
 might be masked, and the French flan might carry him into 
 Germany before the more sluggish Teutons had settled their
 
 NAPOLEON III. 135 
 
 plans or combined their operations. The communications once 
 cut between the north of Germany and the south, he might 
 find his allies in the enemy's country, and beat Prussia, as his 
 uncle had done, with South German auxiliaries. It was the 
 Emperor's misfortune that he was doubly deceived that he 
 was alike ill served in military affairs and in diplomacy. Had 
 he been informed of the real spirit of Germany he might have 
 dismissed his notion of German 'alliances as the most extravagant 
 of dreams, but his envoys to the minor German principalities 
 accepted the temper of the Courts as representing the spirit of 
 the people. As is the manner of Frenchmen, they spoke no 
 German. They reported that if France won a first success she 
 might count on enlisting on her side South German jealousies 
 of Prussia. It is less surprising that the Emperor received the 
 fable at the time, since a man so intelligent as Edniond About 
 repeats it confidently to this very moment. Moreover, as it 
 appears now, the new Foreign Minister was persuaded that he 
 had secured the adhesion of Austria. What he had to tell the 
 Emperor probably confirmed such false reports as came from 
 Courts like Wurtemberg and Hesse-Darmstadt. 
 
 Thus we may understand the Emperor's mental attitude 
 early in the year. It was with anything but a light heart that 
 he looked forward to this war looming on his horizon, yet to a 
 certain extent he had succeeded in persuading himself that the 
 venture was not so very desperate. Did not Lebosuf answer for 
 the army ? Had not De Gramont and his colleagues reassured 
 him as to German alliances ? Meanwhile men were speaking 
 of peace while a sense of coming troubles was spreading, and 
 there were rumours of war in the air. The country, and even 
 the obsequious Chamber, became dangerously susceptible. Staunch 
 Imperialists like Baron Jerome David held strange language. 
 The project of a railway over the Alps threatened to create a 
 conflagration in Europe. For a time there was a lull, but the 
 heavens were lowering. Ollivier's voluble assurances in the de- 
 bate on the Army Bill made most people uneasy ; the barometer 
 was falling fast, and men felt somehow by the movements of the 
 ship of State that the hands which steered it were beginning to 
 falter. 
 
 Early in July the squall of the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen 
 candidate for the Spanish crown blew up. The Emperor found 
 himself suddenly forced towards the resolution over which he
 
 136 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 had been hesitating so long. Let us judge his conduct and that 
 of his Cabinet as we may, it is idle to say they regulated their 
 policy on considerations of the dignity of France. The dignity 
 of France was saved, and more than saved, when the King of 
 Prussia formally approved the withdrawal of the objectionable 
 candidate. But for the sake of the Emperor, of the dynasty, and 
 the Bonapartist place-holders, it was deemed necessary there 
 should be a diplomatic triumph to compensate the humiliation 
 of Sadowa by offering French vanity a brilliant satisfaction. 
 The Emperor himself doubted and hesitated ; if France was to 
 be nattered by a triumph, Germany must smart under a defeat 
 But in place of grasping at the reprieve which was offered him, 
 doing his best in the circumstances, and giving himself time for 
 reflection, he was tempted to push his success, and try if he could 
 insult Prussia without having previously beaten her. Probably 
 his judgment was remonstrating all the time. But we may 
 believe that prolonged suspense was wearing a nature which 
 had been tried by reaction of ill-luck after an extraordinary flush 
 of prosperity. The Emperor saw that safety lay in waiting, had 
 waiting been possible ; but he had no longer either the resolution 
 or the time to hold by his old maxim " Everything comes to 
 him who waits." The matter was precipitately discussed with 
 the brutal bluntness of the telegraph. The most momentous 
 questions were decided by the readiest pen in Cabinet Councils 
 held standing and in feverish exaltation of spirits. Stories were 
 invented and facts deliberately misrepresented by officials with 
 the idea of provoking popular enthusiasm. On the 19th of July 
 the die was cast, and war was declared by ministers almost as 
 thoughtless as the gamins who raised the cry of " A Berlin " upon 
 the Boulevards. 
 
 The war was declared, and the Emperor could have prevented 
 or delayed it, but the French were never more unjust than when 
 they subsequently insisted on holding him solely responsible. 
 It was not only that seven millions of them, men like M. Guizot 
 included, had voted the affirmative in the Plebiscite, but organs 
 of all shades of opinion had been stimulating their jealousy of 
 German unity, and the illustrious Thiera himself had published 
 his gospel of war and revenge in his History of the Consulate 
 and the Empire. Had it not been for the tone held by French 
 writers for many years before, the Emperor would never have 
 dreamt of the German war-path as the shortest way to regain
 
 NAPOLEON III. 137 
 
 his lost popularity, and it is matter of little consequence whether 
 the cries on the Boulevards which followed the declaration of 
 war came from his paid police agents or his enfranchised voters 
 of the faubourgs. 
 
 Every one should be familiar with the history of the war, so 
 far as it can be gathered from the conflicting testimony of the 
 leading actors in it. The error of declaring it once committed, 
 the Emperor became only secondarily responsible for the disasters 
 which cost him so dearly. The moral and material efficiency 
 Lebceuf had pledged himself for was lacking. A multitude of 
 men who had been, carried on the rolls were missing, and those 
 who were actually under arms were never in the right place at 
 the critical moment. The boasted Intendance system utterly 
 broke down ; magazines were found unfurnished, and supplies 
 ran short. There were recrimination, disunion, and discontent 
 among the leaders of the several corps d'armde. Time was lost 
 when time was everything, and instead of France breaking 
 ground with the swift advance that alone could have extenuated 
 her precipitate declaration of war, her attenuated armies stood 
 echeloned in a long line of observation along her assailable 
 frontier. The plan attributed to the Emperor, of an aggressive 
 movement that should sever Germany at once strategically and 
 politically, had broken down before it could even be attempted. 
 Had it been attempted it may be doubted whether it would not 
 have proved more disastrous, if possible, than the one actually 
 adopted. 
 
 The last pageants in which the unfortunate Emperor figured 
 as the favourite of fortune were the arrival with the army of 
 Metz and the war rehearsal on the heights above Saarbriick, 
 where his son received his "baptism of fire." While the world 
 was expecting that, whatever might be the issue of the war, 
 victory at first would incline to France, the Emperor was figuring 
 as commander-in-chief of all the armies in the field. Had 
 things gone well, he would have accepted laurels of ceremony, 
 like the Grand Monarque when he travelled in his lumbering 
 coach to see a town taken by one of his marshals. But in reality, 
 so far as the truth can be arrived at, it seems he only accom- 
 panied his troops in the capacity of spectator and adviser, perhaps 
 as arbitrator in the last resort in some vexed question of com- 
 binations. Had all gone as well as in Italy, Caesar's chariot or 
 charger would have moved along in the middle of his victorious
 
 138 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 columns, through triumphs and ovations, and over roads strewed 
 with bloody laurels. The great object of the war would have 
 been attained, and Louis the younger would have been presented 
 to France and Europe as the spoilt child of victory and fortune. 
 It was the dream of some such result which led the Prince's 
 father to tempt this desperate game when he felt the odds were 
 against him. His first proclamation, written in what should 
 have been the flush of sanguine excitement, had somewhat 
 chilled the more ardent spirits. He warned the troops of the 
 formidable work that awaited them on their march in the country 
 " bristling with fortresses." The anxiety that address shadowed 
 out had more than realised itself. After the famous " Tout peut 
 se retablir " that followed the defeats of Woerth and Forbach, 
 nothing can be conceived more deplorable than the position of 
 the Emperor. Conscious of an irretrievable error, and moving 
 despondently in the shadow of the approaching end among dis- 
 organised and half -mutinous troops who in their looks or 
 language made him responsible for their misfortunes, surrounded 
 by generals who had lost head and heart, and had no comfort 
 to offer to their master, he could do nothing by staying where 
 he was, while he was sure to be made answerable for the defeats 
 which impended when these demoralised troops of his should 
 again be opposed to the disciplined and victorious Germans. 
 The only thing more miserable than the scenes that were passing 
 around him was the news which came from the capital. Paris 
 would only receive him victorious ; therefore Paris would never 
 receive him again. This was where he had been landed by 
 revolving in that vicious circle which had commenced with the 
 coup d'&at. This was the end of the years of strong personal 
 government, when he had boasted himself omnipotent for good 
 or eviL It was but a year or two since he had declared that 
 France was the arbiter of Europe, implying that he had the 
 power to enforce her judgments ; it was but a year since he had 
 confidently answered for domestic order. Now the Germans 
 were in France, and Paris, as he knew, was on the brink of a 
 revolution. For him and for his son there was no safe home in 
 his wide dominions but the headquarters of a beaten and re- 
 treating army. He had no choice left him when he turned back 
 with MacMahon in that Quixotic enterprise of releasing Bazaine. 
 MacMahon with candid chivalrousness has acquitted his master 
 of responsibility for that wild bit of strategy, but the surrender
 
 NAPOLEON III. 139 
 
 at Sedan must have come as a relief from a situation that Avas 
 growing intolerable. 
 
 Thenceforward the Emperor's life has a personal rather than 
 a political interest. The surrender of his sword to the King of 
 Prussia symbolised nothing. He had ceased actually to be 
 Emperor when Jules Favre had dared to demand his deposition 
 three weeks before. The Palikao Ministry was provisional 
 rather than Imperial ; it was understood that its precarious 
 tenure of existence depended altogether on the news from the 
 seat of war. With the capitulation of Sedan it ceased to be ; 
 the Empress sought safety in flight from Paris, not an hour too 
 soon, and "the gentlemen of the pavement" scrambled into 
 authority over the fresh ruins of the personal power. 
 
 A howl of obloquy pursued the Emperor over the Belgian 
 frontier to his seclusion at Wilhelmshohe. It was not unnatural. 
 The war was in great measure his ; it had brought unspeakable 
 suffering and bitter humiliation on the country, and his accom- 
 plices execrated him for not influencing them for their own 
 good, in virtue of the authority their votes had vested in him. 
 But dispassionate spectators regarded the fallen man with very 
 different feelings. It was not only that such startling reverses 
 might well have silenced harsh judgment, but the manner in 
 which he bore them commanded involuntary respect and esteem. 
 People who had called him a charlatan at the Tuileries confessed 
 him to be a man when they saw him in the depths of misfortune. 
 The wonderful result of his ambitions had been blighted so late 
 in his life that all hope was over for him ; his pride was stung 
 by the thought that his career had closed in humiliation ; that 
 posterity would denounce him as an impostor who had owed 
 his rise and reputation to luck rather than genius ; that the 
 son, like the father, would begin life in proscription and exile, 
 and find it the harder to repeat his father's successes among 
 opponents forewarned by his father's example. With reflections 
 so bitter gnawing at his mind, with his physical maladies con- 
 spiring to produce intense depression, he not only preserved his 
 apparent serenity, but displayed invariably that dignified court- 
 esy which denotes a mind too stable to be easily shaken. Nor 
 was the effort merely a passing one. It has lasted from then 
 till now. Beset by a mortal malady which would have made 
 most men irritable and captious, the Emperor has shown himself 
 invariably calm and strong. Nothing, perhaps, is so admirable
 
 140 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 in the life of this remarkable man as the silence lie has con- 
 sistently preserved with regard to those whose ill-advised 
 counsels, incapacity, and self-interested falsehoods contributed 
 so largely to his ruin. Ungrateful protfyds from whom he 
 should have been sacred have sought to make him their scape- 
 goat, as he has been abused and calumniated by bitter enemies. 
 He has neither remonstrated nor recriminated in person or by 
 deputy. The wranglers might tell their stories as they would, 
 they might be sure enough he would never contradict them. 
 History will find much to reproach him with, but it is certain 
 his contemporaries have been very unjust to him. 
 
 We have lingered long on the last year of his reign, pregnant 
 as it was with events which have shifted the landmarks of 
 history. We may dismiss his sojourn at Chiselhurst in a line 
 or two. His life passed there uneventfully and in apparent 
 tranquillity. Silent, self - reserved, and self-controlled, he did 
 not take the world into the secret of his regrets or remorse. If 
 his party raised their heads again and bragged of a new re- 
 volution to their profit while France was struggling still in the 
 social and financial chaos into which they had cast her, we have 
 no reason to believe he gave them encouragement. Disappointed 
 adventurers might talk and act madly when life was short. 
 But the Emperor returned to England, whose life and people 
 he had always liked, and lived like an English country gentle- 
 man, whose shattered health condemns him to retirement and 
 the society of a few intimates. There were attached friends 
 with him when he died, and if constancy should command 
 friends few men deserved friends better. 
 
 It was unfortunate for his reputation that he was spared to 
 live out his life. Had he succumbed some years ago to the first 
 attacks of the disease he died of, he would have found eulogists 
 enough to justify his policy by its brilliant success, and to deny 
 that the Imperial system carried the inevitable seeds of dissolu- 
 tion. Had it collapsed after his decease they might have urged 
 that the collapse was but a proof the more of his unrivalled 
 genius that such a man could leave no successor to develop 
 the ideas he had originated. As it is, it can hardly be doubted 
 that his contemporaries will do him injustice, and that his 
 memory will be, in a measure, rehabilitated by posterity. 
 Unless absorbing ambition is to be pleaded as an excuse by 
 pretenders born in the purple, we must judge his political
 
 NAPOLEON III. 141 
 
 morality severely. The coup d'etat "was an offence almost more 
 venial than the systematically relaxing and demoralising nature 
 of the rule that followed it. His best excuse was that he 
 honestly believed himself and his system better adapted to the 
 French than any other that could be substituted for it ; and 
 subsequent errors seem to have shown that he was not altogether 
 wrong. In considering himself to the best of his lights, he did 
 the best he could for his country. His foreign policy was 
 generous and consistent, until personal motives compelled him 
 to arrange a series of sensational surprises. His enlightened 
 commercial ideas cost him some popularity among the Protec- 
 tionist supporters of his dynasty. England at least had nothing 
 to reproach him with, and the firmness with which he had held 
 to her friendship assured him a friendly welcome when he 
 sought refuge on her shores. 
 
 As might be presumed from the marvellous vicissitudes of 
 his career, few men showed stranger or subtler contrasts in 
 their nature. He owed his rise to the unflinching resolution 
 with which he pursued a fixed idea ; yet he hesitated over each 
 step he took, and it was that habit of hesitation that ruined 
 him in the end. His strong point was that no disappointment 
 discouraged him, and so long as he felt he had time to wait, 
 his patience was inexhaustible. Confined at Ham, in place of 
 dashing himself against his prison bars, he turned quietly to 
 his studies, and educated himself for the destinies in store for 
 him. After the ridicule of his failures on the frontiers and 
 in the Chamber of Deputies, he tried again as if nothing had 
 happened. It was significant of the man that he succeeded in 
 France in spite of ridicule, yet there may have been cool policy 
 in the deeds that changed ridicule to terror on the 2nd of 
 December. 
 
 With his unquestionable ability and some extraordinary 
 gifts, it must be confessed he owed much to fortune. She 
 repeatedly did wonderful things for him when his circumstances 
 were critical. He came to count with too great confidence on 
 her favours when they were showering down on him and he 
 drew recklessly on his prestige instead of nursing it against 
 gloomier days. It had been his aim to persuade his subjects 
 that he was something more than mortal ; when his mishaps 
 proved his mortality, they resented the deception he had 
 practised on them, and trampled their idol in the dust. It is
 
 142 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 not in our province now to speculate as to the influence of his 
 rule on France, or to examine how far France is to be blamed 
 for the vice and corruption of the Empire. If he misunder- 
 stood the people he governed when he treated them rather like 
 children than men, we can only repeat, the fault was a venial 
 one. Had he been born in a station beneath the influence of 
 those ambitions that tempt men to become criminal, he would 
 have lived distinguished and died esteemed. As it is, if the 
 circle of his devoted friends has sadly dwindled since his fall 
 and abdication, we trust, for the honour of human nature, that 
 there are many who mourn him sincerely in common gratitude. 
 
 LEADING ARTICLE, SATURDAY, JANUARY 11, 1873 
 
 An enormous name has passed out of the living world into 
 history. It seems as if a huge mass of the world's annals had 
 receded further into the past, and the future itself was descend- 
 ing more swiftly upon us. We all of us feel older in having 
 survived the man who represented, not, indeed, the ardent youth, 
 but the busy middle age of this wonderful century. As one 
 looks around to consider the various interests accumulated round 
 that one life, and having their place in its story, one must rather 
 ask, what is not to be found there? What hope, what fear, 
 what sentiment, what cause, what race, what tradition, what 
 anticipation, what part of material or mental progress what 
 that men can apprehend or care about is absent from the ideal 
 pomp gathering round the dead ? We cannot look around 
 \vithout seeing the shadow of a great memory everywhere. 
 Even if in all things we seem to detect a lower level something 
 less than the Jove-born neither the prodigy of genius nor the 
 paragon of virtue a cause not sacred and a devotion not 
 absolute interested loyalty and ostentatious splendour in all 
 things a descent, it is still open to ask whether the individual 
 man made out of all these secondary materials does not even 
 exceed the purer and nobler creations. Louis Napoleon Bona- 
 parte has not, like his uncle, risen from the small gentry of a 
 remote island to triumph in every battle-field of the Old World, 
 and to execute vengeance upon dynasties and aristocracies, till 
 beaten only by the elements and ever-growing numbers ; he has 
 not fulfilled an ancient dream of conquest ; he has not con- 
 summated a long design on the liberties and independence of
 
 NAPOLEON III. 143 
 
 semi-barbarous nations ; he lias not delivered his country from 
 a hated thraldom, or welded a race into an empire ; he has not 
 spread a faith or established a principle. The struggling 
 Pretender, the favourite of fortune, the final recoverer of his 
 just inheritance, the patriot bequeathing to the world with his 
 last breath a legacy of truth and honour these are the theme of 
 poets and the idolatry of historians. What we see in the career 
 now closed for ever was a composition of all these things, each 
 in measure and alloy. Hardly anything is wanting to that 
 medley of qualities and that round of vicissitudes which either 
 friend might claim or enemy ascribe. 
 
 The birthright of Louis Napoleon was that which the 
 greatest intellect and most resolute will of his time had been 
 compelled to let fall. It was the claim to hold and govern the 
 world on popular principles and for present good, against the 
 antiquated claims of authority, prescription, and class. Every- 
 thing that was or had been established was in array against his 
 avowed design to make the world anew. Repulsive as that 
 design was to most minds, it had to bear also the scandals of 
 conquest and the vices of Imperialism. What had been a 
 political fanaticism had convicted itself of hypocrisy, and, worse 
 still, of failure. All the states of Europe were banded to rush 
 in and stamp out the slightest sign of an attempt to take up 
 that sword of conquest and that crown of universal empire. 
 The long peace of an exhausted world scarcely disturbed even 
 by revolution at the very focus of the old evil, was construed 
 into a divine sanction of the cause which had won the day. 
 France herself at last, when she seemed free to choose, deliber- 
 ately compromised with legitimacy. Then, and for a long period, 
 Louis Napoleon was the single representative of his cause. But 
 princes flattered the people and dallied with their own fears, 
 till, in spite of themselves, they had made a place for the name 
 they feared and the man they had come to despise. We now 
 see, though few saw then, that the ship which brought home the 
 body of Napoleon to be laid under the gorgeous dome of the 
 Invalides did in effect bring home his nephew. Meanwhile, this 
 strange, meditative, inscrutable man, dark to others, often, 
 doubtless, to himself, was learning everywhere, everything. In 
 long captivity, in Switzerland, and in our metropolis, he had 
 nothing to do but that which princes often cannot do to read, 
 observe, think, and learn and watch the star of his destiny.
 
 144 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 Within the sphere of thought and feeling the man who can 
 think, and feel, and intend, and design is an autocrat He 
 wants no advisers ; he depends on no informers ; he is bound 
 to no agents ; he is all in all the first and last in his mental 
 realm. That was the late Emperor's education, as careful when 
 it depended on himself and fortune as when an Emperor, a 
 nation, and a royal mother gave their heart and soul to it. It 
 prepared him for empire, but not, as we now see, for constitu- 
 tional government ; and not, a3 we now still more plainly see, 
 for the qualities necessary to success under the overwhelming 
 difficulties of unexpected and unexampled prosperity. It pre- 
 pared him for Plebiscites and coups d'etat, a portfolio teeming 
 with schemes, new maps of Europe, rectified frontiers, " wars 
 for ideas" repaid with territory, intrigues, demonstrations, vast 
 material undertakings, and, in all things, a regard to that which 
 pleases the fancy and meets the eye. It prepared him for the 
 pageant and the scene, but not for the stern realities of all 
 life, whether public or private not for the successes only 
 attainable by the full tension and continual exercise of the 
 highest moral and mental faculties. A student may learn, a 
 dreamer may have visions, a thinker may arrive at conclusions 
 or collect and arrange ideas ; but if they have to spend the 
 best part of their lives out of the action of life, watching, observ- 
 ing, and patiently expecting, they will be sure to find that 
 when the opportunity does arise they cannot deal with men, 
 except as the bloodless creatures of their own ideal world. 
 
 For twenty years the world saw, with continual misgiving, 
 the outburst of a long pent-up power, the very summer of 
 empire full of leaf and flower ; the very autumn ripening 
 everywhere to decay. France was to be dazzled with a succes- 
 sion of grand displays, from the fantastic shows of a palace, 
 enormous fites, unequalled exhibitions, and the chase itself 
 transformed into a forest masquerade, to wars and threats of 
 war, in which glory was the only prize. When the Roman 
 poet asked what soil had not been fertilised with Latin blood, 
 he might have been answered that the soil so fertilised had 
 also been won, and that the blood had not been shed wholly 
 in. vain, even though it only pacified and united the world. 
 There was often wanted even that consolation for the blood of 
 France shed in quarrels provoked by herself, as fruitless as 
 they had been causeless. France had opened the century with
 
 NAPOLEON III. 145 
 
 a crusade in behalf of our common humanity, though as little 
 true to its professions as crusades usually are. Napoleon III. 
 had his crusades everywhere for liberty, for order, for religion, 
 for civilisation, for commerce, for national unity, for every 
 purpose that can engage the heart or imagination of man. Of 
 all that effort and cost it is hard to say what and where the 
 harvest is. The grandest and most successful of all these 
 enterprises that for the delivery of Italy from her German 
 lords, winning by a miracle, and ending in a Napoleonic 
 conference, while its lustre was dimmed by material compensa- 
 tion was fatal as a precedent. Professing to stand on unity, 
 Napoleon grudged for Germany what he had helped to win for 
 Italy. He hardly cared to ask how Denmark stood in her 
 quarrel. Principle faltered where the matter was small and 
 the risk more appreciable. In so vast a field of enterprise as 
 the surface of the globe, and with an ambition spanning two 
 hemispheres, it mattered little if a trifle or two fell out of the 
 programme. What if the chase for glory in far distant Mexico 
 resulted in a national shame redeemed only by Imperial discre- 
 tion ? But Napoleon III. wished to be everything. Through- 
 out the long enforced incubation of his own plans he had 
 meditated everything by turns, so now he must be the world in 
 one man. Such an ambition must comprise failure as well as 
 success ; and with some glory not a little disgrace. Of course, 
 all may now see easily enough, in the disastrous result, that 
 under a great name and the semblance to absolute power there 
 was the most fatal of weaknesses the want of public virtue. 
 The Imperial system, if it did not violently cast out the good 
 and true, left them in the shade, and gave honour, place, and 
 power to those who would serve their master's turn. Thus was 
 society corrupted, and the defences of the country left as weak 
 and hollow as the fabulous array, the mock armaments, and 
 the unprovisioned fortresses of some semi -bar baric potentate. 
 Loyalty, " the cheap defence of nations," was wanting, and with 
 that want nothing was true, substantial, and strong. The 
 future will show better than we can tell whether this was the 
 fault of the Emperor or of France. 
 
 Yet, not merely because the man is gone, nor yet because he 
 descends to his grave having recently suffered vast calamities 
 and deep humiliations, but because it is truth, and must be 
 spoken, we bring a willing tribute to his virtues. Even though 
 
 VOL. I L
 
 146 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 absorbed in an egotism almost inevitable under his strangely 
 unique circumstances, Napoleon III. had the qualities which win 
 personal affection, respect, and admiration. He had genuine 
 love and friendship ; he was loyal to his friends, true to all who 
 worked with him, had his full share of personal courage, and 
 was most grateful to all who had ever done him even a small 
 service. It is not too much to say that he had the kindest 
 recollection of everybody who had shown him even a passing 
 civility in the course of his varied fortunes. He had a true love 
 for his country, even though he could not but identify her 
 fortunes with his own. All his schemes for her domestic 
 improvement, for the emancipation of her trade and industry, 
 and the extension of commerce by new and unheard-of channels, 
 were magnificent, their only fault being that in some instances 
 their time was not yet and the cost beyond all hope of repay- 
 ment But France had to be occupied and interested, and 
 better by works of peace than of war. Napoleon IIL stood 
 throughout our fast friend to the very bounds of discretion. 
 He saw and felt that our place was to stand together. Such 
 were our national affinities, such our social interests, such our 
 position. He had made two long sojourns with us, and had 
 learnt our ways. He had become one of us. Nor would he play 
 the dangerous game of former French sovereigns, dissembling 
 his real feelings to this country lest they should seem too English 
 for old French antipathies. He did not disguise his Anglican 
 leanings ; and even when his life was threatened by conspiracy 
 from these shores he was content with such protection as English 
 law and custom could afford. Like his immediate predecessor 
 on the throne, Napoleon IIL will lie in an English grave, more 
 secure there than at St. Denis, more secure, possibly, than at 
 the Invalides. Received on these shores with the sympathy 
 due to misfortune, and followed everywhere with the respect 
 due to a dignified bearing and an affectionate nature, the 
 ex-Emperor acquires a new claim to consideration in the agonies 
 of his deathbed, the manly patience with which they have been 
 borne, and the deep affliction of those he leaves behind him.
 
 LORD LYTTON 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, MONDAY, JANUARY 20, 1873 
 
 To those who are passing into middle age, and still more to 
 those who are farther advanced in years, the news of the death 
 of Lord Lytton will come as an announcement that another 
 spring of pleasure, often tasted in the past, is closed. A younger 
 generation may have favourites of its own whose gifts are awaited 
 with eagerness and devoured with impatience, but the great 
 mass of English readers have grown up under the influence of 
 " Bulwer's " genius, and have delighted in each successive 
 manifestation of his many-sided intellect. His novels fascinated 
 their earlier years, and the remarkable fecundity of his powers 
 only seemed to furnish them with fresh gratification every time 
 they were exercised. They may have got to know the tricks of 
 his style and the turn of his mind ; but knowledge like this 
 did but serve to heighten the pleasure they felt in recognising 
 the personality that could never be disguised, however various 
 the forms in which it was clothed. It is not inconsistent with 
 the energy of his career that even now that he is dead he has 
 left a new book passing through the Press, to be within a few 
 days in our hands. He died as he lived, working to the end. 
 He had revised the last proof-sheets of his last novel just before 
 the sudden attack which has taken him from us. On Friday 
 morning he appeared to be in his usual health, though wintering, 
 as has been of late his custom, at Torquay, but in the afternoon 
 an attack of ear-ache passed into violent inflammation, and on 
 Saturday morning he died. 
 
 Thackeray, with pardonable fondness, was wont to dilate 
 upon the wonderful power that novelists enjoy of conferring
 
 148 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 pleasure upon mankind. He tells us how he read novels as a 
 schoolboy with delight when afternoon holidays came, and 
 with, perhaps, still greater delight when he could smuggle the 
 prohibited books among volumes of another kind he ought to 
 have been studying ; and he made it at once a boast and a 
 matter of thanksgiving that the tastes of his youth had not 
 deserted him as he passed from stage to stage of manhood. 
 How many hours of such innocent pleasure has not Lord Lytton 
 given and will he not yet give to the world of readers ! It is 
 five-and-forty years since his first novel was published, and hia 
 intellectual activity never ceased from the day of his first 
 appearance as an author. All Englishmen know his books. 
 Their popularity in the Colonies is relatively even greater than 
 at home. In America they have been republished in Boston, 
 in New York, and in Philadelphia, and rival publishers in 
 these, and we believe in other cities, have competed which 
 should be the first to reproduce them for American readers. 
 Some have been translated into every language of Europe ; 
 almost all have been translated into the principal European 
 languages. If any one will reflect on the number of readers 
 these books have had in all parts of the world he may be 
 startled to see how hours pass into days, days into weeks, and 
 weeks into years of pleasure. Yet it would be a mistake to 
 dwell merely on the amusement they have given, or to 
 think of Lord Lytton only as a novelist. One of the earliest 
 of his associates, who has remained through life his friend and 
 admirer while rising himself to a post of the greatest honour in 
 his country's service, and to honour even greater than the post 
 he fills the Lord Chief Justice of England recalled to our 
 memory not long since the varied distinctions of Lord Lytton. 
 It was at the parting dinner given to Dickens before his List 
 visit to the United States that the Lord Chief Justice touched 
 on the manifold honours the chairman of the night had gained 
 since the days when they were undergraduates together at 
 Trinity Hall. Poet, essayist, orator, statesman, dramatist, 
 scholar, novelist he had been all these, and this not like the 
 fickle profligate satirised by Pope, who tried all things and 
 never finished any ; for, whatever the character Lord Lytton 
 essayed to fill, he worked at the object he put before himself 
 with conscientious thoroughness until he had completed his 
 design ; and if he did not in every walk achieve equal distinc-
 
 LORD LYTTON 149 
 
 tion, he failed in none. His first efforts in poetry are now but 
 little known, and are scarcely referred to, except as curious 
 illustrations of Lord Byron's influence over his generation ; nor 
 is it likely that King Arthur will be long remembered in his 
 epic ; but in later years Lord Lytton discovered the true limits 
 of his poetic power. The vigour, wit, and polish of St. 
 Stephen's entitle him to high rank in the masculine school of 
 Dryden and Pope ; the Lost Tales of Miletus have charmed 
 scholars with their playful fancy, and the translations from 
 Schiller have been vouched by Mr. Carlyle as the versions an 
 English reader should consult who wishes to know the lyrics of 
 the great German author. Those who are most familiar with 
 Lord Lytton's essays are most fond of them, and are most 
 persuaded that they have never received fit recognition. 
 Certain it is that among the earliest collected of his writings of 
 this kind The Student are some papers of singular power 
 and beauty which have never been adequately appreciated. 
 The author of The Lady of Lyons was flattered by the 
 preference of every actress on the stage for the part of Pauline ; 
 and the audience in the most fastidious of our theatres have 
 welcomed Money every night for more than six months past. 
 The whole world knows his fame as an orator and novelist, and 
 remembers the singular range of knowledge and experience 
 upon which he built up his success. We are not poor in 
 Parliamentary oratory, yet veterans in the House of Commons 
 confessed that Bulwer's speech on Lord Derby's Reform Bill in 
 1859 equalled anything they had ever heard at Westminster. 
 The Eadical member of 1831-41 had become a Conservative in 
 advancing years, but his Conservatism was always rational, and 
 it must be remarked that, while Whigs go to the House of Lords 
 to become Tories, Lord Lytton used the independence of the 
 Upper House to become something very like a Whig. He 
 voted steadily against his party on the great question of the 
 Irish Church, and in the threatened conflicts we have had of 
 late years between the two Houses Lord Lytton was never one 
 of those who reluctantly gave way on second thoughts, for he 
 had always anticipated the vote it became a hereditary legislator 
 to give when the will of the nation had been made plain. 
 
 It is unnecessary to speculate upon the position Lord Lytton 
 will ultimately occupy in the hierarchy of English letters. His 
 keenest admirers will probably admit that he began too soon and
 
 150 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 wrote too much for lasting fame. His workmanship was, 
 indeed, at all times most careful and accurate ; but though the 
 rapidity with which successive works appeared was never 
 suffered to interfere with the polish of their execution, it did at 
 times injuriously affect the spontaneity and depth of their 
 inspiration. Tried by the very highest standard, it may be 
 thought that his imagination, though skilful and eager in the 
 development of dramatic situations, was wanting in the irre- 
 pressible impulse and sway of passion. It may even be said 
 that he was a novelist by an effort of intellectual determination 
 rather than through the possession of a gift that would not rest 
 unexercised. But if this were true of him, it is true of every 
 novelist now living among us, and admitting the limitation, 
 what floods of wealth did Lord Lytton pour forth out of his 
 treasury ! His first novels have the faults which were in- 
 separable from the circumstances amid which they were written, 
 but their wit and brilliancy were all his own. Pelham was 
 written just after he had come of age. Its author had been 
 bred at home before passing to the university, and when he 
 came to Trinity Hall he was like Gibbon in possessing a store 
 of knowledge that would puzzle a doctor, and like him in being 
 ignorant with an ignorance that would shame a schoolboy. 
 Pelham has all the affectation of a youth who had been daintily 
 bred at home and then translated into the life of the salons 
 without ever having gone through the roughness of the play- 
 ground. Most lads suffering from such a training would have 
 dwindled down into becoming the pride of some petty coterie. 
 But Bulwer had the strength to emancipate himself from the 
 weakness of his education, and he grew steadily in power and 
 freedom in every successive work. It is not our purpose to 
 dwell on the volumes that appeared as year followed year. 
 They are in everybody's hands. They have led the charmed 
 reader into all times and into all lands. Imperial Rome lives 
 again in the pages of the Last Days of Pompeii, and the attempt 
 to re-establish Romish liberty in the Middle Ages flashes out 
 again in Rienzi. Our own history furnished the subjects of 
 Harold and the Last of the Barons. The most popular of Lord 
 Lytton's stories will, however, always be those which tell of 
 modern English life. This was the substance of his first efforts, 
 and to this he returned when, in 1850, the second half of his 
 career began with the publication of the Caxtons. It is in the
 
 LORD LYTTON 151 
 
 brilliant and vivid analysis of contemporary manners that the 
 greatest distinctions of Lord Lytton were achieved, and it is to 
 these pictures of England in the first half of the nineteenth 
 century that future students will turn back with interest and 
 gratification. 
 
 The deceased peer was the son of General William Earle 
 Bulwer, of Woodalling and Heydon. Hall, Norfolk, by the only 
 daughter and heiress of Richard Warburton Lytton, of Kneb- 
 worth, Herts. He was born in 1805, and married, in 1827, 
 Rosina, daughter of the late Francis Massey Wheeler, of Lizzard 
 Connell, County Limerick. 
 
 He represented St. Ives in 1831, Lincoln from 1822 to 
 1841, and Herts from 1842 to 1866. He served as Secretary 
 of State for the Colonies from May 1858 to June 1859. 
 
 In 1844 Sir Edward Bulwer assumed the name of Lytton in 
 compliance with the forms of his mother's will, and in 1866 
 was created a peer.
 
 BARON LIEBIG 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, SATURDAY, APRIL 19, 1873 
 
 THE great chymist, Baron von Liebig, who died yesterday after- 
 noon, was born at Darmstadt, the capital of the Grand Duchy 
 of Hesse -Darmstadt, on the 8th, or, according to another 
 account, the 12th, of May 1803. After having completed his 
 classical education at the gymnasium of his native city, his 
 father, who all along had noticed his excessive partiality for 
 chymistry and for other branches of natural science, was 
 induced to place him, when about fifteen years of age, in a 
 pharmaceutical establishment at Heppenheim. Here Justus 
 Liebig remained not quite a year, and in 1819 we find him 
 entered as a student at the University of Bonn, where he pur- 
 sued his favourite studies with great industry and success. 
 From Bonn he was transferred to Erlangen, where he continued 
 to follow up the same course of study, and where he took the 
 degree of Doctor of Medicine before he was of age. In 1822, 
 or the following year, he was sent to Paris at the expense of the 
 Grand Duke of Hesse, who allowed him a bourse or pension, 
 under the name of a travelling stipend. There he remained 
 for about two years more, still prosecuting his chymical studies, 
 and associating with the most distinguished of the chymists of 
 that country, of whom the best known perhaps were MM. Gay- 
 Lussac, Dumas, and Pelouze. In 1823 he communicated to the 
 French Academy of Sciences a memoir on Fulminic Acid and 
 the Fulminates compounds which, according to Sir David 
 Brewster's statement in Mackenzie's Dictionary of Universal 
 Biography, had been originally discovered by our countryman, 
 Howard, as far lack as the beginning of the present century.
 
 BARON LIEBIG 153 
 
 Liebig, however, says Sir D. Brewster, " was the first who 
 explained their true chymical constitution " ; and his memoir on 
 the subject excited so much interest, not only in. Paris, but in 
 other countries, that Humboldt invited the author to his house 
 and introduced him to the circle of his scientific friends. 
 Resolved to stand his friend in more important matters, that 
 distinguished patron of science gave him such strong letters of 
 recommendation to the authorities of the University of Giessen 
 that, although the subject of this memoir was only just twenty- 
 one years of age, he was appointed Professor Extraordinary of 
 Chymistry, a position which, some two years later, he exchanged 
 for the higher and more permanent post of Ordinary Professor. 
 He now, under the patronage of the Government (for which, no 
 doubt, he had in some measure to thank his kind and dis- 
 criminating patron, Humboldt), commenced that model labora- 
 tory for teaching practical chymistry which attracted students 
 from every part of Europe, not to speak of other quarters of the 
 globe, and enabled him to send out into the scientific world such 
 distinguished chymists as Hoffman, Wiess, Fresenius, Gregory, 
 Johnston, and Dr. Lyon Playfair, who were proud to reckon 
 themselves in the number of his pupils. 
 
 For many of the facts in the life of Liebig which we have 
 next to record we are indebted to his biographer and friend, Sir 
 David Brewster. In 1837 Liebig attended the meeting of the 
 British Association for the Advancement of Science, which met 
 that year at Liverpool. On this occasion he read a most 
 interesting and valuable paper on the " Composition and 
 Chymical Relations of Uric Acid " ; and such was the estimation 
 in which his paper was held by the chymical section of the 
 Association that he was requested by its members to draw up 
 two reports the one on " Isomeric Bodies," and the other on 
 "Organic Chymistry." Strange to say, however, none of these 
 reports appeared in the Proceedings of the Association; but 
 before the meeting which was held at Glasgow in 1840, Liebig 
 had published at Brunswick his work entitled Organic Chymistry 
 in its Application to Agriculture and Physiology, which was 
 translated into English from the author's manuscript, and 
 dedicated to the British Association. " This work," observes 
 Sir D. Brewster, " was only a part of the Report on Organic 
 Chymistry which that body had requested at his hands " ; but 
 an abstract of the whole report was read on his behalf by Dr.
 
 154 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 Lyon Playfair before the Chyraical Section at Manchester in 
 1842, under the title of" Organic Chymistry applied to Physio- 
 logy and Pathology." In the first part of this interesting com- 
 munication he treats of the processes employed in the nutrition 
 and reproduction of various parts of the animal economy. In 
 the second part he examines the chymical processes engaged in 
 the production of bile, urea, uric acid, and its components, as 
 well as of cerebral and nervous substance. In the third part he 
 treats of the recondite laws of the phenomena of motion, and he 
 concludes his report with two chapters, one on the theory of 
 disease and the other on the theory of respiration. The entire 
 report, of which this paper was only an abstract, was published 
 in 1842 under the title of Animal Chymistry, or Chymistry in 
 its Application to Physiology and Pathology. It was translated 
 into English from the author's manuscript by Dr. Gregory; a 
 French version of it also was published at Paris. 
 
 In 1848 Professor Gregory translated from the manuscript 
 and published Liebig's work on the Motions of the Juices in the 
 Animal Body, and in the following year his Researches on the 
 Chymistry of Food. Liebig had already published his most 
 popular work, and that by which, after all, his name will be 
 most widely remembered, his Familiar Letters on Chymistry con- 
 sidered in its Relation to Industry, Agriculture, and Physiology. 
 A second series of these Familiar Letters appeared in 1844, or 
 the following year, and they have since passed through several 
 editions. The edition of 1857 was dedicated to Sir James 
 Clark, who had been largely instrumental in establishing the 
 Royal College of Chymistry. A " Reply " to some of the 
 principles laid down by Liebig, by Dr. Gilbert and Mr. Lawes, 
 appeared in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of 
 England in December 1855, and many of his views have been 
 combated elsewhere from time to time ; but still, speaking 
 generally, it may be safely asserted that his principles of 
 agricultural chymistry have found very many and very distin- 
 guished supporters. At all events Liebig must be honoured 
 with the credit of having very extensively simplified the pro- 
 cesses for organic analysis, and of having by their aid made 
 numerous investigations which were formerly impracticable on 
 account of the complexity of the methods then in use. He 
 was also the sole author of nearly three hundred, and the joint 
 author of from thirty to forty, separate memoirs on chymical
 
 BARON LIEBIG 155 
 
 subjects, which have been published from time to time in the 
 leading scientific journals at home and abroad. He co-operated 
 with M. Poggendorf in the Dictionary of Chymistry, published 
 by him in six volumes at Brunswick in the years 1837-56, 
 and in a "Supplement" to the same work in 1851-52 ; as also 
 with M. Geiger in his Manual of Pharmacy. Very many of his 
 most important, though briefer papers have appeared in the 
 Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie. 
 
 The scientific attainments and valuable researches of Liebig 
 were rewarded with honours of various kinds in almost every 
 country where natural science is held in honour. Chairs of 
 Chymistry, for instance, almost without number, were placed 
 at his disposal, if he would only have condescended to accept 
 them, both upon the Continent and also in London. In 1845 
 the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, Louis II., conferred upon 
 him a hereditary barony, and thenceforth he was known as 
 the Baron von Liebig. Already, as far back as the year 1840, 
 he had been chosen a foreign member of our Eoyal Society, 
 and had received its Copley Medal for his researches in organic 
 chymistry. In 1850 he was elected to fill the Chymical Pro- 
 fessorship at the University of Heidelberg, which was left 
 vacant by the lamented death of Gmelin, but he declined to 
 accept it. Two years later, however, he accepted a professorial 
 chair, and afterwards the post of President of the Chymical 
 Laboratory, in the University of Munich, the duties of which 
 he discharged most ably and efficiently until the commencement 
 of the illness under which, after a partial recovery, he has 
 ultimately sunk. 
 
 In 1854 a fund of about 1000 was raised by subscrip- 
 tion throughout Europe for the purpose of marking the 
 value set by the public on his chymical and agricultural re- 
 searches, and it was expended, as we are told by Sir David 
 Brewster, in the purchase of five pieces of plate one for each 
 of his children as memorials of the parent who is now no 
 more. It is almost needless to add that he was an honorary 
 or corresponding member of nearly all the leading academies 
 and learned societies both in Europe and also on the other side 
 of the Atlantic ; and in May 1861 he was elected, in the place 
 of the late M. Tiedeman, as one of the eight Foreign Associates 
 of the Academy of Sciences in the French Institute. In a 
 practical country like England his name will doubtless be
 
 15G EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 remembered less for his purely scientific attainments than for 
 the advance in practical agriculture which has followed from 
 his researches into the laws of chymistry. He was a frequent 
 visitor to England during the last thirty years or so, and his 
 presence was always gladly hailed at our leading agricultural 
 and scientific meetings. In the recent discussion upon the 
 vexed question of the utilisation of sewage he took an active 
 and constant interest ; and his views, to say the least, have 
 tended considerably to increase and extend the knowledge 
 previously existing on this most important subject In English 
 households his memory will, however, be perhaps still better 
 remembered as the inventor of the preparation of meat extract 
 which bears his name.
 
 MR. MACREADY 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 1873 
 
 IT sounds a little strange, even to the ears of veteran playgoers, 
 to record the death of Macready, the favourite of half a century 
 ago, the contemporary of the Keans and the Kembles, more 
 than twenty years since his retirement from the stage. William 
 Charles Macready died on Sunday at Cheltenham at the ripe 
 age of eighty years. 
 
 The son of a gentleman who had not been very fortunate as 
 lessee and manager of one or two provincial theatres, he was 
 born iu the parish of St. Pancras, London, on the 3rd of March 
 1793. He was educated at Rugby with a view to following 
 one of the learned professions, probably either the Bar or the 
 Church. But it was not his destiny to become either a judge 
 or a bishop. His father was suffering from pecuniary embar- 
 rassments, and it became necessary for the son to turn his hand 
 to some line of life where he could be earning money instead 
 of spending it. Accordingly, he appeared on the boards for the 
 first time at Birmingham in June 1810, performing the part of 
 Romeo, when he had little more than completed his seventeenth 
 year. His appearance is traditionally said to have been suc- 
 cessful, and he remained with his father's company until the 
 year 1814 or 1815, performing at Bath, Birmingham, Chester, 
 Sheffield, and Glasgow, and in other large provincial towns 
 with similar results. In September 1816 he made his first 
 appearance on the boards of- a London theatre, performing 
 Orestes in the Distressed Mother at Covent Garden. Here, too, 
 his success was undoubted, but he had difficulties to overcome. 
 To use the words of a writer in the Ewjlish Encyclopaedia,
 
 158 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 " Kemblc, Young, and Kean had taken a sort of exclusive 
 possession of the characters of Shakespeare, in which, at a later 
 period, Macready was destined to display such excellence. 
 With a resolute industry, however, a deep and subtle insight 
 into the shades and peculiarities of character, and a style at 
 once original and simple, he made a certain range his own. 
 He won applause as Rob Roy and Gambia ; but it was in the 
 Virginius of Sheridan Knowles that his true position was first 
 fully demonstrated." 
 
 From this time he continued to rise steadily in the favour 
 of the public, and he increased his reputation abroad by well- 
 timed visits to America and to Paris in the years 1826-28. 
 
 It was in the autumn of 1837 that he added to his many 
 engagements and responsibilities by undertaking the post of 
 lessee and .manager of Co vent Garden Theatre. Here his 
 labour was immense. In the words of the writer already 
 quoted, " He did not overlay the drama by too gorgeous scenery 
 or by too minute attention to the details of costume, as though 
 they were to be the principal attractions, but strove to make 
 them appropriate to the situation and feeling of the scene as a 
 whole." He also endeavoured to purify the atmosphere of his 
 theatre by the exclusion of immoral characters and of all that 
 could justify the suspicions and attacks of the enemies of the 
 drama. It cannot, however, be said that the financial results 
 corresponded to his praiseworthy attempt ; and at the end of 
 two years he resigned his management At the close of his 
 management, however, his friends not only entertained him at 
 a public dinner, but presented him with a more solid " testi- 
 monial " of their sympathy. 
 
 After a short performance at the Haymarket, we find him 
 next undertaking the management of Drury Lane, undeterred 
 by his experience at the rival house. His management here 
 was distinguished by the introduction of musical dramas set 
 forth in the highest style of scenic illustration, among which 
 we ought to particularise Ads and, Galatea and the Masque of 
 Comus. It also marked the introduction of new dramas to the 
 world, including many of the best pieces of Serjeant (afterwards 
 Mr. Justice) Talfourd, Sheridan Knowles, and the late Lord 
 Lytton, then better known to the public by the familiar name 
 of Bulwer, who was his firm and fast friend for many years, 
 and who wrote for him both Richelieu and The Lady of Lyons.
 
 MR. MACREADY 159 
 
 As the great French cardinal, Macready achieved one of his 
 chief histrionic triumphs ; but still, with reference to financial 
 results, his management was not successful. Accordingly, he 
 resigned it at the end of a second season ; and it is not a little 
 remarkable that in his parting address he took occasion to 
 denounce the injurious operation of the dramatic monopoly 
 which then prevailed. This step he followed up by a petition 
 to Parliament for its removal, and before long he had the 
 satisfaction of seeing his wishes realised. 
 
 In 1849 Macready again paid a professional visit to America ; 
 and on this occasion it will be remembered that a quarrel raised 
 by the well-known American actor named Forrest, lately de- 
 ceased, gave rise to a riot in the Astor Opera House at New 
 York, while the performance was going on, in which Macready's 
 life was endangered. The riot was not suppressed until the 
 military were called out : shots were fired, and several persons 
 killed. 
 
 Returning to England towards the close of the same year, 
 Mr. Macready entered upon his last engagement at the Hay- 
 market ; but his health was not good, and he soon after retired, 
 fortunately in good time to enjoy his professional honours in 
 private life, but not until he had completed the representation 
 of all his principal characters. It was in February 1851 that 
 he took his formal farewell of the stage, and was entertained at 
 a public dinner in London, the chair being filled by his old 
 friend, Sir E. Bulwer-Lytton, whom he has now followed to the 
 grave. 
 
 After his retirement from public life he took up his residence 
 first at Sherborne, in Dorsetshire, and subsequently at Chelten- 
 ham, where, as we have said, he breathed his last on Sunday. 
 At Sherborne he employed his leisure time in literary pursuits, 
 and nothing pleased him better than to deliver lectures at the 
 local Mechanics' Institutes and other similar institutions for the 
 benefit of the humbler classes of society ; and both there and at 
 Cheltenham he did his best to promote the cause of popular 
 education. 
 
 About twenty- five years ago Mr. Macready published an 
 edition of the poetical works of Pope, which was originally pre- 
 pared and privately printed by him for the use of his children, 
 to whom it is dedicated.
 
 MANZONI 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, SATURDAY, MAY 24, 1873 
 
 IT is not so much matter of surprise that Alessandro Manzoni, 
 the veteran novelist and poet of Italy, has at last died, at the 
 ripe age of eighty-nine, as that lie was still alive up to Thursday 
 last. He died at Milan, of which place he was a native. His 
 father was Count Manzoni, and his mother the gifted daughter 
 of the Marquis Beccaria, whose name is well known as the 
 author of a treatise on Crimes and Punishments. He had the 
 misfortune to lose his father during his childhood, and he 
 received his early education at Milan and at Pavia. Before 
 he had reached manhood he went to Paris with his mother, 
 who introduced him into literary circles. The result was that 
 he became acquainted with Volney, Caharis, Fauriel (to whom 
 he dedicated a tragedy in after years), and Madame Condorcet, 
 and imbibed many of the opinions then current there. He 
 appears to have first attracted attention by a poem in blank 
 verse on the death of Carlo Imbonati, a relative who lived in 
 Paris and left his property to Manzoni's mother. Returning to 
 Italy in 1807, and soon afterwards marrying a lady from Geneva, 
 we find him in 1809 publishing a poem entitled Urania. This 
 he followed up in 1810 by a volume of Sacred Hymns, from 
 which it appears that he had abandoned the deistical notions 
 which he had imbibed during his residence at Paris. In 1820 
 he published his tragedy of II Conte di Carmagnola, which was 
 succeeded by another, the Adelchi both accompanied by series 
 of interesting historical notes and an ode on the death of the 
 Great Napoleon. His tragedies or one of them at least 
 received the praise of no less a critic than Goethe.
 
 MANZONI 161 
 
 It was not, however, until 1827 that Mauzoni's name became 
 widely known to the world at large by the publication of 
 IPromessi Sposi, which has been translated into English under the 
 title of The Betrothed, and is now read in all the European lan- 
 guages. His next publication was of a controversial character, being 
 a vindication of Catholic morality from certain charges brought 
 against it by Sismondi in his History of Italian Republics. In 1842 
 he published the Storia della Colonna Infame, a historical treatise 
 bearing reference to that portion of his Promessi Sposi which 
 describes the plague at Milan in 1630. The substance of this 
 work is thus explained by a writer in the Ewjlish Cydopcedia : 
 
 " Among the circumstances of that event was a popular 
 belief in the propagation of the disease by persons who were 
 supposed to have anointed the walls of the houses with a poison 
 fatal to those who touched it. Many persons accused of being 
 untori (anointers) were subjected to torture in order to procure 
 confessions and accusations ; and, being tried, were found guilty, 
 and executed with circumstances of appalling cruelty. The 
 house of a barber named Mora, the supposed preparer of the 
 poison, was pulled down, and a column erected on the site, 
 which remained standing near the Via Ticinense till 1778, and 
 was called the Colonna Infame, or Column of Infamy, whence 
 the name given by Manzoni to his treatise." 
 
 Manzoni lost his wife in 1833 ; he afterwards contracted 
 a second marriage, and continued of late years to live in retire- 
 ment with his family at his residence near Milan. His poetical 
 works, including his two principal tragedies, are of the Eomantic, 
 as distinguished from the Classical, School ; and they contain 
 very many passages of great beauty, though probably few judges 
 would place him in the highest rank of dramatists ; but his 
 Promessi Sposi, "in respect of skilful construction and interest 
 of narrative, vividness of description, and discrimination of 
 character," has been pronounced by a high authority as " en- 
 titled to take rank beside the best historical works of Sir Walter 
 Scott." It seems strange that in this present year we should be 
 recording the death of a poet and novelist who was four years 
 older than Byron (who has been dead nearly half a century), and 
 was only a few years junior to Sir Walter Scott himself. In 1860 
 Manzoni was named a Senator of the kingdom of Sardinia. We 
 ought to add that a complete edition of Manzoni's works was issued 
 by Tomaseo, at Florence, in five volumes, several years ago. 
 
 VOL. I M
 
 LORD WESTBURY 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, MONDAY, JULY 21, 1873 
 
 THE son of a physician at Bristol, of ancient Welsh extraction, 
 whose family name was identified by the Heralds and pedigree 
 hunters with that of "Ap-Ithel," Richard Bethell was born on 
 the 30th of June 1800. Having received his early education 
 at a school at Bristol, he showed such a precocity in scholarship 
 and also in mathematical learning, that at the age of little more 
 than fourteen, while still wearing (as he himself said) a jacket 
 and a frill, he presented himself at Wadham College, Oxford, 
 for matriculation. His extreme youth caused at first a little 
 demur ; but he was matriculated and had worn the commoner's 
 gown for only a few months when he gained, being then but 
 just fifteen, a Scholarship in his College an instance of pre- 
 cocity paralleled at Oxford, in modern times, so far as we are 
 aware, only by the late Dr. Phillpotts, Bishop of Exeter. 
 
 His undergraduate career was one of high promise, and in 
 the Easter term of 1818, when he had not yet completed his 
 eighteenth year, he took his Bachelor's degree, obtaining a first- 
 class in the classical and a second in the mathematical schools. 
 Among those who stood in the first class along with him were 
 the Rev. Charles Girdlestone, the late Rev. Edward Greswell, 
 Fellow of Corpus College, and the late Mr. Charles Gray Round, 
 some time M.P. for North Essex. 
 
 For some time after taking his degree Mr. Bethell resided in 
 Oxford, taking pupils, or, as it is there termed, " coaching " ; 
 and we believe that on one occasion, in 1821 or 1822, he was 
 an unsuccessful candidate for a Fellowship at Oriel College 
 against Dr. John H. Newman. Soon afterwards, however, he
 
 LORD WESTBURY 163 
 
 succeeded to a Fellowship in his own College ; and having 
 previously been entered as a student at the Middle Temple, he 
 was called to the Bar in Michaelmas term, 1823.. He now 
 settled in London, and applied himself heart and soul to the 
 study of the profession which he had chosen, and, selecting the 
 Chancery Bar, soon succeeded in obtaining a sufficient share of 
 business to warrant him in throwing up his Fellowship by con- 
 tracting an early marriage. In 1825 he married Elinor Mary, 
 daughter of the late Mr. Robert Abraham. 
 
 Mr. Bethell, as the tradition runs at Oxford, owed much of 
 his early distinction at the Bar to the high impression which he 
 had produced while resident at the university upon the late Dr. 
 Gilbert, the Head of Brasenose College, and afterwards Bishop 
 of Chichester, who had examined him for his Bachelor's degree. 
 The story is told as follows : A suit in Chancery was instituted 
 against the College by a wealthy and influential nobleman in 
 the east of England. An unfavourable decision would have 
 seriously affected the interests of the Society over which Dr. 
 Gilbert presided, and, mindful of the ability displayed by Mr. 
 Bethell at his examination for honours, he selected the young 
 Chancery barrister as counsel for the College. It is said that 
 an eminent authority advised the College to agree to a com- 
 promise, and that the Principal and Fellows were only encouraged 
 to resist the action by the earnest representations of Mr. Bethell, 
 then a young man and untried lawyer. The College persevered, 
 and Mr. Bethell's self-reliance was rewarded by success. Briefs 
 rapidly flowed in, and Mr. Bethell's practice continued to 
 increase until early in 1840, when Lord Cottenham, then Lord 
 Chancellor, gave him a silk gown. Mr. Bethell, by the pro- 
 motion of Messrs. Knight -Bruce and Wigram to the Bench, 
 became, before reaching middle life, the leader of the Bar in the 
 Chancery Court, and his practice rapidly multiplied, the more 
 rapidly, indeed, because it was generally believed that his 
 opinions had an almost irresistible influence over the decisions 
 of Sir Lancelot Shadwell. He continued to practise with almost 
 equal success in the Equity Courts under the successive Chan- 
 cellorships of Lords Cottenham, Lyndhurst, Truro, St. Leonards, 
 and Cranworth ; and it may indeed be said that for upwards of 
 twenty years there was hardly a Chancery suit of importance in 
 which he was not engaged. Among the most interesting and 
 important of such cases were the great Bridgewater Will Case
 
 164 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 (which gave to the Brownlow family the large fortune they 
 inherited from the Duke of Bridgewater free from the conditions 
 imposed on Lord Alford, as contrary to public policy), and also 
 the Montrose Peerage Case and the great Shrewsbury Case, in 
 which he appeared first as Attorney-General, virtute officii, as 
 assessor on behalf of the crown, and subsequently, when out of 
 office, as counsel for the infant son of the late Duke of Norfolk, 
 who was made a party to the suit 
 
 Unlike many of his legal brethren, Mr. Bethell was in no 
 hurry to enter the House of Commons, and it was not until 
 1847 that he offered himself to a Parliamentary constituency 
 as a candidate for their suffrages. In that year he contested 
 Shaftesbury as a Liberal-Conservative, but without success, being 
 defeated by Mr. Richard B. Sheridan. In April 1851, how- 
 ever, he was more successful at Aylesbury, where he presented 
 himself to the electors with a far more advanced political creed, 
 and was returned to the Lower House as a " Liberal, favourable 
 to the Ballot and to the abolition of Church rates." He con- 
 tinued to represent that constituency down to April 1859, when 
 a difference arose as to the terms of a compromise with the 
 Conservative party, and he withdrew from the contest. He 
 was, however, almost immediately invited by the Liberals of 
 Wolverhampton to succeed Mr. Thomas Thornely in the repre- 
 sentation of that important borough, and he continued undis- 
 turbed in the possession of his seat until called to the Upper 
 House. 
 
 Almost immediately upon being elected for Aylesbury he 
 had been nominated Vice-Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. 
 In December 1852 he for the first time took office, becoming 
 Solicitor -General under the Coalition Government of Lord 
 Aberdeen, when he received the customary honour of knight- 
 hood. At this time many rumours of intended legal reforms 
 were current, and, in all probability, had the circumstances of 
 the time been different, Law Reform would have occupied the 
 serious attention of Lord Aberdeen and his colleagues. But the 
 Crimean War rendered this impossible. Still the services of 
 Sir Richard Bethell were of much use to the then Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer (Mr. Gladstone) in carrying his Succession Duty 
 Bill, many of the points in which were so intricate and so 
 strictly technical that not even Mr. Gladstone and, indeed, no 
 one but an Equity lawyer could have made them plain to the
 
 LORD WESTBURY 165 
 
 comprehension of the House of Commons. In fact, a great part 
 of the success of this measure was confessedly due to Sir Richard 
 Bethell, who also took an active part about the same time in 
 carrying the bills for reforming the University of Oxford and 
 for abolishing the Ecclesiastical Courts. In. the winter of 1 8 5 6-5 7 
 Sir Richard Bethell became Attorney-General, on the promotion 
 of Sir Alexander Cockburn to the Chief Justiceship of the Court 
 of Common Pleas. Two important measures of legal reform 
 were added to the Statute Book in 1857 the Probate and 
 Administration Act and the Divorce Act. It was the duty of 
 Sir Richard Bethell, as Attorney -General, to introduce these 
 bills into Parliament, and to take on himself the principal share 
 of the work of carrying them through the Lower House. This 
 duty he discharged most efficiently, although upon the question 
 of Divorce he had to reckon among the resolute opponents of 
 the measure his old colleague, Mr. Gladstone. 
 
 When the new Court of Probate and Matrimonial Causes 
 was first formed, the Judgeship was offered by Lord Palmerston 
 to Sir Richard Bethell, and it cannot be doubted that the public 
 regarded Sir Richard Bethell as eminently fitted to discharge its 
 functions. He, however, declined the offer, being conscious that 
 a higher dignity would be within his grasp if he would only 
 wait for it. 
 
 During the session of 1857 the new Attorney-General carried 
 also through the House of Commons another important measure 
 the Fraudulent Trustees Bill, which remedied a defect much 
 felt in our criminal jurisdiction, for up to that time a trustee 
 who robbed a helpless woman or orphan was regarded, not as a 
 criminal, but only as a debtor. The British Bank scandal had 
 then just occurred, and the Attorney-General declared that he 
 would try without delay whether the law was not strong enough 
 to meet the case of its directors. He did so, and the result was 
 that they were tried for a criminal offence, and convicted. Sir 
 Richard Bethell also had a large share in the preparation of the 
 Conspiracy Bill of February 1858, the rejection of which caused 
 the retirement of Lord Palmerston's Cabinet from office ; and it 
 will be remembered that his statement of the law of England in 
 cases of conspiracy as it stood gave rise to a sharp passage of 
 arms between Sir Richard and several of the Law Lords, in- 
 cluding Lord Lyndhurst, Lord Campbell, and the then Chan- 
 cellor, Lord Cranworth.
 
 1GG EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 The year 1859 was not distinguished by any great measures 
 of Law Reform. The Conservatives, under Lord Derby, were 
 in office, and their Solicitor-General, Sir Hugh Cairns, brought 
 in a bill for simplifying and facilitating the transfer of land. 
 Sir Richard Bethell, though sitting on the Opposition benches, 
 heartily praised Sir Hugh Cairns's speech, but warned him of 
 the difficulties he would have to encounter before he could hope 
 to effect the desired reforms. A change of ministry occurred 
 soon afterwards, and the matter was left over for future 
 legislation. 
 
 When, in the summer of the last-named year, Lord Palmer- 
 ston returned to office, some little surprise was expressed, and 
 probably more still was felt, at the fact of the Great Seal not 
 being offered to the eminent Equity lawyer who had so effectively 
 served his party, and who, as an Equity lawyer, was at all 
 events as well fitted for the woolsack as " plain John Campbell," 
 M r ho had reaped all his laurels at Nisi Prius. But Lord Camp- 
 bell, too, had " claims " on his party ; and it seemed ungenerous 
 to grudge the Lord Chief Justice, then close upon eighty, a 
 dignity which, in all human probability, he would not live long 
 to enjoy. 'And so it turned out ; for on the sudden death of 
 Lord Campbell, in June 1861, the Seals were offered to Sir 
 Richard Bethell, and a few days later be took his seat upon the 
 woolsack as Lord Westbury, of Westbury, in the county of 
 Wilts. He did not, however, go to the Upper House until he 
 had done one further service to the profession and to the country 
 at large by passing the Bankruptcy Bill of 1861 through the 
 Lower House a task of no small magnitude and difficulty. 
 
 On the woolsack and in the Equity Courts, during his three 
 years' tenure of the Great Seal, Lord Westbury made his mark, 
 and there are few of his predecessors in the present century 
 whose judgments can be said to stand higher. 
 
 Lord Westbury was a fluent speaker, though he never rose 
 into high flights of oratory, and his mincing lisp and drawl, 
 and apparently affected style of pronunciation, must have affected 
 his rhetorical fame, even if he had had other pretensions to it. 
 His great merits, both as an advocate and as a judge, were ease 
 and self-possession, clearness of thought, exquisite precision and 
 conciseness of language, and a marvellously acute logical faculty, 
 with a mind capable at once of entertaining the broadest views 
 and the most subtle distinctions. It must be owned also that
 
 LORD WESTBURY 167 
 
 his words sounded, and read also, too often " like butter," when 
 in reality they were "very swords," so keen was the edge of 
 that razor-like wit to which he could give play if provoked. 
 
 We will not reopen here the melancholy question of Lord 
 Westbury's fall. It will be enough to say that in the summer 
 of 1865 scandals which, though not originating with him, it 
 was felt he ought to have detected and checked, were brought 
 to light in connection with the Leeds Bankruptcy Court, and in 
 consequence of these, and of an adverse motion proposed in the 
 House of Commons, he resigned the Great Seal in the July of 
 that year. His resignation was accepted by Her Majesty, and 
 Lord Cranworth again took his seat upon the woolsack as his 
 successor. 
 
 From that date down to a recent period Lord Westbury con- 
 stantly took part, as one of the " Law Lords," in the decision of 
 Appeals brought before the House of Peers. It should be added 
 that as " Arbitrator " in the many delicate and important ques- 
 tions which arose out of the European Life Assurance Company, 
 his lordship showed all the ability which had marked his 
 tenure of the woolsack. Above all, it must not be forgotten 
 that many years ago, when the subject was far from popular, 
 Sir Eichard Bethell took a great interest in the improvement of 
 our system of education for legal students, and that, as Chair- 
 man of the Council of Legal Education, he largely contributed 
 to bring about those measures which have been recently adopted 
 with this object by the Inns of Court. 
 
 Lord Westbury was twice married ; by his first wife, Miss 
 Abraham, he had a family of four sons and four daughters. He 
 married as his second wife Miss Eleanor Margaret Tennant, on 
 the 25th of January last.
 
 BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, MONDAY, JULY 21, 1873 
 
 IT will be with sincere grief that our readers will this day learn 
 the sudden death of the eloquent and able Bishop of Winchester. 
 Bishop Wilberforce was riding last Saturday on the Surrey hills, 
 in the neighbourhood of Dorking, when he was thrown from 
 his horse, and we deeply regret to add that the accident proved 
 fatal. The details were as follows : 
 
 On Saturday the Bishop, accompanied by Lord Granville, 
 left London by the South- Western Railway, with the intention 
 of paying a short visit to the Hon. Edward Frederick Leveson 
 Gower, of Holmbury, near Dorking, where Mr. Gladstone had 
 arrived to meet them. At Leatherhead they were met by a 
 groom with horses. The Bishop mounted one which, on account 
 of its quietness, was a special favourite of Lord Granville's. 
 The distance of Holmbury from Leatherhead is about seven 
 miles, and the route lies through the most picturesque parts of 
 Surrey. After passing the Burford Bridge Hotel they left the 
 high road, and, leaving Dorking in the valley, made their way 
 over Ranmoor Common. From this point they pursued the 
 bridle road towards Leith Hill, where the scenery is especially 
 attractive. Beyond the Ackhurst Downs Lord Granville, being 
 very familiar with this part of the country, led the way down 
 the hill towards Abinger, and arrived on a piece of moorland 
 locally known as "Eversheds Rougk" A waggon road here 
 being very full of ruts, they left it for the turf, which is very 
 light and springy, but is not good galloping ground. The 
 Bishop and Lord Granville were in conversation when the 
 Bishop's horse stumbled, it is believed, over a stone, and threw
 
 BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 169 
 
 its rider on his head. After a slight convulsive movement the 
 Bishop became motionless. The accident happened opposite a 
 range of farm buildings, the only houses in the neighbourhood. 
 Lord Granville at once dismounted, and, seeing no signs of life, 
 despatched the groom for assistance to Abinger Hall, which was 
 the nearest house. Death appears to have been instantaneous, 
 as the Bishop fell on his head, and, turning completely over, 
 dislocated his neck. The body was conveyed to Abinger Hall, 
 the seat of Mr. Farrer, the Secretary of the Board of Trade, 
 Lord Granville assisting to carry the body. Expresses were 
 sent to Dorking and Shere for medical aid, and Dr. Clark and 
 Mr. Furnivall were soon on the spot, but the Bishop was beyond 
 all assistance. From the moment he fell he showed no signs of 
 life. His hat was completely crushed in, but on the body there 
 were no marks whatever, though yesterday morning there was 
 a slight extravasation of blood under the left ear. The face 
 was as placid as in life. The intelligence of the melancholy 
 event was at once telegraphed to his lordship's family, and 
 yesterday morning his youngest son, the Eev. Mr. Wilberforce, 
 arrived at Abinger. He visited the scene of the accident, and 
 caused a cross to be cut in the turf where his father fell. On 
 an examination of the groiind it was ascertained that there is a 
 slight declivity at the place where the accident occurred. The 
 hoof-marks plainly showed where the horse stumbled, and a few 
 feet farther on where it recovered its footing. The body now 
 lies in the drawing-room of Abinger Hall, where an inquest will 
 be held this morning. 
 
 Samuel Wilberforce, for upwards of a quarter of a century 
 Bishop successively of Oxford and Winchester, was born at 
 Broomefield House, Clapham Common, Surrey, on the 7th of 
 September 1805 ; he had not, therefore, completed his sixty- 
 eighth year at the time of his death. He was the third son of 
 William Wilberforce, celebrated for the share he had in the 
 abolition of the Slave Trade, and the author of the well-known 
 and ever-popular Practical View of CJiristianity, who, after repre- 
 senting Hull and his native county, Yorkshire, in Parliament 
 for many years, died in July 1833 full of days, and was 
 honoured by a public funeral and a monument in Westminster 
 Abbey. By his wife, Barbara Anne, eldest daughter of the late 
 Mr. Isaac Spooner of Elmdon Hall, Warwickshire, he had, 
 together with two daughters, four sons, all of whom rose to
 
 170 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 eminence. The eldest, William, who still survives, represented 
 Hull in Parliament for a short time in 1837-38 ; the second 
 was Robert Isaac Wilberforce, some time Archdeacon of the 
 East Riding of Yorkshire, who died in Italy in 1857, not long 
 after having resigned his preferments and joined the Roman 
 Catholic Church, a step which had been previously taken by 
 the youngest of the four sons, Mr. Henry William Wilberforce, 
 some time Vicar of Earl Farleigh, Kent, whose death we 
 recorded since the commencement of the present year. The 
 third son, Samuel, was the prelate whose death we have just 
 announced. 
 
 Half a century and more ago our public schools were not 
 what now they are ; and the Evangelical party had imbibed 
 from the writings of Cowper and from other sources a mistrust 
 of them as seminaries of Christian education. In fact, as a 
 rule, " religious " persons kept aloof from them ; and the elder 
 Wilberforce, who tells us in his diary that he looked forward to 
 no prospect more hopefully than to his sons becoming good and 
 worthy ministers of the English Church, formed no exception 
 to the rule. Accordingly, he sent his son Samuel to Edgbaston, 
 near Birmingham, to receive his early education under the late 
 Archdeacon Hodson. In due course of time, having completed 
 his studies, he was entered as a commoner at Oriel College, 
 Oxford, then at the height of its reputation under Copleston, 
 afterwards Bishop of Llandaff. As an undergraduate, as we 
 learn from Mr. Trench's Notes from Past Life, if not a very dis- 
 tinguished scholar, in the limited and Oxford sense of the word, 
 young Wilberforce was a constant and very fluent speaker at 
 the Union Debating Society. In Michaelmas term, 1826, he 
 brought his undergraduate career to a close by taking his 
 Bachelor's degree, when he obtained a second class in classics 
 and a first in mathematics, his name standing in the class-list 
 side by side with Bishop Trower, the late Dr. Mortimer, Arch- 
 deacon Denison, Lord Henry Bentinck, and the late Lord 
 Newark. 
 
 He did not gain any of the University or other Oxford 
 prizes, either as an undergraduate or a Bachelor ; and we 
 believe that from the time of taking his degree he began to 
 prepare himself for the ministry, to which his father had always 
 hoped that he would " prove his calling." Accordingly, in 
 1828, he was ordained by the late Dr. C. Lloyd, then Bishop of
 
 BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 171 
 
 Oxford, his "title" for orders being the curacy of Checkendon, 
 a remote country parish about midway between Henley, Wall- 
 ingford, and Reading, where, long after he returned into those 
 parts as a bishop, his name was remembered with affection by 
 the aged poor. A short time before his ordination he had 
 married Miss Emily Sargent, eldest daughter and co-heiress of 
 the late Rev. John Sargent, of Lavington, Sussex, who died in 
 1841. 
 
 At the end of the customary period of probation for curates, 
 Mr. Wilberforce was appointed, in 1830, to the great delight of 
 his aged father, to the living of Brightstone, in the Isle of 
 Wight, a benefice in the gift of his old friend Bishop Sumner, 
 of Winchester, to whose see he afterwards succeeded in Dr. 
 Sumner 's lifetime, but whom in the end he has not outlived. 
 In 1841 he was promoted to the rectory of Alverstoke, near 
 Gosport, an important and populous parish, where he had at 
 one time as his curate Dr. Trench, the present Archbishop of 
 Dublin. He had already been nominated by Bishop Sumner 
 to the Archdeaconry of Surrey, attached to which was a canonry 
 in Winchester Cathedral, and in the year of which we speak he 
 was chosen by the authorities of Oxford to deliver the Bampton 
 lectures. The delivery of these was, however, prevented by the 
 death of Mrs. Wilberforce. The subject chosen by him, we 
 believe, was the personality of the Holy Spirit. Preferments 
 were now showered thickly on Archdeacon Wilberforce. In 
 1843 he was nominated one of the chaplains to his Royal High- 
 ness the late Prince Consort. In the year 1844 he was 
 appointed by the then Archbishop of York Sub-Almoner to the 
 Queen, and early in 1845 was promoted to the Deanery of 
 Westminster, which had become vacant by the death of Dr. 
 Ireland. About this time he proceeded to his degrees in 
 Divinity as Bachelor and Doctor. 
 
 He was not, however, destined to stay long at the Deanery 
 of Westminster. Before the close of 1845 the see of Bath and 
 Wells had become vacant by the death of Dr. Law ; and Dr. 
 Bagot having been translated from Oxford to fill the vacancy, 
 the see of Oxford was offered for his acceptance. He was 
 consecrated in Lambeth Chapel by Dr. Howley, at that time 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, on St. Andrew's Day, 1845, the 
 consecration sermon being preached by his elder brother, Robert, 
 Archdeacon of the East Riding of Yorkshire. As Bishop of
 
 172 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 Oxford lie became also Chancellor of the Order of the Garter, 
 for under the ecclesiastical arrangements of a few years pre- 
 viously Windsor Castle and St. George's Chapel were included 
 in the diocese of Oxford instead of in that of Salisbury, to 
 which they had belonged. In 1847 Bishop Wilberforce re- 
 ceived also the appointment of Lord High Almoner to Her 
 Majesty. Joined with the see of Oxford at that time was the 
 rectory of Cuddesden, near Oxford, and, as at Alverstoke, Dr. 
 Wilberforce had one future Archbishop as his curate, so here he 
 had Dr. Thomson, the present Archbishop of York. 
 
 As a bishop, Dr. Wilberforce lost no time in showing him- 
 self earnest, zealous, and indefatigable, confirming not only in 
 the larger towns, but in the village churches, mixing personally 
 with his clergy, and stirring up their dormant energies by 
 taking part in " special services " at Lent, at Advent, and other 
 sacred seasons. He was active, also, in preaching on behalf of 
 new and old religious societies, which he regarded as useful 
 handmaids of the Church, and in promoting all well-considered 
 measures of school improvement, of church extension, and of 
 church restoration. He also established, almost under his own 
 eye, at Cuddesden, a training college for clergymen, in order 
 to bridge over the years which young men who intended to " take 
 orders" too often wasted after taking their degree at Oxford 
 and Cambridge, while not yet of canonical age for ordination as 
 deacons. 
 
 He had not long taken his seat on the Bishops' bench in 
 the House of Lords before he began to make his presence felt 
 there, speaking frequently on subjects in which the Church was 
 more or less directly interested, such as the religious education 
 of the young, the admission of Jews into Parliament, the bill 
 for legalising marriage with a deceased wife's sister, and the 
 revival of the active powers of Convocation, which, as we need 
 scarcely remind our readers, had been long dormant at the time 
 of his consecration to the Episcopate. In 1848 some bitter 
 controversy was excited by the part he took in reference to the 
 nomination of Dr. Hampden to the bishopric of Hereford, and it 
 is worthy of note that, sixteen or seventeen years ago, he was one 
 of the most active opponents of the bill passed at the instance 
 of Lord Palmerston to enable the late Bishops Blomfield and 
 Maltby to resign respectively the sees of London and Durham. 
 Within the last four years he accepted the see of Winchester
 
 BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 173 
 
 upon Dr. Simmer's resignation. But before that time lie had 
 already changed his views upon the subject of clerical resigna- 
 tions, and was the most active promoter, if not the author, of 
 the Act passed to enable aged incumbents to resign their livings 
 and retire on a pension when incapacitated for further work. 
 
 In the Upper House of Convocation it would be more easy 
 to give a list of the subjects on which Bishop Wilberforce was 
 silent than to mention one half of those on which he spoke. 
 Enough to remember that seldom or never did he open his lips 
 on subjects connected with the Church except with energy and fer- 
 vour. It was in 1869, after twenty-four years of constant labour 
 in the diocese of Oxford, Bishop Wilberforce was translated to 
 the great see of Winchester upon Bishop Sumner's resignation. 
 
 Of a man who has lived so much and so long in public as 
 the late Bishop, it sounds tame and trite to say that he was 
 most popular in society, and beloved, both as archdeacon and 
 bishop, by all his clergy, except the extreme men of either side 
 and party. Whatever he undertook he did with grace and ease, 
 and, above all, with a heartiness which proved contagious. As 
 a platform orator he has rarely been equalled ; an anecdote from 
 his lips gained a point which its author could not give it. He 
 was indeed, in its best sense, a " many-sided " man ; and into 
 his active career many careers, so to speak, were crowded to- 
 gether. He was indefatigable in work, and never knew what it 
 was to be fatigued, scarcely what it was to take rest. In the 
 management of two very important dioceses he showed admini- 
 strative ability, and an energy of personal character which does 
 not often display itself on the Episcopal bench. 
 
 His was an eloquence which never failed. It shone equally 
 in his pastoral charges, in his confirmation addresses, whether 
 to the Eton boys or to the boys and girls of country village 
 schools, and in those spirit-stirring appeals which he would 
 deliver in Cuddesden Chapel to the candidates for holy orders. 
 Regarded as a Parliamentary orator, there was much of truth in 
 the observation of a statesman now deceased, that "although 
 the late Lord Derby was facile princeps among debaters, and 
 the late Lord Ellenborough probably the next best debater in 
 the House of Lords, still in Parliamentary eloquence no one 
 so nearly approached either the one or the other as Bishop 
 Wilberforce." 
 
 Although he was not the author of any learned and laborious
 
 174 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 work, and perhaps was not so deep a theologian as his brother 
 Robert or many of his Episcopal brethren, yet his name will 
 be remembered as the author of a History of the Episcopal 
 Church in America, and of two or three charming religious 
 allegories, the most popular of which are Agathos and the liocky 
 Island. He was also the author of numerous " Charges," Archi- 
 diaconal and Episcopal, "Occasional" and other Sermons, 
 " Sermons Preached before the Queen," " Sermons Preached at 
 Oxford," etc. It is worth mention also that, jointly with his 
 brother Robert, he gave to the world the Life and Correspondence 
 of his father in five octavo volumes a work which would have 
 been more valuable had its authors been less filial, and conse- 
 quently more critical in the work of selection. 
 
 LEADING ARTICLE, MONDAY, JULY 21, 1873 
 
 The sudden death of the Bishop of Winchester will be felt as 
 a painful shock, not only to the Church, but to English society 
 in general. A few hours ago he was one of the most prominent 
 characters in English life. He was in all the vigour of his 
 powers as an eloquent preacher, an active administrator, a keen 
 debater, and a brilliant companion. He had gone into the 
 country, not for mere relaxation, but in discharge of that duty of 
 personal visitation of his diocese in which he was indefatigable. 
 But of course he was a welcome guest in one of the country 
 houses of Surrey, and Mr. Gladstone and Lord Qranville had 
 come down to meet him. He was riding with Lord Granville 
 on Saturday when the fatal accident occurred. His horse 
 stumbled, he fell, and was killed instantaneously. It is a 
 strange coincidence that all but the same day should witness 
 the death of another distinguished man, with whom he had 
 more than once had sharp passages of controversy in the Upper 
 House of Parliament Lord Westbury's distinction was won 
 entirely within the walk of his profession, but within those 
 limits it was very high indeed. He was one of the greatest 
 lawyers of whom the English Bar can boast, and he rendered 
 invaluable service to the country in the promotion of several 
 important legal reforms. He can ill be spared at the present 
 moment. His recent decisions as Arbitrator in settling the 
 affairs of the European Assurance Company proved that his 
 ability was in n6 way impaired by age, and there was every
 
 BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 175 
 
 reason to hope for further valuable assistance from him, both as 
 a judge and a legislator. 
 
 But the Bishop of Winchester possessed qualities which had 
 a wider influence, and will render his loss far more generally 
 felt He was a man of talent so great and varied as to constitute 
 genius, and his activity was only limited by the opportunities 
 for its exercise. This versatility, indeed, constituted at once his 
 strength and his weakness. It enabled him to do everything ; 
 but it debarred him from that complete unity and concentration 
 of purpose which are necessary for the highest of all achievements. 
 He was, however, before all things a hard-working bishop, and 
 in the main current of his life he reflected the piety and 
 earnestness of his father. He was made Bishop of Oxford at 
 the early age of forty, but the honour was only a just recogni- 
 tion of his excellence as a clergyman. He won the hearts of the 
 inhabitants of the country parishes in which the early years of 
 his ministry were spent as thoroughly as in after life he gained 
 the affection of a large body of clergy. He inherited the charms 
 of manner and conversation for which his father was celebrated, 
 and, especially in the earlier years of his work, there was some- 
 thing inexpressibly attractive in all he said and did. His 
 preaching was unapproached in our time for its persuasiveness, 
 and for its power of appealing at the same time to the heart and 
 the head. His exquisite voice and impressive manner enchained 
 his hearers, and perhaps he remained to the last the most 
 thoroughly accomplished preacher at least, to a cultivated 
 audience in the English Church. But he could be equally 
 effective anywhere, and it was one of his most admirable 
 characteristics that he took as great pains and achieved as great 
 success with the simplest village congregation as with the most 
 distinguished audience in London. The monotony, for instance, 
 of holding confirmations day after day, and year after year, 
 never led him to treat one such occasion with indifference ; he 
 was always alike earnest, fresh, and impressive. He did nothing 
 by halves, and it was plain that he threw his whole soul into 
 every branch of his work. The young men whom he ordained 
 derived the deepest impressions from the few days during which 
 they were under his instructions, and he always took care, as 
 far as possible, to have them in his palace. He really acted as 
 the spiritual chief of his diocese, and did his utmost to awaken 
 religious life in every corner of it. He was not content with
 
 176 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 acting as a mere overseer ; he was its motive power ; and the 
 clergy learned to look to him for constant encouragement and 
 support. He was always ready to help them through a difficulty, 
 and at the special services at certain seasons which have become 
 customary of late years he was ever ready to take the lead. 
 The one thing for which he had no toleration was indolence or 
 indifference, and he always appreciated and honoured good 
 work. The natural consequence was that he obtained a hold 
 over his clergy rarely gained by a bishop, and when he left 
 the diocese of Oxford, after administering it for a quarter of a 
 century, it was thoroughly devoted to him. He had a difficult 
 task on being translated to Winchester, for the tone which had 
 been encouraged in his new diocese was somewhat different from 
 his own. But he had already won his way among this new 
 body of clergy, and was daily acquiring fresh confidence. To 
 none, perhaps, will his sudden removal be a greater loss than 
 to that diocese. The aged Bishop who, by a singular fate, 
 survives the successor in whose favour he resigned four years 
 ago, had for some time been incapacitated from the vigorous 
 discharge of his duties, and the need of fresh energy in its 
 administration was grievously felt Dr. Wilberforce was but 
 sixty-eight, and his vigour promised yet several years of activity. 
 Whoever may succeed him will find it very difficult to make 
 up for his loss. In the Church at large he held a very distinct 
 and valuable position. His early life imbued him with the 
 religious views of the Evangelical school, and his veneration for 
 his father would alone have been sufficient to maintain their 
 influence in his mind throughout life. But as a man who 
 thoroughly shared in the thoughts and feelings of Oxford, he 
 was not likely to hold aloof from that remarkable development 
 of thought which marked the first fifteen years of his ministry. 
 He was in consequence regarded as belonging to the High 
 Church school ; but he always held back from the extremes of 
 that party, and his last words in the House of Lords were a 
 declaration that he " hated and abhorred the attempt to 
 Komanise the Church of England." He saw, however, that 
 the High Church party were at least reviving the organisation 
 of the Church, and he turned their principles to great account 
 in practical administration. It says much for his impartiality 
 and substantial moderation that, coming to his diocese just when 
 the Tractarian storm was at its height, he guided it through the
 
 BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 177 
 
 crisis without a breach with any party among his clergy. 
 Party feeling ran high for a time but the Bishop's manifest 
 earnestness and the twofold sympathies which he embodied 
 formed a bond of union amid the discord, and he probably 
 rendered the Church a great service by guiding and harmonising 
 the confused movements of the day. He regenerated and de- 
 fended to the last that school of scholarly, learned, and gentle- 
 manly High Churchmen whose place in the Church of England 
 need never be disputed, who have really rendered her invaluable 
 services, and who have more cause than any others to be 
 indignant at the miserable extravagances of their professed 
 successors. But he rendered no less service to the Church by 
 the ability with which he represented it to the world in. general. 
 He maintained as no other man could its place and its dignity 
 in society at large, and he approached Burke's ideal of a prelate 
 who could make religion hold its head high in courts and 
 public assemblies. Always courtly, he could be dignified or 
 condescending, gentle or stern. The most witty and genial of 
 companions, he was the favourite of social life, and was equally 
 irresistible in the drawing-room or on the platform. In Parlia- 
 ment he exhibited powers of debate which placed him in the 
 first rank of speakers, and which, if more cultivated, would 
 have rendered him a match for all but the greatest orators of 
 the House of Lords. He would have achieved eminence in any 
 profession, and in that which he chose he has left behind him a 
 great name. There is much of earnestness, of eloquence, of 
 gentleness, and of energy in the ranks of the clergy ; but that 
 peculiar combination of the qualities of a great preacher, a 
 practical bishop, an engaging friend, a man of the world, and a 
 sincere Christian will hardly be seen again. Nothing less can 
 be said than that we have lost in him the chief ornament of the 
 English Church. It is, indeed, seldom that within the space of 
 one day we suffer such an intellectual loss as the death of two 
 such men as Dr. Wilberforce and Lord "Westbury has inflicted 
 on England. 
 
 VOL.1
 
 SIR EDWIN LANDSEER 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1873 
 
 WE have to announce the death yesterday morning, at 10.40, 
 of Sir Edwin Landseer. Sir Edwin had been long known to 
 be in a most precarious state of health, but the news will not 
 the less shock and grieve the worlds both of art and of society, 
 in which he was an equal favourite. The great painter never, 
 however, courted publicity ; he was singularly reticent about all 
 that concerned himself, and it is astonishing to find how little 
 was known to his contemporaries respecting his early career. 
 
 The grandfather of Sir Edwin, we are told, settled as a 
 jeweller in London in the middle of the last century ; and here, 
 it is said, his father, Mr. John Landseer, was born in 1761, 
 though another account fixes Lincoln as his birthplace, and his 
 birth itself at a later data John Landseer became an engraver, 
 rose to eminence in his line of art, became an Associate of the 
 Royal Academy, and having held that position for nearly fifty 
 years, died in 1852. He was largely employed in engraving 
 pictures for the leading publishers, including Macklin, who 
 engaged him on the illustrations to his Bible; this employ- 
 ment led to his marriage with a Miss Pott, a great friend of the 
 Macklins, and whose portrait as a peasant girl, with a sheaf of 
 corn upon her head, was painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence. The 
 issue of this marriage consisted of three daughters and also of 
 three sons Thomas, born in or about the year 1795 ; Charles, 
 born in 1799 ; and Edwin, the youngest, in 1802. In 1806 
 Mr. John Landseer delivered to large audiences at the Royal 
 Institution in Albemarle Street a series of lectures on engraving, 
 in which he laid down broader, higher, and truer views of that
 
 SIR EDWIN LANDSEER 179 
 
 branch of art than those which had hitherto prevailed. His 
 name will also be remembered by many as the author of 
 Observations on the Engraved Gems brought from Babylon to 
 England by Mr. Abraham Lockett in 1817 ; Sabcean Researches, 
 another work on the same subject ; and a Description of Fifty of 
 the Earliest Pictures in the National Gallery. He subsequently 
 edited the Review of the Fine Arts and the Probe. Later in life 
 lie exhibited at the Academy some water-colour studies from 
 Druidical temples, and finally engraved his son Edwin's " Dogs 
 of St. Bernard," of which he wrote also a small explanatory 
 pamphlet. The chief work, however, of John Landseer lay in 
 bringing up his three sons, of whom the eldest is as well known 
 by his engravings as was his father, and the second was elected 
 Keeper of the Academy in 1851. The artistic education of 
 Edwin Landseer was commenced at an early age under the eye 
 of his father, who, after the example of the greatest masters, 
 directed him to the study of nature herself, and sent him 
 constantly to Hampstead Heath and other suburban localities to 
 make studies of donkeys, sheep, and goats. A series of early 
 drawings and etchings from his hand, preserved in the South 
 Kensington Museum, will serve to show how faithful and true 
 an interpreter of nature the future Academician was even more 
 than half a century since, for some of his efforts are dated as 
 early as his eighth year, so that he is a standing proof that 
 precocity does not always imply subsequent failure. Indeed 
 he drew animals correctly and powerfully even before he was 
 five years old ! 
 
 His first appearance, however, as a painter dates from 1815, 
 when, at the age of thirteen, he exhibited two paintings at the 
 Academy ; they are entered in the catalogue as Nos. 443 and 
 584" Portrait of a Mule " and " Portraits of a Pointer Bitch 
 and Puppy," and the young painter appears as Master E. 
 Landseer, 33 Foley Street. In the following year he was one of 
 the exhibitors at " the Great Eoom in Spring Gardens," then 
 engaged for " the Society of Painters in Oil and Water 
 Colours," along with De Wint, Chalon, and the elder Pugin ; 
 about the same time, too, we find him receiving regular 
 instruction in art as a pupil in the stiidio of Haydon, and the 
 residence of the family in Foley Street was the very centre of a 
 colony of artists and literary celebrities. Mulready, Stothard, 
 Benjamin West, A. E. Chalon, Collins, Constable, Daniel,
 
 180 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 Flaxman, and Thomas Campbell all lived within a few hundred 
 yards of John Landseer's house ; and from their society young 
 Landseer, we may be sure, took care to draw profit and 
 encouragement. He also derived considerable assistance from a 
 study of the Elgin marbles at Burlington House, where they lay 
 for some time before finding a home in the British Museum. 
 These ancient treasures he was led to study by the advice of his 
 teacher Haydon. In the same year (1816) he was admitted as 
 a student to the Royal Academy. In the following year he 
 exhibited " Brutus, a portrait of a Mastiff," at the Academy, 
 and also a " Portrait of an Alpine Mastiff," at the Gallery in 
 Spring Gardens already mentioned. 
 
 With the year 1818 commenced an important epoch in 
 the life of Landseer. His " Fighting Dogs Getting Wind," 
 exhibited this summer at the rooms of the Society of Painters 
 in Oil and Water Colours, excited an extraordinary amount of 
 attention ; and, being purchased by Sir George Beaumont, it 
 set the stream of fashion in his favour. Sir David Wilkie, 
 writing to Haydon at this date, remarked, as much in earnest 
 as in jest, " Young Landseer's jackasses are good/' 
 
 " The Cat Disturbed " was young Landseer's chief picture in 
 1819 ; it was exhibited at the Royal Institution ; here, also, 
 were exhibited about the same date his " Lion enjoying his 
 Repast," and a companion picture, a " Lion disturbed at his 
 Repast." In these paintings it is not fanciful or absurd to say 
 that an educated eye can detect the hand of the designer of the 
 lions which guard the Nelson Monument in Trafalgar Square. 
 His opportunity for studying the anatomy of the lion had 
 arisen shortly before, we are told, through the death of one of 
 the old lions in Exeter 'Change, and his subsequent dissection 
 in Landseer's presence. 
 
 In 1821 he exhibited at the Academy his " Ratcatchers," 
 which was subsequently engraved by his brother Thomas ; 
 and at the British Institution another sporting picture, entitled 
 " Pointers, So-ho." In 1822 he was fortunate enough to 
 obtain the premium of ,150 from the directors of the British 
 Institution for his celebrated picture " The Larder Invaded." 
 This was followed next year by " The Watchful Sentinel," 
 contributed to the Exhibition of the British Institution, now in 
 the Sheepshanks Gallery at South Kensington, and styled " The 
 Angler's Guard." It represents a large brown and white New-
 
 SIR EDWIN LANDSEER 181 
 
 foundland dog and a white Italian greyhound seated and 
 keeping strict watch and ward over a fishing-rod and basket. 
 In 1824 he exhibited, also at the Eoyal Institution, " The Cat's 
 Paw," which, we believe, hangs, or hung, in the dining-room at 
 Cashiobury, the seat of Lord Essex in Hertfordshire. " Taking 
 a Buck," " The Widow," and a stray " Portrait " were Land- 
 seer's contributions to the Academy in 1825, and in the same 
 summer his " Poacher " was hung on the walls of the British 
 Institution. In the following season was shown at the 
 Academy his " Hunting of Chevy Chase," an important picture, 
 which has often been exhibited since. In the same year Land- 
 seer removed to the house in St. John's Wood Eoad, where he 
 fixed his studio to the last. In 1826 he exhibited at the 
 Koyal Institution the picture of " The Dog and the Shadow," 
 which is now at South Kensington. If we may trust the 
 compiler of the monograph on Sir E. Landseer's Early Works, 
 published by Messrs. Bell and Daldy in 1869, it was about this 
 time that, being asked by Lord and Lady Holland to sit for his 
 portrait to Landseer, Sydney Smith sent the well-known reply, 
 " Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing 1 " 
 
 It can scarcely be supposed that it was merely the exhibi- 
 tion of " Chevy Chase " which led to Edwin Landseer's elec- 
 tion at this time to an Associateship of the Royal Academy. 
 The fact is that the honour was anticipated long before, and 
 that the election was made almost as a matter of course imme- 
 diately on his attaining the age of four-and -twenty the limit 
 prescribed by the laws of the Academy. It may be interesting 
 to our readers to know that the only other artists to whom a 
 like compliment has been paid are Sir Thomas Lawrence and 
 Mr. J. E. Millais. 
 
 It was in this year that Landseer paid his first visit to the 
 Highlands a district of which it may be said with truth that 
 for more than thirty years he was the prophet and interpreter, 
 and from which he drew more subjects than from any other, 
 illustrating its men, its animals, and its landscapes with almost 
 unvaried success. " The Chiefs Return from Deer -stalking," 
 exhibited at the Academy in 1827, may be regarded as the first 
 fruits alike of this northern tour and of his Associateship. 
 Together with this appeared his " Monkey who had seen the 
 World," showing the reunion of " Pug " and his untravelled 
 friends at home. Meantime, in spite of his election to the
 
 182 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 Academy, lie proved that he did not forget his acquaintances 
 and friends at the British Institution, to which he contributed, 
 in the same year, another picture of " Chevy Chase," and " A 
 Scene at Abbotsford," representing Sir Walter Scott's favourite 
 dog Maida reclining by a piece of ancient armour. The year 
 1828 was one of comparative rest to Landseer at all events, it 
 was productive of no contribution to the exhibitions of the day ; 
 but in 1829 he produced his "Illicit Whisky Still in the 
 Highlands," and " A Fireside Party " (now at South Kensing- 
 ton), in which the terriers which figure as the principal 
 characters are said to have been the original " Peppers and 
 Mustards " so graphically described in Guy Mannering by Sir 
 Walter Scott 
 
 The year 1830 witnessed the election of Landseer to the 
 full honours of the Academy ; and from that date to the end of 
 his long career there is little for a biographer to do but to 
 chronicle a long and regular catalogue of pictures year by year, 
 exhibited either at the British Institution or else on the walls 
 of the Academy at Somerset House, in Trafalgar Square, and at 
 Burlington House. Of these, the best known and most popular 
 are his u High Life " and " Low Life " (comprised in the 
 Vernon gift, and now at South Kensington), " Poachers 
 Deer-stalking," " Too Hot," " A Lassie Herding Sheep," 
 " Spaniels of King Charles's Breed " (also at South Kensing- 
 ton), " The Cavalier's Pets," a picture which it is said was 
 painted in two days ; " Jack in Office," " Suspense," " A 
 Highland Dog Rescuiug Sheep from a Snowdrift," " Bolton 
 Abbey in the Olden Time " (now at Chatsworth), " The 
 Drover's Departure, a scene in the Grampians " (part of the 
 Sheepshanks gift, and now at South Kensington), " The 
 Tethered Rams" (ditto), "Comical Dogs" (also at South 
 Kensington), " Odin," a portrait of a Scotch deerhound ; " The 
 Highland Shepherd's Chief Mourner," " There's Life in the 
 Old Dog yet," " Dignity and Impudence " (a noble contrast of 
 the heads of a magnificent bloodhound and a small terrier, 
 bequeathed by Mr. Jacob Bell to the nation, and now at South 
 Kensington), " A Distinguished Member of the Humane 
 Society," " Her Majesty's favourite Dogs and Parrot," " The 
 Return from Hawking," " The Hooded Falcon," " Favourites, 
 the property of His Royal Highness Priuce George of Cam- 
 bridge," " A Highland Breakfast," " Deer and Deerhounds in
 
 SIR EDWIN LANDSEER 183 
 
 a Mountain Torrent," " Corsican, Russian, and Fallow Deer," 
 and " Spaniels belonging to Lord Albemarle." 
 
 These were all exhibited, with many others, by Landseer 
 during the first ten years after he began to write the letters 
 " R.A." after his name. They were almost all of them great 
 favourites at their first appearance, and are well known to the 
 world by the engravings of them. They may be regarded as 
 marking the perfection of Landseer's style. 
 
 To the next decade of Landseer's life belong " Horses Taken 
 in to Bait," " Macaw, Terrier, and Spaniel Puppies belonging to 
 Her Majesty," "Laying down the Law," "Otters and Salmon," 
 " The Highland Shepherd's Home," "Brazilian Monkeys," " The 
 Otter Speared," " Horses, the property of Mr. W. Wigram," 
 "Shoeing," "Coming Events Cast their Shadows Before," 
 " Time of Peace," " Time of War " a pair in well-marked 
 contrast, to whose lessons it would be well if certain kings and 
 emperors of late had listened ; " The Stag at Bay," " Pincher," 
 " Alexander and Diogenes " (the philosopher of the tub being, 
 of course, a four-footed one) ; " A Random Shot," " The Desert," 
 " The Forester's Family," " The Free Church," " Collie Dogs," 
 "Evening Scene in the Highlands," "Good Doggie," and "A 
 Dialogue at Waterloo." In these, too, as in the productions of 
 Landseer in the previous decade, we see the canine element and 
 also the Highland element well represented ; but, upon the 
 whole, we should say that these works have never gained the 
 hold on the popular estimation which confessedly was accorded 
 to those of 1830-40. 
 
 With the year 1851 the Highland sketches occur less fre- 
 quently, and there is a corresponding increase in ideal subjects 
 in the published list of Landseer's works. Among the pictures 
 exhibited by him at the Academy in 1851-60, we may par- 
 ticularise his " Fairy Scene from Midsummer Night's Dream," 
 " A Group at Geneva," " The Last Run of the Season," " Night " 
 and " Morning," a pair ; " The Children of the Mist," " Twins," 
 " Dandie Dinmont," an old Skye terrior of the Queen's ; ' Saved," 
 dedicated to the Humane Society ; " Highland Nurses," dedi- 
 cated to Florence Nightingale ; " Rough and Ready," " Uncle 
 Tom and his Wife (two dogs, of course) for Sale," " Deer- 
 stalking," "The Maid and the Magpie," "Doubtful Crumbs," 
 "The Prize Calf," "Bran, Oscar, and the Deer," "A Kind 
 Star," and, lastly, " A Flood in the Highlands " his only con-
 
 184 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 tribution to the Academy Exhibition in the last-named yi-nr, 
 and a picture which will long be remembered for its pathos and 
 truth to life. 
 
 The closing decade of Landseer's artistic career shows but 
 little falling off from the preceding, either in the number or in 
 the power of its productions. " The Shrew Tamed," " The 
 Fatal Duel," " Scenes in Lord Breadalbane's Highland Deer 
 Forest," " Windsor Great Park," " Pensioners," " Man Proposes, 
 God Disposes," " Dejeuner a la Fourchette," " Prosperity " and 
 " Adversity," a pair ; " The Connoisseurs," " Mare and Foal in 
 an Indian Tent," " The Prayer of Lady Godiva," " The Chase," 
 "The Stag at Bay," "Odds and Ends," "Deer at Chillingham," 
 " Wild Cattle at Chillingham," " Rent-day in the Wilderness," 
 "Her Majesty at Osborne in 1866" a picture which will be 
 remembered as a thorough contrast to the rest of his works ; 
 "Eagles Attacking the Swannery," "The Queen Meeting the 
 Prince Consort on his Return from Deer - stalking," two 
 " Studies of Lions," and " A Doctor's Visit to Poor Relations 
 at the Zoological Gardens" one of the best illustrations of 
 monkeydom. These and many others will crowd with more or 
 less vividness and freshness on the reader's memory as he 
 peruses this brief biography of him who in his day was 
 deservedly called "the Shakespeare of the world of dogs." It 
 appears from the annual catalogues that from the very first 
 Landseer was one of the most regular and constant exhibitors at 
 the Academy, for from his first appearance on its walls in 1816 
 down to the present date his name is absent on only seven 
 occasions namely, in 1816, 1841, 1852, 1855, 1862, 1863, 
 and 1871. But even this statement fails to do justice to his 
 indefatigable industry as a painter, for, between 1818 and 
 1865, he exhibited at the British Institution no less than ninety 
 pictures, including (besides those already mentioned) some of 
 his most popular efforts, such as " The Twa Dogs," " The 
 Sleeping Bloodhound," "The Eagle's Nest," "Well -bred 
 Sitters," and " Dear Old Boz," painted for Her Majesty. To 
 this list must be added four other pictures exhibited with the 
 Society of British Artists between the years 1826 and 1832, 
 and also nine more exhibited in his early days, between 1816 
 and 1820, on the walls of the Society of Painters in Oil and 
 Water Colours, in Spring Gardens. His contributions to the 
 Royal Academy Exhibition in 1870 were five in number,
 
 SIR EDWIN LAXDSKEK 185 
 
 YoHigeiuv' the winner of the Derby and St. Leger ; "Deer: 
 a Study"; ''Lassie: a Sketch"; and two pictures already 
 mentioned. The. name of Sir Edwin Landseer does not occur 
 in the catalogue of 1871, as illness had then paralysed his 
 powerful and charming pencil. He exhibited in 1872, and 
 even last summer, but the works were scarcely worthy of his 
 fame and reputation. 
 
 It is not our purpose, nor, indeed, would it be possible, here 
 tu enter into any minute and detailed criticism on the works of 
 Landseer. His paintings are well known in the household of 
 every educated man through the length and breadth of the 
 land. His lions at the foot of the Nelson Column in Trafalgar 
 Square, his only known effort in the sister art of sculpture, are 
 so well known to the public, and were made the subject of so 
 much criticism in the columns of the newspapers at the time of 
 their completion, that we need only allude to them here. 
 
 It only remains to add that he received from Her Majesty, 
 in 1850, the honour of knighthood. He received also the large 
 sold medal from the authorities of the Universal Exhibition of 
 Paris in 1855. A few years ago, upon the death of Sir Charles 
 Eastlake, he was offered the Presidency of the Royal Academy, 
 but his modesty led him to decline the distinction. In private 
 life he was one of the most kind and courteous of men and the 
 warmest of friends ; and in very many circles, from royalty 
 downwards, people will miss with regret his round, merry, 
 genial face, his white hair, and his pleasant smile.
 
 SIR HENRY HOLLAND 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1873 
 
 SIR WALTER SCOTT relates that, when some one was mentioned 
 as " a fine old man " to Swift, he exclaimed with violence that 
 there was no. such thing : " If the man you speak of had either 
 a mind or a body worth a farthing it would have worn him out 
 long ago." Voltaire, Goethe, Brougham, Lyndhurst^ Palmerston, 
 Moltke, Guizot, Thiers may be cited in refutation of this theory, 
 which we presume has nothing to do with thews and sinews, or 
 stature. Most of Clarendon's "great" men were little men. 
 But if we wanted another example of faculties, and faculties of 
 no common order, remaining unimpaired by mind or body till 
 long past the grand climacteric, we might name Sir Henry 
 Holland, who died at his house in Brook Street on his eighty- 
 sixth birthday, Monday, the 27th inst, having attended the 
 Bazaine trial at Versailles on Friday, the 27th, and dined that 
 same day at the British Embassy in Paris, where he was 
 especially remarked as "cheerful and happy, and full of 
 conversation." 
 
 When the Abbe" Sie"yes was asked what he had done during 
 the Reign of Terror, he made answer, " J'ai v&cu," and it was 
 no idle boast. Nor was it a small thing for Sir Henry Holland 
 to be able to say that, dating from the commencement of the 
 century, he had lived, an intelligent and omnipresent spectator, 
 through seventy-two of the most exciting and eventful years of 
 the world's history ; that he had seen the political and social 
 aspect of most civilised nations in both hemispheres transformed 
 three or four times over, including the fall of two Empires, two 
 Monarchies, and three or four Republics, to say nothing of
 
 SIR HENRY HOLLAND 187 
 
 Provisional Governments, in France. He had crossed the 
 Atlantic sixteen or seventeen times ; travelled over more than 
 26,000 miles of the American Continent ; made four expedi- 
 tions to the East, three tours in Russia, two in Iceland, several 
 in Sweden, Norway, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece ; 
 innumerable voyages to the Canary Isles, the West Indies, 
 Madeira, etc., and, to use his own words, "other excursions 
 which it would be useless to enumerate." He had associated in 
 every capital in Europe with all that is, or was, most eminent 
 for rank, birth, genius, wit, learning, and accomplishment. He 
 could call every leading statesman of the United States and 
 every President for the last half -century his friend. In his 
 professional capacity, besides a long list of royal and princely 
 patients, he had the honour and deep responsibility of pre- 
 scribing for six Prime Ministers of England, besides Chancellors 
 of the Exchequer, Secretaries of State, Presidents of the Council, 
 Chief Justices, and Lord Chancellors. 
 
 We say " deep responsibility," because it is difficult to over- 
 estimate the influence of health on statesmanship, on the 
 administration of justice, or on the general conduct of affairs. 
 Although the fact of Pitt's illness behind the Speaker's chair, 
 during the speech to which he made his famous reply in 1783, 
 did not impair his eloquence, the collapse of the Ministry 
 formed by Lord Chatham in 1766 was certainly owing to sup- 
 pressed gout. There were three occasions Borodino, the third 
 day of Dresden, and Waterloo on which the eagle eye of 
 Napoleon was perceptibly dimmed by indigestion or physical 
 suffering. When Lord Tenterden's stomach was out of order 
 as it generally was after a City dinner, from his extreme fond- 
 ness for turtle woe to the unlucky junior who cited an in- 
 applicable case, and still greater woe to the prisoner who had 
 the misfortune to appear before him in the criminal court. The 
 editor of the Almanack des Gourmands lays down that, when 
 your cook's palate is disordered to the extent of destroying or 
 vitiating his taste, the sole mode of restoring it "c'est depurgerle 
 cuisinier, telle resistance qu'il y oppose ; for there are cooks who, 
 deaf to the voice of glory, do not see the necessity of taking 
 medicine when they do not feel ill." It is the same with 
 statesmen, who are often similarly deaf to the voice of glory, 
 and when a Prime Minister displays an unusual degree of 
 irritability, or a Chancellor of the Exchequer gets into the
 
 188 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 habit of snubbing deputations and giving snappish answers in 
 the House, they should be compelled to take physic, whether 
 they like it or feel the necessity for it or not. Sir Henry, in 
 his Recollections of Past Life, says : 
 
 " Such practice [his own] cannot occur without a certain 
 knowledge of political events and occasional anticipation of 
 changes not yet obvious to the public eye. Several instances 
 of this kind come to my memory, connected chiefly with 
 changes of Ministry at the time. I refrain from mentioning 
 details, nor would they now, in truth, have any value, save in 
 showing how largely bodily temperament has its share in the 
 government of the world, and how many anomalous incidents 
 of history may find possible or probable solution in the fluctuat- 
 ing health of the actors concerned in them. When reading the 
 histories of the great revolutions of the world, as well as the 
 biographies of eminent men, such suggestions have often 
 occurred to me." 
 
 Sir Henry Holland is as bad as the philosopher who said he 
 would not open his hand if he had it full of truths. Such 
 details may not have any value, save the illustration of a 
 general rule, when we are simultaneously reminded " how many 
 anomalous incidents of history may find possible or probable 
 solution in the fluctuating health of the actors concerned in 
 them " ! Vehement remonstrances were addressed to him on 
 the first appearance of his Recollections. He was reminded 
 that he could probably account in the simplest manner for 
 what has hitherto seemed unaccountable why one of his 
 Premier patients wrote that imprudent letter which fell among 
 his party like a bombshell why another made that angry 
 speech which precipitated the downfall of his government. 
 Was it, he was asked, simply because their " guide, philosopher, 
 and doctor " was not called in a little sooner because the blue 
 pill or colchicum was administered too late ? But Sir Henry 
 dies and makes no sign. There are only two or three instances 
 in which he has in the slightest degree departed from his 
 provoking, although, we must admit, highly creditable, reserve. 
 He tells us that when he was in attendance on Canning at 
 Chiswick, in August 1827, the dying statesman said to him : 
 " I have struggled against this long, but it has conquered me at 
 last" That Canning's death was accelerated by political worry 
 and excitability is well known. " Having occasion to call on
 
 SIR HENRY HOLLAND 189 
 
 Lord Liverpool in the preceding February, he (Lord Liverpool) 
 begged me to feel his pulse, the first time I had ever done so." 
 His lordship's state was such as to induce an immediate appeal 
 to his medical advisers, and the very next morning his political 
 life was closed by a paralytic stroke. " His pulse alone 
 had given me cause for alarm ; but there were one or two 
 passages in half an hour's conversation so forcibly expressing 
 the harassing anxieties of his position, that I could hardly 
 dissociate them from the event which thus instantly followed." 
 There is a striking reminiscence of Lord Palmerston : 
 
 "I have seen him under a fit of gout, which would have 
 sent other men groaning to their couches, continue his work of 
 reading or writing on public business almost without abate- 
 ment, amid the chaos of papers which covered the floor as well 
 as the tables of his room." 
 
 There is only one consultation, if it can be called one, which 
 Sir Henry was tempted to betray. It was his being asked by 
 AH Pasha whether he knew of any poison which, put on the 
 mouthpiece of a pipe or given in coffee, might slowly and 
 silently kill, leaving no note behind. " The instant and short 
 answer I gave, that, as a physician, I had studied how to save 
 life, not to destroy it, was probably, as I judged from his face, 
 faithfully translated to him. He quitted the subject abruptly, 
 never to return to it." 
 
 In consequence of the recent and wide circulation of Sir 
 Henry's autobiography (Recollections of the Past) a detailed 
 biography in the ordinary form seemed superfluous, and little 
 remained but to specify two or three dates and indicate the 
 prominent features of his character. He was born at Knuts- 
 ford, Cheshire, on the 27th of October 1787, of a respectable 
 family, and received his principal education at a school at 
 Bristol, where he was named head boy at once in succession to 
 John Cam Hobhouse, the late Lord Broughton. On leaving 
 school he was placed for a short time in a merchant's counting- 
 house at Liverpool, but in his eighteenth year we find him study- 
 ing medicine in Edinburgh, where he graduated in the autumn 
 of 1811, taking as the subject of his Latin thesis, " The Diseases 
 of Iceland," which he had already visited. Of the three years 
 yet wanting of the age required for admission to the College of 
 Physicians in London, he resolved to appropriate the first part 
 to a scheme of travel, embracing the Mediterranean and the
 
 190 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 countries bordering on it. The result was given in his Travels 
 in Portugal, Sicily, the Ionian Islands, and Greece, published in 
 1815, in which year Mrs. Piozzi writes from Bath : 
 
 " We have had a fine Dr. Holland here. He has seen and 
 written about the Ionian Islands, and means now to practise as 
 a physician exchanging the Cyclades, say we wits and wags, 
 for the sick ladies. We made quite a lion of the man. I was 
 invited to every house he visited at for the last three days. So 
 I got the queue du lion, despairing of le cceur." 
 
 There is a story that when his engagement to his second 
 wife, Sydney Smith's daughter, was made known in 1834, 
 Lady Holland asked Sydney Smith whether Saba was not 
 going to marry an apothecary or something of the sort, and 
 that the answer was, " Yes, but he happens to be a namesake 
 of yours." This is hardly possible, for we learn from the 
 Recollections that he became free of Holland House and Lans- 
 downe House soon after his return, to England in 1814. But 
 he was not made a baronet until 1853, and we have grounds 
 for believing her reported threat (though he said he never 
 heard of it) that he should never set foot in Holland House 
 again if he brought a rival Lady Holland into the field. In 
 the summer of 1814 he accepted the appointment of domestic 
 medical attendant on Caroline, Princess of Wales (afterwards 
 Queen), on an engagement to accompany her on her travels 
 and stay with her during the first year of her intended resi- 
 dence on the Continent. He saw a great many curious things 
 and came into contact with a great many remarkable people 
 while he remained with her, but he tells us next to nothing of 
 them which might not be proclaimed at Charing Cross, and 
 indeed he fairly warns us, to prevent disappointment : " I 
 have never been a practised relater of anecdotes, and do not 
 pretend thus late in life to take up that character." Her Royal 
 Highness must have paid him the compliment of being singu- 
 larly prudent and reserved in his company, for when he was 
 called as a witness for the defence at her trial, he positively 
 stated that he had seen nothing improper or derogatory in 
 her behaviour towards Bergami or any other person at any 
 time : 
 
 "An erroneous report which, had it been true, might have 
 embarrassed me, I was enabled at once to put aside by a simple 
 and explicit denial " it was that he had spoken disadvantage-
 
 SIR HENRY HOLLAND 191 
 
 ously of Her Majesty. " Including the examination in chief 
 by my friend (afterwards Chief Justice) Tindal the cross- 
 examination by the Solicitor-General, afterwards Lord Lynd- 
 hurst and that by several peers who questioned me in sequel 
 (Lord Erskine one of them), I was not detained more than an 
 hour at the bar of the House, and encountered no difficulty 
 which I was not prepared fairly to meet. Two or three con- 
 gratulatory notes from peers caine to me immediately after the 
 examination had closed." 
 
 To give some idea of the personal anxieties created by this 
 trial, he mentions that during its progress he was called upon 
 to see as patients three ladies summoned as witnesses, and 
 made ill by their apprehensions. "One of them only was 
 examined, but this in a way to justify her fears. I can affirm, 
 notwithstanding one scene in the House of Lords, that the 
 Queen herself was the person least excited or affected by the 
 proceedings." 
 
 Besides professional calls to foreign parts, he made a point 
 of indulging himself annually in a two or three months' 
 ramble, choosing the long vacation for his holiday ; and this 
 goes far to explain why his patients did not call in another 
 doctor, or (as has been rather maliciously insinuated) " take an 
 unfair advantage of his absence to get well." They belonged 
 almost exclusively to a class which emigrated about the same 
 time ; and a good many of them, we suspect, were rather ailing 
 than ill. We knew a wealthy couple whom he visited regu- 
 larly during the season, receiving daily from each a two-guinea 
 fee, which he could not have refused without offending them. 
 After stating that steam and electricity enabled him to make 
 engagements for the very moment of his return, he adds : 
 
 " I recollect having found a patient waiting in my room 
 when I came back from those mountain heights, not more than 
 200 miles from the frontier of Persia, where the 10,000 Greeks 
 uttered their joyous cry on the sudden sight of the Euxine. 
 The same thing once happened to me in returning from Egypt 
 and Syria, when I found a carriage waiting at London Bridge 
 to take me to a consultation in Sussex Square ; the communica- 
 tion in each case being made from points on my homeward 
 journey. More than once in returning from America I have 
 begun a round of visits from the Euston Station." 
 
 " Time and tide wait for no man," and we can hardly believe
 
 192 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 that a congestion of the ' liver, diarrhoea, or even a fit of the 
 gout, would be more accommodating than time or tide. That 
 round of visits was most assuredly to the class of patients whom 
 he had in view in the frank admission that " the practice of a 
 West End physician abounds in cases which give little occasion 
 for thought or solicitude, and are best relieved by a frequent 
 half-hour of genial conversation." There could be no West End 
 physician better qualified to administer this sort of remedy, for, 
 besides his varied information and good sense, every one felt 
 safe in his society. The well-known lines of Pope, imitated 
 from Horace, have been justly and happily applied to him : 
 
 Envy must own, I live among the great, 
 
 No pimp of pleasure and no spy of state ; 
 
 With eyes that pry not, tongue that ne'er repeats, 
 
 Fond to spread friendships, but to cover heats ; 
 
 To help who want, to forward who excel ; 
 
 This, all who know me, know ; who love me, tell. 
 
 His published writings place his professional and scientific 
 knowledge, as well as his literary attainments, beyond dispute ; 
 but a fashionable physician, with his style of practice, must 
 expect to encounter a good deal of harmless pleasantry, and can 
 afford it. When Lady Palmerston was suffering from an illness 
 that occasioned some alarm to her friends, one of them, meeting 
 the Lite Dr. James Ferguson, asked anxiously how she was. 
 " I can't give you a better notion of her recovery," was the reply, 
 " than by telling you that I have just received my last fee, and 
 that she is now left entirely to Holland." On this being repeated 
 to Lord Palmerston, his lordship mused a little and then said, 
 " Ah ! I see what he means. When you trust yourself to 
 Holland, you should have a superfluous stock of health for him 
 to work upon." 
 
 On the announcement of his failure to kill either of a brace 
 of pheasants that had risen within easy range at Combe Florey, 
 Sydney Smith asked why he did not prescribe for them. To 
 refute this story, which was certainly told by Sydney Smith 
 himself, he, in his Recollections, says: "I can even affirm, 
 though without boasting of it, that I have never fired gun or 
 pistol in my life, either as sportsman or in any other capacity." 
 Once, on his making the same statement at a dinner table, it 
 was suggested that he would have been placed at a disadvantage
 
 SIR HENRY HOLLAND 193 
 
 if, like the doctor in Peregrine Pickle, he had been obliged to fight 
 a duel. One of the party remarked: "Not at all; if Sir 
 Henry had the choice of arms, he might choose the same as the 
 two French doctors, who agreed to have two pills silvered over 
 so as to look exactly alike, one of bread and one of deadly 
 poison, which, after, tossing up for first choice, they were to 
 swallow at a signal. This mode of duel has also the marked 
 recommendation that, whatever the result, there is sure to be a 
 doctor the less." 
 
 He was engaged in hot argument with Bobus Smith, an 
 ex -Advocate -General, touching the merits of their respective 
 professions. " You will admit," said Holland, " that your 
 profession does not make angels of men." " No," retorted 
 Bobus ; " there you have the best of it. Yours certainly gives 
 them the best chance." 
 
 Sancho Panza's short tenure of his government was em- 
 bittered by the attendance at supper of his state physician, who 
 waved his wand as a signal to the major-domo to remove 
 untasted every savoury dish in succession for fear his excellency's 
 invaluable health should suffer from excess. This is a duty 
 which Sir Henry Holland would have discharged reluctantly 
 and inefficiently. Towards the conclusion of an excellent dinner 
 after, in fact, eating and drinking more than was good for 
 him Lord Melbourne was in the daily habit of, as he expressed 
 it, " topping up " with toasted cheese and orange brandy. The 
 year before he died, a friend who was at Brocket when Sir 
 Henry Holland came down and stayed to dinner, called his 
 attention to this habit as a fair case for medical interference. 
 " I shall certainly keep it in mind," was his reply ; " but if I 
 made any direct reference to what I saw at dinner none of my 
 patients would ever ask me to dine with them again, and most 
 of them would leave off consulting me." Let it be remembered 
 that this was said by a man of excellent sense and known 
 liberality, who might have materially increased his professional 
 income had he thought fit. 
 
 A little exaggerating Sir Henry's light equipment as a 
 traveller, Sydney Smith used to say that he started for his two 
 months' tour with a box of pills in one pocket and a clean shirt 
 in the other occasionally forgetting the shirt. Certain it is, as 
 all who have fallen in with him by sea or land will attest, that 
 he might be seen in all climates, in the Arctic regions or the 
 VOL. I o
 
 194 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 Tropics, on the Prairies or the Pyramids, in precisely the same 
 attire the black dress coat in which he hurried from house to 
 house in Mayfair. Yet he never had a serious illness till his 
 last There was not a day, probably not an hour, when he 
 could not boast of the men* sana in corpore sano, and without 
 headache or heartache, he attained the extraordinary age of 
 eighty-six. 
 
 According to the Gfreek adage, "He whom the gods love 
 dies soon." The same thought is expressed in one of the most 
 beautiful epitaphs ever written that on the grave of a new- 
 born infant, by Bishop Lowth : 
 
 Ere Sin could blight, or Sorrow fade, 
 
 Death came with timely care ; 
 The op'ning bud to Heaven conveyed, 
 
 And bade it blossom there. 
 
 But if it be a blessing or sign of Divine favour to die 
 young, surely it is a still greater blessing to live a long, happy, 
 useful, irreproachable life, and sink, calmly, full of years, into 
 the grave, regretted and esteemed by all 

 
 JOHN STUART MILL 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1873 
 
 THE autobiography of Mr. John Stuart Mill is the simple record 
 of anomalous life ; it will be read by those who never read the 
 works of its author ; if they once take it up they will not soon 
 lay it down, and the interest they feel in the man will probably 
 lead them farther to explore the results of his singular career 
 and unsurpassed energy. Mr. Mill was designed and elaborately 
 prepared from his very birth to be a protest against the entire 
 system of the whole world, and the author of a new one. It 
 was he who was to purify and reconstruct human reason, and 
 make it the supreme and universal ruler of the world. His 
 education, it may be said, was even more than equal to this 
 almost infinite task. It was as gigantic an experiment on the 
 formation of mind as the "Devastation" is in its own element, and, 
 fortunately for the progress of psychological science, we have in 
 this autobiography as careful and exact a record of the experi- 
 ment as logbooks and automatic instruments could supply. The 
 narrative is simple, and, all things considered, singularly modest 
 and unconscious. That a man a boy, we should say should 
 shoot several years ahead of the human race, and have actually 
 a quarter of a century's start on the ordinary English student, 
 and that he should not even be aware of it, has to be explained, 
 and is explained satisfactorily. But what he did not see himself 
 others could not but see, and we remember to have heard the 
 surprise expressed by a Cambridge contemporary of Macaulay 
 at the entrance of a boy in the tatter's rooms who talked like a 
 man. In fact, he was a prodigy at almost any small age. He tells 
 us himself, without the least affectation, that it was all labour,
 
 196 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 for that he was singularly devoid of genius, or what is called 
 quickness of parts. It was a forced precocity. At a very early 
 age he was reported to be a " made " or " manufactured " man, 
 and strangers came expecting to be astonished, but without a 
 thought that a warmer or kinder regard was possible. It was 
 only when nature did at last break through the biggest and 
 tightest swaddling clothes ever strapped round human soul that 
 Mr. Mill was discovered to be a lovable and interesting person. 
 Mr. Mill had never been allowed to be a child or a boy ; but 
 the proper elements of these stages are irrepressible, and in 
 course of time, ever through life, he showed that he had it all 
 in him, though with an irregular development. His father had 
 that estimation of the wisdom of youth as to hold that men 
 under forty might be as justly excluded from the franchise 
 as women, on the common ground that both are adequately 
 represented by men of forty, or over, if that ground be admitted. 
 It was the wisdom of forty that he intended to give his son 
 per saltum without a stop at the intermediate stages. All that 
 can be said is that the design was not entirely successful. It is, 
 however, absolutely necessary to include the character and 
 circumstances of Mr. Mill's education in any attempt to measure 
 his authority and weigh his opinions. We are invited and 
 required to do so. Here was a desire to educate the world 
 into reason and goodness. By force of education the world 
 was to throw away old things and acquire that which would be 
 entirely new. The first example was Mr. John Stuart Mill, 
 educated expressly to educate the world, formed anew to 
 form it anew. The human race was to be recast in his mould, 
 and what the mould was the volume before us most con- 
 scientiously describes. 
 
 His father, who figures almost as the lower, but not always 
 pleasing, divinity in these pages, was the well-known author of 
 the History of British India, a man of great abilities and rigid 
 principles. By the kindness of a distinguished friend, and from 
 a charitable fund, he was educated for the Scottish Church, 
 went through the usual studies, and was licensed for a preacher. 
 But he seems immediately to have made up his mind not to 
 follow the profession. His son explains it all, recurring to the 
 subject whenever he had to give an account of his own religion. 
 The father was satisfied with the logical coherence of the Scottish 
 formularies, the Bible, and the belief in a Deity. He had
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 197 
 
 studied Butler carefully, and agreed with him that if there be a 
 Creator and Providence, in the common and personal sense of the 
 word, then all the rest follows even the Scottish conclusion 
 that the Almighty has created the greater part of the human 
 race with the intention of tormenting them in fire for all 
 eternity. This conclusion he abhorred ; but as all the rest, so 
 he thought, was bound up with it, and as he also found, he 
 said, from his extensive reading, that all the successive notions 
 of a Deity from the beginning of the world were only more and 
 more cruel and wicked, he renounced the whole, and stigmatised 
 professed Deists as half-minded or illogical men. In this he 
 brought up his son, whom he early resolved to make the heir 
 of his principles and the very image of his moral being. The 
 result was that John Stuart Mill never had a faith, and could 
 never remember the time when he did not regard Christianity 
 as a vestige of Paganism. The father most carefully secured 
 the son from the merest chance of a faith. He seems to have 
 excluded him from society, except a very few kindred minds, 
 and to have imposed upon him a reserve amounting to conceal- 
 ment, which the son regarded as necessary, but not without ill 
 consequences on the character. Future generations, he hoped, 
 would revenge his enforced silence, for a time will come, he 
 says, when every child will be free and glad to avow his utter 
 unbelief. The father had a large family, whom he maintained 
 for many years entirely by literary work, without ever being in debt 
 or difficulty ; but, strange to say, they only appear as troublesome 
 and unsatisfactory pupils, employing much of young Mill's time, 
 with little more result than making him remember better what 
 he attempted to teach them. Most likely he talked over their 
 heads. The mother is hardly mentioned ; but for the fear of 
 being corrected, we should say not at all. For intercourse of 
 mind with mind, John Stuart Mill might have been a Miranda 
 and his father Prospero. Long before he was out of what should 
 have been his childhood, he knew, besides his father, some of 
 the ablest and most advanced men of the age. 
 
 Very few of us remember when we first learned English. Mr. 
 Mill could not remember when he was not learning Greek. It 
 was when he was three years old. He faintly remembers going 
 through ^Esop's Fables in Greek. He then read the Anabasis, 
 which he remembers better. Herodotus is no trifle to read 
 through and master. An Oxford tutor will perhaps venture to
 
 198 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 suggest to a promising public school man, going down to his 
 first Long Vacation, to read four out of the nine books, and the 
 said young man will mutter to himself as he goes down the 
 stairs that it would just spoil the " Long," and he won't do it 
 By his eighth year young Mill had read all the nine books of 
 Herodotus, all Xeuophon's Cyropadia and Memorials of Socrates, 
 portions of Diogenes Laertius, Lucian, and Isocrates. Even earlier 
 he had read the first six Dialogues of Plato, as commonly arranged ; 
 though he ventures to think the Thecetetus was somewhat in 
 advance of him. In those days there were no Greek and English 
 lexicons ; and young Mill, who had been studiously kept out of 
 Latin, had continually to ask his father the English of the 
 equivalent he found in his Greek and Latin lexicon. The 
 father sat writing his History of India at one side of the table, 
 and the son at the other side had to interrupt him with these 
 most necessary questions. But this was only part of the work 
 done by his eighth year. He had learnt arithmetic, which he 
 did not much like it was the evening work ; he had read 
 Robertson's Histories, Hume, Gibbon, Watson's Philip the Second 
 and Third, Hooke's History of Rome, Rollin's Ancient History, 
 beginning with Philip Langhorne's Plutarch, Burnet's History of 
 His Own Time, and the historical part of the Annual Register 
 down to 1788, where the volumes, borrowed from Mr. Bentham, 
 left off. It was not till long after this that he read much 
 about the French Revolution. When he came to the American 
 War, like a child, he says, he sided with England, till his father 
 set him right and quenched the spark of false patriotism. He 
 had also read by his eighth year Millar's Historical View of the 
 English Government, Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, Marie's 
 Life of John Knox ; and even two historians of the Quakers. 
 Nor were these cursory or desultory readings. The son had 
 every day to give his father a full account of what he had read, 
 particularly when the father suspected the reading was more 
 duty than pleasure. In their daily walks the father gave him 
 explanations and ideas respecting civilisation, government, 
 morality, and mental cultivation, and the son had afterwards 
 to reproduce it all in his own words. Though, barring his 
 little slip on the War of Independence, the son was naturally 
 disposed to take the aggressive and heroic side, the father 
 thought it necessary to assist this sentiment with books ex- 
 hibiting men of energy struggling with difficulties, such as
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 199 
 
 Beaver's African Memoranda and Collins's First Settlement of 
 New South Wales. He was never wearied of reading Anson's 
 Voyages and Hawkesworth's Collection. Of course he read 
 Robinson Crusoe, and was rather grudgingly permitted by his 
 father to read the Arabian Nights and other Arabian tales, Don 
 Quixote, Miss Edgeworth's Popular Tales, besides other books 
 not so well remembered. Having thus mastered some con- 
 siderable branches of Greek and English literature, and being 
 prepared, we should think, to take a good Oxford degree, as far 
 as they were concerned, in his eighth year he commenced learn- 
 ing Latin. This is a considerable inversion of the usual order, 
 but the elder Mill had his reasons for it, as he had for some 
 other novelties of practice. " In the same year in which I 
 began Latin," says the biographist, " I made my first commence- 
 ment in the Greek poets with the Iliad." When he had made 
 sufficient progress to enter into the spirit of Homer the father 
 put Pope's translation in his hand. It was the first English 
 verse he had cared to read, and, he adds, such was his never- 
 failing delight in it, that he thinks he must have read it through 
 twenty or thirty times. After this Euclid, and by and by 
 algebra ; then all the Latin and Greek poets, historians, philo- 
 sophers, and orators ; a proportionate amount of English 
 reading, his pen at work incessantly in exercises, analyses, 
 arguments, full-sized histories, and every way in which he 
 could practise a ready use and entire command of this immense 
 material. Amazing as the narrative is up to the eighth year, 
 it is even more oppressive and painful in the four years next 
 following. It is more painful because one can realise better 
 with regard to that period of life the difficulties of scholarship, 
 the burden on the memory, the perplexities of life and the con- 
 troversies that divide mankind. The father seems to have 
 persisted in his old way of adding one difficulty to another, and 
 so finding out, if possible, what his son could not do. He 
 illustrated author with author, and multiplied instances in a 
 way that would have overwhelmed any ordinary intellect but 
 for his own constant and decisive lead through the labyrinth of 
 his own creation. He appears to have systematically overlooked 
 the necessity of previous knowledge for the solution" of almost 
 any kind of problem, as if one intuitive perception of truth 
 was better than any amount of reason. However, he took good 
 care the son should not stray from the right road :
 
 SCI 
 
 200 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 " Mitford's Greece" says young Mill, " I read continually. 
 My father had put me on my guard against the Tory prejudices 
 of this writer, and his perversion of facts for the whitewashing 
 of despots and blackening of popular institutions. These points 
 he discoursed on, exemplifying them from the Greek orators 
 and historians with such effect that in reading Mitford my 
 sympathies were always on the contrary side to the author, and 
 I could, to some extent, have argued the point against him." 
 
 In his eleventh and twelfth years, besides writing a Roman 
 History, a History of Holland, and a Universal History, he 
 occupied himself with writing what he nattered himself was 
 something serious a History of the Roman Government, as 
 much as would have made an octavo volume, extending to 
 the epoch of the Licinian Laws : 
 
 "It was, in fact, an account of the struggles between the 
 patricians and plebeians, which now engrossed all the interest 
 in my mind which I had previously felt in the mere wars and 
 conquests of the Romans. I discussed all the constitutional 
 points as they arose ; though quite ignorant of Niebuhr's re- 
 searches, I, by such lights as my father had given me, vindicated 
 the Agrarian Laws, on the evidence of Livy, and upheld, to the 
 best of my ability, the Roman Democratic party." 
 
 By the time young Mill was twelve, he had become a con- 
 siderable author at home, and whether it was that his father 
 now felt that he could trust him, or that he thought the time 
 now better employed in pushing onwards than in making good 
 the old ground, he did not trouble himself to read his son's 
 works, as we must call them ; nor did they ever see the light, 
 for his son's maturer judgment he had a maturity condemned 
 them. 
 
 Without giving the very words of a full, and yet condensed 
 statement, it is impossible to do justice to the thorough character 
 of the grand experiment made with the human mind by James 
 Mill. Could we suppose the subject of this terrible process 
 under a glass case, hermetically sealed against not only all 
 foreign and inimical, but common social influences, breathing 
 an ordained atmosphere, and sustained on chymically propor- 
 tioned food, that would only represent a fraction of the mental 
 coercion he submitted to, and the moral durance he delighted 
 
 bear. The great difficulty his father had to encounter, the 
 secret hold on the old world that it was necessary to cut or
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 201 
 
 wither, was the unfortunate fact, which he soon discerned, that 
 the son had a good deal of poetry in his nature. There is no 
 accounting for a poet, as he may break loose any day, and con- 
 found all the philosophy, logic, and even common sense in the 
 world. Such a catastrophe was to be averted at any cost. 
 Thus the son read through Herodotus before he was allowed to 
 look at Homer, not merely because the former was a sceptic in 
 all things and the latter ready to believe anything he could 
 persuade or be persuaded of, but because Homer was a poet 
 while the other was not. So the son had to get up worldly- 
 wise fables, histories, philosophies, political orations, lampoons 
 on the old religions, before he was permitted what to him was 
 mother's milk real poetry. Against this he was to be case- 
 hardened. He was early taught to admit no idea that he could 
 not reduce to exact form, no theory that had not a solid 
 foundation in reason or fact. Feeling or sentiment, whatever 
 it be called, he was taught to regard as a deadly sin, the fruitful 
 source of crime and errors, the worst and most incorrigible of 
 excuses. Errors were crimes in the elder Mill's Criminal Code. 
 The son, as we have seen, was not let into Latin till he had 
 become an advanced Greek scholar. He was thus kept out of 
 Ovid, Virgil, Horace, and other authors, who infect with so 
 much poetry even the robust constitutions of ordinary English 
 gentlemen. The son had that passionate love of the country so 
 often left by a childhood spent in town, and so often found the 
 key to a life of wandering. But father and son took their 
 walks together, and as they walked they talked incessantly, 
 asking and answering questions, examining, recapitulating, 
 analysing, all on the matter of the studies in hand. When 
 nature caught young Mill's eye, it was as if a needy man had 
 caught sight of an unprotected hoard ; he must resist the devil 
 till it fled from him. Poetry, it might almost be said, was the 
 one point of repugnancy between the father and the son. There 
 was a felt difference between them. The father was enough 
 under the spell of poetry to know its beguiling and weakening 
 influences, and he knew how to separate the wheat from the 
 chaff. He would make poetry do good work like any other 
 beast. Then he, too, had his weak points. He had a soft 
 place in his heart for poetic denunciations of conquest, oppres- 
 sion, wealth, luxury, bigotry, and social degeneracy. Nor could 
 he entirely shake off the Scotchman and the Kirk. Oddly
 
 202 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 enough, the son always assumes that his father was an English- 
 man, though the son of a small farmer in the county of Angus, 
 as if he would rather have had an English father than a Scotch 
 one : 
 
 " Shakespeare my father had put into my hands for the sake 
 of the historical plays, from which, however, I went on to the 
 others. My father never was a great admirer of Shakespeare, 
 the English idolatry of which he used to attack with some 
 severity. He cared little for any English poetry except Milton 
 (for whom he had the highest admiration), Goldsmith, Burns, 
 and Gray's Bard, which he preferred to his Elegy ; perhaps I 
 may add Cowper and Beattie. He had some value for Spenser, 
 and I remember his reading to me (unlike his usual practice of 
 making me read to him) the first book of the Faerie Queene, 
 but I took little pleasure in it The poetry of the present 
 century he saw scarcely any merit in, and I hardly became 
 acquainted with any of it till I was grown up to manhood, 
 except the metrical romances of Walter Scott, which I read at 
 his recommendation, and was intensely delighted with, as I 
 always was with animated narrative." 
 
 In his thirteenth year the son tells us that some of Campbell's 
 poems gave him sensations he had never before experienced 
 from poetry, though it is easy to see those sensations were still 
 in the line of his studies. In his thirteenth year he advanced 
 to experimental science and devoured treatises on chymistry, 
 but without attending a lecture or seeing an experiment. He 
 never was so wrapt up in any book as in Joyce's Scientific 
 Dialogues, and was even recalcitrant to his father's criticisms of 
 their bad reasoning as to the first principles of physics. After 
 this came Logic, the Organon, Hobbes, and so on through a 
 catalogue the mere enumeration of which would answer no 
 purpose but to baffle the apprehension we say nothing of the 
 belief of the general reader. How it may be in more favoured 
 climes, or how it may have been under institutions more directly 
 framed for meditation and study, the world shut out, and nature 
 kept well in hand, we know not ; but we must confess the 
 humiliating fact that never yet have we met the mind that 
 could grow at this pace, acquire words, ideas, names, and facts 
 by the thousand an hour, advance to conclusion of infallible 
 truth at lightning speed, and construct theories as rapidly as a 
 hard frost covers a quiet pool. We must have recourse to the
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 203 
 
 most violent mechanical illustrations to describe as they should 
 be described young Mill's powers of acquisition, absorption, and 
 assimilation. As we think of it, we cannot help fearing that it 
 is useless to say he had read everything there was to be read by 
 the completion of his twelfth year, because " everything," though 
 a large term, may still gain by being embodied. He had read 
 Demosthenes, the whole of Tacitus, Juvenal, and Quinctilian, 
 and the best of Plato. But all this educational reading and 
 writing had only a secondary place. All this time young Mill 
 was taking an actual and important part, and for himself a most 
 improving part, in his father's great work. Thus does he de- 
 scribe what really was the chief occupation of his twelfth year, 
 or, to speak more correctly, of his eleventh year and the earlier 
 part of his twelfth : 
 
 " A book which contributed largely to my education in the 
 best sense of the term was my father's History of India. It was 
 published in the beginning of 1818. During the year previous, 
 while it was passing through the Press, I used to read the proof- 
 sheets to him ; or, rather, I read the manuscript to him while 
 he corrected the proofs. The number of new ideas which I 
 received from this remarkable book, and the impulse and 
 stimulus as well as guidance given to my thoughts by its 
 criticisms and disquisitions on society and civilisation in the 
 Hindoo part, made my early familiarity with it eminently 
 useful to my subsequent progress. And though I can perceive 
 deficiencies in it now as compared with a perfect standard, I 
 still think it, if not the most, one of the most instructive his- 
 tories ever written, and one of the books from which most 
 benefit may be derived by a mind in the course of making up 
 its opinion. The preface among the most characteristic of 
 my father's writings as well as the richest in materials of thought 
 gives a picture which may be entirely depended on of the 
 sentiments and expectations with which he wrote the history. 
 Saturated as the book is with the opinions and modes of judg- 
 ment of a democratic Radicalism then regarded as extreme, and 
 treating with a severity, at the time most unusual, the English 
 Constitution, the English law, and all parties and classes who 
 possessed any considerable influence in the country, he may 
 have expected reputation, but certainly not advancement in life, 
 from its publication," etc. 
 
 What followed may perhaps have surprised the father as
 
 204 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 well as the son, but will seem quite as matter of course in these 
 days. James Mill knew more than most people about India, 
 and cared more than most people, so he was eagerly laid hold of 
 by the Directors, put in harness, and set to work on the enormous 
 correspondence of the Company. He rose to the top of the tree, 
 and drew John S. Mill after him, obtaining for him in 1823 not 
 only admission, but special employment in direct relation with 
 himself. No doubt they were both well looked after, and both 
 seemed to have considered that this was the chief opportunity 
 ever offered them of correcting their opinions, ascertaining the 
 practicability of their views, putting their ideas into working 
 form, finding out what men and Hindoos are made of, studying 
 human nature particularly in the form of a director or a high 
 Indian official, coming round prejudices, and getting one's own 
 way without seeming to do so. Most of our readers will doubt 
 whether this was a royal road to the study of the English 
 nature or of any high type of man. However, to judge by the 
 result, young Mill may be considered to have been already 
 deeply versed and deeply engaged in the secrets of Indian 
 diplomacy when little more than ten years old, though probably 
 still deeper in them by the time he was eleven. 
 
 It is understating by exactly 250 per cent Mr. Mill's own 
 estimate of the march he had stolen upon time to assume that 
 at the age of twelve he had the standing of the most accom- 
 plished and well-read gentleman Oxford or Cambridge, or even 
 London University, could hope to turn out at the age of twenty- 
 two. Indeed, it was not many years after this that a university 
 man, loaded with honours and preceded by a blazing reputation, 
 having been induced in an evil hour to take the chair at a dis- 
 cussion, crumbled to dust in the presence of our Titan, and 
 passed out of count utterly. But when time is thus annihilated, 
 and mortal man is privileged to overleap a part of his allotted 
 term, there arises a question such as that which so sorely 
 plagued the old women last century at the alteration of the 
 style. What had become of the eleven days struck out of the 
 calendar 1 Whatever did become of the ten years dropped by 
 J. 8. Mill in his own impatience and his father's to be a man 
 that much before his time ? Of course he had no games, except 
 analysis, controversy, the construction of theories, and synop- 
 tical views of psychological systems ; he had no bodily exercise, 
 except walking, writing, and turning over the leaves ; nor does
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 205 
 
 he seem to have had any companions of about his age, except 
 his young brothers and sisters, who not unnaturally bored him. 
 He did not go to school, which would have been a simple 
 absurdity, for at twelve he knew probably more than all our 
 public schools, man and boy, put together ; but he certainly 
 did thereby lose that which our British parents, wise in their 
 own generation, think not only necessary to a good education, 
 but enough to be the whole of it if a boy happens to be incap- 
 able of any more. An English parent, even though in circum- 
 stances to measure his outgoings, will think it no loss of money 
 if his son does but make the common and unavoidable use of 
 ordinary well-bred companionship, acquiring common sense, 
 current knowledge, the words that pass from lip to lip, the 
 feelings that flow from heart to heart, and the manners of good 
 society, even though he learn nothing whatever that grammars 
 and schoolmasters are made for. Nor is the calculation dis- 
 appointed by the results more than human anticipations usually 
 are. A vast amount of all that makes the man, and thereby 
 perpetuates society, conies down by unwritten we ought now 
 to say unprinted tradition. Nor is it at all certain yet that 
 even in these days of competitive examination, or even in the 
 stages of revolution with which we are threatened, the men 
 whose chief education has been that which boys learn from boys 
 will not carry the day in a large proportion of instances against 
 their more learned rivals. With the great facts of British 
 society before us, it is hardly impossible to overrate, and very 
 unwise to disparage, this spontaneous and natural education. 
 We cannot make it otherwise even if we desired it. But the 
 subject of this autobiography was carefully secluded from com- 
 panions of his own age, lest he should acquire their vices, their 
 low tone, their false estimates, their ridiculous follies, their 
 disregard of truth, their prejudices, and, last, not least, their 
 irrational and immoral superstition. Against the largest and 
 most important part of ordinary association young Mill was as 
 carefully guarded as the babe bred in a tent by mutes, under 
 the orders of an ancient king, to see what language it would 
 first express its wants in. The father had the lowest estimate 
 of society, regarding it as a social conspiracy for subordinating 
 all the most important objects of life to the most worthless, the 
 public interest to the private, and high principles to idle pleas- 
 antry. He would ask how it was possible to suppose that
 
 206 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 society believed what it never mentioned or recognised, except 
 in public ceremony or pre-ordained occasion. However, he 
 would have nothing to say to it, and J. S. Mill confronted the 
 world at the age of twelve with a gulf between the two doomed 
 antagonists. Of course, if the object be to produce intellect in 
 its purest virgin state, without alloy of concrete matter, and if 
 this be the rod of iron earth is henceforth to be ruled by, then 
 the laboratory which made J. S. Mill was the right one. But 
 one thing is evident There can be but few such men made in 
 the nude under the most hopeful conditions. We have only to 
 look at the imposing list of names imposing as to their in- 
 tellectual eminence which in this case were to take the place 
 of companions, and so supply one of the first demands of nature. 
 The persons J. S. Mill had most frequently to converse with 
 till twelve were his father's intimate friends David Ricardo, 
 Joseph Hume, and Mr. Bentham. With the latter he had an 
 early intimacy which ripened into a useful alliance, and it 
 comes as a sort of oasis in this story of high intellect to find 
 young Mill acquiring in excursions with Mr. Bentham a taste 
 for natural scenery in the elementary form of fondness for a 
 " view." But surely it must have been the reappearance of 
 some ancestral type in Mr. J. S. Mill's concrete being when he 
 could find his mind affected as he thus describes : 
 
 "From 1814 to 1817" (that is, from the writer's eighth 
 year to his eleventh) " Mr. Bentham lived during half of each 
 year at Ford Abbey, in Somersetshire, which interval I had the 
 advantage of passing at that place. This sojourn was, I think, 
 an important circumstance in my education. Nothing contri- 
 butes more to nourish elevation of sentiments in a people than 
 the large and free character of their habitations. The middle- 
 age architecture, the baronial hall, and the spacious and lofty 
 rooms of this fine old place, so unlike the mean and cramped 
 externals of English middle-class life, gave the sentiment of a 
 larger and freer existence, and were to me a sort of poetic culti- 
 vation, aided also by the character of the grounds in which the 
 Abbey stood, which were riant and secluded, umbrageous, and 
 full of the sound of falling waters."
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 207 
 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1873 
 
 At an age when most of our young gentlemen are ignorant 
 and uninformed beyond measurement or even depreciation, 
 young Mill started direct from his father's brain, endowed with 
 every gift except those which are only acquired by society with 
 equals, by the work of life, and by practical experience. From 
 books he had gained a world of words and ideas, and by much 
 talking and writing he had learnt to marshal his intellectual 
 forces on the level plain of an understanding which was not 
 that of a boy, nor yet that of a man. From twelve to fourteen 
 his father seems to have been carefully introducing him to all 
 the controversies of the day, in order to show how much there 
 was to be done, how the best established opinions in logic, in 
 politics, in political economy, were the most erroneous, and the 
 newest lights the most promising. The father lectured, the son 
 took notes by memory ; the father put them into shape, and 
 out there came, in one instance, an important publication. At 
 that early age the son was so deep read and thoroughly decided, 
 thanks to his father and Ricardo, on the Bullion controversy 
 that he never afterwards found any reason to change his 
 opinions, and could even set right his teachers upon some minor 
 points. That he was never able to set the whole world right, 
 too, is no more than has happened to the best and greatest men. 
 " At this point " that is, a point far away in the " thorny 
 path " of the Bullion controversy, where the son found himself 
 slightly at issue with his father and Ricardo " concluded what 
 can properly be called my lessons," and happily for mind and 
 body. The son went to the south of France for a year with 
 Mr. Bentham's brother, General Sir Samuel Bentham, Super- 
 intendent of Portsmouth Dockyard. It was a decided breach in 
 his studies, or rather a sharp turn in them. Besides seeing 
 fine towns and mountain scenery, which, he says, gave a colour 
 to his tastes through life, he studied the French language and 
 literature, attempted gymnastics, and attended lectures on 
 chymistry, zoology, logic as taught by an eighteenth-century 
 metaphysician, and the higher mathematics. Besides all this, 
 General Bentham was a great mechanic, his wife the daughter 
 of a celebrated chymist, and their son an eminent botanist. At 
 Paris Mill made the acquaintance of M. Say, at whose house he
 
 208 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 saw various noteworthy persons, among them Saint-Simon, then 
 only a clever original. The chief fruit he carried home from 
 France was a strong and permanent interest in Continental 
 Liberalism. This is stated in comparison with some other 
 impressions. Having seen nothing of English society excepting 
 a few philosophers, but having acquired the belief that it was 
 generally corrupt, he could not help contrasting with it, to its 
 disadvantage, the French society he did see something of. Later 
 in life he seems to have found out that Englishmen pretend to 
 be worse than they are, and Frenchmen pretend to be better 
 than they are, and that if they would only be a little less 
 affected, it might possibly be found there was not much to 
 choose between them. But when ordinary Frenchmen possess 
 social graces which in England are confined to the best bred of 
 the upper and upper middle ranks, it was but natural young 
 Mill should return to England in one point wiser even than his 
 father, who, with all -his superiority to prejudice, was not 
 exempt from the error of judging universal questions by a 
 purely English standard. 
 
 It has already been noticed that while young Mill's education 
 had been hitherto in one sense less thoroughgoing and un- 
 reserved, insomuch that he calls it " a course of Benthamism," 
 mitigated latterly by a visit to France with Mr. Bentham's 
 brother, his father could exercise much discretion at least in 
 the order of initiation. It was not till a year or two after the 
 visit to France that the son read the history of the French 
 Revolution, at which his earlier historical studies had stopped, 
 and he " now learnt with astonishment that the principles of 
 Democracy, then apparently in so insignificant and hopeless a 
 minority everywhere in Europe, had borne all before them in 
 France thirty years earlier, and had been the creed of the 
 nation." While deep in the lowest depths of all the philoso- 
 phers, he knew hardly the rudiments of the greatest events of 
 modern times ; for while any child knew about Louis XVI., 
 Marie Antoinette, the guillotine, and Napoleon, and had even 
 heard of the Girondists, this made the sum of J. S. Mill's 
 knowledge of that era when he was fifteen. Not only James 
 Mill, but also his friends, were aware of a certain quicksand 
 of vulgar poetic sentiment in the son's composition, and this 
 they had tried by all means to dry up or solidify, if the 
 foundation was to stand. But he could now be trusted with
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 209 
 
 the most dangerous materials, and all they did was to feed and 
 quicken his juvenile aspirations to the character of a demo- 
 cratic champion. It is only fair to say that even down to the 
 date mentioned, 1821, nothing was easier than to keep the 
 young uninformed on the history of the French Revolution. 
 It was only known, or imagined, as a terrible outbreak of the 
 wildest, rudest, and fiercest elements of humanity an explosion, 
 a hurricane, and a ruin, in which a few names, and some 
 episodes, were accidentally conspicuous. The long war that 
 followed had taken all the romance out of it. There were 
 no Frenchmen here except the Royalist emigrants ; there was 
 no French literature, not even schoolbooks, except those of the 
 old regime ; there were no translations ; there was nothing but 
 the echoes of a great shock, and the shadow of a great horror. 
 It would have been safer to avow Atheism than French Re- 
 publicanism, and even they were pointed at who had corre-. 
 sponded with the National Convention in its earlier and bloodless 
 days. But when the whole story, like a vision, suddenly 
 unfolded itself to young Mill's mind, at the comparatively 
 mature age of fifteen, all his ambition, all his love of enterprise, 
 was absorbed into that interrupted, still unfinished struggle. 
 We need not ask why a nature not devoid of gentleness did 
 not recoil against a reign of blood and terror. They are the 
 food of schoolboys and the -staple of history. Mill became and 
 never ceased to be a Republican. With his principles and 
 objects thus more sharply defined he could read to more 
 purpose. As a preparation for the Bar, the profession for 
 which he was least unfit, but also as an important part of 
 general education, he read Roman law and a good deal more 
 with Mr. John Austin, who had made Mr. Bentham's best 
 ideas his own, and what was more, he now availed himself of 
 Dumont's assistance as interpreter of Mr. Bentham. That 
 philosopher was never able to bring himself into definite and 
 practical relation with the living world, and had therefore to 
 be interpreted as much as if he had dropped from the moon, 
 or could utter only the music of the spheres. Mankind in 
 general were content to read the voyages of M. Dumont 
 through that ocean of truth. Considering the work before 
 young Mill, and what people will lay hold of if they happen 
 to find themselves adrift in the mid -Atlantic, one can 
 hardly find fault with the grand principle which he grasped, 
 VOL. i p
 
 210 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 and which he henceforth made his safety buoy and his main- 
 stay through life. " When I laid down the last volume of the 
 Traili (M. Dumont's) I had become a different being. The 
 principle of utility, understood as Bentham understood it, and 
 applied in the manner in which he applied it through these 
 three volumes, fell exactly into its place, as the keystone 
 which held together the detached and fragmentary component 
 parta of my knowledge and beliefs. It gave unity to my 
 conception of things. I now had opinions, a creed, a doctrine, 
 a philosophy ; in one among the best senses of the word, a 
 religion." He then describes, as might a converted man, the 
 glowing sense of infinite power, the assurances of solid certainty, 
 and the endless vista of improvement that opened to his en- 
 larged faculties. But he hardly recognises that all the 
 materials were in him already, that they were Mr. Bentham's 
 own, that the neatly-cut arch was there resting on its ingeniously 
 framed centre, and that nothing but the keystone was wanting, 
 the magic " principle of utility " ; that principle so easy to 
 conceive, but hitherto found so impossible to apply on the 
 occasions when it is most wanted. However, in his sixteenth 
 year young Mill had decided on his gospel, and embraced his 
 course. He was a Utilitarian, and to this doctrine would he 
 convert all peoples, nations, and legislatures. To his mind it 
 was the light that lighteneth the world. Not only did all 
 dogmas and opinions disappear in its radiance, but the oldest 
 and most solemn institutions became as gossamer in that mid- 
 day sun. It modified or transformed every relation of life, 
 for nothing was good, or real, or true, except the useful, in the 
 highest discoverable sense of the word. With this lantern to 
 light his paths, young Mill now read Locke, Helvetius, Hartley, 
 and, as he felt inclined, Berkeley, Hume, Reid, Dugald Stewart, 
 and Brown. He also read at this time, at the age of sixteen, 
 for the better satisfaction of his mind on a subject of alleged 
 importance, an anonymous work founded on Bentham's MS., 
 entitled Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the 
 Temporal Happiness of Mankind, This reads very like the 
 theme of the great Roman poet, but Mr. Mill's comments are 
 rather on the weakness of such beliefs and the inconsistencies 
 of their holders. He notices that it is common to all religions, 
 Pagan, Philosophic, Christian, and Deistic, or the worship of 
 Nature and Providence, that the belief itself is feeble and pre-
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 211 
 
 carious, but the opinion of its necessity for moral and social 
 purposes almost universal. Everybody says that there ought 
 to be a religion, and that people ought to be religious, but they 
 don't think it so necessary to be religious themselves, or at 
 least don't act as if they did. Deism he concludes to be as 
 absurd and demoralising as Christianity itself, under any of its 
 forms. This satisfied Mr. Mill. He had been ready to give 
 religion fair play. He had summoned it into court, asked what 
 it possessed, and inquired into the value of its testimony. This 
 he found good for nothing. The witness said one thing and 
 did another. Philosophers had only added to their difficulties 
 by their efforts to patch up a sort of belief in the course of 
 nature and the order of events. Try as they would they could 
 not do it, and evidently put no faith in their own inventions. 
 So Mr. Mill would have nothing to say to any doctrine what- 
 ever, except, of course, the principle of utility. This little 
 matter he seems to have reserved to the last. The views of 
 " Philip Beauchamp," the assumed name of Mr. Bentham's last- 
 mentioned interpreter, were the very best things that had ever 
 appeared on the subject, and when Mr. Mill had examined and 
 approved there was an end of the question, in his own mind at 
 least. He adds immediately, " I have now, I believe, mentioned 
 all the books which had any considerable effect on my early 
 mental development. From this point I began to carry on my 
 mental cultivation by writing still more than by reading." It 
 was on attaining his sixteenth year that he wrote his " first 
 argumentative essay." That the poor are as good as the rich, 
 and rather better too, is the fertile subject of countless eclogues, 
 sermons, and declamations ; but to prove this by " dry argument" 
 young Mill considered to be the best way of breaking ground 
 in his great attack on aristocracy. 
 
 His friends and associates were now Mr. Grote, Mr. John 
 Austin, and his brother Charles ; the former two, in different 
 degrees, the disciples of James Mill. Charles Austin, having 
 only just left Cambridge, where he had greatly distinguished 
 himself in the Union Debating Society, gave young Mill the 
 new sensation of being a man among men, and conversing on 
 a ground of equality. In a crowd of intellectual gladiators 
 Charles Austin was the really influential mind, attaching others 
 to his car, and drawing them in triumph from the free and 
 fervid arena of the university to the more serious metropolis.
 
 212 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 " Through him," says Mill, " I became acquainted with Macau- 
 lay, Hyde, and Charles Villiers, Strutt (now Lord Belper), 
 Eomilly (now Lord Romilly), and various others who subse- 
 quently figured in literature and politics." Charles Austin loved 
 to strike and to startle. He never doubted or hesitated. He 
 pushed Benthamism to its extreme, putting foremost its most 
 offensive doctrines and maxims, and defending them with such 
 vivacity as to come off always either victor or with divided 
 honours. Mill ascribes to him that popular idea of Benthamism 
 which he appears to regard as a sort of cloud, a brilliant cloud, 
 interposed between the man and the world. However, in turn, 
 most of those whom this brilliant interpreter of the Benthamite 
 mysticism illuminated or ignited grew dim, or slackened their 
 fires, if they did not absolutely burn out and smoulder away, 
 as Mill suggests some did. He cherished the torch of truth, 
 and, under Bentham and Charles Austin, was the practical 
 founder of Utilitarianism, or as much of it as man can under- 
 stand. Mill says, and the reader must bear in mind he was 
 then still in his seventeenth year : 
 
 " It was in the winter of 1822-23 that I formed the plan of 
 a little society, to be composed of young men agreeing in 
 fundamental principles, and acknowledging utility as their 
 standard in ethics and politics, and a certain number of the prin- 
 cipal corollaries drawn from it in the philosophy I had accepted, 
 and meeting once a fortnight to read essays and discuss ques- 
 tions conformably to the premisses thus agreed on. The fact 
 would hardly be worth mentioning, but for the circumstance 
 that the name 1 gave to the society I had planned was the 
 Utilitarian Society. It was the first time that any one had 
 taken the title of Utilitarian ; and the name made its way 
 into the language from this humble source. I did not invent 
 the word, but found it in one of Gait's novels, the Annals of 
 the Parish, in which the Scotch clergyman, of whom the book 
 is a supposed autobiography, is represented as warning his 
 parishioners not to leave the Gospel and become Utilitarians." 
 
 Young Mill was delighted to be the leader of a sect with a 
 name, and to find the name take. The meetings were held in 
 the very nursery of the new creed, Bentham's own house, but 
 the numbers were few, and the society lasted only three years 
 and a half. William Eyton Tooke, whose name will bring 
 back many old recollections, was a member of their little com-
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 213 
 
 panionship, as also W. Ellis, the founder, as he may be called, 
 of " Social Science," and John Arthur Roebuck. 
 
 About his seventeenth birthday we presume it was the 
 earliest possible age James Mill obtained for his son an 
 appointment under himself in the office of the Examiner of 
 Indian Correspondence. This was so important a step in the 
 career of a man intended to regenerate the human race, that we 
 follow Mr. Mill's example in saying a few words about it. 
 Indeed, he says a good many words about it. His fortune was 
 now made. He had competency, honourable and improving 
 work, society, promotion, and deliverance from all the anxieties, 
 risks, toils, and troubles so apt to molest and degrade the best 
 of men, philosophers especially. His employment was just one 
 of those that are sometimes imagined as national provisions 
 and final havens for the loftier natures, whose time and strength 
 it is the true interest of a nation to economise at any cost. 
 With ordinary pursuits, such as commercial business or a pro- 
 fession, there could be no comparison, so much was this better. 
 Mr. Mill contrasts it especially with writing for the press. In 
 that employment, he observes, you live by that which does not 
 live ; you give your best to the public, and leave only the 
 worst for yourself ; you have to take advice, and submit to 
 revision and correction. An Athanasius contra mundum such as 
 Mr. Mill was could not do this. On the other hand, at the 
 India House Mr. Mill was pleasantly employed from ten to four, 
 in the sufficiently varied routine of perusing interesting docu- 
 ments, conferring with intelligent men, and practising graces of 
 style. As he was already well up to every point on which 
 there could be a difficulty, including Indian history and politics, 
 it was all plain sailing ; and excepting that he hints at system- 
 atically coming round the directors, when he had a view of his 
 own, and the fitting opportunity, he did not hold himself 
 responsible for what was done. The work was no tax upon 
 him. He and his acquaintances in like position spent their 
 mornings and their evenings in discussion, for which they 
 arranged clubs and societies, besides reading and writing as 
 much as ever. The six hours of office work were rest to their 
 intellects, and they did their office work all the better for the 
 change. India, of course, young Mill was helping to govern on 
 old Indian principles, but, as regards all the rest of the world, 
 including England, he was an outsider, in no immediate practical
 
 214 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 relation to it, and at liberty to revolutionise it to the very 
 foundation by any system timed to come due a century, or half 
 a century hence. So advantageous a position was the only 
 thing wanting to the father's arrangements for educating a 
 destroyer of the old world and creator of the new. For any- 
 body approaching the mighty work of universal reform in a 
 more reverential and conservative spirit, it is far better, not to 
 say necessary, that he should share throughout life all the 
 difficulties and weaknesses, all the trials and even degradations 
 which for the present are the lot of those whom he has to deal 
 with. A man ought to be in the battle of life if he is to 
 improve the conditions of that warfare. By all the ethical 
 rules that are founded on experience, J. S. Mill, little qualified 
 as he was by his education for British politics, had less and less 
 opportunity of repairing that defect in his secure retreat at the 
 India House. Nor can we help observing here the scores of 
 names which occur in this volume, severally representing secure, 
 comfortable, and dignified positions in various departments of 
 the Civil Service, and also vigorous agitations, and formidable 
 combinations, for the utter overthrow, not merely of this or that 
 doctrine, opinion, or institution, but of society altogether, as 
 now constituted. Society is very generous to many who 
 evidently feel no reciprocal obligation. 
 
 Even before Mr. Mill had thus acquired a material as well as 
 intellectual basis of operations, he had tried to catch the public 
 attention. As usual, his first attempts were with the news- 
 papers, some of which were as Benthamite as was compatible 
 with existence. Apropos of the prosecution of Richard Carlisle, 
 and under the highly becoming signature of " Wickliffe," the 
 precocious propagandist wrote letters, which were inserted up to 
 a point, and not after. But Mr. Bentham long ago came to the 
 conclusion that public opinion, in almost every sense of the 
 word, must itself be revolutionised before it could be trusted to 
 do the work of revolution. Even in its most congenial forms 
 it lay in his way like a huge earthwork, which he could only 
 ooze and trickle through. " His influence," says Mr. Mill, 
 " flowed in minor streams too numerous to be specified." It 
 was necessary to make head against the Edinburgh and Quarterly 
 Reviews, equally hateful to the Benthamites, as the twin Whig 
 and Tory giants guarding the entrance of Castle Corruption. 
 So the Westminster was started under difficulties. From the
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 215 
 
 narrative before us we should say that everybody wanted to be 
 editor, everybody wanted to write political articles, and every- 
 body wanted to write all the articles, and all on one string. 
 Bowring was editor, though the elder Mill thought him a most 
 improper man for the work, and it was found necessary, with a 
 view to a circulation, to divide the editorship with Mr. Southern, 
 "a literary man by profession." The lips of the cup must be 
 sweetened if the contents were ever to go down. Young Mill 
 was admitted in the second number, but though the Review 
 made a great noise, and did good by suggesting, disturbing, 
 scaring, and generally unsettling, he pronounces it a downright 
 failure as regards consistency, honesty, and truth. It seems 
 rather strange that Bentham, whose main idea was to harmonise 
 the human race into the accord of perfect reason, but who, 
 unfortunately, could not write a page without verging on 
 buffoonery, and had himself to condemn a large part of his 
 writings for this fault, possessed more practical common sense 
 than his own disciples. They thought they had only to blow a 
 great blast with the youngest and strongest lungs in their camp 
 and the enemy's walls would come down. Most of them, how- 
 ever, not only acquired wisdom by experience, but very early 
 showed divergent lines of character and opinion. The Mills had 
 not their way with the Westminster Review, and finding himself 
 in a position to criticise it, the younger Mill took strong 
 exception among other points to the skits at poetry which 
 the chief political writer thought fit to indulge in. Bingham 
 having tried his hand at poetry and failed, took to abusing it 
 altogether. " A Mr. Moore," he said in the Review, " is a poet 
 and therefore is not a reasoner. Bentham used to say, " All 
 poetry is misrepresentation," but then he only meant that it 
 was a special and partial representation, and not one to argue 
 upon. But even if the master might claim anti-poetical license, 
 it was a different thing when the 'prentice did, particularly 
 when there was not room for young Mill in the Review, because 
 the unpoetical writer must have five articles in it, and would 
 not be content with less. Now, young Mill had a weakness for 
 poetry, though he could not find its proper place in a perfect 
 theory of human life. His father, too, had only forced himself 
 into proscribing it on principle. He always admitted that 
 things could be said in poetry which could not be said in prose, 
 and that therefore it was still to the good. Altogether young
 
 216 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 Mill was well content that the Westminster failed, by the usual 
 test ; it did not pay. Then ensued a sort of reaction in his 
 mind. He ceased to call himself a Utilitarian, disused the 
 pronoun " we," and revolted from the idea of a sect, though for 
 a long time disagreeably conscious of the leaven. But he still 
 did yeoman's work for the great master, editing his papers, 
 arranging his Sibylline leaves, unravelling his immense sen- 
 tences, and selecting from half-a-dozen bulky MSS., which were 
 substantially the same things in so many successive forms, the 
 most authentic or intelligible version. It was at the age of 
 eighteen that young Mill appeared before the world as editor of 
 Mr. Bentham's Rationale of Judicial Evidence, The task im- 
 proved his own style, so he thinks, as well as making Bentham's 
 readable ; but it is not surprising to find him adding a course of 
 English and French writers combining ease with strength of 
 language, such as Goldsmith, Fielding, Pascal, Voltaire, and 
 Cuvier. The consequent change in his own style which, as his 
 Logic and Political Economy prove, grew to be, though a little 
 diffuse, a model of lucidity is described in words suggestive of 
 the prophet's " Valley of Dry Bones." " Through these influences 
 my writing lost the jejuneness of my early composition ; the 
 bones and cartilages began to clothe themselves with flesh, and 
 the style became at times lively and almost light" 
 
 His improved style he now had the opportunity of exhibiting 
 in a Parliamentary History and Review, in which he took a chief 
 part with the best men of the Benthamite corps. He wrote on 
 the Catholic Disabilities, the Commercial Crisis of 1825, the 
 Currency, and the Reciprocity Principle, and a paper on 
 " Canning versus Gallatin." The publication lasted three years. 
 He now learned German, beginning on the Hamiltonian system, 
 and forming his acquaintances into a class for the purpose. He 
 and his class, a dozen or so, then addressed themselves to several 
 branches of science, Mr. Grote lending them a room in Thread- 
 needle Street The first study was the elder Mill's Elements of 
 Political Economy. Then they passed to other writers, or cog- 
 nate subjects. The debaters argued themselves into different 
 views, and the younger Mill found himself improving on his 
 text-books, and also his father, who came round to him on some 
 points. These discussions soon brought on the larger question 
 What is right reason ? Young Mill read Whately's Logic and 
 Hobbes, and soon found himself an innovator, not only on the
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 217 
 
 schoolmen, but on all who had ever come before him. They 
 then launched into analytic psychology, and re -assembled 
 specially to study the elder Mill's Analysis of the Mind. These 
 morning and evening classes, however, could only be the train- 
 ing for larger arenas, and at nineteen years Mill was an enterprising 
 public speaker, like the Admirable Crichton, only looking for 
 antagonists and auditories worthy of his powers. He and his 
 comrades made an onslaught on the Owenites, whom they drove 
 out of all their positions. Among other household names for 
 political and social controversy thus engaged it is interesting to 
 read that of Thirlwall, then a Chancery barrister, now Bishop 
 of St. David's. Young Mill dissented from nearly every word 
 he said, the speech being in fact an answer to his own; but 
 adds, " Before he had uttered ten sentences I set him down as 
 the best speaker I had ever heard, and I have never since 
 heard any one whom I placed above him." At the suggestion 
 of M'Culloch, who introduced some pupils, and in rivalry of 
 similar movements at Edinburgh, Oxford, and Cambridge, there 
 was now founded a debating society on the widest basis that 
 could be obtained. The difficulty was to catch a Tory or two, 
 and to make up an " Opposition." Whig or Tory, some of the 
 names were then new viz. Thirlwall, Praed, Lord Howick, 
 S. Wilberforce, Poulett Thompson, the two Bulwers, and 
 Fonblanque. After a time they got Hayward and Shee for 
 Tories, and the second generation of Cambridge Benthamites, 
 including C. Buller and Cockburn. Later still came in the 
 Coleridgians, in the persons of Maurice and Sterling. Here were 
 action and reaction. The debates " habitually consisted of the 
 strongest arguments and most philosophic principles which either 
 side was able to produce, thrown often into close and serried 
 confutations of one another." Mill considered the practice 
 specially fitted to his case for a reason that scarcely falls in the 
 line of a debating society. He wrote his speeches whenever he 
 felt it important to express himself clearly and strongly. He 
 adds, " I greatly increased my power of eifective writing, acquir- 
 ing not only an ear for smoothness and rhythm, but a practical 
 sense for telling sentences, and an immediate criterion of their 
 telling property, by their effect on a mixed audience." In real 
 debate a man enjoys the further criterion of a comparison of his 
 own opinions and statements with those urged against him. He 
 thus learns to correct and modify. This does not seem to have
 
 218 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 occurred to Mill. The chief, indeed only, use of the audience 
 was to show what would tell and what would not. A pulpit, 
 with the primitive liberty of acclamation, would have answered 
 the purpose. Meanwhile, the original Westminster Review had 
 died of the common malady : 
 
 " The last article which I wrote in it cost me more labour 
 than any previous ; but it was a labour of love (in more senses 
 than one), being a defence of the French Revolutionists against 
 the Tory misrepresentations of Sir W. Scott in the introduction 
 to his Life of Napoleon. The number of books which I read for 
 this purpose, making notes and extracts even the number I 
 had to buy (for in those days there was no public subscription 
 library from which books of reference could be taken home) 
 far exceeded the worth of the immediate object ; but I had 
 at that time a half-formed intention of writing a History of 
 the French Revolution, and though I never executed it, my 
 collections afterwards were very useful to Carlyle for a similar 
 purpose." 
 
 At the critical age of twenty in this wonderful career that 
 happened which has so often happened to very different char- 
 acters under very different circumstances, that it contributes 
 little to any argument upon Mr. Mill's philosophy. He called 
 it himself "a crisis in his mental history," from which he 
 recovered, fortunately as he felt, by " one step onward." Such 
 had been his early confidence in his creed that he believed it 
 would be found an unfailing and ever-increasing source of 
 delight, as he seemed continually nearer and nearer its consum- 
 mation, and saw more and more abundant and convincing 
 demonstrations of its truth. Utility he felt must be happiness. 
 This hope had been long sustained and reinforced by the 
 secondary pleasures of acquisition, successful work and argument- 
 ative triumph. He had been all this time on the march to a 
 land of promise, and was blest because soon to be blest All at 
 once he woke as from a dream, and asked himself a question, 
 which certainly it argues' great sincerity to have asked, and still 
 more to confess. He asked himself whether in very truth he 
 would feel so very happy if he succeeded in making the whole 
 world happy, and thereby put an end to his vocation. He 
 arrived at the only honest conclusion that in that case he would 
 care very little about the happiness of the human race, but a 
 good deal more about having more to do. When divines ask
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 219 
 
 us from the pulpit how we should feel if suddenly admitted to 
 heaven, or to any society of absolutely good people, we must 
 either reply that such a state is past our conception, or that we 
 should feel out of place, blank, and uncomfortable. We -cannot 
 help looking forward, but we must give the chief of our attention 
 to that which is around us, and at hand. As Mr. Mill hints, 
 the truth was he had overworked himself at last ; his strength 
 failed, and his nerves gave way. Philosophers are as much 
 dependent on their physique as labourers ; and Mr. Mill now for 
 twenty years had been drawing upon the springs of vital power far 
 more than if he had been hedging and ditching, deep draining, 
 or folloAving the plough. When Martyn, afterwards the mission- 
 ary, had come out senior wrangler, he was taken with an ugly 
 and unpleasant suspicion that mathematics generally were an 
 invention of Satan, and that, like Bunyan's hero, he had been 
 led into a net of destruction. Constituted as we are to design, 
 to work, to advance, and overcome difficulties, success is often 
 as fatal to happiness as " chopping " the fox in the hunting-field. 
 Mr. Mill thought that his condition must have been pretty much 
 that which, in some characters, under peculiar religious in- 
 fluences, assumes the form of conviction of sin and reacts in 
 fanaticism. Perhaps there are very few persons who are not 
 seized and overcome, once if not oftener, in early life by a dull, 
 depressing sense of universal unreality, hollowness, and deadness. 
 For several months Mr. Mill lay in this slough of despond, and 
 felt he never could get out of it He did, however ; catching, 
 this time, not at a straw, but at the flowers on the banks of that 
 pit. His favourite books, even the most exciting and elevating, 
 had failed to cheer his increasing gloom. He sought comforters 
 and found none. His father, he felt, would be the last to help 
 him. In none of his friends had he the confidence of a thorough 
 sympathy. Father and friends had all been working for the 
 general happiness, not for a case of individual misery. Con- 
 tinual analysis, he felt, had exhausted his affections ; and the 
 fountains of vanity and ambition had been dried up within 
 him as completely as those of benevolence. Work was 
 now mechanical. In after years he could not even remember 
 what he had said or done at this time. We read in this 
 narrative : 
 
 " I frequently asked myself if I could, or if I was bound to, 
 go on living, when life must be passed in this manner. I
 
 220 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 generally answered to myself that I did not think I could 
 possibly bear it beyond a year. When, however, not more 
 than half that duration of time had elapsed, a small ray of light 
 broke in upon my gloom. I was reading, accidentally, Mar- 
 montel's Mtinoires, and came to the passage which relates his 
 father's death, the distressed position of the family, and the 
 sudden inspiration by which he, then a mere boy, felt and made 
 them feel that he would be everything to them supply the 
 place of all that they had lost A vivid conception of the scene 
 and its feelings came over me, and I was moved to tears. From 
 this moment my burden grew lighter. The oppression of the 
 thought that all feeling was dead within me was gone. I was 
 no longer hopeless ; I was not a stock or a stone. I had still, 
 it seemed, some of the material out of which all worth of 
 character and all capacity for happiness are made. . . . Thus 
 the cloud gradually drew off, and I again enjoyed life." 
 
 The conclusion he drew from this miserable experience, and 
 from the nature of the relief, was that both his own tempera- 
 ment and reason itself suggested the use of ordinary sources of 
 cheerfulness, over and above the stimulus of grand objects. He 
 must condescend to be amused, and have something to fall back 
 upon when wearied with great efforts. He took to music, and 
 went to the opera, though he seems to have had a relapse in the 
 singular form of an unlucky discovery that, as the materials for 
 melody are finite and few, so also must the melodies be, particu- 
 larly as it is only a limited proportion of the possible combina- 
 tions of sound that are melodious. A time must come when music 
 will run itself out, and there will be nothing new except a 
 wretched gleaning after the harvest To some purpose he read 
 Wordsworth for the first time in the autumn of 1828 and 
 describes it as an important event in his life. The Excursion 
 he had read before. " The miscellaneous poems in the two- 
 volume edition of 1815 proved to be the precise thing for my 
 mental wants," he says, "at that particular juncture." Mill 
 had a love for rural objects and natural scenery. " What made 
 Wordsworth's poems," he says, "a medicine for my state of 
 mind was that they expressed not mere outward beauty, but 
 states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the 
 excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of 
 the feelings which I was in quest of." 
 
 As Mill recovered he speculated on the nature of the
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 221 
 
 medicine, and urged it upon his friends, perhaps without duly 
 considering what their complaint was. He forced Wordsworth's 
 poems on Eoebuck, who took to them kindly at first ; but when 
 Mill followed up his advantage by setting up Wordsworth over 
 the head of Byron, Eoebuck stood on his defence. The two 
 Benthamites had a pitched battle in their debating society on 
 the comparative merits of Byron and Wordsworth, and the fight 
 waxed so hot that not only were the two friends never such 
 good friends after, but there ensued a marked divergence of 
 views which both were careful to pronounce. 
 
 We have lingered too long, perhaps, on the first half of this 
 remarkable narrative, but it is the half which contains what 
 may be called the Cyropaedia of John Stuart Mill It is the 
 education of the great educator, the formation of the man 
 designed from his infancy to reform the world. If Benthamism 
 ever had a chance, it was in the person of this magnum Jovis 
 incrementum. The rest of the autobiography relates to that 
 which is well before the world Mill's alliances and contro- 
 versies ; his innumerable publications and vast editorial labours ; 
 his immense efforts, his actual achievements ; the records of 
 " the most valuable friendship of his life," as he very suitably 
 calls his rather singular marriage history ; his Parliamentary 
 enterprises; his more prominent crusades, and what he did, and 
 what he failed to do. As his object was to reconstruct human 
 society on the single principle of utility, and as he was rather 
 in a hurry to set about it at once, and do it out of hand if 
 possible, to force the hundred gates of the old city in a day 
 it was to be expected that he should suffer a good many dis- 
 appointments. It is not possible, however, to separate him 
 from Bentham. To ask what John Stuart Mill has done is 
 simply to institute that very large and important inquiry how 
 far we are indebted to Mr. Bentham for the legislation of the 
 last fifty years, and the still larger, still more important 
 inquiry, how much more we are likely to do in the same 
 direction in the next fifty years. But whatever estimate 
 we may choose to make of the Utilitarian progress, we may 
 still find it is a mere fraction that we owe to the great 
 professors of that philosophy. Long before Bentham wrote or 
 Mill interpreted, we had already entered on the path of liberal 
 legislation, when the French Revolution threw us back a couple 
 of centuries, and reduced politics to a literature. For a long
 
 222 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 time men wrote and talked, and the writers and talkers had it 
 all to themselves, and were left to themselves. But no sooner 
 had the European war come to an end than there was a 
 great awakening, and Liberals and Tories were immediately 
 involved in a deadly struggle ; the former with the conscious- 
 ness of immense arrears to be recovered, the latter with a 
 misgiving that their time was but short. Bentham just 
 then supplied a nucleus, and a philosophy, and so con- 
 tributed to the reviving cause the aid of a large intellectual 
 capacity, abundant powers of language, and a sufficiently genial 
 temperament, warm to friends and bitter to foes. But if we 
 owe anything to him and his lieutenants that we should not 
 have but for them, on the other hand, they have thrown a good 
 many stumbling-blocks in the way of legislative and social reform. 
 Their propositions exceeded both in comprehension and in ex- 
 tent all the projects of the most radical of our reformers. Could 
 any well-informed politicians have pointed out to Bentham or 
 John Stuart Mill any one political or social institution which 
 they had not proposed to abolish in its existing form in order! 
 to substitute a new form founded on the principle of utility, wej 
 feel confident that they, either of them, would have taken I 
 advantage of the hint to throw the missing institution after the) 
 rest, into the furnace of change. Their names and their theories 
 have become a terror to good doers as well as to evil, and much 
 has been left undone because they had insisted on a great deal 
 more. But in some remarkable questions Mill did assert a 
 domain for himself, and had his pet measures. They were 
 generally strong in the personal element He fought for the 
 East India Company with a zeal which would have done honour 
 to the stoutest champion of the closest oligarchy. He was 
 especially eager to reform the status of the weaker sex, on the 
 model of his own exceptional relations with it, and though there 
 was " no harm " in those relations, still they were extraordinary. 
 He might be right as to the necessity of the ballot, but he never 
 foresaw its exact working, and on his own principles might have 
 lived to repent it. His views on the currency may be left in 
 the abyss, for it is not upon any abstract reasoning that the 
 currency question will ever be settled. All Mill's ideas on 
 Parliamentary representation might be summed up in the wish 
 to secure for everybody with a head, a heart, and a tongue, a 
 seat in the House of Commons, and so to convert it into an
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 223 
 
 enormous debating society. Indeed, whatever he proposed 
 through life was hut the natural development of his own char- 
 acter, his own ambition, and his own circumstances. If his 
 career is to be adduced for the illustration of any theory of life 
 at all, it must not be for the Utilitarian theory, to which we 
 are bound to say his inner nature was treacherous. Much more 
 reasonably might it be adduced to prove, so far as one example 
 can, another theory infinitely below the Utilitarian in morality 
 and likelihood. If we could suppose ourselves the creatures of 
 necessity, made as we are out of atoms, germs, concurrences, 
 vitalities, struggling influences, and surrounding circumstances, 
 without a will of our own except one that matter has made for 
 us, then we might exhibit John Stuart Mill as a man born, and 
 bred, and governed by irresistible agencies. But was he the man 
 to rule the politics, the intellect, or the social life of the civilised 
 world ? Losing him, are we to look for his disciples or his 
 imitators ? We answer that he was made up far too early, far 
 too artificially, far too much in the workshop of his father's 
 mind and special circumstances. He was a formed intellect 
 before he could be anything else. He had all the machinery, 
 . all the nomenclature, all the craft, before he could possibly have 
 acquired the indispensable foundation of knowledge of men 
 and things. He really was as little qualified for politics as he 
 probably was for the management of a farm, or any affair what- 
 ever in which actual experience is necessary. In all that he 
 wrote or said there is little evidence that he knew what an 
 ordinary Englishman, let alone an Englishwoman, is made of. 
 His philosophy deals with words, images, the mere counters of a 
 game, all stamped with J. S. Mill's own image and superscription. 
 If we will be so good as to suppose everything exactly as he 
 supposes it, persons, things, facts, natures, tendencies, axioms, 
 and corollaries, then he will show us a good deal more standing 
 in the same hypothesis. Of course there must be theories, if 
 only for pegs to hang facts upon. Of course there must be 
 an abundance of words for people to find out what they mean. 
 Of course there must be the gifted possessors of immense 
 memories, men who can talk of all philosophies, and point with 
 the finger to every distinct divergence of opinion. Of course 
 there must be such men as John Stuart Mill, even if only a 
 few of them in an age ; but when we ask their value as leaders 
 of thought, or at all entitled to tell us how to govern ourselves,
 
 224 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 or to form our belief on the most important points of human 
 practice and inquiry, then the proof is here. Few readers of 
 this autobiography will fail to see that John Stuart Mill was at 
 fifty what he was at twenty, at twenty what he was at ten, and 
 at ten, just what his father, however fearfully and wonderfully, 
 had fashioned and made him.
 
 DR. LIVINGSTONE 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28, 1874 
 
 THE following telegram, dated Aden, the 27th inst., has been 
 received at the Foreign Office from Her Majesty's Acting 
 Consul-General at Zanzibar : 
 
 " The report of Livingstone's death is confirmed by letters 
 received from Cameron, dated Unyanyembe, 20th October. 
 He died of dysentery after a fortnight's illness, shortly after 
 leaving Lake Bemba for eastward. He had attempted to cross 
 the lake from the north, and, failing in this, had doubled back 
 and rounded the lake, crossing the Chambize and the other 
 rivers flowing from it ; had then crossed the Luapula, and died 
 in Lobisa, after having crossed a marshy country with the 
 water for three hours at a time above the waist ; ten of his men 
 had died, and the remainder, consisting of seventy-nine men, 
 were marching to Unyanyembe. They had disembowelled the 
 body and had filled it with salt, and had put brandy into the 
 mouth to preserve it. His servant, Chumas, went on ahead to 
 procure provisions, as the party was destitute, and gave intelli- 
 gence to Cameron, who expected the body in a few days. 
 Cameron and his party had suffered greatly from fever and 
 ophthalmia, but hoped to push on to Ujiji. Livingstone's 
 body may be expected at Zanzibar in February. Please 
 telegraph orders as to disposal. No leaden shells procurable 
 here." 
 
 \ A plain Scottish missionary, and the son of poor parents, 
 David Livingstone yet came of gentle extraction. The Living- 
 stones have ever been reckoned one of the best and oldest of 
 the Highland families. Considering that his father and him- 
 
 VOL. I Q
 
 226 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 self were strong Protestants, it is singular that his grandfather 
 fell at Culloden fighting in the cause of the Stuarts, and that 
 the family were Roman Catholics down to about a century ago, 
 when (to use his own words) " they were made Protestants by 
 the laird coming round their village with a man who carried a 
 yellow staff," to compel them, no doubt, to attend the estab- 
 lished worship. More recently the Livingstones were settled in 
 the little island of Ulva, on the coast of Argyllshire, not far 
 from the celebrated island of lona, so well known in the annals 
 of mediaeval missionary enterprise. 
 
 Dr. Livingstone's father, one Neil Livingstone, who kept a 
 small tea-dealer's shop in the neighbourhood of Hamilton, in 
 Lanarkshire, is represented by him, in a biographical sketch 
 prefixed to his volume of Travels, as having been too strictly 
 honest and conscientious in his worldly dealings ever to become 
 a rich and wealthy man. The family motto, we are told by 
 one writer, was " Be honest." He was a " deacon " in an 
 Independent chapel in Hamilton ; and he died in the early part 
 of the year 1856. His son was born at East Kilbride, in 
 Lanarkshire, in or about the year 1816. His early youth was 
 spent in employment as a " hand " in the cotton - mills in 
 the neighbourhood of Glasgow ; and he tells us, in the book to 
 which we have already referred, that during the winter he used 
 to pursue his religious studies with a view to following the 
 profession of a missionary in foreign parts, returning in the 
 summer months to his daily labour in order to procure support 
 during his months of renewed mental study. 
 
 While working at the Blantyre mills, young Livingstone 
 was able to attend an evening school, where he imbibed an 
 early taste for classical literature. By the time he was sixteen 
 years of age he had got by heart the best part of both 
 Horace and Virgil. Here also he acquired a considerable 
 taste for works on religion and on natural science ; in fact, he 
 " devoured " every kind of reading " except novels." Among 
 the most favourite books of his boyhood and early manhood, 
 he makes special mention of Dr. Dick's Philosophy of Re- 
 ligion and Philosophy of a Future State, His religious feel- 
 ings, however, warmed towards a missionary life ; he felt an 
 intense longing to become " a pioneer of Christianity in China," 
 hoping that he might be instrumental in teaching the true 
 religion to the inhabitants of the Far East, and also that by so
 
 DR. LIVINGSTONE 227 
 
 doing he might " lead to the material benefit of some portions 
 of that immense empire." In order to qualify himself for 
 such an enterprise, he set himself to obtain a medical education, 
 as a superstructure to that which he had already gained so 
 laboriously ; and this he supplemented by botanical and 
 geological explorations in the neighbourhood of his home, and 
 the study of Patrick's work on the Plants of Lanarkshire. 
 
 We next find him, at the age of nineteen, attending the 
 medical and Greek classes in Glasgow in the winter, and the 
 divinity lectures of Dr. Wardlaw in the summer. His reading 
 while at work in the factory was carried on by " placing his 
 book on the spinning-jenny," so that he could " catch sentence 
 after sentence while he went on with his labour," thus 
 " keeping up a constant study undisturbed by the roar of 
 machinery." Having completed his attendance on Dr. Ward- 
 law's lectures, and having been admitted a Licentiate of the 
 Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons, he resolved in 1838 to 
 offer his services to the London Missionary Society as a 
 candidate for the ministry in foreign parts. This step he was 
 induced to take, to use his own words, on account of the 
 " unsectarian character of that society, which sends out neither 
 Episcopacy nor Presbyterianism, but the Gospel of God to the 
 heathen." In this " unsectarian " movement he saw, or 
 thought he saw, realised his idea of the missionary life as 
 it ought to be. The opium war, which then was raging, 
 combined with other circumstances to divert his thoughts from 
 China to Africa ; and from the published accounts of the 
 missionary labours of Messrs. Moffat, Hamilton, and other 
 philanthropists in that quarter of the globe, he saw that an 
 extensive and hopeful field of enterprise lay open before him. 
 
 His offer was accepted by the Society, and having spent 
 three months in theological study in England, and having 
 been ordained to the pastoral office, he left these shores in 1840 
 for Southern Africa, and after a voyage of nearly three months 
 reached Cape Town. His first destination was Port Natal, 
 where he became personally acquainted with his fellow-country- 
 man, the still surviving Rev. Robert Moffat, whose daughter 
 subsequently became his wife and the faithful and zealous 
 sharer of his toils and travels and accompanied him in his 
 arduous journey to Lake Ngami. 
 
 From Natal he proceeded inland to a mission station in the
 
 228 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 Bechuana country, called Kuruman, about 700 miles distant 
 from Cape Town, where, and at Mapotsa, he was employed in 
 preparatory labours, jointly with other missionaries, down to 
 about the year 1845. From that date for about four years more 
 he continued to work at Chonuane, Lepelole, and Kolobeng, 
 aided and supported by no larger staff than Mrs. Livingstone 
 and three native teachers. It was not until 1849 that he made 
 his first essay as an explorer, strictly so called, as distinct from 
 a missionary ; in that year he made his first journey in search 
 of Lake_Ngami. In 1852 he commenced, in company with his 
 wiFepthe "great journey,"" as he calls it, to Lake Ngarni, of 
 which a full and detailed account is given in the work already 
 quoted above, and which he dedicated on its publication to Sir 
 Roderick Murchison, as "a token of gratitude for the kind 
 interest that he had always taken in the author's pursuits and 
 welfare." The outline of this " great journey " is so familiar to 
 all readers of modern books of travel and enterprise that we 
 need not repeat it here. It is enough to say that in the ten 
 [ years previous to 1855 Livingstone led several independent 
 \ expeditions into the interior of Southern Africa, during which 
 \ he made himself acquainted with the languages, habits, and 
 religious notions of several savage tribes which were previously 
 unknown to Englishmen, and twice crossed the entire African 
 continent, a little south of the tropic of Capricorn, from the 
 V^jihores of the Indian Ocean to those of the Atlantic. 
 
 In 1855 the Victoria gold medal of the Geographical Society 
 was awarded to Livingstone in recognition of his 'services to 
 science by " traversing South Africa from the Cape of Good 
 Hope, by Lake Ngami, to Linyanti, and thence to the western 
 coast in 10 degrees south latitude." He subsequently retraced 
 his steps, returning from the western coast to Linyanti, and 
 then passing through the entire eastern Portuguese settlement 
 of Tete he followed the Zambesi to its mouth in the Indian 
 Ocean, In the whole of these African explorations it was 
 calculated at the time that Livingstone must have passed over 
 no less than 11,000 miles of land, for the most part untrodden 
 and untraversed by any European, and up to that time believed 
 to be inaccessible. 
 
 In 1856 Livingstone returned to England, to use the eloquent 
 words of his firm friend, the late Sir Roderick Murchison : 
 
 " As the pioneer of sound knowledge, who by his astronomical
 
 DR. LIVINGSTONE 229 
 
 observations had determined the sites of various places, hills, 
 rivers, and lakes, hitherto nearly unknown ; while he had 
 seized upon every opportunity of describing the physical 
 features, climatology, and even geological structure of the 
 countries which he had explored, and pointed out many new 
 sources of commerce as yet unknown to the scope and enterprise 
 of the British merchant." 
 
 The late Lord Ellesmere bore similar testimony to the 
 importance of his discoveries, adding his warm approval of the 
 " scientific precision with which the unarmed and unassisted 
 English missionary had left his mark upon so many important 
 stations in regions hitherto blank upon our maps." 
 
 It may possibly be remembered that in a letter published in 
 our columns on the 29th of December 1856 Dr. Livingstone 
 publicly stated his views and convictions upon the question of 
 African civilisation in general, and strongly recommended the 
 encouragement of the growth of cotton in the interior of that 
 continent, as a means towards the opening up of commercial 
 intercourse between this country and the tribes of Southern and 
 Central Africa. Such measures, if adequately supported, he 
 considered, would lead, in the course of time, to the gradual 
 but certain and final suppression of the slave trade, and the 
 proportionate advancement of human progress and civilisation. 
 
 Early in the spring of 1858 Livingstone returned to Africa 
 for the purpose of prosecuting further researches and pushing 
 forward the advantages which his former enterprise had to some 
 extent secured. He went back with the good wishes of the 
 entire community at home, who were deeply touched by his 
 manly, modest, and unvarnished narrative, and by the absence 
 of all self-seeking in his character. He carried with him the 
 patronage and encouragement and the substantial support of 
 Her Majesty's Government (more especially of Lords Clarendon 
 and Kussell), and of the Portuguese Government also ; and before 
 setting out on his second expedition in that year he was publicly 
 entertained at a banquet at the London Tavern, and honoured 
 by the Queen with a private audience, at which Her Majesty 
 expressed, on behalf of herself and the Prince Consort, her deep 
 interest in Dr. Livingstone's new expedition. In the meantime ^ 
 a " Livingstone Testimonial Fund " was raised in the City of f 
 London by the liberal subscription of the leading merchants, r 
 bankers, and citizens, headed by the Lord Mayor. Within a \
 
 230 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 very few months from the time of leaving England, Dr. Living- 
 stone and his expedition reached that part of the eastern coast 
 of Africa at which the Zambesi falls into the ocean ; here two 
 small steamers were placed at their disposal, and they resolved 
 to ascend the river and thence make their way into the interior. 
 Passing over the details of the expedition, a full account of 
 , which is given in the Narrative published by himself and his 
 (' brother in 1865, we may state that in these journeys Living- 
 \ stone and his companions discovered the Lakes Nyassa and 
 Shirwa, two of the minor inland meres of Africa, and explored 
 - 1 the regions to the west and north-west of Lake Nyassa for a 
 distance of 300 miles districts hitherto unknown to Europeans, 
 and which lead to the head waters of the north-eastern branch 
 of the Zambesi and of several of that river's tributaries. The 
 | geographical results of the expedition, then, were the discovery 
 of the real mouths of the Zambesi and the exploring of the 
 . immense territories around that river and its tributary, the 
 Shire" results which not only possess much interest, but may 
 prove hereafter of great value if this part of Africa can be 
 brought within the sphere of civilisation and commerce. It 
 was hoped, indeed, at one time, that this exploration of the 
 Zambesi would lead to a permanent settlement of Christianity 
 on the banks of that river ; but the first head of that mission, 
 sent out mainly by Oxford and Cambridge Bishop Mackenzie 
 soon fell a victim to the climate ; and the mission itself was 
 abandoned as hopeless by his successor, Bishop Tozer. The fact 
 was that we had endeavoured to plant the tree before the land 
 was dug up and prepared to receive it. 
 
 In this second work, the Narrative, which was written in the 
 hospitable abode of Newstead Abbey, in the autumn and winter 
 of 1864-65, the author tells his own story with a genuine 
 modesty and yet a native force which carries the reader 
 irresistibly onwards. Like its precursor, it obtained a sale of 
 upwards of 30,000 copies. In its pages he sums up the positive 
 results of his researches as the discovery of a large tract of 
 fertile soil, rich in cotton, in tobacco, and in timber, though 
 subject to periodical droughts, and also the establishment of an 
 excellent port, the capacities of which had been overlooked by 
 previous travellers. It is only fair to add that some of those 
 results have been disputed by independent writers, who, however, 
 have never visited those parta. Still, it is no slight thing to be
 
 DR. LIVINGSTONE 231 
 
 able to boast, as Dr. Livingstone could boast, that by means 
 of the Zambesi a pathway has been opened towards the Central 
 Highlands, where Europeans, with their accustomed energy and 
 enterprise, may easily form a healthy and permanent settlement, 
 and where, by opening up communications and establishing 
 commercial relations with the friendly natives, they may impart 
 Christianity and that civilisation which has for centuries marked 
 the onward progress of the Anglo-Saxon race. This expedition, 
 it is right to add, originated among the members of the Geo- 
 graphical Society, and Livingstone was aided in it from first to 
 last, not only by the support of Her Majesty's Government, but 
 by the counsel of Captain "Washington, the Hydrographer to 
 the Admiralty, Commander Bedingfeld, R.N., Dr. Kirk, of 
 Edinburgh, Mr. Baines, of African and Australian fame, and by 
 his ever-faithful friend and companion, his devoted wife. By 
 their assistance he was enabled, to use the expression of Sir R. ] 
 Murchison, " to reach the high watersheds that lie between his 
 own Nyassa and the Tanganyika of Burton and Speke, and to 
 establish the fact that those lakes did not communicate with 
 each other ; and that, if so, then there was, to say the least, a 
 high probability that the Tanganyika, if it did not empty itself 
 to the west, through the region of Congo, must find an exit for 
 its waters northwards by way of the Nile." 
 
 This leads us to the third and last great journey of Dr. 
 Livingstone, the one from which such great results have been 
 expected, and in which he has twice or thrice previous to the 
 last sad news been reported to have lost his life. Leaving 
 England at the close of 1865, or early in the following year, as 
 our readers are probably aware, he was despatched once more 
 to Central Africa, under the auspices of the Geographical Society, 
 in order to prosecute still further researches which would throw a 
 light on that mystery of more than two thousand years' standing 
 the real sources of the Nile. Of his explorations since that date 
 the public were for several years in possession of only scanty 
 and fragmentary details, for it must be remembered that Dr. 
 Livingstone was accredited in this last expedition as Her 
 Britannic Majesty's Consul to the various native chiefs of the 
 unknown interior. This post, no doubt, gave him considerable 
 advantages connected with his official status ; but one result was 
 that his home despatches have been of necessity addressed, not 
 to the Geographical Society, but to the Foreign Office. It was
 
 232 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 known, however, that he had spent many months in the central 
 district between 10 degrees and 15 degrees south of the Equator, 
 and Dr. Beke no mean authority upon such a subject considers 
 that he has solved the mystery of the true source of the Nile 
 among the high tablelands and vast forests which lie around the 
 lake with which his name will for ever be associated. 
 
 Although we cannot travel quite so rapidly in our inferences 
 ! as Dr. Beke, we are bound to record the fact that Dr. Livingstone 
 claims to have found that "the chief sources of the Nile arise 
 between 1 1 degrees and 1 2 degrees of south latitude, or nearly in 
 the position assigned to them by Ptolemy." This may or may not 
 be the case ; for time alone can show us whether this mystery 
 has been actually solved, or whether we are still bound to say, as 
 Sir R. Murchison said in 1866 : " We hope at the hands of Dr. 
 Livingstone for a solution of the problem of the true watershed 
 of that unexplored country far to the south of the huge water- 
 basins which, we know, contribute to feed the Nile, the Victoria 
 Nyanza of Speke and Grant, and the Albert Nyanza of Baker." 
 
 During the last year or two our news of Dr. Livingstone has 
 been but scanty, though from time to time communications 
 some alarming and others, again, reassuring have reached 
 us from himself or from other African Consuls, officially 
 through the Foreign Office and privately through Sir Roderick 
 Murchison. It will be remembered, more especially, that in 
 the spring of 1867 a letter from Dr. Kirk, dated Zanzibar, 
 26th December 1866, was received by Sir R. Murchison and Mr. 
 Bates, giving an apparently circumstantial account of Living- 
 stone's death by an attack of a band of Mantes, some miles to 
 the west of Lake Nyassa. The news rested" mainly upon the 
 testimony of some Johanna men, who declared that they had 
 with difficulty escaped the same fate ; and for some days half 
 London believed the sad story to be true. But Sir Roderick 
 Murchison, with a keen insight which almost amounted to intui- 
 tion, refused to believe the evidence on which the tale was based, 
 and gradually the world came round and followed suit The 
 story, as told in the Times of India, 13th March 1867, ran as 
 follows : 
 
 "It would appear that Dr. Livingstone had crossed Lake 
 Nyassa about the middle of September last, and had advanced 
 a few stages beyond its western shores, when he encountered a 
 horde of savages of the Mafite tribe. He was marching, as
 
 DR. LIVINGSTONE 233 
 
 usual, ahead of his party, having nine or ten personal attendants, 
 principally boys from Nassick, immediately behind him. The 
 savages are said to have set upon them without any provocation 
 and with very little warning. Dr. Livingstone's men fired, and 
 before the smoke of their muskets had cleared away their 
 leader had fallen beneath the stroke of a battle-axe, and his 
 men speedily shared the same fate. Moosa, who witnessed the 
 encounter and the death-blow of his master from behind a 
 neighbouring tree, immediately retreated, and, meeting the rest 
 of the party, they fled into the deep forest, and eventually made 
 their way back to Lake Nyassa, whence they returned to the 
 coast with a caravan. When the news of Dr. Livingstone's sad 
 death reached Zanzibar, the English and other European 
 consuls lowered their flags, an example which was followed by 
 all the ships in the harbour, as well as by the Sultan. It may 
 be worth while to remark that Dr. Livingstone himself had 
 a strong presentiment that he would never return from the 
 expedition which has terminated thus disastrously ; and this 
 presentiment he frequently expressed to the officers of Her 
 Majesty's ship ' Penguin,' who were the last Europeans he saw 
 before starting for the interior." 
 
 It will be within the memory of our readers also that in 
 1867 an expedition was sent out by the British Government 
 in concert with the Geographical Society, under Mr. E. D. 
 Young, R.N., and Mr. H. Faulkner, in order to ascertain the fate 
 and, if still alive, the position of Dr. Livingstone. The result 
 of this expedition was that they found sufficient traces of his 
 recent presence at Mapunda's and Marenga's towns, on the Lake 
 Nyassa, to negative entirely the melancholy rumour of his 
 murder, by showing that these Johanna men had deserted him 
 while still pursuing his travels, and that, consequently, he was 
 alive when he and they parted company. It was in this west- 
 ward journey that he was said to have been killed in the 
 autumn of the year 1868 ; but the story as soon as it reached 
 London was discredited, both by Sir R. Murchison and by the 
 city merchants, as inconsistent with the known dates of his 
 movements, and afterwards happily proved to be false. 
 
 In July 1869 Dr. Livingstone resolved to strike westward 
 from his headquarters at Ujiji, on the Tanganyika Lake, in 
 order to trace out a series of lakes which lay in that direction, 
 and which, he hoped, would turn out eventually to be the
 
 234 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 sources of the Nile. If that, however, should prove not to be 
 the case, it would be something, he felt, to ascertain for certain 
 that they were the head waters of the Congo ; and, in the latter 
 case, he would probably have followed the course of the Congo, 
 and have turned up, sooner or later, on the Western Coast of 
 Africa. But this idea he appears to have abandoned after 
 having penetrated as far west as Bainbarre and Lake Kamo- 
 londo, and stopping short at Bagenya, about 4 degrees west 
 from his starting-point At all events, from this point he 
 returned, and when, in the winter of 1870-71, he was found by 
 Mr. Stanley, he was once more in the neighbourhood of his old 
 haunts, still bent on the discovery of certain " fountains on the 
 hills," which he trusted to be able to prove to be the veritable 
 springs of the Nile, and to gain the glory of being alone their 
 discoverer to use his own emphatic words, " So that no one 
 may come after and cut me out with a fresh batch of sources." 
 
 During the last two years or so, if we except the sudden 
 
 light thrown upon his career by the episode of Mr. Stanley's 
 
 successful search after him, we have been kept rather in the 
 
 dark as to the actual movements of Dr. Livingstone. Mr. 
 
 ^ Stanley's narrative of his discovery of the Doctor in the 
 
 / neighbourhood of Ujiji is in the hands of every well-informed 
 
 ; Englishman, and his journey in company with him round the 
 
 northern shores of Lake Tanganyika (with some hint of a 
 
 possible modification of his opinion as to the connection between 
 
 that sea and the Nile) was recorded in the address delivered by Sir 
 
 Henry Eawlinson, the President of the Geographical Society, 
 
 last summer. On that occasion the President remarked : 
 
 " Our knowledge of Livingstone's present whereabouts is 
 not very definite. He appears to have been so thoroughly 
 impressed with a belief of the identity of his triple Lualaba 
 with the Nile that, in spite of earnest longings to revisit his 
 native land, he could not persuade himself to leave Africa 
 until he had fairly traced to their sources in the southern 
 mountains the western branches of the great river that he had > 
 explored in Manyema. Awaiting, accordingly, at Unyanyembe *> 
 the arrival of stores and supplies, which were partly furnished by ] 
 Mr. Stanley, and partly by our own First Relief Expedition, no I 
 sooner had they arrived than he started in September last (1872) i 
 for the farther end of Tanganyika, intending from that point to 
 visit a certain mound in about 1 1 degrees south latitude, from
 
 DR. LIVINGSTONE 235 
 
 which the Lufira and Lulua were said to flow to the north, and 
 the Leeambye and Kafue" to the south. Hence he proposed to 
 turn northwards to the copper mines of Katanga, in the Kone" 
 mountains, of which he had heard such an extraordinary 
 account. Later still he was bent on visiting Lake Lincoln, and 
 following the river which flowed out of it, and which, under the 
 name of the Loeld or Lomam^, joined the Lualaba a little 
 farther down, to the great unexplored lake at the Equator. 
 His expectation seems to have been that this lake communicated 
 with the Bahr-el-Gazal, and that he might thus either return home 
 by the route of the Nile or retrace his steps to Ujiji ; but if, as 
 we hope will be the case, either the one or the other of the 
 expeditions which are now penetrating into the interior from 
 the East and West Coasts respectively should succeed in open- 
 ing communication with him before he is called on to decide on 
 the line of his return journey from the Equatorial lake, it is 
 far from probable that, with the new light thus afforded him, 
 he will continue his journey along the Congo, and emerge from 
 the interior on the Western Coast." 
 
 We fear that these forecastings have been falsified by the 
 event, and that we must now add the name of David Living- 
 stone to the roll of those who have fallen in the cause of 
 civilisation and progress. 
 
 It is impossible not to mourn the loss of a missionary so 
 liberal in his views, so large-hearted, so enlightened. By his 
 labours it has come to pass that throughout the protected tribes 
 of Southern Africa Queen Victoria is generally acknowledged as 
 " the Queen of the people who love the black man." Living- 
 stone had his faults and his failings ; but the self-will and ob- 
 stinacy he possibly at times displayed were very near akin to the 
 qualities which secured his triumphant success, and much allow- 
 ance must be made for a man for whom his early education had 
 done so little, and who was forced, by circumstances around him, 
 to act with a decision which must have sometimes offended his 
 fellow-workers. Above all, his success depended, from first to 
 last, in an eminent degree upon the great power which he\ 
 possessed of entering into the feelings, wishes, and desires of the; 
 African tribes and engaging their hearty sympathy. 
 
 As the best memorial of such a man as Livingstone, we 
 would here place on permanent record his own eloquent words, 
 in which he draws out his idea of the missionary's work in the
 
 236 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 spirit, not merely of a Christian, but of a philosopher and 
 statesman : 
 
 "The sending of the Gospel to the heathen must include 
 much more than is implied in the usual picture of a missionary, 
 which is that of a man going about with a Bible under his arm. 
 The promotion of commerce ought to be specially attended to, as 
 this more speedily than anything else demolishes that sense of 
 isolation which is engendered by heathenism, and makes the 
 tribes feel themselves to be mutually dependent on each other. 
 Those laws which still prevent free commercial intercourse 
 among civilised nations appear to me to be nothing but the 
 remains of our own heathenism. But by commerce we may 
 not only put a stop to the slave trade, but introduce the negro 
 family into the body corporate of nations, no one member of 
 which can suffer without the others suffering with it This in 
 both Eastern and Western Africa would lead to a much larger 
 diffusion of the blessings of civilisation than efforts exclusively 
 spiritual and educational confined to any one tribe. These 
 should, of course, be carried on at the same time where possible 
 at all events, at large central and healthy stations ; but 
 neither civilisation nor Christianity can be promoted alone ; in 
 fact they are inseparable." 
 
 In conclusion, our readers will forgive us for quoting the 
 following testimony to Livingstone's character from the pen of 
 Mr. E. D. Young, whom we have mentioned above : 
 
 " His extensive travels place him at the head of modern 
 explorers, for no one has dared as yet to penetrate where he has 
 been ; no one, through a lengthy series of years, has devoted so 
 much of his life to the work of searching out tribes hitherto 
 unknown ; and I believe that his equal will rarely, if ever, be 
 found in one particular and essential characteristic of the 
 genuine explorer. He has the most singular faculty of in- 
 gratiating himself with natives whithersoever he travels. A 
 frank, open-hearted generosity, combined with a constant jocular 
 way in treating with them, carries him through all True, it is 
 nothing but the most iron bravery which enables a man thus to 
 move among difficulties and dangers with a smile on his face 
 instead of a haggard, careworn, and even a suspicious look. 
 Certain it is, also, that, wherever he has passed, the natives are 
 only too anxious to see other Englishmen, and in this way 
 we must crown him ' the King of African Pioneers.' "
 
 M. VAN DE WEYER 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, MONDAY, MAY 25, 1874 
 
 THE duty which has devolved upon us of paying the customary 
 and well-merited tribute to the memory of M. Sylvain Van de 
 Weyer has been, to a certain extent, anticipated. A life of 
 him, as one of the Founders of the Belgian Monarchy, in two 
 volumes 8vo, was published in 1871 ; and in reviewing it we 
 took occasion to place his recognised claims to distinction as a 
 statesman, diplomatist, and man of letters prominently before 
 the world. We shall now, therefore, merely recall attention to 
 the salient points of a career which, from its commencement to 
 its practical close by his withdrawal from the public arena in 
 1867, was marked by never-failing energy, firmness, resolution, 
 and sagacity. When a mere boy he gave promise of intellectual 
 superiority, combined with strength of character, and he amply 
 redeemed that promise as a man. 
 
 In 1802, the year of his birth, his father (afterwards a 
 judge at Brussels) filled a second or third class civil appoint- 
 ment at Amsterdam, and he himself was originally intended for 
 the Dutch Navy. His destination was changed in consequence 
 of his marked predilection for studious pursuits, and at an un- 
 usually early age he was admitted a student in the Law Faculty 
 of the University of Louvain. Falling here under the tuition 
 of M. Van Meenen, editor of the Observateur (the organ of the 
 Liberal party), he studied journalism simultaneously with juris- 
 prudence, and took the earliest opportunity of exhibiting his 
 proficiency in both. It was the rule and uniform practice of 
 the University for the graduate in law, on receiving the diploma 
 of Doctor, to take the text of his inaugural dissertation from the
 
 238 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 Code Napoleon. Whether from deeming the Code a badge of 
 subjection or from meditated defiance of custom and authority, 
 Van de Weyer refused to abide by the rule, and handed in a 
 dissertation on the " Reality, Knowledge, and Natural Practice 
 of Duty " ; the formal reception of which, resisted in the first 
 instance by the Faculty, he compelled by a threat to publish it 
 under the title of " Essay Rejected by the Law Faculty of the 
 University of Louvain." Not satisfied with having carried the 
 point so far as he was personally concerned, he wrote a spirited 
 article in the Courrier des Pays Bos against the preliminary 
 censorship to which the theses of young doctors were subjected 
 by the Faculties. The passage which gave most offence may 
 have been suggested by the well-known reflections of Figaro on 
 the liberty of the press : 
 
 " It is pitiable to see and listen to them ! Do you speak of 
 the jury 1 Slippery subject, which would displease those who 
 have called for its suppression ; of which there is not a word in 
 the new organisation, and which, for this very reason, had 
 better be left to oblivion. Moreover, it is an exotic fruit which 
 suits not the nature of our soil. Do you touch, in passing, on 
 ministerial responsibility ? What is the use of raising questions 
 upon which our fundamental law preserves a deep silence ? 
 Do you examine our deplorable electoral system ? This is to 
 sap our constitution at its base ? Do you venture on the 
 exalted theories of public law ? Reveries, hollow speculations, 
 very fine on paper, impracticable in the real world, and conse- 
 quently dangerous. And so on of every subject of the slightest 
 elevation, which promotes the investigation and discussion of 
 vital questions of social order, but which would make known 
 that our youth are beginning to contract the bad habit of com- 
 bining ideas, and of thinking themselves called upon some day 
 or other to make useful application of these theories." 
 
 It is clear from this passage that he himself was the most 
 striking example and representative of the youth who had con- 
 tracted the bad habit of combining ideas and of looking forward 
 to an arena on which their theories of social regeneration should 
 be tried. During several ensuing years his literary and biblio- 
 graphical pursuits and duties were alone sufficient to exhaust 
 the energies of an ordinary man, and he had considerable 
 practice at the Bar ; but he was all along watching the signs of 
 the political horizon, and he left no means untried of fostering
 
 M. VAN DE WEYER 239 
 
 the prevalent spirit of discontent. As one of the founders of 
 the Socidd des Douze, in 1825, he paved the way for the insur- 
 rectionary movements of 1830 ; and in his defence of Potter, in 
 1828, he openly declared war against the Government, and 
 boldly identified himself with the journalists who were defying 
 and undermining its authority. 
 
 " If ever I should have to account to my fellow-citizens for 
 the employment of my time and my faculties in the interest of 
 my country, I should say with pride, My first thoughts have 
 been consecrated to our social guarantees, and I have been since 
 so many years a journalist. Yes, gentlemen, I hold it an 
 honour to have been so many years a journalist, and never will 
 the public prosecutor, with his declamatory commonplaces, 
 succeed in stigmatising the men who write conscientiously and 
 courageously, and defend all our liberties at their own personal 
 risks." 
 
 A time was now approaching when Van de Weyer's patriotic 
 aspirations and personal ambition were to be amply fulfilled and 
 gratified. The Belgians had other and well-founded causes of 
 complaint, but of all their wrongs and grievances their com- 
 pelled union with the Dutch was certainly the most galling and 
 the worst. They longed for separation ; and the public disturb- 
 ances which followed close on the French Revolution of July 
 were so managed by their leaders as to conduct by sure though 
 carefully -concealed approaches to that end. The first open 
 manifestation of hostility occurred at Brussels on the evening of 
 the 25th of August 1830, when the houses of the most un- 
 popular functionaries were sacked, and the ensigns of royalty 
 torn down. The civil and military authorities being unable to 
 restore order, a Garde Bourgeoise was organised on the 27th, 
 and the notables, about fifty in number, formed themselves into 
 an assembly on the 28th. Van de Weyer was named secretary, 
 and he was also one of the five delegates who were deputed to 
 draw up and carry their address or petition to the King, setting 
 forth " the deep-rooted character of the discontent, the lament- 
 able results of the fatal system followed by the Ministers, who 
 misapprehend both our wishes and our wants." 
 
 Not a word about separation, although the language used by 
 one of the notables in the discussion on the address was such as 
 to induce Van de Weyer to check him with the significant 
 remark, " Eighty-nine, yes ; ninety-three, no." In the mean-
 
 240 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 time, the Prince of Orange, at the head of 6000 men, had 
 arrived at Lacken, where, on the morning of the 3 1st, the 
 attendance of the Commandant of the Garde Bourgeoise was 
 imperatively required. He obeyed the summons, accompanied 
 by Van de Weyer and the four other delegates, who succeeded 
 in persuading the Prince to enter the city escorted only by six 
 officers of his staff, by way of testing the loyalty of the popula- 
 tion. The experiment was not successful. His reception was 
 cold or threatening from the first ; and by the time he had 
 reached the Hotel de Ville the symptoms of rising tumult were 
 so marked that, growing angry or taking alarm, he put spurs to 
 his horse, and, followed by his slender suite, reached the palace 
 at a gallop. Van de Weyer was thrown down in the confusion, 
 and with difficulty succeeded in joining the circle round the 
 Prince, who was in the act of addressing the Belgian representa- 
 tives in terms of anger and reproach. Van de Weyer replied 
 on the instant by an energetic recapitulation of their grievances ; 
 and, in a subsequent interview, seems to have made considerable 
 progress in inducing his Royal Highness to become the inter- 
 preter and advocate of their views and wishes to the King. 
 But the breach was irreconcilable, and no arrangement was 
 possible between a community aiming at independence and a 
 sovereign resolved on preserving the union unimpaired. A 
 single scene may serve to show how revolutions of this sort are 
 conducted, and how temporary or provisional authority may be 
 scrambled for or usurped. No regular assembly of the States 
 having been found practicable, a number of so-called patriots 
 met at the Hotel de Ville to determine on the measures to be 
 taken to repel force by force. M. Genebien, in his Aperqus sur 
 la Revolution de 1830, says : 
 
 " After the sitting, Van de Weyer and I led Felix de Mdrode 
 into the embrasure of one of the windows of the salon of the 
 so-called Council. We then and there constituted a Provision- 
 ary Government of us three. In the contingency of one being 
 separated by events it was agreed that two together should sign 
 for them that is to say, should be authorised to add the 
 signature of the third." 
 
 After the failure of the attack on Brussels by the Dutch 
 troops, a Provisional Government was established on a broader 
 basis : 
 
 " It was installed (according to the same authority) at the
 
 M. VAN DE WEYER 241 
 
 Hotel de Ville, with no furniture but a deal table taken from 
 a guardhouse, and two empty bottles with a candle stuck in 
 each. This is the plain matter of fact. As for our resources, 
 the municipal chest contained 10 florins 36 cents., and it is 
 with such means that we did not despair, that we began 
 organising anew the army, the judicial order, the civil 
 administration, and the administration of finances." 
 
 The same boast is repeated in a well-known pamphlet by 
 Van de Weyer, and it must be admitted that the performance 
 of the task, rendered comparatively easy by the unanimity of 
 the liberated provinces, was greatly facilitated by the public 
 spirit and improvised statesmanship of their chiefs. Van de 
 Weyer was a man who always rose with the occasion, and 
 always seemed trained and fitted for his work. Assuming that 
 the Dutch would be unwilling and unable to renew the struggle, 
 it became a matter of primary importance to secure the 
 recognition of Belgian independence by the five powers, the 
 parties to the Treaty of Vienna in 1844 ; and Van de Weyer 
 was deputed to conciliate the English statesmen. He found no 
 difficulty with the Duke of Wellington, who simply stipulated 
 that there should be no junction with France ; but, considering 
 how uniformly Lord Palmerston has been credited with the 
 establishment of the new kingdom, it is curious to find that he 
 was in the first instance and for a considerable time opposed to 
 it. " The more," he wrote, " that country (Belgium) is drawn 
 back to Holland, the better for Europe and itself." It was as 
 his representative at the Brussels Conference that Lord Ponsonby, 
 replying to Van de Weyer's declaration that the people would 
 have nothing to do with Orangeism, exclaimed : 
 
 " ' The people, the people ! Are you aware that within 
 eight days I could have you hanged at the first tree in the Park 
 by this very people on whom you rely ? ' ' Yes,' repeated M. 
 Van de Weyer, ' I believe with time and plenty of money you 
 might ; but I could have you hanged in five minutes, and 
 hanged gratis. Don't let us play at this game.' " 
 
 Excepting two or three brief intervals, when his counsels or 
 services were imperatively required for the home administration, 
 he held the post of Belgian Minister at the English Court from 
 1830 to 1867, when he withdrew from active service (retaining 
 his diplomatic rank) on the plea of advancing age and ill-health, 
 but really, we suspect, to have more leisure for his books. He 
 
 VOL. I E
 
 242 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 stood in the first rank of modern bibliophilists, and the magnitude 
 of his collections may be estimated from the fact that, with 
 town and country house full to overflowing, he had 30,000 
 volumes in the Pantechnicon when it was burnt down. He 
 was an indefatigable and discriminating reader, as well as a 
 munificent purchaser ; and he might have acquired eminent 
 distinction as an author could he have been induced to con- 
 centrate his powers instead of employing them discursively on 
 ephemeral topics. The two volumes of Opuscules, edited by his 
 distinguished friend, M. Octave Delepierre, are replete with 
 thought, fancy, observation, and knowledge ; his style was pure, 
 clear, and animated, and there are essays in this collection 
 which will not lose by comparison with Paul Louis Courier, 
 whom he much admired, and consciously or unconsciously 
 imitated in some of them. His " Kichard Cobden, Roi des 
 Beiges," for example, was a masterpiece of sportive raillery. It 
 was provoked by Cobden's declaration, " If I were King of the 
 Belgians and wished to preserve the Crown to my descendants, 
 I would keep only an army of a few thousand men on foot" 
 The motto was a compressed satire in itself : 
 
 II serait un bon petit roi, 
 
 Peu desireux de vivre dans 1'histoire ; 
 
 Laissant a 1'etranger a defendre son droit, 
 
 II dormirait fort bien sans armee et sans gloire. 
 
 Pour sabre il aurait son biton, 
 
 Et pour couronne un bonnet de colon. 
 
 (D'apres Bfc RANGER.) 
 
 The tone and spirit of this pamphlet prove that his patriotism 
 and loyalty had suffered no diminution from the gradual 
 loosening of the ties which bound him to the country of his 
 birth. From the period (1838) of his auspicious marriage with 
 the only daughter of the late Mr. Bates, he had been wont to 
 regard England as his home and the permanent abode of his 
 family. He became in due course the proprietor of a consider- 
 able landed estate, including the lordly mansion of New Lodge ; 
 and there was no duty which he fulfilled with more pride and 
 pleasure than that of presiding at the annual meeting of 
 Berkshire agriculturists in 1857. But neither rural nor literary 
 interests averted his watchful attention from what was passing 
 in courts and cabinets. The whole system of European 
 politics was familiar to him, and whenever a new combination
 
 M. VAN DE WEYER 243 
 
 or complication occurred, there was no one whose opinion was 
 more eagerly sought or valued by statesmen and rulers, includ- 
 ing, if we are not misinformed, the most exalted personage in 
 the land. They and we have lost in him the wisest of counsel- 
 lors as well as the most agreeable of companions and the 
 kindest of friends ; and of all the distinguished foreigners who 
 have been naturalised in England we should be puzzled to name 
 another of whose adoption of us as fellow-countrymen we have 
 greater reason to feel proud.
 
 SIR WILLIAM FAIRBAIRN 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1874 
 
 SIR WILLIAM FAIRBAIRN, the eminent engineer, of Manchester, 
 died yesterday, in his eighty-third year. A friend and fellow- 
 worker with the Stephensons, it is almost needless to state here 
 that no name stood higher than that of Fairbairn in the world 
 of civil engineering, and that, though late in life he accepted a 
 well-earned title, his reputation hereafter will date from a 
 generation at least earlier than his patent as a baronet. The 
 son of a plain man of the middle class, a Mr. Andrew Fairbairn, 
 of Smailholm, he was born at Kelso, in Roxburghshire, in the 
 early part of the year 1789, and received his education as a 
 boy at a small school at Mtillochy, in Ross-shire, subsequently 
 acquiring a more strictly professional training at Newcastle-on- 
 Tyne. Apprenticed to an enginewright at Percy Main Colliery, 
 he employed his evenings in the study of geometry and 
 mechanics, and it is recorded in a sketch in the Imperial Diction- 
 ary of Biography that on the termination of his apprenticeship 
 he came to London, where he was employed for two years as a 
 journeyman mechanic, and that he subsequently set out on a 
 tour through the north of England, Wales, and part of Ireland, 
 for the purpose of seeing the practical application of the 
 principles which he had so carefully studied, but supporting him- 
 self by work through the whole of his travels. He appears to have 
 settled at Manchester in 1817, according to the account already 
 quoted, without capital or connection ; but if we may trust the 
 English Cyclopcedia, in partnership with a Mr. Lillie, in con- 
 junction with whom his name rose to become that of one of the 
 leading firms among the machine-makers of that city. At first
 
 SIR WILLIAM FAIRBAIRN 245 
 
 he had an uphill battle to fight, but by firmness and energy he 
 conquered all difficulties and rose steadily, if not rapidly, into an 
 independent position. In the course of his early practice he 
 originated many improvements in mill work, which have since 
 been generally adopted, and with beneficial results ; but the 
 minute description of these would, perhaps, be too technical for 
 the general reader. Mr. Fairbairn acted in conjunction with 
 Robert Stephenson in the planning and execution of the cele- 
 brated Britannia and Conway tubular railway bridges across the 
 Menai Straits. In this great work his wide practical as well as 
 theoretical knowledge of wrought and cast iron as materials, and 
 of the form in which they could be made available for bearing 
 the strain of heavy weights, pointed out Mr. Fairbairn as one 
 of the authorities to be consulted. The relative portions of the 
 merit of these triumphs of engineering skill, which were due 
 to Stephenson and to Fairbairn respectively, became in the end 
 the subject of a controversy in which much was written on both 
 sides, and which it would be foreign to our purpose and our 
 wish to revive. It is more to the point to observe that the 
 experience gathered here has since contributed largely to the 
 present extensive use of iron in naval architecture. For the use 
 of that material in shipbuilding Mr. Fairbairn was a constant 
 advocate, at all events since the year 1850, when he published 
 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society his 
 Experimental Inquiry into the Strength of Wrought-Iron Plates and 
 their Riveted Joints, as applied to Shipbuilding and to Vessels exposed 
 to severe Strains. To him also we owe many useful researches 
 into the causes of explosions in steam boilers a subject upon 
 which he has given evidence and delivered lectures full of the 
 most important information, because it is the result of practical 
 observation. He collected several of his lectures on these and 
 kindred subjects, and gave them to the world under the title of 
 Useful Information for Engineers, which has reached, at all 
 events, three series. He was also the author of works on the 
 Britannia and Conway Bridges, and on the Application of Cast 
 and Wrought Iron Beams to Floors and Bridges. He was a 
 Fellow of the Royal Society, a Corresponding Member of the 
 French Institute, an active or honorary member of almost every 
 society connected with engineering science in this country, and 
 of many foreign philosophical societies ; and had received medals 
 or other marks of recognition for his services to science from
 
 246 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 most of the crowned heads of Europe. He several times 
 acted as President of the Mechanical Section of the British 
 Association for the Advancement of Science ; was a member of 
 the jury of the Mechanical Department of the Great Exhibition 
 of 1851, and acted as President of the Jury of the corresponding 
 section of the Exhibition of Industry at Paris in 1855. He 
 was created a baronet at the recommendation of Mr. Gladstone 
 in 1869. The greater part of Sir William Fairbairn's acknow- 
 ledged publications appeared in the Philosophical Transactions 
 of the Royal Society, in the Reports of the British Association, 
 and in the Transactions of the Philosophical Society of 
 Manchester, in which he filled the chair at Dalton. Some of 
 his works, however, were also published separately. Among his 
 chief productions we may specify treatises on Canal Navigation, 
 on the Strength and other Properties of Hot and Cold Blast Iron, 
 on the Strength of Locomotive Boilers, on the Strength of Iron at 
 Different Temperatures, on the Effect of Repeated Melting upon the 
 Strength of Cast Iron, on the Irons of Great Britain, on the 
 Strength of Iron Plates and Riveted Joints, on the Application of 
 Iron to Building Purposes in General, etc.
 
 M. GUIZOT 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, MONDAT, SEPTEMBER 14, 1874 
 
 THERE are not many among the men destined to achieve dis- 
 tinction whose characters can be said to have been more power- 
 fully influenced by the impressions received in early life than 
 Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot, whose death at his country 
 house near Lisieux we regret to have to record this morning. 
 
 He was born on the 4th of October 1787, only two years 
 before the outbreak of that great Eevolution which brought his 
 father, an eminent advocate at Nimes, to the scaffold, and 
 which drove his mother and himself, a boy of seven, into exile 
 at Geneva. His horror of revolutionary excesses was thus, as 
 it were, innate in him, and it set him against the rulers of his 
 country throughout the period of the Republic and of the 
 Empire which sprang from it. Like Mirabeau, Thiers, Emile 
 Ollivier, Gambetta, and other leading men in the French 
 political world, Guizot was a Southern man ; but any excessive 
 vivacity of temperament which he might have contracted from 
 his native climate of Languedoc was sure to be tempered and 
 sobered at an early time by strict religious training ; for he 
 was a Protestant a word which in France means a Calvinist, 
 one whose faith, originally gloomy and austere, was further 
 soured by the sense of the long persecution endured by his 
 Church in his country. 
 
 Driven from France after his father's tragic end, in 1794, 
 young Guizot settled with his mother at Geneva, that little 
 Calvinistic Republic, which was then, as it continues to be at 
 the present day, the cradle of watchmakers and the nursery of 
 preachers and schoolmasters. Guizot was for eleven years a
 
 248 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 student at the Gymnasium and Academy of that city, and 
 when he left it for Paris in 1805 he was, and remained to his 
 dying day, rather a thorough French Swiss than a genuine 
 Frenchman. At Paris he entered his name as a law student ; 
 but, owing probably to the straitened circumstances of his 
 family, he accepted a situation as a private tutor in the house 
 of M. Stapfer, a former Swiss diplomatist accredited to the 
 French Republic. Seven years later, 1812, he married Mdlle. 
 Pauline de Moulan, a lady fourteen years his senior, literary, 
 and royalist, who, like himself, wrote in the journal Le 
 Publiciste, and to whom, during her long illness, he had, with 
 great tact and discretion, tendered opportune assistance. 
 Madame Guizot had rather extensive connections among the 
 royalist party, and it was among them chiefly that her hus- 
 band found his public and private friends ; while the reputa- 
 tion established at once by his early writings won him from the 
 Imperial Government a Professorship of Modern History at 
 La Sorbonne. In 1814, two years after this appointment, the 
 Empire, and with it the Revolutionary era, came to an end, 
 and Guizot, who was known among those who had most 
 earnestly longed for the Bourbon Restoration, soon found his 
 place among the servants of Louis XVIII., and was appointed 
 Secretary-General at the Ministry of the Interior, and subse- 
 quently at that of Public Instruction. In less than a twelve- 
 month, however, the return of Napoleon from the isle of Elba 
 threatened to give a new turn to the destinies of France, and 
 Guizot, leaving his post at the Ministerial office, was among the 
 loyal subjects who joined the fugitive Bourbon Court at Ghent. 
 He came back with the Bourbons after Waterloo, and was 
 again in office in his former capacity as Secretary-General at the 
 Ministry of Public Instruction. The Bourbon reaction, how- 
 ever, was soon carried farther than either Guizot himself or the 
 men whose lead he followed could conscientiously approve, so 
 that, upon the inauguration of what was called the " White 
 Terror," under Villele, and after the assassination of the Due 
 de Berry, 13th February 1820, Guizot followed the Minister 
 Decazes in his retirement, and resumed his occupations as a 
 professor and a writer. From this period to the downfall of 
 Charles X. in 1830 t.e. for more than ten years Guizot, 
 deprived for a time of his seat at the Council of State, and 
 even of his chair at the University, bestowed his undivided
 
 M. GUIZOT 249 
 
 attention on political and historical, studies ; and it was chiefly 
 at this epoch that he gave to the public those works which 
 constitute his greatest claim to admiration in and out of France. 
 In the January preceding the catastrophe of July 1830, Quizot 
 was elected a Deputy for Lisieux, in the Department of 
 Calvados, and he ranged himself among those 221 opponents 
 of the Polignac Ministry whose . Address, in answer to the 
 Crown Speech, determined the famous Ordinances of the 26th 
 of July, and the consequent overthrow both of the Ministry 
 and of the Monarchy. Guizot was at Nimes at the time of the 
 outbreak, but was back in time to draw up, with many of his 
 friends in the Chamber, a resolution by which an attempt was 
 made to dissociate the cause of the Sovereign from that of the 
 Cabinet, and an assurance of unshaken loyalty and devotion 
 was conveyed to the King and his dynasty. It was, however, 
 too late. The infatuated Charles X. preferred dethronement 
 and banishment to any limitation of what he considered his 
 royal prerogative i.e. his absolute power and the country, 
 which was for one moment at the discretion of the mob of the 
 capital, was only saved from anarchy by men who, while 
 abandoning the dynasty, were still willing that the Monarchy 
 should survive. Guizot, who by his last effort to save the 
 dynasty had sufficiently proved the steadfastness of his anti- 
 revolutionary principles, on the 30th of July became a member 
 of the Municipal Commission, which was at the head of public 
 affairs, and took charge of the department of Public Instruction. 
 After the elevation of the Due d'Orleans, first to the regency 
 and then to the throne, Guizot accepted a place in the Cabinet, 
 still in the capacity of Minister of Public Instruction, an office 
 which, more lately, he exchanged for that of Home Minister. 
 This first Cabinet of Louis Philippe, of which Mole" was the 
 head, lasted from the llth of August to the 3rd of November. 
 It was then followed by a Laffitte administration, from which 
 Guizot kept aloof, preferring to follow the lead of Casimir 
 P^rier, whose Juste Milieu, or Conservative, politics were more 
 in harmony with his own views. The Pdrier Ministry, which 
 had the support both of Guizot and Thiers, was formed on the 
 19th of March 1831, and came to an end with the death of its 
 chief on the 16th of May 1832. After a series of rapid crises, 
 a permanent Cabinet was composed, of which the Due de 
 Broglie was the head, and which numbered Guizot and Thiers
 
 250 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 among its members. This lasted for more than three years 
 from llth October 1832 to 22nd February 1836 during which 
 period the antagonism between Guizot and Thiers became 
 apparent, and arrayed them in opposite camps throughout the 
 remainder of Louis Philippe's reign. The victory was at first 
 with Thiers, who held the supreme power alternately with 
 Mole" during the best part of four years 1836 to 1840 
 Guizot generally siding with Mold, and even for a short time 
 joining his Administration, but more frequently appearing in 
 the ranks of the Opposition, compelled to play a part repugnant 
 to his feelings and habits, and to consort with partisans between 
 whom and himself there could be no genuine sympathy. 
 From the awkwardness and irksoineness of this position he was 
 relieved in February 1839, by being appointed to the French 
 Embassy in London, vacant by the retirement of Marshal 
 Sebastian! This honourable office he was allowed to retain 
 when, a year after, Thiers came into power with his Ministry 
 of the 1st of March 1840. But on the 29th of October of the 
 same year the turn came for Thiers to make room for his 
 opponent, and Guizot at last attained the height of his ambi- 
 tion, being called to form a Ministry, of which he gave Marshal 
 Soult the nominal Presidency, but of which, as Minister of 
 Foreign Affairs, he had the supreme direction. From this date 
 to the catastrophe of February 1848, which put an end to the 
 July Monarchy, a period of more than seven years elapsed, 
 during which the destinies of France and the dynasty of her 
 ruler might be said to be in Guizot's hands. After the fall of 
 Louis Philippe, Guizot, on whom rests the whole responsibility 
 of that disaster, sought a refuge in England, where he remained 
 for three years, and only returned to France when the prosecu- 
 tion which was commenced against the fallen Cabinet was 
 abandoned, and after the restoration of order consequent on 
 the coup tf&at of December 1851, when the animosity, of 
 which the ex-Premier was the special object, had considerably 
 subsided. Guizot was so little aware of the disposition of 
 men's minds towards him as to venture to renew his appeal to 
 his old constituency of Calvados as a candidate for a seat in the 
 legislative body, but the unfavourable result of the vote soon 
 convinced him that the tide of his unpopularity was still set- 
 ting strongly against him. He was equally unsuccessful at a 
 later period in his efforts to bring about that fusion between
 
 M. GUIZOT 251 
 
 the elder and younger branches of the Bourbons which, now 
 that it has been effected, has produced such little fruit He 
 therefore at last resigned himself to the comparative leisure of 
 private lii'e, spending the remainder of his days in retirement 
 at his country seat in Val Eicher, near Lisieux, in Normandy, 
 whence he only came forth in the discharge of his functions, 
 eii/ner as an eminent member of the French Academy or as an 
 influential leader in the conferences of the Protestant Church in 
 France. It was in Val Richer, as many will remember, that 
 his former colleague and rival, Thiers, President of the French 
 Republic, visited the yet older statesman in one of his excur- 
 sions from Trouville in the autumn of 1872. 
 
 Three distinct epochs occur in Guizot's life the prospective 
 period, from 1816 to 1830, in which he fitted himself for 
 power ; the active, from 1830 to 1848, in which, from 1830 to 
 1840, he struggled for it, and, from 1840 to 1848, enjoyed it ; 
 finally, the retrospective, in which he was left to brood over its 
 loss, from 1848 to his last day. But the nature of the man 
 continued unchanged throughout all these successive phases. 
 French public men, since the democratic transformation of the 
 country deprived rank and wealth of the ascendency in the 
 government which belongs to them in other countries, have 
 been divided into two classes the Advocate Statesmen and the 
 Professor Statesmen. The two great men whose names, as con- 
 nected with the July Monarchy, will eclipse in history all their 
 contemporaries Guizot and Thiers may be taken as proto- 
 types of their respective classes Thiers, the model of the 
 Political Advocate ; Guizot, the ideal of the Political Professor. 
 The Advocate is impulsive, combative ; the Professor is dog- 
 matic, systematic. Both are eloquent ; but the Advocate pleads, 
 the Professor lectures. The office of the one is to persuade ; 
 that of the other is to correct and chastise. Throughout his 
 public career Guizot wielded the schoolmaster's ferule. He was, 
 with Royer-Collard, the founder of the " Doctrinaire " another 
 word for Pedantic school. As early as 1816, when the Pro- 
 fessor was still on his very first steps towards the attainment of 
 power, he laid his scheme of a Constitutional Government on 
 the principle that all liberties compatible with the preservation 
 of public order should be admitted in theory, but that their 
 practical application should be adjourned till the people were 
 " ripe " for their enjoyment ; little considering that without
 
 252 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 liberty nations are apt to rot before they ripen. Quizot was at 
 all times an enemy to Revolution, Even as Opposition leader 
 the heaviest charge he could think of bringing against the 
 Government was that it did not govern enough ; that it com- 
 promised the public safety by suffering the principle of authority 
 to be shaken at its very basis. This notion of the paramount 
 importance of authority, this dread lest the Government should 
 not be strong enough, haunted him at every stage of his politi- 
 cal life ] it beset him even long after he had been hurled from 
 power, when, in 1861, he presided at a meeting of his own 
 French Evangelical Church, when he, a Protestant, a " Black " 
 Calvinist, declared himself a staunch partisan of the Pope's 
 temporal power, denouncing the triumph of Italian independ- 
 ence and unity as a deplorable perturbation which undermined 
 the principle of authority in that very church which was most 
 solidly based upon it. In the very bosom of that Protestant 
 Church which had suffered for centuries for the cause of freedom 
 the ex-minister stood up as a champion of orthodoxy with a 
 zeal and, indeed, with a bigotry which won him the appellation 
 of " Pope Guizot." 
 
 It was this sternness of conviction, this faith in his own 
 infallibility, that rendered Guizot unsympathising and intoler- 
 ant ; incapable of admitting that there can be two sides to a 
 question, unwilling to meet his adversaries on that debatable 
 ground which must always lie between the best defined bound- 
 aries of right and wrong. This impatience of contradiction 
 arose in him not so much from transcendent self-esteem as from 
 disdain of his adversaries, which prompted him rather to court 
 than to shun unpopularity. This unamiable instinct grew 
 upon him as he rose in the world, and it culminated in that 
 famous outburst of temper to which he gave way when, in the 
 fulness of his power, in 1844, he proposed in the Chamber a 
 vote of flArissure a brand of infamy against some Legitimist 
 deputies who had attended the Comte de Chambord's levies in 
 Belgrave Square. The " branded " deputies turned against him 
 tumultuously, calling him the " Man of Ghent," and reminding 
 him of the time in which he looked with pride on the proof he 
 had himself given of as staunch a loyalty to an exiled Bourbon 
 as that with which he now upbraided them an allusion to the 
 homage Guizot went to pay to his fugitive sovereign, Louis 
 XVIIL, in 1815. The taunt drove the Minister out of his
 
 M. GUIZOT 253 
 
 habitual stately dignity and self-possession, and caused him to 
 break out into bitter words to his opponents as these crowded 
 up the steps of the tribune for their turn to speak, " Step up, 
 step up, gentlemen ; you will never raise yourselves to the 
 height of my scorn." (Montez, montez, messieurs ; vous n'arri- 
 verez jamais a la hauteur de mon de"dain.) 
 
 It must not be forgotten, however, that there was enough in 
 the political circumstances in which Guizot had to make his 
 way into power to intensify the harshness and haughtiness into 
 which nature and education had moulded his character. At the 
 time of his first appearance on the stage of the world, France 
 had only gone through one revolutionary experiment, and well- 
 meaning men flattered themselves that it should be the last, as 
 it had been the first. Eevolution in 1789 had been inaiigurated 
 in the name of liberty ; it had degenerated into anarchy ; it 
 had ended in tyranny. At the Restoration, in 1814, men 
 hoped to reconcile monarchy with liberty, and liberty with 
 order. Like most of his contemporaries, Guizot was in quest of 
 a constitution ; and, as he had given his attention to the free 
 institutions of other countries, and especially of England, he 
 fancied, as Sieyes had done before him, that he had exhausted 
 the subject. He scarcely doubted that the practice of Constitu- 
 tionalism would be as easy as its theory ; and when he proceeded 
 from his private study as a professor or a journalist, to take a 
 place among the servants or among the opponents of the Govern- 
 ment, he soon found he had to deal with men who were either 
 too conservative or too liberal for him. During the whole of 
 this period of struggle he laboured hard to lay out in his 
 writings his own scheme of a Constitutional Government, and 
 evinced great wonder and no little vexation at the difficulty he 
 found in bringing other men's views to agree with his own. He 
 was thus making the Procrustean bed in which he was to lie 
 when he attained the supreme power, and bound himself to 
 doctrines which his pride would not allow him to disavow, and 
 the application of which put his consistency to the severest test. 
 He was a Constitutionalist, bent and bound to rule by a 
 Parliamentary majority ; but when a sufficiently strong govern- 
 ment party did not spontaneously arise he was not unwilling to 
 lean on a fictitious and artificial one. Strictly upright and 
 honourable as he himself was, he had no very elevated opinion 
 of those who surrounded him. Like Sir Eobert Walpole, he
 
 254 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 thought that " every man had his price " ; and, all engrossed 
 with the importance of the end he had in view, he did not 
 always scruple to attain it by the means upon which he fancied 
 he could most safely and most readily depend. 
 
 But power which is based on the corruption of partisans 
 must equally rely on the repression of adversaries. It seemed 
 absolutely necessary to Guizot to establish a strong government, 
 for the events of 1830 had dispelled the illusions of 1816, and he 
 conceived that the July Monarchy, which had risen on a revolu- 
 tion, might also fall by a revolution. He was determined to 
 provide against such a contingency at any price ; and he shrank 
 from no measures, however arbitrary, for which he could show 
 even a bare shadow of legality. There was thus silence, and 
 something like a grim order, and a complacent unanimity about 
 him. But he gradually isolated both his Government and his 
 Parliament. There ceased to be any mutual understanding 
 between him and France, and he never perceived that by the 
 very energy with which he contrived to overcome opposition he 
 allowed his adversaries no other redress than revolution. Not 
 that the party straggle in France under Louis Philippe to any 
 extent turned on matters of principle. Guizot and his Juste 
 Milieu or Conservative party were not much more illiberal 
 than Thiere and his Tiers Parti, or Left Centre. That "the 
 King should reign and not govern " was the Thiers maxim, and 
 it did not greatly differ from that of Guizot, who held that the 
 King should both reign and govern, subject, however, to the 
 control of Ministerial responsibility. 
 
 We have since seen Thiers both reigning and governing, 
 equally responsible as a sovereign and as a Minister. But Thiers 
 was genial and versatile, active and impetuous, intensely and 
 egotistically patriotic ; and he in his early days encouraged those 
 reminiscences of the Republic and Empire which were at the 
 time rapidly reviving, and which Guizot was at the greatest 
 pains to discountenance. Guizot was for " peace at any price " ; 
 Thiers was for national glory, and for the extension of the 
 prestige of France all over the world. France had been at peace 
 for a quarter of a century ; no wonder the warlike Minister 
 had the multitude with him. And when, in 1840, Guizot at 
 last found himself in possession of undivided power, he was 
 fettered by the popularity of such measures as the fortifications 
 of Paris and the recovery of the ashes of Napoleon from St.
 
 M. GUIZOT 255 
 
 Helena measures which Thiers had initiated, and which hung 
 like a stone round the neck of his successor. Guizot had shown 
 himself a not very skilful diplomatist during his mission to 
 London (1839-40) ; at least, his countrymen thought he had 
 suffered himself to be hoodwinked by our English Foreign Office 
 in the negotiations relative to the Eastern Question, allowing 
 the Treaty of 14th July 1840 to be stipulated and signed over 
 his head. He was equally unsuccessful in 1844 being then at 
 the head of foreign affairs in his management of the Pritchard 
 controversy, when the French, whose vindictive feelings towards 
 England had at the time by no means abated, attributed to Lord 
 Palmerston the saying that " he would make France go through 
 the eye of a needle." 
 
 It was in vain that the French land and sea forces distin- 
 guished themselves by signal achievements in the Marquesas, at 
 Buenos Ayres, in the Chinese seas, and in other distant regions, 
 and especially in Morocco, where they obtained one of their more 
 brilliant than useful victories at Isly. In Europe, in his dealings 
 with England and Russia, Guizot was accused of compromising 
 and sacrificing French interests, now truckling to one power, 
 now exposing himself to be browbeaten by another ; and it was 
 probably with the view to silence this outcry, and to show that 
 he, at least, knew how to out-manceuvre and to baffle England, 
 that he plunged into the deep and foul mire of the Spanish 
 marriages of 1846. In these transactions both he and his 
 sovereign seemed utterly unmindful of what they owed to their 
 character both for honesty and sagacity, and they sold their 
 souls, as it were, to obtain a most chimerical advantage an 
 advantage depending on a variety of unreal isable conditions, and 
 chiefly on the readiness for sacrifice of a young queen the most 
 unfitted by her temperament and by her education for the kind 
 of self-immolation which was demanded of her. 
 
 We, who look upon those disgraceful negotiations at so great 
 a distance of time, find it difficult to understand the infatuation 
 which brought the France of Louis Philippe to the verge of a war 
 with England, for the sake of that Spain for which the France 
 of Louis Napoleon committed itself to a war with Germany. 
 But twenty- eight years ago the means by which French 
 intrigue hoped to " do away with the Pyrenees " and secure for 
 a French prince of the blood, the Due de Montpensier, the in- 
 heritance of a queen doomed to barrenness, aroused the horror
 
 256 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 and disgust of all men. However it might be hailed in France 
 itself as a diplomatic triumph, it damaged the Guizot Admini- 
 stration in the opinion of Europe beyond all hope of recovery ; 
 and if it did not actually lead to the fall of the July Monarchy, 
 it at least deprived it of much of the sympathy which its fate 
 would otherwise hare called forth. We have seen lately with 
 what abhorrence a loyal man like Baron Stockmar looked upon 
 that " vile transaction," which, in his opinion, " brought about 
 the general European catastrophe." The Baron was convinced 
 that " without Guizot's conceit and arrogance, and without his 
 ignorance of the world and of mankind, Louis Philippe would 
 have died on the throne." An equal dislike seems, on Stock- 
 mar's evidence, to have been entertained for Guizot by the 
 Emperor Nicholas of Russia. Independently of the Spanish 
 marriages, however, a variety of causes, not wholly dependent 
 upon Guizot, contributed to bring about the great cataclysm of 
 1848. 
 
 The latter end of Louis Philippe's reign was saddened by a 
 series of public and private calamities, foremost among which 
 was the tragic death of the heir of the throne, the Due d'Orleans, 
 in 1842, which opened the prospect of a long minority and 
 possibly of a disputed regency before the nation's eyes. The 
 collapse and panic arising from the bursting of the railway 
 bubble at the same time caused the utmost distress among those 
 middle classes on which the July Monarchy chiefly relied for 
 support, and coincided with those difficulties of the Exchequer 
 to which official corruption and malversation were supposed to 
 have given rise. From all parts of France, and especially from 
 the south and west, came the usual tidings of inundations, 
 storms, and other natural calamities, but which happened to fall 
 in with popular riots put down with the strong hand and not 
 without too lavish an effusion of blood. In Paris disgust arose 
 from the disgraceful revelations connected with the trial of Teste 
 and Cubidres, and horror from the shocking murder of the 
 daughter of Marshal Sebastiani by the Due de Praslin, her 
 husband. The horror was in this case deepened into strong 
 indignation by the stratagem by which the murderer, supplied 
 with poison by a friendly hand, was enabled to baffle public 
 vengeance, the general impression being that the court and 
 government had thus exempted a high-born criminal from that 
 jurisdiction which should equally extend to all citizens.
 
 M. GUIZOT 257 
 
 To these causes of internal discontent were added the symp- 
 toms of incipient foreign complications. The war of the Sonder- 
 bund (1846-47) was soon over in Switzerland, thanks to the 
 promptness of the Federal Council, which, at the head of the 
 Protestant, and of the Liberal Catholic parties, easily overpowered 
 those champions of Jesuitism who relied on the support of France, 
 as well as of Austria and Sardinia. The elevation of Pope Pius 
 occurred at this same epoch June 1846 ; the liberal measures 
 which ushered in his Pontificate awakened sympathies both 
 among Catholic and Protestant nations ; and it was not without 
 amazement that France saw the benevolent intentions of the 
 Pontiff frustrated by the warning and forbidding attitude of the 
 French Ambassador, Pellegrino Rossi, one of Guizot's early 
 friends at Geneva, and an old patriot from the Roman States, 
 who had fled his country under sentence of death many years 
 before. It was alleged as a proof of the vacillating and false 
 policy of the Guizot Government that this envoy, who had been 
 sent to Rome under Gregory XVI. to soften the harshness of the 
 Vatican, and to dissociate it from Austrian interests, was now 
 conspiring with Austria to cross the path of Gregory's successor 
 in his schemes of reform, and to deter him from a course which 
 was winning him the enthusiastic applause of his own subjects, 
 as well as of all Italy and Europe. 
 
 The Pope's Liberal policy, and a quarrel arising from the 
 collision of material interests between Austria and Sardinia, 
 breathed a new life into those Italian hearts which had so long 
 struggled and suffered for what appeared a desperate cause, 
 and, with the very earliest days of the eventful year 1848, 
 the Two Sicilies and Lombardy were already in arms against 
 the force which had so long and so often crushed them. The 
 same restless spirit, the same national aspirations, stirred the 
 Magyar and Sclavonic populations of Austria, and a longing 
 for change was manifest both in the larger and the smaller 
 States of Germany. That was the time in which a clear-sighted 
 French statesman should have anticipated the movement which 
 had become inevitable, and, by taking its lead, have endeavoured 
 to give it a rational and practical turn. But Guizot had faith 
 in nothing but senseless repression and reaction ; and when the 
 movement reached Paris under the by no means formidable 
 appearance of a scheme for Reform banquets, he had recourse 
 to a second edition of Polignac's Ordonnances, and put his veto 
 
 VOL. I B
 
 258 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 upon the banquets. The result in 1848, as in 1830, was a 
 revolt, which soon grew into a revolution. Quizot hoped to 
 conjure the storm by withdrawing from the contest, but his 
 resignation came too late, and the Minister's fall was instantly 
 followed by the ruin of the Monarchy. 
 
 It is not easy, in commenting upon the career of Guizot, to 
 distinguish the statesman from the man of letters. A vast 
 mass of his early productions, such as his various dissertations 
 on Constitutional Government, on the condition of France at 
 the Restoration, and on the government best suited to that 
 country, his essays on the history and literature, on the insti- 
 tutions and revolutions, of England, had a political object ; they 
 were the studies of the future Minister, and his contemporaries 
 judged by their views of this Statesman and Minister both those 
 and the mtmoires, pamphlets, and heavier volumes by which, 
 in his leisure hours at Pelham Crescent and Val Richer, he 
 undertook to vindicate his policy. That Guizot was always 
 right in his own estimation no man can doubt ; but the old 
 statesman stuck fast to the ideas of the period which ended in 
 1848, while the world has been advancing ever since ; and 
 judgment must go by the testimony of events which have put 
 Guizot's doctrine completely at fault. A new generation has 
 sprung up which can neither understand Guizot nor could have 
 been understood by him. 
 
 Fortunately, even when the Statesman is altogether given 
 up there remains the Professor. When all is said about Guizot's 
 political shortcomings, it must be freely admitted that he was 
 an eminently gifted man, and that he will always rank among 
 the foremost writers and scholars, among the most efficient men 
 of progress in France. In the earliest discharge of his functions 
 as a Minister of Public Instruction, and in his long connection 
 with Cousin and Villemain, he exercised the most beneficial 
 influence over the educational establishments and the method 
 of education in his country, and raised the whole tone and 
 standard of French studies to a pitch they had never attained 
 before. His historical works on civilisation in France and in 
 Europe, and his dissertations on the England of the Stuarts 
 and the Crom wells, will find readers both in their original and 
 in foreign translations, so long as extensive information, deep 
 research, and acute observation can impart charms to such 
 productions. Even in those works, however, and in the late
 
 M. GUIZOT 259 
 
 History of France, written for the young, too great a tendency 
 is apparent to generalise and classify events ; to make them 
 subservient to system and theory ; to bend stubborn facts to 
 arbitrary laws and rules of action ; to take a Calvinist i.e. a 
 fatalist view of human nature, and to confine it to an imagin- 
 ary groove from which it is rather taken for granted than proved 
 that it cannot free itself or deviate. 
 
 In mere matters of style and language, Guizot's dogmatic 
 tone of mind was against him. He was evidently as stiff in 
 the professor's chair as he was in the tribune of the Chamber, 
 where although his manner- was, in ordinary cases, calm and 
 stately, simple and dignified, it was characterised by a certain 
 assumption of magisterial authority, even when contradiction 
 did not call forth those outbursts of temper in which his in- 
 tolerant disposition became manifest. He showed himself far 
 less self-conscious and overbearing in private intercourse ; and 
 those who became familiar with him during his stay in this 
 country, first as French Ambassador, in Manchester Square, and 
 then as a political fugitive, in Pelham Crescent, bear witness to 
 the courteous demeanour which sank the sour statesman in the 
 accomplished scholar. His Protestantism, the interest he took 
 in the advancement of evangelical religion, and his thorough 
 acquaintance with the language, the history and literature, and 
 the institutions of this country won him the regard of a 
 variety of our eminent men to a degree that is seldom evinced 
 towards foreigners. His affection for his first wife, notwith- 
 standing the great disparity of age, long survived her, and 
 even guided him in the choice of her successor. He was 
 at her bedside to the last moment, and it is on record that 
 he soothed the pangs of death by reading aloud to her 
 Bossuet's sermon on " Immortality." After the loss of his second 
 wife, Guizot's daughter became the inseparable companion of 
 his long widowhood, and few have forgotten the grace with 
 which she did the honours of her father's house in Brompton. 
 Guizot's religion was, to all appearance, an earnest, deep-seated 
 sentiment, undiminished and unaltered throughout the various 
 stages of his long existence.
 
 2GO EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 LEADING ARTICLE, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1874 
 
 Yesterday there passed away a man who for the patriarchal 
 period of sixty years has held a high place in the changeful 
 annals of France ; at times, too, in the politics of the world. 
 For two entire generations Guizot has been, except for one 
 short period, the object of a high degree of admiration in 
 England, where he has been the best understood and the most 
 appreciated of French statesmen. At once religious and en- 
 lightened, loyal and patriotic, a learned man and a philosopher, 
 and yet capable of action, loved in private life and equal to 
 the highest part in public affairs, England was pleased to think 
 him almost an Englishman and just the man to supply much 
 that is deficient in the French character. His literary labours, 
 and to a certain extent his political ideas, betrayed a continual 
 leaning in this direction ; and though his English style could 
 only be considered a clever imitation, and he seemed to be 
 rather borrowing our notions than acquiring our wisdom, such 
 as it is, we could not but be proud of so high a tribute to our 
 national character and institutions. His virtues and his merits 
 in English eyes have been prominent, constant, and long- 
 sustained, and his chief faults only discoverable on the occasion, 
 in the result, and upon analysis. That for a quarter of a 
 century he has been in exile, or only tolerated in France 
 because of no political value, is a fact which English people 
 have generally thought to reflect quite as much blame on the 
 country as on the man. 
 
 In a general way it has been felt that he was the man to 
 improve France, if she would only submit to be improved. He 
 desired to give her a Constitutional Monarchy ; the nearest 
 practicable imitation of our House of Lords ; a respectable, 
 safe, and manageable constituency for the election of the 
 Chamber of Deputies ; a church at once popular, tolerant, and 
 on good terms with its traditional centre of authority ; a 
 complete educational system ; and as high a place in European 
 politics as could be attained by words without actual recourse 
 to blows. He could not but know that he was a Minister of 
 Peace ; but he also knew that peace involved readiness for war. 
 It might have been imagined that it would be possible for him 
 to be all this, and to attempt all this, and yet to leave a
 
 M. GUIZOT 261 
 
 memory as blameless as the halo of respectability that ever 
 surrounded the living man. But he that serves France, her 
 people, or her kings has harder tasks to perform than any yet 
 written in the books upon loyalty and patriotism. Guizot 
 failed where all have failed. To defend him, to maintain that 
 he was really a great statesman, is to impeach France ; to make 
 much of his shortcomings and errors is to excuse her. We 
 have to steer between two great untruths, and do justice, but 
 no more than justice, to either side in this long and absolute 
 divorce between France and a Minister whose name still 
 occupies the highest place, unless we except M. Thiers, among 
 the French statesmen of this century. 
 
 There appear to be political necessities, for such they are 
 accounted, in the government of France which can never be 
 satisfied, and which, therefore, soon or late, are sure to wreck 
 the ablest, the wisest, or the most complying statesman. When 
 Guizot came to the height of power, there were several objects 
 to be attained at any price in order to the security and per- 
 petuation of Louis Philippe's throne. It was necessary to keep 
 up the impression that France had the lead in general politics, 
 not only on the Continent, but all round the world. It was 
 necessary to keep up the impression that the king, his dynasty, 
 and the policy of the Cabinet were rather anti-English than 
 guilty of any leaning towards this country. It was necessary 
 to embrace at all costs the present opportunity of strengthening 
 what France has always regarded as her rightful ascendency in 
 the Spanish Peninsula. In order to these and other purposes 
 it was necessary to secure the throne from the perturbations 
 and more serious perils arising from the various antagonisms 
 which beset France, foremost the Legitimist, the Democratic, 
 and the Imperialist cause, and, above all, the cause worse than 
 all the other causes that of Young France, always more or 
 less revolutionary in one form or another. It was necessary 
 to meet all these with a compact phalanx of supporters, in- 
 terested, experienced, educated, welded into one body, even to 
 the extent of one more partisanship in a nation of partisans. 
 Here, upon the whole reckoning, was a game the game of a 
 monarch, of a dynasty, of a party, but not of the nation, except 
 so far as the nation had to be continually propitiated by 
 sacrifices to its vanity, its jealousy, or even less respectable 
 foibles.
 
 262 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 Quizot had watched and waited for the decay of the Empire ; 
 lie had duly foreseen and cleared away from the wreck of the 
 Elder Bourbon, when the claims of Constitutionalism and 
 Legitimism became incompatible ; he had shown all due 
 deliberation in committing himself utterly to Constitutional 
 Monarchy ; and it is not easy to suppose him blind or indif- 
 ferent to the great errors which Louis Philippe, without regard 
 to his character of a Constitutional King, forced upon his 
 Ministers. Had he been dealing with Louis XIV. he could not 
 have been more unfaithful to his own sacred convictions, as far 
 as they are known and as far as they are to be presumed from 
 his writings. It could not be simple infatuation ; it could not be 
 that Guizot had been absorbed like a weak satellite into the more 
 generous and powerful nature of his Sovereign. Such excuses 
 might be made for some unhappy Ministers of power ; but there 
 was no such fascination in Louis Philippe as that ; it was nothing 
 less than a violence to his own tastes and a dereliction of principle 
 which made Guizot the aider and abettor, the accomplice, and the 
 very instrument of a great and hideous crime. 
 
 In all its circumstances the scheme of the Spanish marriages 
 is without a parallel in political follies and sins. It is fortunate 
 for the character of the world that so few persons, whether in 
 France or Spain, or anywhere else, were partners in, or even 
 sympathisers with, the deed ; but Guizot was one of them, and 
 the chief of them, if, indeed, he was what he claimed to be the 
 First Minister of a Constitutional throne. It was an incident 
 of the crime that he had to deceive the country with direct 
 falsehoods as well as concealments not less criminal. Even 
 before this both Guizot and his master had been apologising 
 to our Government and beseeching its forbearance for some 
 proceedings we could not but resent, on the very peculiar 
 ground that it was necessary to humour the French nation in 
 their hatred of us ; the King was the best friend we had there, 
 but his danger lay in this being known, and it was therefore 
 necessary to disguise the fact. Whether the King and his 
 Minister were rightly interpreting and representing the feelings 
 of France need hardly be asked, for, as it happens, they did not 
 trust to French feelings themselves. 
 
 During the whole of Guizot's administration the Constituency 
 was steadily contracted, by one means or another, till there 
 were actually four Government places to every elector, and an
 
 M. GUIZOT 263 
 
 elector was, indeed, an ill-used man if he had not several offices 
 to foster his loyalty and retain his vote. Such a system was 
 nothing more than a France within France. When the mal- 
 formation hore its fruit in mortal disease, Guizot had no 
 resource but the old arms of despotism. He could censure, 
 suppress, prosecute, prohibit, call in the police, and send in the 
 soldier. He had waked from a stupid day-dream to find him- 
 self the object of European indignation, and to see in return 
 for loss of character an intrigue with a thousand chances against 
 its success, which put him at once in the position of Spain's 
 worst enemy. Perhaps the most extraordinary revelation of the 
 defect in Guizot's character, as well as the surest proof that he 
 did not understand or do full justice to France, is the fact that 
 even after this he should have thought it possible to recover his 
 lost position in that country. 
 
 But Guizot was something more as well as something less 
 than a statesman. The gloomy episode in his life over, and his 
 political career once for all at an end, he resumed his earlier 
 and more natural position of a critic of national history. It is 
 easy to impute his shortcomings as a statesman to the mental 
 qualities which made him a historian. But if he fell low he 
 had first risen high, and the same philosophical subtlety of 
 intellect, if it must be charged with the defeat, has a right to 
 be credited equally with the triumph. A career can only in 
 a qualified sense be deplored as a failure which has engaged the 
 attention of Europe for sixty years. It would be idle to inquire 
 whether Guizot could have played a grander part. The real 
 wonder is that a half-Swiss writer, tutor, professor, lecturer, full 
 of theories and dogmatism, seldom rising to eloquence, not 
 always to grace of style, without much presence or manner, not 
 of a noble family, without wealth, and without even a large 
 circle of personal adherents, should have attained so high a 
 position, kept it so long, done so much good and so much evil, 
 and, after all, should in his fall have kept so lofty an estate 
 as to be disqualified thenceforward from accepting any lower 
 rank.
 
 BARRY CORNWALL 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1874 
 
 IT seems strange that we should only at this distant day be 
 recording the death of a poet who was born almost in the same 
 year with Byron, and the earliest productions of whose muse 
 date from nearly sixty years ago. 
 
 Mr. Bryan Waller Procter, better known to the last genera- 
 tion by his literary pseudonym of " Barry Cornwall," whose 
 death, at the age of eighty-six years, will have been remarked with 
 deep regret in our yesterday's obituary, was born, according to 
 the most generally received account, in 1787, or early in 1788, 
 though some of the biographical dictionaries give the date three 
 years later. He was sent at an early age to Harrow, where he 
 had Lord Byron as his schoolfellow, and we have heard it said 
 as his form-fellow too. Be this as it may, however, he would 
 seem to have left Harrow at a somewhat early age, being 
 destined for the dull, routine business of a country lawyer's 
 office. According to a writer in the English Cyclopcedia he 
 " was for some time in the office of a solicitor at Calne, in 
 Wiltshire, and afterwards studied law in London, where, in due 
 course, he was called to the Bar at Gray's Inn." Long before 
 this, however, he had published verses, and we believe it was 
 in the columns of the newly-founded Literary Gazette, then 
 under the editorship of Mr. William Jerdan, that his first 
 poetical efforts appeared in print ; so at least Mr. Jerdan states 
 in the second volume of his Autobiography. " So vivid was his 
 genius," writes Jerdan, " that I can put my finger on some 
 twenty of his pleasing contributions as early as the year 1818." 
 Among these he particularises as worthy of praise some lines on
 
 BARKY CORNWALL 265 
 
 " Uriel, a beautiful picture painted by Allston," " The 
 Comet," and " The Marriage of Peleus and Thetis," especially 
 the last, as giving proof of some of the characteristic classical 
 traits of its writer. These were followed up' by Magic a dia- 
 logue of a dramatic character and some clever jeux d'esprit and 
 short political satires enough, at all events, to exhibit his 
 versatility. These were signed " Barry Cornwall," and the 
 same name appeared also on the title-page of his first substantive 
 publication, Dramatic Scenes and other Poems. This volume at 
 once gave him a place among the poets of the day. The follow- 
 ing is a list of his subsequent publications : Marcian Colonna, an 
 Italian Tale ; A Sicilian Story ; Mirandola, a Tragedy ; The Flood of 
 Thessaly and other Poems ; English Songs and other Smaller Poems, 
 etc. His poetical works were published in a collected form in 
 three volumes in 1822, and again in 1853. He was also the 
 author of a memoir and essay prefixed to an edition of Shake- 
 speare ; A Memoir of Charles Lamb ; A Life of Edmund Kean ; 
 Effigies Poeticce, or Portraits of the British Poets, illustrated 
 by notes, biographical, critical, and poetical ; and of another work 
 of a different character, entitled Essays and Tales in Prose, which 
 has been republished in America. In 1856 he re-issued his 
 Dramatic Scenes in an illustrated volume, at the same time 
 appending to them several other poems which up to that time 
 had been unpublished. Besides these labours he edited the 
 works of Ben Jonson. It may be mentioned here that his 
 play of Mirandola had considerable success, one of the principal 
 characters in it being sustained by Macready. 
 
 In 1856 Barry Cornwall thus bade farewell to poetical 
 publication : 
 
 " At one time, in common with other lovers of the charming 
 art of poetry, I prepared myself to enter those lists where the 
 Muses are said to award a wreath to each of the bolder combat- 
 ants ; but a long life of labour (my destiny) ensued, presenting 
 few intervals of leisure, and forcing my thoughts into another 
 course. If years have not brought to me the philosophic mind, 
 they have at least quelled those aspirations which are trouble- 
 some only to the young, and I now feel that I ought to disburden 
 myself from my armour, and leave to more active and heroic 
 spirits the glory of the struggle and the crown that awaits 
 success." 
 
 Bryan Procter's, or rather Barry Cornwall's, dramas and
 
 266 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 songs have been, and to some extent still are, great favourites 
 with certain classes of English society ; indeed, few English 
 song-writers have had equal success in that proverbially difficult 
 class of poetry. Probably Mr. Chambers is not far wrong when 
 he reckons him as " belonging to the school of Keats and Leigli 
 Hunt," adding that " throughout all his works the influence of 
 the old English dramatists may be traced like a vein running 
 through a piece of agate." It may be safely asserted that he 
 was one of those authors who by their writings helped to revive 
 the taste, now so general, for the elder English poets. There 
 have been poets of greater fire, of a higher and of a more mascu- 
 line order of genius, but, with the exception of Thomas Moore, 
 few more elegant and graceful writers of lyrical poetry have 
 arisen to delight the readers of the present century. 
 
 Of his Dramatic Sketches Mr. Procter tells us in his preface 
 that they were published by him " in order to try the effect of 
 a more natural style than that which had for a long time pre- 
 vailed in our dramatic literature." How well he succeeded in 
 his imitation of the elder dramatists may be inferred from the 
 fact, recorded by Allibone, that " Charles Lamb declared there 
 was not one of the fragments to which, had he found them 
 among the Garrick Plays in the British Museum, he would have 
 refused a place in his Dramatic Specimens." Thomas Moore 
 and Hazlitt spoke of the book in high terms on its first appear- 
 ance, and Blackwood ascribed to its author the gifts of " exquisite 
 tact and original power." D. M. Moir (Delta) spoke of his 
 poems as "bewitching all our finer sensibilities by being so 
 thoroughly tinctured with Elysian beauty." Jeffrey criticised 
 him at length in the Edinburgh Review for 1820, but consented 
 to rank him very high among our poets " in spite of his neglect 
 of the terrible passions" ; he described him as being gifted with 
 "a beautiful fancy, a beautiful diction, a fine ear for the 
 music of verse, and a great tenderness and delicacy of feeling." 
 He adds : " If one of the surest tests of true poetry be that of 
 impressing the heart and the fancy, Barry Cornwall must rank 
 high, for there are few to whose pages the young and ardent 
 reader would more frequently and fondly recur, or which so 
 tenderly impress themselves on the tablets of the memory." 
 To these testimonies we will add that of Byron, who, Lady 
 Blessington tells us, was a great admirer of Procter's poetry, 
 which he held to be full of imagination and beauty, possessing
 
 BARRY CORNWALL 267 
 
 the refinement and delicacy of a woman's mind with all the 
 force of a man's ; and he expressed his conviction that Procter, 
 if he would devote himself to tragedy, would rise to the highest 
 rank. 
 
 More extended notices of Mr. Procter and his works will be 
 found by the curious reader in Allan Cunningham's Biographical 
 and Critical History of the Literature of the Last Fifty Years ; in 
 Howitt's Homes of the Poets ; in Moir's Sketches of Poetry, Litera- 
 ture, etc. ; in Watts's Souvenir ; in the Works of Professor 
 Wilson ; and in Madden's Life of the Countess of Blessington. 
 
 In middle life Mr. Procter obtained the appointment of a 
 Commissioner of Lunacy. He retired, however, from his official 
 duties on a well-earned pension in 1861, when he was succeeded 
 by Mr. John Forster. He married a daughter of the late Mr. 
 Basil Montagu, Q.C., and his daughter, Miss Adelaide Anne 
 Procter, the " golden-tressed Adelaide " of her father's poems, 
 was, like her father, the author of some " Lyrics " of a very high 
 order of merit, but she died in the early part of the year 1864.
 
 CANON KINGSLEY 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, MONDAY, JANUARY 25, 1875 
 
 CANON KINGSLEY died at his parsonage at Eversley, in Hamp- 
 shire, at the early age of fifty-five. 
 
 A son of the late Rev. Charles Kingsley, who was successively 
 Examining Chaplain to Dr. Marsh when Bishop of Peterborough, 
 Hector of Barnack, in Northamptonshire, and of Clovelly, North 
 Devon, and eventually Eector of Chelsea, he was born at Holme 
 Vicarage, on the borders of Dartmoor, on the 12th of June 
 1819. He claimed descent from an ancient Cheshire family, 
 the Kingsleys of Kingsley or King's Lea, in the forest of Dela- 
 mere, who suffered severely during the Civil Wars from their 
 fidelity to the cause of the Parliament. His ancestor's com- 
 mission to raise a troop of horse has long been in the family ; 
 it is signed by Oliver Cromwell and Ireton. One branch of the 
 Kingsleys emigrated and settled in America among the " Pilgrim 
 Fathers," where the family still flourishes, and where one of 
 them, the late Dr. Kingsley, for some time held a Professorship 
 in Yale College. Educated under his father's eye and roof till 
 about fourteen years of age, he became a pupil of Mr. Derwent 
 Coleridge, and having been for a time a student at King's 
 College, London, entered in due course at Magdalen College, 
 Cambridge. Here he gained a scholarship and other distinc- 
 tions, and took his Bachelor's degree in 1842, obtaining a First 
 Class in classics, and coming out as a " Senior Optime " in the 
 mathematical tripos. The first bent of his mind, it is said, 
 was towards the study of the law, but at the close of 1842 he 
 was ordained Deacon by the then Bishop of Winchester, Dr. 
 Sumner, his " title " being the curacy of Eversley. On receiving
 
 CANON KINGSLEY 269 
 
 priest's orders in the following year he was offered and accepted 
 the rectory of that parish, which happened to fall vacant, the 
 patron, the late Sir John Cope, having seen and appreciated 
 the merits of the young curate. In the same year he married 
 a daughter of Mr. Pascoe Grenfell, many years M.P. for Truro 
 and for Great Marlow. 
 
 Perhaps he will be none the less regretted that he had 
 accomplished so much of the task he set himself ; that he 
 has left the stamp of a vigorous individuality on English society 
 and English literature. His originality of thought, his sustained 
 energy, the fearlessness of a nature that inclined to the aggrieved, 
 united as they were to what we may call genius, and the higher 
 mechanical qualifications of the writer's art, were sure to assert 
 sooner or later the influence he had fully resolved on exciting. 
 A poet he was, in the broadest meaning of the word ; but, 
 though we believe his first public work was a poem, his poetical 
 gifts were rather latent than directly available. They gave colour 
 and animation to his strong nervous prose, they threw a warm light 
 on the scenes and the characters he best loved to dwell upon ; 
 they served him sometimes for a seemingly spontaneous out- 
 burst of verse that brightened up the surroundings it was set in. 
 But the Saint's Tragedy, with which he began his literary career, 
 is all but forgotten already, and its first success was scarcely 
 such as to encourage him to persevere. It does not lie within 
 the scope of an article to treat of his power as a preacher, except 
 in the purely literary aspect. But this we may and must say, 
 that the whole of his active existence showed a wonderful 
 harmony and consistency. There was real life in his sermons, 
 as there were practical sermons in his novels. Concentration 
 of purpose was his most striking characteristic. He did not 
 understand the clergyman casting the surplice behind him 
 when he took his seat at the desk in his library. We may 
 add, perhaps, that still less did he understand the divine 
 diverging from his habitual course of thought when he mounted 
 the pulpit or came forward as teacher or controversialist. 
 
 There can be no question that his early career was more 
 calculated to excite apprehension than hope among those who 
 most appreciated his promise. His ready gifts made him a 
 force for good or evil, and he was not one of those to whom you 
 can refuse a hearing. Clothing himself with the authority of 
 his sacred office, he seemed not unlikely to abuse its privileges
 
 270 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 in the warmth of his feelings and his earnest conscientiousness. 
 He never hesitated to speak his thoughts, nor did he shrink 
 from advocating the most subversive doctrines because the 
 ignorant might make a mischievous application of his words. 
 He saw there were wrongs to be redressed, and he came forward 
 as the champion of the sufferers. 
 
 Along with Mr. Maurice he became the most eloquent chief 
 of a clique composed of honest and clever, but hot-headed and 
 inexperienced young men. Consequently, he was challenged, 
 with much appearance of reason, as the apostle of a new revolu- 
 tionary gospel It was said that even Socialism would never 
 satisfy him, and that logically his opinions could find no 
 resting-place short of the very broadest Communism. He was 
 understood to be the " Parson Lot " of those Politics for the 
 People which made no little noise in their time, and, as Parson 
 Lot, he declared in burning language that to his mind the fault 
 in the u People's Charter " was that it did not go nearly far 
 enough. He wrote his earliest novels in a similar sense, and it 
 is as a novelist that he will live in English literature. The 
 powerful story of Alton Locke, tailor and poet, was the out- 
 pouring of his impulsive sympathy with conscious powers 
 impotently struggling under the artificial conditions of a corrupt 
 civilisation. The morbid sensibility of the hero is his bane ; 
 his unsatisfied aspirations turn to gall and bitterness in him. 
 The representation of such an individuality was natural and 
 legitimate enough. It would have been easy for Kingsley to 
 turn it to beneficial purpose, holding the scale of justice 
 judicially between society and its fancied victim. 
 
 But the fault that was fairly charged on him was that he 
 made himself a partisan and special pleader. Straining his 
 ingenuity and eloquence to the utmost, in place of distributing 
 the woes of the modern world between causes that are inevitable 
 and irremediable and those that are the artificial consequences of 
 our existing political constitution, he insisted on tracing every 
 one of them to the latter. He indulged in indiscriminate 
 denunciations of property, typified as "Mammon," so that it 
 seemed as if his unregulated indignation was levelled indis- 
 criminately at every one who was better off than the poorest of 
 his neighbours. Carried away by his theme, he even ventured 
 on the rash conclusion that " Mammon " as he understood it was 
 crumbling in innate decay and must soon collapse entirely. If
 
 CANON KINGSLEY 271 
 
 he did not go still farther in his Yeast, at least he carried the 
 light of his new revelation into an atmosphere still more 
 inflammable. Artisans like the tailor poet have eaten, at all 
 events, of the tree of good and evil, and you find them ripe 
 for the reception of revolutionary doctrine. Yeast, as it was 
 asserted, preached social incendiarism to the peasants, and tended 
 to set quiet classes fermenting. In truth, there were utterances 
 in it that could only be called truculently suggestive and 
 animated ballads that took arson for their theme. No doubt 
 the writer would have argued that the antidote was to be found 
 there as well as the bane. Writing with the intention of repro- 
 ducing real life, it was no fault of his if the victims of a system 
 figured in his page who were the prey of resentful passions and 
 breathed murder and revenge. Enough for him if he warned 
 them that violent measures were not the way to redress their 
 wrongs. 
 
 But looking back on his earlier writings after a lapse of some 
 thirty years, we must admit he laid himself open to the imputa- 
 tions of his critics. It is proof sufficient of their high opinion 
 of the man that they expressed themselves so much alarmed at 
 its influence. Time has belied Kingsley and his critics too. 
 Society was not so welded to its alleged abuses as he represented 
 it, and the realm of his " Mammon " stands firm on the old 
 foundations, while Alton Locke has had no appreciative 
 influence in inducing the artisans "to raise barricades." 
 Thackeray said that all clever young men naturally make their 
 ddbut as Radicals. Kingsley chanced to have extraordinary 
 powers of expression and composition, and by means of his 
 books he created a sensation far beyond the circle of university 
 debating societies. 
 
 When we turn to his later age, to the works that have made 
 his reputation, and must perpetuate it, there, too, we may pick 
 out faults in the scope and the form of the conception, but on 
 the whole their spirit is admirable, and their practical lessons 
 leave nothing to desire. Excellent as works of art in themselves, 
 they were invaluable as a protest against sickly sentimentality 
 and morbid sensationalism, which were the snares and vices of 
 some of his most popular contemporaries. It was plain they 
 were written from a lofty motive, and their fascination was 
 merely incidental to the dominating idea. They addressed 
 themselves not to dreamers, but to men and women who were
 
 272 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 bracing themselves for the ceaseless battle of life. Hyper- 
 criticism said his heroes and heroines stood too high for common- 
 place imitation, inviting you rather to resign yourself to distant 
 admiration. The force of inborn evil that they triumphed over 
 only made them more like those mythical heroes whom the 
 ancients deified for their philanthropical labours. We do not 
 think so. Mr. Kingsley's favourite standards of moral power 
 and goodness might be above the reach of most men, just as he 
 was fond of glorifying such bodily strength as rarely falls to the 
 lot of mortals. But his ideals, though high, were by no 
 means beyond the reach of effort, and then it is the right and 
 privilege of a romance writer to ask something of his reader's 
 imagination. 
 
 As we said, too, there was much of the sermon in his novels, 
 with nothing whatever of professional cant The "muscular 
 Christianity" with which his name has been identified was 
 only the common-sense principle of the Christian religion in 
 healthy, everyday, unostentatious action. He made it his aim 
 to show that there was nothing incompatible between the 
 Christian life as its founder taught it and the innocent enjoy- 
 ment of the best gifts of the Creator ; that it was the first duty 
 of every conscientious man to make the very utmost of his 
 powers for the service of his fellow-creatures. This is not to be 
 done by secluding yourself from the world, or systematically 
 withdrawing from its anxieties, cares, and temptations. 
 
 We should say Mr. Kingsley had modelled his self-education 
 very much on one of the characters he introduces in his 
 Hypatia, the hunting, hard -fighting, hard-working African 
 bishop of the fifth century. The fact that the bent of his own 
 tastes, his convictions, and his idiosyncrasy generally, suggested 
 the subjects and leading characters of his fictions is the great 
 secret of his success. Apart altogether from the scope of his 
 plot, he always appeals to our more generous and earnest 
 feelings. He peoples his pages with knight-errants generally 
 enthusiasts chivalrously confuting something or other, but 
 always more or less men like ourselves. Hypatia is the 
 struggle of Christianity with Heathen vices and Pagan philo- 
 sophy. Westward Ho! is the crusade of free-born English 
 adventurers against the Spanish and Papal tyranny which had 
 been brooding over half the world. Hereward shows that self- 
 sacrificing patriotism is independent of physical conditions, that
 
 CANON KINGSLEY 273 
 
 the men of the Fen country could make as good a fight for their 
 liberties as those who had been bred and trained in inaccessible 
 mountain solitudes. Tico Years Ago is none the less effective and 
 all the more practical that the story is strictly local and domestic, 
 and the scene is laid in our own days. 
 
 You may say, perhaps, that Kingsley over -idealises his 
 characters, in the sense of giving them unnatural force to 
 vanquish their enemies, moral and material, active and passive. 
 But you cannot say that they are not men and women, with 
 their full share of our frailties and imperfections, if they have 
 no ordinary capacity for making themselves perfect. Grace 
 Harvey, the schoolmistress in Two Years Ago, is unusually 
 ethereal for Mr. Kingsley, one of those rare exceptions which 
 prove our rule. But there, on the other hand, is her lover Tom 
 Thurnall. Thurnall may be taken as the type of what we 
 mean, for it was rather Mr. Kingsley's practice to exaggerate the 
 outcrop of original sin and unattractive qualities in his most 
 favourite creations. Raphael Aben-Ezra, in Hypatia, not only 
 affects but acts cynicism, as he plays at dice with the Prefect of 
 Alexandria, making a slave kneel before them for a table. 
 Amyas Leigh, in Westward Ho ! as rough of speech as he is ready 
 of hand, gives wild rein to his temper throughout, and cherishes 
 the demon of revenge almost to the last moment. He scarcely 
 changes his mood till the flash of the lightning strikes him 
 down in his pride and throws him into the arms of the beautiful 
 Indian. Hereward, the hero of the Bruneswald, is still more 
 intractable. In his earliest boyhood he is hard on his sainted 
 mother, the Lady Godiva ; for her protege's the monks he feels 
 animosity almost as bitter as that of Amyas Leigh for his enemy 
 Don Guzman ; and, while rallying his countrymen to their 
 desperate struggles for freedom, shows himself as cynical on 
 occasions as the blase' Jew of Alexandria. 
 
 Mr. Kingsley's sympathies never go out to the common- 
 place. He sees no merit in those tranquil and lymphatic 
 temperaments who profit by the labours and trials of others to 
 be rich and respectable. It is his pleasure to feel that his 
 " heroes are not so far removed from us after all ; they were 
 men of like passions with ourselves, with the same flesh about 
 them, the same spirit within them, the same world outside, the 
 same devil beneath, the same God above." It was the secret of 
 their success, he adds, " that on the whole (though they found it 
 VOL. I T
 
 274 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 a sore battle) they refused the evil and chose the good." He 
 writes these characteristic sentences in special reference to 
 Raleigh, the favourite hero of his favourite age. With all the 
 faults he freely acknowledges in him, Raleigh is the type of Mr. 
 Kingsley's ideal man, and one of the models on which we may 
 suppose he would most have striven to give himself. It is one 
 of the secrets of his success in the historical novel, whose scenes 
 he laid in unfamiliar times of which we have but slight and 
 uncertain records, that he recognised that human nature goes on 
 repeating itself ; that minds will be moved by similar impulses, 
 independent of the accidents of time, place, and surroundings. 
 We should say he generally took the hints for his heroes from 
 his personal idiosyncrasy and experiences ; modifying and dis- 
 tributing them their respective parts from the careful study of 
 the nature he had made himself most familiar with. There is 
 never servile reproduction, yet Raphael is much what Thurnall 
 might have been, had Thurnall's lot been cast in the schools 
 of Alexandrine philosophy, while Amyas Leigh, though neither 
 philosopher nor thinker, has very much in common with both. 
 
 That Elizabethan age in which Leigh flourished was the 
 golden age of England to Mr. Kingsley, so that Westicard Ho ! 
 is the most vivid and stirring of his novels, although it may be 
 less brilliant and picturesque than Hypatia. His fancy had 
 been so busy with the men, manners, and scenes of the times 
 that when he came to write of them they were so many realities 
 to him. It is true his imagination had been dazzled and 
 captivated till he saw them at last in a golden haze, which 
 threw back into obscurity the crimes and the meaner motives 
 he could not help recognising and admitting. As for the 
 Virgin Queen, he was as fanatical an admirer of her as Raleigh 
 professed to be when he longed to break out of his imprison- 
 ment. He threw himself heart and soul into the great struggle 
 that a handful of hardy adventurers, half soldiers, half seamen, 
 were waging with the Spaniard, the Pope, and the devil. He 
 sympathised with the great and ambitious spirits who were 
 fired by dreams of realms of El Dorado lying somewhere among 
 the head waters of South American rivers. His indignation 
 flamed up as angrily as that of Richard Grenville against the 
 cold-blooded tyrants of the hapless Indians. He heartily 
 admired the religious daring of high-minded adventurers like 
 Humphrey Gilbert.
 
 CANON KINGSLEY 275 
 
 To him that desperate war that Englishmen were always 
 waging " across the line " was as sacred as any that were 
 undertaken for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. Rough 
 instruments volunteered for it, and the lust for gold and pillage 
 was the animating motive with many of them. Violence and 
 horrors were inevitable incidents in a warfare where quarter 
 was seldom asked and less often given ; but these reckless 
 filibusters were the men of their times, and the fathers of our 
 national vigour and prosperity. When a low -lying galley 
 swept up alongside of a towering galleon, when the scanty 
 crew scrambled up her tall sides and lowered the standard of 
 Spain in the teeth of numbers, that was the form that English 
 commercial enterprise took in the days of Elizabeth. Well for 
 us that it was so. Had these Devon gentlemen stayed at home, 
 tilling their paternal acres and trying to meet the interest on 
 their mortgages had Hawkins, Frobisher, and Drake confined 
 themselves to coasting voyages in the narrow seas the story 
 of the Armada would have ended differently, in spite of the 
 elements ; and in place of being mistress of her vast Colonial 
 Empire, England might have seen herself a province of the 
 House of Austria. 
 
 We remember no more thrillingly patriotic picture in any 
 English historical novel than the scene off the Hoe of Plymouth 
 when the outlawed captain brings news of the approach of the 
 Spaniards. If we were threatened by another descent and 
 desired to fire the zeal of our volunteers, we know nothing we 
 should sooner recommend for reading. The mingled group 
 assembled in expectancy bear themselves as chivalrously as the 
 heroes of the Niebelungenlied. Yet each of them speaks and acts 
 exactly after his kind and nature. Blunt old Hawkins, taking 
 up his parable against croakers ; Francis Drake turning away 
 again to his game at skittles, having seen all ready in his ship 
 beforehand, are as heroic as the Lord High Admiral Howard or 
 Walter Raleigh. Many of these men had been fiercely set on 
 gain, and had compromised their names and reputations in 
 pursuit of it even in the lenient judgment of the times. But 
 when they heard the Armada was at sea, they unloaded the 
 rich cargoes they had freighted for the Virginian voyage, and 
 made ready to put out in their light merchant vessels against 
 Philip's formidable war-fleet. That scene in Plymouth illus- 
 trates as well as any we could select the tone and spirit of all
 
 276 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 Kingsley's writings. Nor, although Westward Ho ! is over- 
 charged throughout with sensations of the best and noblest kind, 
 is there any want of calm and repose in it 
 
 To say nothing of the gentler, but not less courageous, 
 natures who show their courage in endurance and resignation, 
 we may indulge ourselves to the full with charming descriptions 
 of scenery. Mr. Kingsley loves Devon as well as any of the 
 Devonshire worthies he glorifies. His poetry comes out in the 
 descriptions of land-locked inlets, wooded down to the water's 
 edge, of wild moorland, and savage rocks. And while the 
 landscape outlines are dashed in broadly with unmistakable 
 truth and force, there are as many of those telling touches of 
 detail as in the Winter Garden or the Chalk Stream Studies, 
 which he published subsequently in his Miscellanies. Nor 
 even when he changes the scenes to the Tropics from the 
 West of England do we find much less reason to admire either 
 his force or his fidelity. It was long afterwards that he visited 
 the other hemisphere, and records his admiration in At Last, the 
 last of his books that we noticed in these columns. Yet the 
 luxurious vegetation and rich colours of the tropical fields were 
 as much a reality to him when he wrote Westward Ho ! as the 
 banks of the Ganges to Edmund Burke. When he visited the 
 West Indies, it must have been rather like reviving familiar 
 recollections than being startled by new and unlooked-for 
 beauty. 
 
 That power of vividly conjuring up the unknown is shown 
 even more strongly in Hypatia. Hypatia is a veritable tour de 
 force. It dispels the dim mists of ecclesiastical history, throwing 
 everything out in distinct relief, in a light that is at once 
 powerful and natural. The author's conceptions are so per- 
 fectly clear and complete as to impress themselves upon his 
 readers precisely as he wished. If there is anything false in 
 them, at all events the illusion is perfect. The peaceful Laura 
 rises before us in the hot, flickering glow of the desert. We 
 enter into the fierce struggle of its ascetic inmates with the 
 spirits of evil who haunted their solitary cells, a struggle which 
 has turned with the elders into the quiet assurance of victory. 
 Philammon, with his hot blood and vigorous nature, is no 
 mythical abstraction, but a very living personage, and we 
 follow his fortunes with proportionate interest, when he goes 
 down among the wolves of the world. It is a real touch of
 
 CANON KINGSLEY 277 
 
 genius when, having mastered his Gothic assailant in a desperate 
 grapple, his religion stops him when about to strike, and he 
 seats himself on the deck in meek repentance of his violence 
 instead of cleaving his enemy's skull. We picture the Prefect 
 of Alexandria driven through its streets among his discomfited 
 guards, amid the yells and missiles of the fierce and excitable 
 populace. We fancy that we assist in the flesh at the attack 
 of the armed rabble on the Patriarch's residence, nor can 
 anything be more fearfully dramatic than the scenes in the 
 wasted Campagna of Kome, when the " Court of Africa had 
 thrown for the Empire of the world and lost." 
 
 Scarcely less stirring is the description of the conflict of the 
 new religion and the old superstition, which effete philosophy 
 embodied in the beautiful. Hypatia in vain strives for a 
 hearing among passions so furiously excited. If Mr. Kingsley's 
 talent makes controversy and dry scholasticism almost attractive, 
 nothing can be more sensationally effective than the contrast of 
 the iron Goths with the effeminate donkey-drivers they despised 
 so utterly, nothing more touching than the episode of the 
 lives of the unfortunate Amal and the fair daughter of the 
 Cyprian Venus. His descriptions stamp themselves on our 
 mental retina. We seem to see the squire-bishop approaching 
 at a hand-gallop through clouds of sand to meet the travellers 
 who come to throw themselves on his hospitality, with his 
 armed horsemen and his hounds at his heels. 
 
 Then for delicate evolution of character nothing can be 
 more admirable than the artificial cynicism of the brave and 
 generous Raphael, yielding reluctantly to the gentle influence 
 of Christianity and dawning love. We might go on recording 
 remembrances indefinitely, but we have almost been tempted 
 beyond our limits. Nor need we glance, as we had intended, 
 at Two Years Ago or Hereward. We must have already said 
 enough to bear out the assertion we started from that 
 Kingsley's novels were books to profit by ; that it is impossible 
 to read them without feeling stronger and better. For their 
 leading feature is their intolerance of all that is mean and 
 weak ; their scornful antipathy to indolence, cowardice, avarice, 
 selfishness all the vices that debase the mind or rust the 
 faculties. They must often have given an impulse for good to 
 natures hesitating between good and evil, at an age when youth 
 is most impressionable and most in need of a manly counsellor
 
 278 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 That they must often do this again we cannot doubt, for there 
 is nothing ephemeral either in their interest or their teaching, 
 and in saying as much, we pay the writer's memory the tribute 
 that Christian man of the world would have most dearly 
 appreciated. 
 
 In 1860 Mr. Kingsley was nominated to the Professorship 
 of Modern History in the University of Cambridge, a post 
 which he resigned nine years later, on being preferred to 
 a canonry in Chester Cathedral. It is comparatively quite 
 recently that he exchanged his stall at Chester for one in 
 Westminster Abbey.
 
 LORD ST. LEONARDS 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 18V5 
 
 FOR the full term allotted to man Lord St. Leonards' name has 
 been on men's lips, and it seems almost impossible to number 
 with the departed one who has been appealed to as a living 
 oracle of the law for seventy years. 
 
 Edward Burtenshaw Sugden Lord St. Leonards, of Slaugham, 
 Sussex, in the peerage of the United Kingdom began life in a 
 humble position. Like Chief Justice Abbott (afterwards better 
 known as Lord Tenterden), his father was a hairdresser. Mr. 
 Sugden, senior, was a successful tradesman, and he finally 
 retired from business with a well-earned competence. But the 
 future Chancellor was born at his father's shop in Duke Street 
 on the 12th of February 1781. He gained the first rudiments 
 of his education at home, and the rest at a private school. 
 Nearly all that is known about the commencement of his legal 
 career is that towards the end of the last century, while still 
 under age, he entered the office of a Mr. Groom, who at that 
 time was in large practice as a conveyancer. The tradition, 
 widely believed, is that while still quite a youth, and employed 
 as a clerk in the offices of a large firm of solicitors in London, 
 he was in the habit of taking matters of business for them to 
 the chambers of an eminent conveyancer we have heard it 
 said, the late Mr. Duval. The latter one day having occasion 
 to speak to young Sugden with reference to some business that 
 he had brought to him, was so struck with the lad's acquaintance 
 with the law of the case, that, at the suggestion of the firm, Mr. 
 Duval took him as a pupil without the customary fee ; and it 
 was in this eminent man's chambers that he got that insight
 
 280 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 into the law of real property which afterwards led him to the 
 woolsack. 
 
 At this period conveyancers were not so generally barristers 
 as they are now ; and, indeed, they comparatively seldom were 
 called to the Bar. But still it was necessary for them, as now, 
 to enter their names on the books of one or other of the Inns ol 
 Court. Mr. Sugden, therefore, became a member of Lincoln's 
 Inn at the same time at which he entered Mr. Groom's chambers 
 as a pupil Having completed the needful number of terms 
 and dinners, and gleaned as large a stock of experience as he 
 thought would be likely to prove a sufficient capital, Mr. Sugden 
 commenced business on his own account ; and, as a good means 
 of making himself generally known in the profession, he wrote 
 as early as 1802 a small legal work, which he modestly 
 entitled A brief Conversation with a Gentleman of Landed Property 
 about to Buy or Sell Lands. Even at a much later period of his 
 life, as we shall see hereafter, he showed a great power of putting 
 legal technicalities into a plain and popular form, divesting them 
 of their abstruser points, and popularising their substance. His 
 little work on the transfer of landed property was the first means 
 of his rise into extensive legal business. But in 1805 he gave 
 the public his larger work On the Law of Vendors and Purchasers, 
 a treatise which not only proved of great practical utility on its 
 first appearance, but which in its successive editions, each care- 
 fully revised and embodying the most recent changes in legal 
 details, has been for far more than half a century the standing 
 text-book and authority on the subject. 
 
 Mr. Sugden's practice, always good from the very first, was 
 now rapidly increasing, when a change began to come over that 
 department of the profession which he had hitherto followed. 
 Some of the leading conveyancers resolved to be called to the 
 Bar and to go into the Courts, so as to support there the drafts 
 which they had drawn in Chambers. Mr. Sugden followed the 
 lead of his elders, and was " called " by the Hon. Society of 
 Lincoln's Inn in or about the year 1807. He now gave his 
 clients to understand that henceforth he would not confine him- 
 self to conveyancing, but would take general business in the 
 Courts. The first case in which we find him engaged was that 
 of " Brown v. Like," which he argued before Sir William Grant, 
 then Master of the Rolls. His senior on this occasion was Sir 
 Samuel Romilly, who left him to open the case ; and he argued
 
 LORD ST. LEONARDS 281 
 
 the first of the two legal points which were involved in it with 
 such consummate ability that the counsel for the opposite side 
 abandoned the other point, and the Court decided for the 
 plaintiff. His next case, so far as we have been able to trace 
 him, was the well-known one of " Sloane v. Cadogan," in the 
 Rolls Court in 1808. The outline of his somewhat elaborate 
 argument on this occasion is to be found by the curious in such 
 matters at full length in the appendix to his Vendors and 
 Purchasers. 
 
 His practice in Chambers grew rapidly, and he began to 
 appear with increasing frequency, not only in the Equity Courts, 
 but in those of Common Law, mostly, however, to argue 
 questions connected with conveyancing and the transfer of real 
 property. Yet, although his services now came to be so 
 constantly in request, he found time, not only to prepare for the 
 press two new and enlarged editions of his Vendors and 
 Purchasers, but also to compose another legal work, scarcely less 
 learned and scarcely less important as a text-book, we mean 
 his Treatise on Powers, which immediately raised him, at the age 
 of only twenty-seven, to a conspicuous position in the first rank 
 of his contemporaries. A writer in Blackwood says : 
 
 "This book has ever since continued a text-book of the 
 highest repute and authority . . . and we regard it as one of 
 the most remarkable performances on record in the literature of 
 the law, though the writer adds, for the benefit of laymen, that 
 an attempt to give a more general reader a fair notion of what 
 a lawyer means by ' powers ' would be about as hopeful a task 
 as to explain to a young lady the doctrine of the Differential 
 Calculus." 
 
 We may mention that the late Sir Robert Peel once told 
 Lord St. Leonards at dinner, as much in earnest as in jest, that 
 from what he heard of this book he had come to regard it as a 
 sort of legal Euclid, and that he had found the greatest difficulty 
 in getting over its Pons Asinorum by mastering the third 
 section of its first chapter on what is known to lawyers as 
 Scintilla Juris. Mr. Sugden dedicated subsequently the third 
 edition of this work to Lord Chancellor Eldon, who, great 
 lawyer though he was, once paid its author the compliment of 
 calling him into his private room and asking him his opinion 
 upon an intricate point of law relating to what are known as 
 " springing uses," and eventually came over to his view.
 
 282 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 In 1811 we find Mr. Sugden giving the profession a new 
 edition of the posthumous work of Chief Baron Gilbert on 
 Uses and Trusts, of which it is not too much to say that its 
 chief value was derived from the introduction prefixed to it by 
 the editor, and from a series of elaborate notes by the same 
 hand, amply epitomising the points of law to which they relate 
 chiefly springing and shifting uses and the law of perpetuities. 
 After this date Mr. Sugden's name appeared from time to time 
 before the world as a legal author, mainly as an author of 
 pamphlets on subjects of current interest to the profession, such 
 as the mischievous operation of the Annuity Act, which he 
 succeeded in expunging from the statute book ; the improve- 
 ment of the administration of justice in the Equity Courts, the 
 Law of Wills, the Rate of Interest and Redeemable Annuities, 
 the appellate jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery and of the 
 House of Lords, and Mr. Humphrey's proposal to repeal the Law 
 of Real Property, a proposal to which Mr. Sugden offered the 
 most strenuous opposition, publishing against it a pamphlet, 
 which created much interest in legal and Parliamentary circles, 
 and went through some three or four editions. 
 
 Already, while practising as a conveyancing counsel, Mr. 
 Sugden, as we have said, went occasionally into the Common 
 Law Courts to argue questions relating to the Law of Real 
 Property, and from about the year 1812 he came to be often 
 specially retained to argue such cases in the Common Law 
 Courts. Most of these cases, we may add, will be found in 
 East's, Maule and Selwyn's, and Barnewall and Alderson's 
 Reports. 
 
 Some years afterwards, we believe in 1822 or 1823, he 
 received a silk gown from Lord Eldon, thereby taking another 
 step in advance, and surrendering junior for leading business. 
 " His silk gown," says the writer in Blackicood, " was a 
 splendid success, silencing all sneers and the whispers of 
 disparagement in every quarter. His consummate knowledge 
 of the principles and details alike of Real Property Law and of 
 Conveyancing and of Equity, his rapidity of perception, his 
 imperturbable coolness and self-possession, his conscientious 
 devotion to the interests of his clients, the pith and brevity of 
 his arguments, his lucid exposition of the most involved facts 
 these points all combined to invest his advocacy with such 
 charms in the eyes of anxious solicitors and their clients that
 
 LORD ST. LEONARDS 283 
 
 retainers were soon showered down upon Mr. Sugden from every 
 quarter, and it was almost always a race between rival solicitors 
 who should first retain him." 
 
 Such was his position at the Bar when in February 1828, 
 after an expensive contest of ten days' duration, he was chosen 
 Member of Parliament for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis. 
 He entered Parliament as an adherent of the Tory party, and 
 was shortly afterwards appointed Solicitor- General in succession 
 to Sir Nicholas Tindal. At the general election of 1830 he was 
 again elected ; and he represented the since disfranchised 
 borough of St. Mawes in the short Parliament which passed 
 the first Reform Bill. He had, however, previously stood 
 several contested elections, having been an unsuccessful candidate 
 for Shoreham in 1826, and for Cambridge, if we remember 
 right, more than once, his opponent being the late Lord Mont- 
 eagle. He had also offered himself as far back as the year 1818 
 as a candidate for Sussex, in which county he had bought a 
 small property called Tilgate Forest, but he withdrew without 
 going to the poll. 
 
 The story of his standing for Sussex and for Shoreham runs 
 as follows. In 1826, as the general election was approaching, 
 a vacancy was expected in the representation of Shoreham. Mr. 
 Sugden, being in want of a seat, made overtures to the electors, 
 and, considering that it was useless to prosecute a canvass with- 
 out first conciliating the goodwill of the Duke of Norfolk, he 
 applied to his friend, the late Mr. Charles Butler, the eminent 
 Roman Catholic barrister, to solicit his Grace's interest. Accord- 
 ing to Mr. Horsfield, the historian of Sussex : 
 
 "Mr. Butler wrote to one of the Duke's most influential 
 friends requesting his support, and stating in this letter that 
 Mr. Sugden was a decided friend of Catholic Emancipation, a 
 measure which at that time was of paramount interest. For 
 some cause or other, however, the Duke withheld his support, 
 and a relation of his own, Mr. Henry Howard, offered his 
 services. On this," adds Horsfield, " Mr. Sugden addressed the 
 electors, stating to them that he sought their support in order 
 to help them to work out their own independence, and, among 
 other things, his handbill contained the following paragraph : 
 ' I have pledged myself to vote against the admission of Catholics 
 into Parliament, and that pledge I shall faithfully redeem.' By 
 some means or other, Mr. C. Butler's letter came to the know-
 
 284 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 ledge of the freeholders, who, feeling that they had been treated 
 ill in the matter, declined supporting Mr. Sugden. The result 
 was that his claims were rejected, and he found himself at the 
 bottom of the poll, the numbers being for Mr. Charles M. 
 Burrell, 865 ; for Mr. Henry Howard, 545 ; for Mr. Sugden, 
 483. In 1818 Sir Godfrey Webster suddenly announced his 
 intention to withdraw from the representation of Sussex, and 
 the Tories endeavoured to steal a march on their opponents by 
 putting forward Mr. Sugden, who was nominated, together with 
 Mr. Walter Burrell, and fully expected to be forthwith girt with 
 the sword of a ' Knight of the Shire," being strongly supported 
 by Mr. Huskisson and the Government. At the last moment, 
 however, Sir G. Webster was again put into nomination without 
 his knowledge ; and at the end of the first day's poll Mr. Sugden 
 was glad to retire from the hopeless contest, having polled only 
 122 votes." 
 
 Sir Edward Sugden, who had been knighted on becoming 
 Solicitor-General, retired with his party from office on the 
 accession of Earl Grey to the Premiership in 1830 with 
 Brougham as Chancellor. He accordingly resumed his practice 
 occasionally in the Courts of Common Law, but more frequently 
 in the Equity Courts, where he frequently found himself 
 obliged to teach and instruct the new Lord Chancellor in the 
 principles of Equity, of which it is agreed on all hands that 
 Lord Brougham's knowledge was not very profound. It was 
 at this period, indeed, that Sugden made the witty and often- 
 repeated remark that " If the Chancellor knew only a little of 
 law, he would know a little of everything." 
 
 During this time his health must have been good, and even 
 more than good, for often when he had been sitting up the best 
 part of the night in " the House," and only returned to his 
 house in Guildford Street, Russell Square, when the day was 
 dawning, he would be up again at six o'clock, reading his 
 briefs, then off to Westminster before nine, hold five or six 
 consultations before ten, and be retained, probably, on the one 
 side or the other in every case in either Court, so that he was 
 on his legs incessantly, until four o'clock arrived, when he was 
 again at his place in Parliament His income for those days 
 was enormous, and it is said that it exceeded 15,000, or even 
 .20,000 a year. On one occasion, the evening before a 
 " motion " day, he read and mastered the contents of thirty
 
 LORD ST. LEONARDS 285 
 
 briefs between his dinner and 11 P.M., and then, instead of going 
 off to bed, called a hackney coach, and drove off to the House 
 of Commons. 
 
 At the close of the year 1834 his political prospects were 
 brightened by the sudden return of the Tories, under Peel and 
 Wellington, to power. He had been offered place by the Whigs 
 already more than once ; but he declined all overtures. In 
 January 1835, he accepted the Chancellorship of Ireland ; and 
 although he held the Irish seals for little more than three 
 months, yet he sat long enough on the woolsack in Dublin to 
 exhibit the highest judicial qualities, and to cause general 
 regret at his sudden withdrawal from office. His retirement 
 from the Irish woolsack offered him the very first real holiday 
 in his professional life ; and how do our readers think that he 
 spent his leisure ? Not in making a tour to Italy, or Switzer- 
 land, or Paris, but in revising, correcting, and preparing for 
 press a new edition of his Law of Vendors and Purchasers. 
 
 Sir Edward Sugden could not now, consistently with pro- 
 fessional etiquette, return to his practice at the Bar, and he was 
 free from Parliamentary duties, for he did not again secure a 
 seat until the general election of 1837. In the July of that 
 year he was returned for the pocket borough of Ripon, which he 
 continued to represent until, on the return of the Conservatives 
 under Sir Robert Peel, to place and power, he was sent a second 
 time to Ireland as Lord Chancellor in 1841, to find more 
 extended opportunities of exhibiting his judicial and adminis- 
 trative abilities. It is needless to say that he manifested, 
 through a critical and trying time, the same acuteness, strength, 
 and exactness of legal judgment which, at the close of his former 
 brief tenure of the Great Seal of Ireland, had elicited the 
 spontaneous and unanimous approval of all legal circles in that 
 country. It is said by the writer in Blackwood, to whom we 
 have already referred, that 
 
 " Every one of his judgments appealed from was affirmed by 
 the House of Lords except two, and a single point in a third. 
 The propriety, however, of these reversals," he adds, " is gravely 
 questionable, and it is denied by Lord St. Leonards himself, 
 who, in his Treatise on the Law of Property, as administered in 
 the House of Lords, elaborately examines the grounds on which 
 they proceeded, and thereby makes those who are competent to 
 do so pronounce an opinion for themselves."
 
 286 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 He did not quit Ireland without leaving behind good proofs 
 of his industry ; for, in conjunction with the late Mr. Black- 
 burne, then Master of the Rolls, and afterwards Lord Chancellor 
 of Ireland, he consolidated into one uniform code all the orders 
 of the Irish Court of Chancery, a work of no small personal 
 labour, and a great saving in itself to the suitors. 
 
 For some years after his return to England Sir Edward 
 Sugden was "out of harness," condemned to live on without 
 public employment. But he was far from idle. In 1851 he 
 gave to the world two more elaborate legal works, An Essay on 
 the New Real Property Statutes, and A Concise and Practical 
 View of the Law of Vendors and Purchasers of Estates, the latter 
 being a condensation of his large and more technical work on 
 the same subject. 
 
 In February 1852 the Great Seal of England, with the 
 customary Peerage, was offered to him by Lord Derby on the 
 formation of his first shortlived Ministry. He speedily showed 
 both the Bar and the public that he justified the appointment, 
 and something more than justified it In the first appeal case 
 which came before him in the House of Lords that of " Rhodes 
 v. De Beauvoir " a most intricate case, depending on the 
 construction of a singular and most obscurely-worded will, when 
 the counsel expected that he would ask for the papers and take 
 time to consider, he delivered, off-hand and without notes, a 
 most elaborate and luminous judgment, which occupies nearly 
 twenty pages in the printed reports. And this he did repeatedly 
 as by intuition, so familiar had he grown with every possible 
 complication that had arisen or could arise in all questions as 
 to the ownership or transfer of real property. His decisions, 
 indeed, though delivered so speedily, were always weighty and 
 sound. Among them we would particularise his judgment in 
 the great case of " Egerton v. Brownlow " (delivered after he 
 had resigned his seat upon the woolsack), the case which placed 
 the Brownlow family in possession of a large portion of the 
 property of the Dukes of Bridgewater, unfettered by the con- 
 ditions imposed by the divisor, conditions which the House of 
 Lords cancelled as being contrary to public policy. 
 
 The rest of the career of Lord St. Leonards, busy and in- 
 dustrious as it was, is soon described. Since the close of 1852 
 he has never again held the Great Seal of England, although it 
 was offered to him by Lord Derby on his return to his second
 
 LORD ST. LEONARDS 287 
 
 brief lease of power in 1858. Lord St. Leonards declined the 
 offer for reasons, doubtless, best known to himself; and, in 
 default of better reasons, he could at all events easily plead in 
 excuse the weight of seventy-seven years and more. But from 
 that day to the last of his life he was true to the motto that he 
 chose on being raised to the peerage, " Lahore vinces." He was 
 an indefatigable reader and worker and writer upon the subjects 
 with which the long experience of his middle age had made him 
 familiar. His rule was literally nulla dies sine linea ; and those 
 who have visited him at his pleasant seat, Boyle Farm, near 
 Kingston-on-Thames, knew that to the very last he regularly 
 read and digested the reports of every single Court of Law, and 
 recorded every single important decision in the marginal notes 
 of his legal works, which, thus being " posted up " by their 
 author from day to day, are left in such a state that his executors 
 could easily send to press a new edition of them to-morrow 
 without the necessity of any further revision. One book he 
 wrote subsequent to his retirement from office, his well-known 
 and popular and common-sense Handy Boole of the Law of Real 
 Property, which has passed through several editions. 
 
 His speeches in Parliament, though not very numerous, were 
 all upon subjects of great intrinsic importance, and he was as 
 fluent and facile a speaker as he was a writer. Among these 
 speeches, perhaps the best-remembered are that against the Bill 
 of 1853 imposing duties on the succession to property ; that in 
 November 1852 on certain projected improvements in the 
 administration of the law : and that on Life Peerages in 1856, 
 in which he iirged strongly the illegality of the experiment 
 made by Lord Palmerston on the Constitution in the Wensley- 
 dale Peerage. 
 
 The hand of Lord St. Leonards can be traced in the statute 
 book in more places than are generally known. The Annuity 
 Act of 1813, since repealed, which put an end to a flood-tide of 
 ruinous litigation ; the statute of 1825 which rendered valid 
 certain decrees and orders in the Rolls which were open to invali- 
 dation on a legal flaw ; and the Act passed under William IV. 
 having for its main objects the prevention of long imprisonment 
 for contempt, to afford aid and relief to ignorant and poor parties, 
 and to prevent obstinate parties from impeding the course of justice 
 after the decree or order of the Court these were his, wholly or 
 mainly. To these may be added another statute of 1830 amend-
 
 288 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 ing the law relating to illusory appointments, another amending 
 the law for the payment of debts out of the real estate, and a 
 third for extending the powers of the Equity Courts and the powers 
 of trustees and mortgagees to make a satisfactory title to what they 
 have mortgaged or sold. It must be added that for the amend- 
 ment of the law of lunacy and lunatics the country owes no 
 greater debt to any one than it owes to Lord St Leonards, and 
 that the same may be said of the law with respect to the imprison- 
 ment of debtors. Indeed, we may mention a fact which hitherto, 
 we believe, has never been made public : that in the midst 
 of his most pressing occupations he would find time to pay 
 secret visits to the old Fleet Prison, converse with its wretched 
 inmates, and give them, without fee, the benefit of his advice 
 and counsel, which he often followed up by paying out of his 
 own pocket the costs for which they were incarcerated, and so 
 procuring their discharge. 
 
 The attendance of Lord St. Leonards in the House of Peers 
 in appeal cases was constant and unflagging, so long as his 
 health and strength allowed ; and it may be said that for six- 
 teen or seventeen years after his resignation of the Great Seal 
 there was no one more diligent in the discharge of his duties 
 as a " Law Lord." He generally gave his decisions in these 
 cases without the aid of notes, and always without hesitation ; 
 and if the staff of our " Law Lords " has ever at times been 
 regarded as weak, that weakness could never have been laid at 
 his door. He was always a fair, but at the same time a severe, 
 critic of all questions of law reform as they arose, and therefore 
 he naturally took a deep and special interest in measures relat- 
 ing to the reform of the Law of Real Property. For instance, 
 when Lord Hatherley, in 1 869, introduced his Judicature Bills, 
 Lord St. Leonards, though close upon ninety years of age, put 
 forth a clear and lucid criticism on these measures. 
 
 Lord St Leonards married, in 1808, Winifred, the only 
 child of Mr. John Knapp, and by her, who died in 1861, he 
 had a family of three sons and seven daughters.
 
 SIR ARTHUR HELPS 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, TUESDAY, MARCH 9, 1875 
 
 WE had to announce yesterday the death of a man who will be 
 missed and deeply regretted in very various circles. In the 
 course of a life of versatile activity, the accomplished author of 
 Friends in Council had made himself innumerable friends, both 
 public and private. Sir Arthur Helps was a somewhat rare 
 type of a class which has fortunately grown far more common 
 than it used to be. He sought repose from one form of labour 
 in recourse to another, and relieved the somewhat monotonous 
 daily routine of his official engagements by indulging himself in 
 the toils and pleasures of literature. 
 
 There are some men who seem absolutely incapable of com- 
 prehending intellectual inertia. The late Lord Lytton, in one 
 of his Caxtoniana, takes it as matter of course that man must 
 always be thinking, and thinking to some sort of purpose. We 
 doubt greatly whether that is so in the vast majority of instances, 
 but it would certainly seem to have been very much the case 
 with Sir Arthur Helps. Although from early youth he had 
 held official appointments more or less responsible, he was one 
 of the most prolific of popular authors. Happily for him as 
 for his readers, the grand secret of his literary industry and 
 success was to be found in the fact that his writings were very 
 much the fruits of his regular labours. Even when he struck a 
 side vein, as when he conceived the idea of his histories of the 
 Spaniards in America, he elaborated and illustrated his favourite 
 theories of humanity, or struck out arguments for the schemes 
 of philanthropy he always had near at heart 
 
 Born in 1817, Mr. Helps entered the public service, when 
 VOL. i u
 
 290 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 still scarcely of age, as private secretary to Lord Monteagle, 
 who was then Mr. Spring-Rice and held the Chancellorship of 
 the Exchequer under Lord Melbourne. In the following year 
 he exchanged the place for that of private secretary to Lord 
 Morpeth, then Chief Secretary for Ireland, but better known 
 afterwards as Earl of Carlisle and Lord-Lieutenant It was just 
 twenty years afterwards that he succeeded the Hon. W. L. 
 Bathurst in the post he held up to his death as Clerk of the 
 Privy Council. 
 
 In selecting Mr. Helps, Her Majesty and her successive 
 Ministers could hardly have lighted upon a better man. He 
 had the merit we cannot say the art of gaining the confidence 
 and regard of everybody with whom he was officially brought 
 in contact. Shrewd, singularly clear-headed, very highly and 
 generally cultivated, he had made it his business to master as 
 matters of personal interest many of the various questions that 
 came under the cognisance of the Council. When Cabinets 
 changed, he did much to perpetuate safe traditions on sub- 
 jects that lie beyond the scope of party. Somewhat reserved 
 by nature, his discretion was proof against surprise and 
 temptation. Thrown by his office into frequent intercourse 
 with the Queen, no one had learnt to appreciate his qualities 
 more highly than Her Majesty. In her Clerk of the Council 
 she always could reckon upon a staunch, thoughtful, and 
 capable adviser, whose views had not been rashly arrived at, 
 whose information was ample, and who had neither personal 
 nor party interests to serve. 
 
 There was another bond of union between the Queen and 
 the subject Sir Arthur Helps loved and appreciated the late 
 Prince Consort, with whose peculiar bent of mind he had a good 
 deal in common. Not unnaturally, then, it was to Sir Arthur 
 that the Queen turned for advice and assistance when she 
 decided to take the people who had shared her sorrows into 
 some of her domestic confidences. Entrusted with the revision 
 of the Prince Consort's speeches, it was he who subsequently 
 prepared for the press the Leaves from the Journal of our Life in 
 the Highlands, and he discharged the nattering duty entrusted to 
 him with excellent taste and judgment. 
 
 As Sir Arthur had been " entered " young at public business, 
 so his irrepressible literary instincts broke out early. We 
 believe the first of his many works made its appearance within
 
 SIR ARTHUR HELPS 291 
 
 two or three years of the commencement of his public career, 
 and was named, appropriately and literally enough, Essays 
 written in the Intervals of Public Business. Ever since and up to 
 the other day, when he paid a graceful tribute in Macmillan's 
 Magazine to the memory of his departed friend Canon Kingsley, 
 he has been pouring out his productions in a variety of styles at 
 brief, if irregular, intervals. We have no idea of attempting a 
 catalogue raisonne'e either of their names or dates. It is enough 
 to say that they may be ranked broadly in the four compre- 
 hensive classes of history, biography, social essays, and fiction. 
 
 It is not to his success as a historian, however, that he has 
 been chiefly indebted for his popularity. In one sense he was 
 very fortunate in the particular subject he pitched upon, and 
 yet, perhaps, his peculiar idiosyncrasy might have served him 
 better in fields chosen nearer home and nearer to our own times. 
 But his imagination was fired by that grand series of epics 
 which may be evolved out of the Spanish discoveries in the 
 New World, and he undertook to write the Spanish Conquest of 
 America. As he owned frankly in the preface to one of the 
 series of biographies into which that work was subsequently 
 broken up, his Spanish Conquest had speedily fallen into 
 oblivion. The truth seemed to be that his especial genius 
 carried him somewhat wide of that picturesque and captivating 
 method of treatment which suggested itself so naturally to 
 Prescott and to Washington Irving. 
 
 Sir Arthur often appears to stop just short of brilliancy 
 because he is too much disposed to reflection and somewhat too 
 conscientious. He writes by preference from the philosophical 
 point of view. He suspends the action of his narrative in its 
 fullest swing to analyse character and condescend calmly upon 
 motives. He projects his mind forward among remote results, 
 going back again to draw most painful morals, when we would 
 gladly hear more of present achievements. Strange to say, he 
 has almost too little of the ordinary indulgence of the bio- 
 grapher for heroes who, whatever their failings or their crimes, 
 must certainly be pronounced heroes after all. He detested war, 
 being vividly alive to its horrors, and it was not unnatural 
 that he should care but little to dwell upon its glories, to say 
 nothing of its inglorious gains. Characteristically, he is inclined 
 to turn away from the daring but violent deeds, from the heroic 
 struggles and sublime endurance of the iron Conquestadores, to
 
 292 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 bring the gentler beauties of Isabella's nature into the light, or 
 to expatiate indignantly on the curses of that system of oppres- 
 sion and slavery which was to grow out of a series of gallant 
 combats. 
 
 We do not desire to be misunderstood. In our opinion, 
 that chivalrous feeling for the losing side and the victims of 
 oppression or of circumstances makes one of the greatest charms 
 of Sir Arthur's books ; but then it is a feeling that, unless it be 
 duly subordinated to the main theme, chimes in more artistic- 
 ally with an essay or biography than with the broad battlepiece 
 of a warlike history. So we consider Sir Arthur's Hispano- 
 American studies infinitely more taking as he brought them out 
 later in the form of biographies. He is the very man to 
 appreciate the noble aims of Columbus, to sympathise in his 
 mortifications and disappointments, yet to make allowance for 
 the natural vacillations of Isabella, when hesitating between her 
 own generous ambitions and the pressure of Court influence and 
 her husband's narrower nature. His easy and polished style 
 lends itself admirably to such themes as the description of the 
 actual discovery, when excitement had culminated on board the 
 ships ; when so much depended on what a single night might 
 bring forth ; and when it was first fancied that a fitful light 
 was to be seen glimmering somewhere on the eagerly-scanned 
 horizon. 
 
 If, too, we have said that we lose something in point of art 
 by Sir Arthur's being scarcely sufficient of a hero-worshipper, 
 that scene we happen to have singled out for remark is no bad 
 illustration of how much we gain. Even in the glow of ardent 
 admiration and vigorous description, Sir Arthur will not be 
 betrayed for a moment into blinking the most discreditable 
 meanness of the grand subject of the memoir. He suppresses 
 nothing of the story how the great Admiral, on the eve of 
 setting his foot upon the New World he had dreamt of, had not 
 the generosity to do common justice to the man who actually 
 sighted it. It was Rodrigo de Triana, a common seaman on the 
 " Pinta," who first detected the light on the longed-for shore. 
 It was Columbus who drew to his dying day the pension 
 decreed to the first actual discoverer. 
 
 There is little to be said within the limits of our space of 
 such of his writings as the Friends in Council, simply because 
 the range of topics embraced by them is so wide. Yet in none
 
 SIR ARTHUR HELPS 293 
 
 of his works did he show his special gifts to so much advantage. 
 Many and varied as were the topics he treated of, his heart was 
 thrown more or less into all of them. Most of them he had 
 studied long, earnestly, and sometimes almost passionately; of 
 many he had an exceptional practical knowledge. Thanks to 
 the system on which he arranged them, he availed himself to 
 the utmost of his special qualifications, and went the best way 
 to work to predispose people to listen to him. He was by no 
 means the first to conceive the idea of making a group of friends 
 assemble socially for an informal and desultory discussion of 
 things in general. To go no farther back than the earlier part 
 of the century, Thomas Peacock, whose works have just been 
 republished, had assembled such .parties in Headlong Hall and 
 elsewhere, while Christopher North had long presided at the 
 famous Rabelaisan symposia of the Nodes Ambrosiance. 
 
 But Sir Arthur Helps banished the rancour of sarcasm and 
 the bitterness of party spirit. His friends confined themselves 
 to literary and social rather than political topics, and they dis- 
 coursed on them with animation, and yet with the quiet good 
 breeding which elucidates truth rather than provokes angry 
 repartee. No doubt the author, whether represented by Elles- 
 mere or any other of the group, took care to make his favourite 
 points in the end. Still, each subject was very fairly discussed 
 on the whole, and the interest of the reader is sustained 
 throughout the dialogue by finding that his own ideas have 
 been honestly represented, while not unfrequently his hasty 
 impressions have been corrected very much to his enlighten- 
 ment. As you read, you have a prevailing sense of the author's 
 Catholicism of comprehension. Nor is it wonderful that it 
 should be so ; for by his nature an honest and earnest inquirer 
 after truth, his duties brought him in frequent and familiar 
 contact with many minds, and with men whose crude impulses 
 had been corrected by responsibility and the lessons of 
 experience. Sir Arthur sometimes seems something of a 
 visionary, as, for example, in certain of his kindly suggestions 
 for the better housing of the overcrowded working classes. But 
 he believed firmly that the miracles of to-day would be the 
 natural incidents in the progress of a more enlightened future. 
 
 His novel of Realmah is something more of a tour de force 
 than anything else he ever attempted. It carries you ostensibly 
 back to a mythical period, and lands you in a chaotic society
 
 294 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 struggling out of prehistoric ages ; yet in reality it veils under 
 transparent names and a very flimsy allegory prominent 
 statesmen and popular questions of its day. We own to having 
 no great faith in such far-fetched means of persuasion where 
 parallel circumstances are necessarily invented or arranged to 
 suit the tendencies of the author's argument. But independ- 
 ently altogether of its primary purpose, Reaimah had no small 
 merits as a work of art. It might not convert us to the belief 
 that England, like the imaginary Abibah, was so overwhelm- 
 ingly strong that she could well afford to dispense with her 
 outlying fortresses, that she might give up with impunity, 
 economy, and advantage the Bermudas, Malta, and even Gib- 
 raltar ; but what is more to the purpose from the artistic point 
 of view, it did succeed in making us forget that its hero the 
 thinker and schemer far in advance of his times was an utter 
 anachronism ; it even made us follow with a certain tempered 
 interest the fluctuating fortunes of his lovemaking. Yet Sir 
 Arthur was more happy in the choice of a subject for that last 
 of his fictions which we noticed in the Times no long time 
 ago. In it also that exact fidelity to fact was conspicuous 
 which is only too often neglected in weaving deceptive historical 
 romances ; and the vivid scenes of life in the Siberian wilds, 
 the intrigues and counter-intrigues of favourites of the Czars 
 and Czarinas, the revolutions, dmeutes, and pronunciamientos at 
 St. Petersburg, are strictly historical, as we have reason to 
 know. 
 
 We have little more left to add. Those who met Sir Arthur 
 in society as the ordinary acquaintance, those who knew him 
 merely as the agreeable author and cultivated companion of 
 their literary solitude, will alike feel as if they had lost a 
 personal friend. Those social essays of Sir Arthur Helps will 
 bear reading again and again, and no doubt many of his 
 admirers will return to them with revived interest and attention 
 now that the pleasant series has been brought to an untimely 
 end.
 
 REAR-ADMIRAL SHERARD OSBORN 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, MONDAY, MAY 10, 1875 
 
 SUDDENLY, in the prime of life, there has been snatched from 
 the Naval Service an officer who from all points of view was 
 one of its most distinguished members. Gifted with the highest 
 professional abilities, pre-eminent for cool self-possession and 
 ready resource in action, daring to the utmost stretch of naval 
 audacity, but as prudent as he was daring, a strict disciplinarian, 
 yet one of the most popular of captains, a very successful 
 administrator, Rear -Admiral Sherard Osborn had lived long 
 enough to do the State distinguished service, and seemed to be 
 a man to whom in an emergency we should turn for aid of 
 even greater value in the days to come. He was made of too 
 stern materials to be a universal favourite. His opinions were 
 too uncompromising, and his will too determined to be fully 
 appreciated in a time of peace ; but during an active and varied 
 career he had won the respect of his profession, and few men 
 had warmer or more devoted friends among those and they 
 were many who knew him well, whether civilians, brother 
 officers, or shipmates in the humbler walks of life. 
 
 Admiral Osborn entered the Navy as first-class Volunteer in 
 September 1837; commanded a gunboat against pirates at the cap- 
 ture of Quedah in 1838 ; served in the East Indies and China in 
 1843, in Her Majesty's ships "Hyacinth," " Volage," and "Colum- 
 bine" ; entered the "Excellent" in 1843, and passed out in 1844 
 with a first-class certificate as gunnery officer ; was recommended 
 as gunnery mate to Admiral Sir George Seymour, and appointed 
 to the " Collingwood," Captain Henry Eden, then fitting for the 
 flag in the Pacific ; became gunnery lieutenant for two years in
 
 296 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 the same ship ; was appointed in the autumn of 1848 to command 
 the " Dwarf," and sent to Ireland in consequence of the Irish in- 
 surrection. In the winter of 1849 he was selected as a volunteer 
 for the Arctic Expedition sent in search of Franklin, under 
 Captain H. T. Austin, C.R, and appointed to command the 
 "Pioneer." In that expedition, as well as the following one under 
 Captain Sir E. Belcher, he held the command of the " Pioneer " 
 during a protracted service of three winters and five summers in 
 the Arctic seas, and made several long sledge journeys, the last 
 one exceeding a thousand miles on foot. 
 
 After a few months' service as Commander of the Norfolk 
 District Coastguard, to re-establish his health, which had been 
 shaken by continuous Arctic service, Commander Osborn was 
 appointed to the "Vesuvius," in the Black Sea Fleet, under 
 Admiral Sir Edmund Lyons, K.C.B. He first assisted the 
 late Admiral Boxer in restoring order in Balaklava harbour, 
 and, as a reward for his services there, was sent by Admiral 
 Lyons to succeed Captain John Moore as senior officer of the 
 blockading squadron off Kertch and the Straits of Yenikale. 
 He was present at the capture of Kertch, and was then sent 
 into the Sea of Azov as second in seniority to Captain Lyons, 
 commanding the gunboat squadron. Commander Osborn suc- 
 ceeded, on the death of that officer, to the command of the 
 squadron, which averaged from fourteen to eighteen gunboats 
 and despatch -vessels. As commander, and subsequently as 
 captain, he co-operated or commanded in the destruction of the 
 Russian squadron at Berdiansk and the military position of 
 Taganrog ; the burning of the Russian transport flotilla ; the 
 bombardment of Arabat, and the cutting off the supplies of the 
 Russian armies by the capture of the military store depots at 
 Qenichi and Gheisk services which were acknowledged by the 
 Commander-in-Chief in a highly flattering memorandum. In 
 the spring of 1856, at the special request of Admiral Sir E. 
 Lyons, Captain Osborn was appointed by the Admiralty to the 
 " Medusa " gun-vessel, and again sent into the Sea of Azov as 
 senior officer commanding that squadron, and remained there 
 until the signature of the treaty of peace, when he returned to 
 England. For his services during the Russian war, without 
 any solicitation on his part, Captain Osborn was honoured with 
 the Companionship of the Bath, and made an officer of the 
 Legion of Honour and of the Order of the Medjidie", besides
 
 REAR-ADMIRAL SHERARD OSBORN 297 
 
 being personally complimented at Windsor by his sovereign 
 and the Prince Consort. 
 
 In the spring of 1857, on the news of a rupture with the Em- 
 peror of China, Captain Osborn was appointed to the " Furious," 
 and instructed to escort a force of fifteen gunboats and despatch- 
 vessels to China. Captain Osborn's orders from the Admiralty 
 gave him large discretionary powers as to the route and arrange- 
 ments, and many essential preparations had to be made at 
 Devonport under his superintendence. Seeing the difficulty other 
 officers had experienced in escorting even two gunboats at a time 
 to China, doubts were entertained of these vessels, some of them 
 of the lightest draught that had ever passed the Cape, effecting 
 the voyage at all during the winter of southern latitudes. 
 
 The Commander-in-Chief at Devonport, Admiral Sir William 
 Parker, was so much struck with the arduous nature of the task 
 before Captain Osborn that in giving him his parting orders he 
 said, in the presence of his secretary, Mr. Charles Richards, "If 
 ever you, sir, deliver all that squadron safe to your admiral in 
 China, you deserve to be made a commodore." By going to 
 Brazil, avoiding the Cape, and carrying the squadron on a great 
 circle to the south, the passage was made without one disaster, 
 and within six months all the vessels were safely at anchor in 
 Hong-Kong harbour. That squadron of gunboats, it is only fair 
 to say, changed the character of the war in China, and brought 
 our negotiations to a successful issue. 
 
 Captain Osborn next embarked the British Ambassador, and 
 the "Furious" took a prominent share in every subsequent opera- 
 tion, from the escalade of Canton to the capture of the Taku 
 Forts in 1858. The gunboat he embarked in was the first to 
 reach the city of Tien-tsin and the entrance of the Great Canal. 
 The Commander-in-Chief praised Captain Osborn most highly 
 in his official despatches, but as he was already in possession of 
 every possible honour for past services no official recognition 
 could then be given him. From China, Captain Osborn carried 
 Lord Elgin to Japan, and on his own responsibility led the 
 escorting squadron beyond the surveyed portion of Yeddo Bay 
 until Her Majesty's ships were anchored in a position within 
 gunshot of the capital. This measure led to a satisfactory 
 treaty between Japan and Great Britain being speedily signed 
 by the emperors, and Lord Elgin then and subsequently 
 acknowledged the service rendered by Captain Osborn.
 
 298 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 On the return of the " Furious " to Shanghai in September 
 1858 a question arose in framing the supplementary treaty 
 with China how far it was possible to declare the great river 
 Yang-tze navigable to Europeans. Captain Osborn was applied 
 to by Lord Elgin, and, confident from his experience of the 
 volume of the river at Nankin, that it must be navigable for 
 hundreds of miles beyond, he undertook to test the question, and 
 persuaded Captain Barker (of Her Majesty's ship " Retribution "), 
 senior officer at Shanghai, to make the experiment at once. 
 That officer, shattered by a stroke of paralysis, could only 
 accompany the force just above Nankin, the batteries of which 
 were successfully engaged and silenced. Thence, up a falling 
 and intricate river, Captain Osborn had, as senior officer, to con- 
 duct his ship, accompanied by the " Cruiser " and two gunboats, 
 to Hankow, 600 miles from the sea ; the "Furious" having several 
 times to be cleared to her keel to float her off unknown shoals 
 and reefs. This service enabled the ambassador to insist on the 
 river being opened to foreign commerce. No warship of the size 
 or the draught of the " Furious " has subsequently been able to 
 reach Hankow, although at this moment the river is covered 
 with vessels carrying European commerce. Admiral Sir Michael 
 Seymour, the Commander-in-Chief, on the return of the squadron, 
 issued a general order expressing his satisfaction "at the gallantry, 
 zeal, and perseverance displayed by the captains, officers, and men 
 comprising the expedition." His Excellency the Earl of Elgin, 
 in his official despatch to the Secretary of State No. 1, the 5th 
 of January 1859, said : 
 
 " The transport of a vessel the size of the ' Furious ' to a 
 point so remote from the sea under circumstances so peculiar is, I 
 apprehend, a feat unparalleled in naval history. I consider the 
 successful issue of this undertaking to have been mainly due to 
 the energy, professional skill, courage, and judgment of Captain 
 Osborn and his able master," etc. 
 
 Again, on the 18th of August 1859, when Lord Elgin found 
 that his despatch had not been officially communicated to the 
 Admiralty, he wrote to the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign 
 Affairs, begging that this might be immediately done, as he was 
 naturally held in some degree responsible for the fact, and that it 
 exposed him to the double charge of injustice and ingratitude 
 for the "remarkable services" rendered, and his lordship 
 added :
 
 REAR-ADMIRAL SHERARD OSBORN 299 
 
 "To what I have already said in reference to the services 
 rendered by the ' Furious,' I beg now to add that I ascribe the 
 success of the policy which I considered it my duty to carry out 
 at Tien-tsin, Yeddo, and Shanghai in a great measure to the 
 zeal, energy, and devotion with which I was supported by Captain 
 Osborn and those under his command." 
 
 And again, in the House of Lords, on the 21st of February 
 1860, Lord Elgin publicly acknowledged his obligation to 
 Captain Osborn in the most eulogistic terms. 
 
 In the meantime such had been the arduous nature of the 
 service rendered in ascending the Yang-tze that Captain Barker 
 had invalided and subsequently died ; Mr. Court, the master of 
 the " Furious," invalided and died ; and Captain Osborn had to 
 give up his ship and return home on half-pay to undergo a long 
 series of surgical operations. By the publication of his naval 
 journals and by other literary labours, Captain Osborn was 
 enabled to subsist until well enough again to seek service, when, 
 in the spring of 1861, he had the honour to be appointed to 
 the command of Her Majesty's ship "Donegal," 101 guns. In 
 her he embarked a portion of the British force sent to co-operate 
 in the allied attack on Mexico. The return of the expedition 
 was followed by the paying-off of the " Donegal " in 1862, and so 
 creditable was the report upon its efficiency that the Admiralty 
 promoted her first lieutenant on Captain Osborn's recommenda- 
 tion. 
 
 The Emperor of China, in June 1862, made an offer to 
 Captain Osborn, through his agent, Mr. H. N. Lay, C.B., of the 
 absolute command of a large squadron of vessels to be equipped 
 by him in England for the suppression of piracy on the coast of 
 China. The command was to have been a very lucrative one. 
 Captain Osborn was formally promised that, in order to guarantee 
 such a force not being used against European powers, or in a 
 way hostile to our naval sense of humanity or justice, he should 
 not be placed under any local authorities, but receive his orders 
 direct from the Emperor. With this understanding, Captain 
 Osborn received special leave for the purpose from the 
 Admiralty, at the written request of Her Majesty's Secretary of 
 State for Foreign Affairs, and officers were lent likewise from 
 Her Majesty's Navy on the same understanding. A squadron 
 of six vessels was constructed, equipped, and carried by Captain 
 Osborn to the near neighbourhood of Pekin in 1863 ; but on
 
 300 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 reporting himself at the capital of China, he found that the 
 Emperor repudiated the promises and engagements of his agent, 
 and wished to place a Chinese mandarin as a superior officer 
 even on board his own ship. This, together with the fact that 
 the representatives of the European powers were adverse to the 
 institution of a force on such terms, decided Captain Osborn on 
 withdrawing from a position so likely to prove compromising to 
 his own honour as well as to the British interests in China 
 By direction of our Minister, Sir Frederick Bruce, the whole 
 force was withdrawn from China, and Captain Osborn's conduct 
 received his warmest commendations in an official letter. 
 
 Keturning to England, Captain Osborn again placed his 
 services at the disposal of the Lords Commissioners of the 
 Admiralty, and was in 1864 appointed to the command of Her 
 Majesty's ship " Royal Sovereign," a vessel adapted to test the new 
 system of turrets invented by Captain Cowper Coles, R.N. He 
 reported on the perfect success with which 12-ton guns were 
 for the first time used at sea in Her Majesty's Navy, and other- 
 wise showed the excellence of the turret system ; but the " Royal 
 Sovereign" was paid off. Captain Osborn was permitted to 
 remain attached to her until the end of 1864, when, having 
 served sufficient time by the regulations then in force to qualify 
 for his flag, he resigned his command. 
 
 The short time for which the " Royal Sovereign " was kept in 
 commission entailed heavy pecuniary loss to Captain Osborn, 
 who had fitted her out at a great expense under the impression 
 that he would be considered one of the active fleet for at least 
 three years, and this circumstance, together with additional 
 losses caused by the bankruptcy of a firm of Navy agents, 
 obliged Captain Osborn to turn his attention while on half-pay 
 and awaiting promotion to the Admirals' List to some employ- 
 ment as a means of subsistence. He first proceeded to Western 
 India and successfully administered as agent between the Great 
 Indian Peninsular Railway Company and the Government 
 a network of railways extending throughout the Bombay 
 Presidency. Finding the climate, however, injuring his health, 
 and being desirous of keeping himself employed on matters 
 more immediately connected with the profession to which he 
 belonged, Captain Osborn resigned this appointment in 1866, 
 and received the thanks both of the Government of Bombay and 
 the Supreme Government of India, who were pleased to express
 
 REAR-ADMIRAL SHERARD OSBORN 301 
 
 " very sincere regret at the prospect of the loss of Captain 
 Sherard Osborn's services, which Government believes to have 
 been most valuable to Government and the public." 
 
 In 1867 Captain Osborn undertook the office of Managing 
 Director of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance 
 Company (which had then just successfully laid the Atlantic sub- 
 marine telegraph cables) for the purpose of giving his professional 
 knowledge to the work of establishing submarine telegraph 
 communication between Great Britain and her Eastern and 
 Australian possessions and colonies. In four years this work 
 was completed by a series of submarine cables from Falmouth, 
 the Mediterranean, and Eed Sea to India, the Eastern Archi- 
 pelago, Hong-Kong, and Australia ; and Captain Osborn might 
 well feel that, from a public as well as professional point of 
 view, he had in this great work served the commercial as well 
 as the military interests of his country. In 1871 Captain 
 Osborn was appointed to the command of Her Majesty's ship 
 " Hercules," the finest of our cruising ironclads, but was compelled, 
 by unexpected circumstances, to ask to be relieved before the 
 term of his command expired. In 1873 he was promoted to 
 the rank of Rear- Admiral. 
 
 In the whole of these services, whether as midshipman, 
 lieutenant, commander, captain, or man of business, the name 
 of Sherard Osborn was highly distinguished. In the first 
 Chinese war he was thrice mentioned in the despatches of 
 Commodore Sir Thomas Herbert and Admiral Sir William 
 Parker, and was publicly thanked as a midshipman by Com- 
 modore R. B. Watson for his services at the capture of Shanghai. 
 In Ireland he earned the warm approval of the local authorities, 
 and was repeatedly thanked by his commander -in -chief. In 
 1849 his seamanship and gallantry were reported to the 
 Admiralty "as beyond all praise in remaining by his vessel, 
 the ' Dwarf/ in a sinking state in tempestuous weather." In the 
 Arctic seas his energy and joviality, and his readiness to under- 
 take the hardest labour, if any of his men were distressed in 
 sledging expeditions, won him the devoted attachment of his 
 crew. In the Crimean war he gained the highest renown and 
 the fullest approval of his distinguished Admiral, Sir E. Lyons, 
 who not only selected him for presentation to the Queen at 
 Windsor, but strained every nerve, and with success, to secure 
 his reappointment to the command of the Sea of Azov Squadron.
 
 302 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 To no man more than to Captain Sherard Oaborn was the open- 
 ing of our trade with Japan and China due. We believe that 
 his social qualities and knowledge of men assisted Lord Elgin 
 in his difficult negotiations almost as much as the professional 
 nerve and seamanship which carried the " Furious " to Yeddo and 
 Hankow. 
 
 It has been often said that naval officers make the best 
 diplomatists, and probably Sherard Osborn, as admiral on a 
 foreign station, would have been a marked illustration of this 
 rule. Like Lord Dundonald, whom, in many respects, afloat 
 and ashore, he resembled, he carried his fighting temperament 
 into the arena of civil controversy. For ten years he struggled 
 energetically to advance the views of his friend Captain Cowper 
 Coles, and had the satisfaction of eventually witnessing the 
 Chief Constructor of the Navy, whose great qualities he always 
 fully recognised, pronounce in favour of the turret ship for 
 fighting purposes, and the admiral in command of the Channel 
 Fleet report that the lamented " ' Captain ' could destroy all the 
 broadside ships of the squadron in detail." 
 
 His untimely death will cast a gloom over the Arctic Expe- 
 dition, which he did so much to promote. To-day, which 
 witnesses his funeral, had been fixed for a meeting of the 
 Geographical Society, at which he and other Arctic celebrities 
 were to have assisted. At such a time it seems well to recall 
 that he himself attributed to his own Arctic experience and the 
 example of his first Arctic commander, Captain Austin, two 
 naval lessons of first-rate importance : first, the practice of 
 commanding men sympathetically, as human beings and not as 
 machines ; and secondly, the habit of prudent daring, which 
 the struggle with an Arctic winter always, he declared, engenders. 
 He believed he could get out of his men the utmost exertions of 
 which they were capable, and he told his intimate friends that 
 in the unknown waters of the Sea of Azov and the Yang-tze he 
 was always congratulating himself on his Arctic training. He 
 will be remembered by the Expedition now about to start, 
 whatever its success, for no one did more to furnish his comrades 
 with the opportunity of distinction.
 
 BISHOP THIRLWALL 
 
 LEADING ARTICLE, WEDNESDAY, JULY 28, 1875 
 
 WITH Bishop Thirlwall, a name passes away which, on the 
 whole, has, perhaps, beeii the greatest of those which have 
 adorned the English Episcopate of this century. His greatness, 
 indeed, did not lie in the customary paths of Episcopal labour, 
 though he was far more successful in the administration of his 
 diocese than might have been supposed by those who judged 
 him from a distance. But his characteristic distinction lay in 
 the unique combination of qualities which he represented a 
 combination to which justice can only be done by a review of 
 his singular career. His life and mind might not unfitly be 
 regarded as reflecting in a calm mirror the successive disturbed 
 influences of a turbulent age, and it was his function, if not to 
 unite the rays of thought thus variously reflected, at least to 
 prevent their dissipation. His life combined a variety of 
 mental experience in which he has left few compeers. It com- 
 menced in a period which the excitement of subsequent move- 
 ments has obscured, but in which the true source is to be found 
 of many an influence which to the present generation seems 
 comparatively novel. 
 
 In the third decade of this century two schools of religious 
 and philosophical thought were silently growing, which were 
 destined, in the active period which ensued, to develop side by 
 side, with frequent, though often unintentional, collision. At 
 Oxford was silently maturing that vigorous revival of ecclesi- 
 astical life and patristic thought which soon became so potent. 
 But there existed at the same time, and more particularly at 
 Cambridge, a school of what might be called " the new learning,"
 
 304 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 attracted by the brilliant light which German scholars were 
 throwing over ancient history and literature, and not less by 
 the broader human foundations on which they were seeking, 
 with whatever errors, to base the life and truth of Christianity. 
 Bishop Thirlwall was the contemporary and friend at Cam- 
 bridge of men like the late Archdeacon Hare ; and one of his 
 first and most characteristic performances was to publish, in 
 conjunction with Hare, a translation of Niebuhr's History of 
 Rome. That translation was the means of introducing to 
 English readers what to many of them seemed mere disin- 
 tegrating speculations, and the seeds of all subsequent suspicion 
 of German thought and theology may be seen in the suspicion 
 which this publication aroused. Niebuhr, as is well known, 
 became subsequently almost the animating influence of the 
 mind of Dr. Arnold, in whom perhaps the school of thought 
 which Thirlwall did so much to start lost the character which 
 might have given it the practical force it has lacked. 
 
 It was at this period, also, that Bishop Thirlwall similarly 
 brought to the notice of English theology some of the more 
 important German criticisms on the Gospel history. It is a curious 
 illustration of the two influences we have noticed as then pre- 
 valent that Dr. Pusey at the same period wrote in vindication 
 of German theologians against the suspicions entertained of 
 them. His lot was soon cast with a very different school, but 
 Thirlwall at this time was reviewing, in the labours of a candid 
 and laborious scholarship, the very foundations of that cclesi- 
 astical edifice of which the superstructure was soon to be the 
 object of such vehement enthusiasm. 
 
 This, it must be allowed, however valuable in its distant 
 results, was not the temper to gain a hearing in the stormy 
 time which followed. England was about to experience the 
 recoil of the revolutionary wave which at first she had success- 
 fully resisted, and the moment was come for men with distinct 
 principles, a compact and imposing theory, and a genuine and 
 uncalculating enthusiasm. Nothing is more evident in the 
 records of the Oxford movement of 1833, as they have been 
 furnished by the principal actor in it, than that the eager minds 
 which led it formed their theories, or, as they would have said, 
 their principles, before ascertaining their facts ; and that their 
 theories were animated by the necessity of finding some effectual 
 basis of resistance against the attacks with which the Church
 
 BISHOP THIRLWALL 305 
 
 was menaced. The admirable genius who then poured upon 
 the world for about twelve years the accumulated stores of his 
 meditation and his reading, and whose personal character, no 
 less than his writings, kindled a fire of enthusiasm in the 
 younger men of his day, could not but carry all before him. 
 
 The success and the long predominance of the Tractarian 
 party were due, as was from the first acknowledged by com- 
 petent observers, to the unrivalled vigour and beauty with 
 which the claims of the ecclesiastical system which it revived 
 were presented. Arnold alone in some degree stemmed the 
 tide ; but it was not really checked till it was broken by the 
 force of its own impetuosity against the rocks which lay in its 
 course. The secessions of Dr. Newman and his followers were 
 the first, but at the same time the fatal, interruption to its 
 career, and the steadier stream which it had so long submerged 
 soon began to make its way to the surface. Dr. Thirlwall was 
 no longer at the head of that current, but he was in a position 
 in which his peculiar abilities had, perhaps, even a greater 
 opportunity of being useful. Between 1830 and 1840 he had 
 found a refuge from the prevailing turmoil in those historical 
 and philosophical researches which, on whatever subject, were 
 most congenial to him. In that decade he had published his 
 History of Greece a work which later researches may have 
 largely supplemented, but which will always retain the charm 
 of a pellucid and judicial narrative. Before, indeed, entering 
 the ministry he had studied law, and had actually been called 
 to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn ; and if the Church gained in him 
 a valuable prelate, it is not less certain that Equity lost in him 
 an incomparable judge. It is not difficult to imagine the 
 serene ratiocination with which he would have rivalled even 
 the greatest masters of the modern Equity Bench. 
 
 But he carried the temper, and perhaps the habit, of Equity 
 into all his subsequent work ; and when his learning was 
 rewarded in 1840 by promotion to the see of St. David's, it 
 was promptly shown that an invaluable moderating influence 
 had been brought to bear upon the counsels of the Church. 
 His early studies, instead of precipitating him into a partisan 
 opposition to the influence which for the time obscured them, 
 were used by him, on the contrary, as furnishing the means for 
 a more impartial and calmer estimate of the excitement around 
 him. He gauged its real value if perhaps a little too coolly, 
 VOL. I x
 
 306 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 yet with a justice for which, perhaps, coolness was in those 
 days an essential requisite. In one of his earliest charges, 
 when the Tractarian movement was at its height and was 
 arousing the fiercest antagonism, he distinctly vindicated the 
 learning, and in some points the fair claims, of its promoters ; 
 and he thus gave a conspicuous pledge of the spirit in which, 
 for the future, he interposed in ecclesiastical warfare. His 
 voice after that time was chiefly heard in his periodical charges, 
 and always with the effect of dividing the real from the unreal 
 in the questions of the hour, and of dissecting with the hand of 
 a perfectly skilled anatomist the mental and religious phenomena 
 which successively arose. He was not so much a force as the 
 supervisor of other forces ; and if the function is comparatively 
 rare in such hands, it is at least not uncongenial to the idea of 
 the Episcopal office. He remained, however, in great measure, 
 to the last the critic and historian he had been in earlier life ; 
 and when the history of the English Church in this century 
 comes to he written, Bishop Thirlwall's charges will be the 
 most valuable source of illumination to his successor in historical 
 labours. 
 
 On one occasion, however, of late years, he did enter into a 
 grave public contest, and the manner in which he acquitted 
 himself rendered it impossible to avoid a regret that nature 
 should have endowed him with so exceptionally and supremely 
 judicial a temperament. When others were hesitating and 
 wavering as to the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, he 
 asserted the duty of decision, and vindicated the claims of the 
 juster side in a speech which seemed to concentrate the experi- 
 ence and the lucidity of a long life of thought and observation. 
 Such a career does not win the loud applause elicited by the 
 capacities which appeal more directly to the feelings. But it has 
 its reward in the silent gratitude of perplexed contemporaries 
 and in the more conspicuous recognition of history. The world 
 rarely does justice to the men whose function it is to hold the 
 balance between contending parties, to check enthusiasm, and 
 thus to give all truths fair play ; but they perform, perhaps, at 
 least as important a function as those who are the motive powers 
 of life. The particular school of thought to which Thirlwall gave 
 an early impulse has since risen to a position more worthy of its 
 claims ; but he did it, probably, as great a service in his old age by 
 discouraging its extravagances as in his youth by furnishing its
 
 BISHOP THIRLWALL 307 
 
 earliest nourishment. There passes away with him the only 
 mind which could survey all schools and forms of English 
 religious thought with equal knowledge and justice ; but his 
 memory will always survive as the most conspicuous proof that 
 there is no true learning and no genuine piety which may not 
 be harmoniously combined in the English Church.
 
 SIR CHARLES WHEATSTONE 
 OBITUARY NOTICE, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1875 
 
 CHABLES WHEATSTONE was the son of Mr. W. Wheatstone, a 
 citizen of Gloucester, where he was born in the year 1802. He 
 received his early education at a private school, where he 
 imbibed a taste for mechanics and physical science ; and he 
 devoted his youth and early manhood to the manufacture of 
 musical instruments. Entering into business on his own 
 account in London when he was scarcely as yet of age, he soon 
 showed a capacity for higher and more philosophical studies, 
 his mental powers being concentrated not so much on the actual 
 manufacture of the instruments themselves as upon the prin- 
 ciples which underlay their construction. In 1823 he first 
 attracted attention by the publication of a work entitled New 
 Experiments in Sound. He now devoted his attention to a 
 study of the close analogy he found existing between the 
 phenomena of light and of sound, and proceeded to illustrate 
 the subject by numerous models and an apparatus of his own 
 contrivance. 
 
 After numerous investigations in this double field of inquiry, 
 many of which were published in the Journals of the Royal 
 Institution and in the Philosophical Magazine, some ten years 
 after the date of his above-mentioned work, he was led to 
 communicate, through Professor Faraday, a paper on u Acoustic 
 Figures," and another on certain experiments made to measure 
 the velocity of electricity and the duration of electric light. 
 In 1834 he was appointed Professor of Experimental Philo- 
 sophy at King's College, London, which had been founded 
 some five years previously, and two years later he was elected
 
 SIR CHARLES WHEATSTONE 309 
 
 a Fellow of the Royal Society, when he read before its meeting 
 a paper entitled " Contributions to the Physiology of Vision." 
 The first part of this paper treated of some remarkable and as 
 yet unnoticed phenomena of binocular sight, and it is remark- 
 able as containing the first mention totidem verbis of the 
 stereoscope, now the constant companion of our drawing-room 
 tables. 
 
 It would take long to enumerate all the inventions which 
 proceeded from that fertile brain, but it was as a pioneer in 
 the invention and application of the electric telegraph that the 
 name of Charles Wheatstone will be remembered. We do not 
 forget the claims of Sir William Fothergill Cooke to equal 
 recognition in regard to this discovery when we state that as 
 far back as June 1836, in his lectures as Professor at King's 
 College, Wheatstone had exhibited certain experiments on the 
 velocity of electricity with a lengthened circuit of nearly four 
 miles of copper wire, which he then and there proposed to 
 convert into an electric telegraph. In the following month of 
 February (1837) he made, through the intervention of Roget 
 and Faraday, the acquaintance of Mr. W. F. Cooke, who had 
 lately become acquainted abroad with the electric experiments 
 of Baron Schillin and other German philosophers. In the 
 month of May in the same year, Wheatstone and Cooke took 
 out their first patent " for improvements in giving signals and 
 sounding alarums in distant places by means of electric currents 
 transmitted through metallic circuits." 
 
 The various improvements which, by the joint discoveries of 
 Messrs. Wheatstone and Cooke, were successively introduced 
 into the telegraph we need not describe at length ; but we may 
 as well record here the fact that the first line of electric 
 telegraph actually laid down for public purposes was constructed 
 on the Blackwall Railway in 1838. The terms of partnership 
 were afterwards more exactly defined and confirmed in the 
 November of the same year, when a deed expressly vested in 
 Mr. Cooke the exclusive management of the invention in Great 
 Britain, Ireland, and the Colonies, with the exclusive manage- 
 ment of the engineering department, while, as partners standing 
 on a footing of perfect equality, they were to divide equally 
 all proceeds arising from the granting of patent rights and 
 licenses, a percentage being first payable to Mr. Cooke as
 
 310 EMINENT PERSONS 
 
 We quote from an award formally made by the late Sir 
 Mark Isambard Brunei and Professor Daniel on the subject, 
 when difficulties arose out of this partnership, a few sentences 
 which will serve to show how the honours of having discovered 
 or invented the electric telegraph are to be divided between the 
 two claimants. The arbitrators write, under date 1841 : 
 
 " While Mr. William Fothergill Cooke is entitled to stand 
 alone as the gentleman to whom this country is indebted for 
 having practically introduced and carried out the electric 
 telegraph as a most useful undertaking, promising to be of 
 national importance, and Professor Wheatstone is acknowledged 
 on all hands as the scientific man whose profound and successful 
 researches had already prepared the public to receive it as a 
 project capable of practical application, it is to the united 
 labours of the two gentlemen, so well qualified for mutual 
 assistance, that we must attribute the rapid progress which this 
 important invention has made during the five years since they 
 first became associated." 
 
 Professor Wheatstone was one of the jurors of the Universal 
 Exhibition at Paris in 1855 in the class for "heat, light, and 
 electricity," on which occasion he was appointed by the late 
 Emperor a Knight of the Legion of Honour, on account of his 
 " application of the electric telegraph." He was also chosen a 
 correspondent of the French Imperial Institute of Sciences, and 
 an honorary member of the principal academies of science in 
 Europe. 
 
 END OP VOL. I 
 
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