CERTAIN MEN OF MARK 
 
 rtufcies of JLitotng Celebrities* 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE MAKEPEACE TOWLE. 
 
 I/ 
 
 BOSTON: 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 
 1880.
 
 Copyright, 1 880, 
 By ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS : 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 GLADSTONE 7 
 
 BISMARCK 37 
 
 GAMBETTA 66 
 
 BEACONSFIELD 95 
 
 CASTELAR 124 
 
 VICTOR HUGO 154 
 
 JOHN BRIGHT 183 
 
 THREE EMPERORS 213
 
 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 I. 
 
 GLADSTONE. 1 
 
 / "~T*HE lobbies of the Lords and Commons, in 
 the Parliament Palace at Westminster, are 
 free for every one to enter ; and there it is that 
 one may, any day during the parliamentary ses- 
 sion, meet the statesmen of England, as it were, 
 
 1 The author having sent a copy of this sketch to Mr. Glad- 
 stone, received from him the following reply : 
 
 "LONDON, April 21, 'So. 
 
 "DEAR SIR, I have now read the article so kindly sent 
 me twice over, and I congratulate you as an author on a paper 
 of so much ability and so much discernment. 
 
 " In its praise it is far too liberal. To only one of the items 
 set down on the other side do I take any exception. I really 
 do not admit myself to have been a bad follower. There never 
 was any opposition between Lord Hartington and myself on 
 the Public Worship Bill. On the Eastern Question I was too 
 deeply committed by antecedent action, as well as by convic- 
 tion, to be simply obedient; for which, however, on various 
 occasions, I made great efforts. 
 
 "I remain, dear sir, 
 
 " Your faithful and obedient, 
 
 "W. E. GLADSTONE."
 
 8 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 tete-a-tete. It is interesting to observe eminent 
 men from a near point of view, and at moments 
 when they are "off duty; " and in the lobbies, 
 during the half hour before the two Houses are 
 called to order, the members stand about, chat 
 with a friend here and a constituent there, and 
 relax, if ever, their official dignity in social con- 
 verse. 
 
 It was in the lobby of the Commons that, 
 some fifteen years ago, I first saw Mr. Gladstone. 
 He was then in the full prime of life, being about 
 fifty-five years of age. He had already won a 
 degree of political renown only less than the 
 highest. At that time he was Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer in Lord Palmerston's cabinet; 
 and, next to Lord Palmerston, was the most 
 distinguished member of the popular House. 
 He had been a member of parliament thirty- 
 three years ; and his career there, at least as far 
 as reputation was concerned, had been a tri- 
 umphal progress, ever and steadily advancing. 
 No one doubted that at some day not far distant 
 Mr. Gladstone would be summoned to assume 
 the post of Prime Minister. 
 
 A glance sufficed to recognize him. His pho- 
 tographs peered at the passer-by from every
 
 GLADSTONE. 9 
 
 bookstore and print shop in London ; and no 
 one could have seen them without taking note 
 of the very remarkable, expressive, intense fea- 
 tures they discovered. But there was something 
 about Mr. Gladstone as he stood there, gravely 
 talking with two gentlemen who listened to him 
 with every outward sign of respect, which the 
 photographs had not disclosed. There was a 
 certain plainness, almost rusticity, of dress and 
 external appearance; a thick-set, farmer-like 
 body, far from graceful ; a certain negligence of 
 attire and toilet and manner, and simple gravity 
 of bearing, which one had not expected to see 
 in the brilliant and eloquent scholar who had so 
 often thrilled the House, and, through the me- 
 dium of the press, the world. But after the 
 first superficial glance, when you raised your 
 eyes to the face and head, and observed the 
 features, you soon found the man's character 
 reflected there. The not very large, but brilliant, 
 earnest, burning eyes ; the retreating, but nobly 
 shaped forehead ; the very un-English swarthy 
 complexion; the firm, thin mouth, to which 
 every line lent new expressiveness ; the square- 
 set jaw, and bold straight nose; the spirit and 
 warmth that glowed in the whole countenance
 
 IO CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 betokened a mind and soul alike lofty, zealous, 
 and intense. 
 
 Never once did the slightest smile cross those 
 almost grim features ; and the contrast between 
 this grimness of expression, and the sweet, sil- 
 very voice, the tones of which now and then 
 reached my ear, was very striking. Mr. Glad- 
 stone's smiles, indeed, are very few and slight. 
 He has always been too dead-in-earnest; and 
 dead-in-earnestness has stamped itself on his 
 face, as it has throughout the record of his pub- 
 lic career. 
 
 Not many evenings after, I was fortunate 
 enough to see Mr. Gladstone on another scene, 
 and in a new aspect. A great debate was pro- 
 ceeding in the House of Commons, on the usu- 
 ally dry subject of Supply. Mr. Gladstone had, 
 as Chancellor of the Exchequer, brought in a 
 Budget, some features of which had aroused the 
 hostility of certain attacked interests. Among 
 other items he had proposed, for the first time, 
 to tax the great public charities of England. 
 Such institutions as Bartholomew and Christ's 
 Hospitals had before been exempt from taxa- 
 tion, as being devoted to purposes of benevo- 
 lence. They had now grown, however, to be
 
 GLADSTONE. I I 
 
 rich and powerful corporations ; and Mr. Glad- 
 stone declared that they should aid in support- 
 ing the expenses of the country. The proposal 
 aroused great indignation, especially among the 
 established clergy, who to a large extent con- 
 trolled the great hospitals. 
 
 On the night in question, Mr. Gladstone was 
 announced to speak in defence of his policy of 
 taxing these charities. Though it seemed an 
 arid topic,, giving little scope to a rich imagina- 
 tive eloquence like his, it was no easy matter to 
 secure a place in the Stranger's Gallery. Every 
 corner and crevice of the House were filled as 
 soon as the doors were open. Members, even, 
 were forced to resort to the galleries, so crowded 
 were the benches below ; the ladies' gallery was 
 thronged with peeresses, and the leaders of Lon- 
 don society. The world of London, at least, 
 knew that Mr. Gladstone was one of those rare 
 magicians who could make even figures eloquent. 
 
 When the orator rose from the front govern- 
 ment bench, drew himself up, holding a small 
 slip of paper in his hand, and quietly looked 
 around on the multitude whose single gaze was 
 upon him, he seemed younger and more impos- 
 ing than he had done when standing chatting in
 
 12 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 the lobby. You recognized at once, by his mere 
 expression and motion, that he was already warm 
 and proud with the ardor -of forensic conflict; 
 that he loved this arena on which he stood, and 
 that his whole soul was in the task before him. 
 In his first few simple sentences, one already felt 
 the sweet and persuasive power of a voice which, 
 even in his age, has perhaps no equal in any 
 assembly on earth. There were the soul and 
 life of intense earnestness in its very first tones, 
 as the commonplace opening of the speech was 
 uttered ; now subdued, to be sure, but soon to 
 burn out and glow with all the fire of the man's 
 warm intellectual nature. The next thing ob- 
 served was the contrast between this smooth, 
 steady flow of words, this rising fluency of lan- 
 guage, pouring out long and involved sentences 
 without a pause, a hitch, an instant's loss of the 
 right word, and the halting and hesitating ora- 
 tory of most English public men. After listen- 
 ing to the stammering of Lord John Russell, the 
 humming and hawing of the genial Palmerston, 
 and the studied abruptness of Disraeli, this rapid, 
 steady, limpid quality of Mr. Gladstone's elo- 
 quence was charming. To his wonderful fluency, 
 the flexibility and strength as well as sweetness
 
 GLADSTONE. 13 
 
 of his voice added striking effect; for it has 
 depth, volume and wide range of tone, and 
 quickly adapts itself to the rhetorical need of 
 the moment. 
 
 His style of speaking was easy and simple. As 
 he proceeded, he played with a piece of paper in 
 his hand, which soon proved to contain the few 
 notes he had prepared ; and every now and then 
 he stroked the thin hair above his forehead with 
 his forefinger or thumb, as if to encourage the 
 idea to come out into expression. The gestures 
 were at first few, the clenched hand occasionally 
 suddenly sawing the air for a moment, then fall- 
 ing as suddenly prone at his side. As he ad- 
 vanced, he often straightened himself up from a 
 colloquial to a declamatory posture, with his 
 head thrown back, his sunken dark eyes glisten- 
 ing from beneath the heavy brows, and the strong 
 jaw seeming to set, as for a serious purpose ; and 
 then, as he passed to another branch of the sub- 
 ject, he would relapse into the conversational 
 attitude again. The movements, it could be 
 easily seen, were quite unstudied ; the impulse 
 of the moment guided the action of head or 
 hand, or the expression of the speaking features. 
 As he warmed to his subject, his action became
 
 14 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 more excited, and his gestures more frequent. 
 Now, his head was almost every moment high 
 in air, his hands would be clasped as if in appeal, 
 he turned often to the right and to the left, or 
 bent over the table in front of him. Every atti- 
 tude was at once ungraceful and strong. The 
 spontaneity, the earnestness, made even the ora- 
 tor's occasional awkwardness eloquent; while the 
 continual, unhesitating, liquid flow of the words 
 and sentences, and the solid chain of thought, 
 most often diverted the listener's mind from the 
 gestures altogether. 
 
 You recognized at once that this was not an 
 extempore speech, in the sense of being delivered 
 off-hand and without preparation. Every point 
 had been thought over carefully, every series of 
 figures conned, the array of the general current 
 of the argument duly and methodically arranged 
 in the mind. But the words, the sentences, the 
 few telling figures of speech, came with voluble 
 spontaneity. The opening deceived you some- 
 how into the idea that the flow of the harangue 
 would be sweet and serene throughout. But 
 before Mr. Gladstone had been speaking- fifteen 
 minutes he seemed, as Sydney Smith said of 
 Webster, " a steam engine in trousers." No
 
 GLADSTONE. 1 5 
 
 orator was ever more susceptible to the warm- 
 ing-up process, caused by the very act of speak- 
 ing, than he. No orator ever became more 
 wrapt, more absorbed, in the task before him. 
 You felt profoundly that he was speaking from 
 the most firmly rooted convictions ; that the 
 cause he advocated was buried deep in his heart, 
 and was the outcome alike of conscience and 
 intellectual self-persuasion. The dominant idea 
 with him was, not to make a great display, not 
 to produce a refined and polished-off bit of elo- 
 quence, but to persuade and to convince. He 
 produced that powerful effect upon his hearer, 
 which is one of the highest triumphs of oratory, 
 that made you feel ashamed and perverse not to 
 agree with him and be persuaded. I cannot 
 imagine even a stolid Tory squire listening to 
 such appeals, without feeling some dull qualm 
 at his own silent resistance to the persuasive 
 argument. There was, too, a proud conscious- 
 ness of his own powers betrayed in every motion 
 and utterance ; not vain self-conceit was this, but 
 the pride that assured him that these powers 
 might be and should be used to attain the un- 
 selfish public end he had in view. " He stands 
 up," as a shrewd observer once said of him, " in
 
 1 6 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 the spirit of an apostle with a message to deliver, 
 certain of its truth, and certain that he, and not 
 some other man, is appointed to deliver it." 
 That is just the impression which Mr. Gladstone 
 has always produced, and still produces, on those 
 who hear him speak ; and this apostolic earnest- 
 ness is, indeed, the chief source of his forensic 
 power. 
 
 As an orator, Mr. Gladstone lacks the strong 
 simplicity of Mr. Bright's Saxon English, and 
 the wealth of illustration with which Mr. Bright 
 illumines his subject ; he also lacks the epigram- 
 matic sparkle and subtle irony of his long-time 
 rival, Disraeli. He has sometimes been com- 
 pared to Burke, and in a few respects closely 
 resembles the " great impeacher," in personal as 
 well as intellectual traits. But it is doubtful 
 whether Mr. Gladstone's speeches will be read 
 ninety years hence, as Burke's are read now. 
 They are too verbose. His sentences are often 
 as well-nigh interminable as the celebrated sen- 
 tences of our own secretary of state. True, the 
 language is beautiful and forcible, the meaning 
 clearly conveyed, and the argument pyramidal 
 in structure and strength. But no one would 
 put selections from Mr. Gladstone's speeches
 
 GLADSTONE. I / 
 
 into a school reader or a book containing 
 "Specimens of Oratory." Yet they will be 
 eagerly read by the student of eloquence and 
 the student of English political history. They 
 are, for all their defects, great and noble ad- 
 dresses, instinct with not only the most earnest 
 but the broadest statesmanship. They are mas- 
 terly arrays of evidence, and deep reservoirs of 
 exhaustive argument. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's public career extends over a 
 period of about forty-seven years. He entered 
 the House of Commons at the age of twenty- 
 three, in the year that the great Reform struggle 
 ended. He may be said to have already become 
 distinguished when he took his seat; for he had 
 won high honors at Oxford, and the Oxford 
 prize-men are always known and applauded 
 throughout England. More than this, he was 
 understood to be an ardent champion of the 
 church, and to possess the eloquence to defend 
 it with effect. The future Liberal leader first 
 appeared on the political arena as what Macau- 
 lay called " a stern and unbending Tory." He 
 owed his parliamentary seat to the favor of a 
 great Tory magnate ; and he was looked upon 
 as the young hope of the party which then had
 
 1 8 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 few " hopefuls," young or old. There was, from 
 the first, not the least doubt of one thing, Mr. 
 Gladstone was certain to be a parliamentary suc- 
 cess. His first speech more than justified his 
 reputation. It charmed and delighted every- 
 body who heard it or read it. It suggestively 
 contrasted with Mr. Disraeli's break-down as a 
 political tyro, and the long struggle which Mr. 
 Disraeli made to retrieve himself and become a 
 power. Mr. Gladstone no sooner opened his 
 mouth, and let his sweet, silvery, persuasive 
 voice be heard, and his intense ardor and ear- 
 nestness be seen, than he took high rank among 
 the orators of the House of Commons, and from 
 that time to this he has never once made what 
 his bitterest enemies could construe as a failure 
 in eloquence. He has never for a moment lost 
 his hold on the silence, attention, and admira- 
 tion often reluctantly awarded of the House. 
 In England, oratorical success in parliament is 
 the almost invariable " open sesame " to politi- 
 cal honors. Ministries need, almost above all 
 else, men who can speak, especially men who 
 can persuade. Mr. Gladstone's readiness and 
 fluency, and the genuineness of his eloquence, 
 speedily stood him in good stead. He was soon
 
 GLADSTONE. 19 
 
 in office; and thenceforth no ministry could be 
 formed from the political party with whose 
 views he at the time accorded, without provid- 
 ing him with a place in it. He was indispensa- 
 ble, first to the Tories, then to the Peelites, and 
 finally to the Liberals ; his intellectual suprem- 
 acy over all his contemporaries had already 
 been acknowledged before he had passed the 
 limit of middle life. And this was in spite of 
 his intellectual restlessness, and impatience of 
 submission to party precepts and party rule. 
 As he advanced, his opinions changed. Far 
 from proving " a stern and unbending Tory," 
 Mr. Gladstone was very quick to yield to new 
 arguments, to accept new lights, to modify his 
 views according to changing circumstances. Pos- 
 sessing a mind keenly sensitive to the needs of 
 the state and of the people, he never seems to 
 have allowed the bugbear of consistency, much 
 less the idea of mere loyalty to a party, to stand 
 in the way of his conversion to any cause of the 
 justice of which he was finally satisfied. " Open- 
 ness of mind," says an able English writer, 
 " eagerness to learn, candor in the confession of 
 past mistakes, and a readiness to admit a con- 
 scious immaturity of judgment on points which
 
 2O CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 he has not yet fully thought out," are the high 
 intellectual and moral qualities that belong pre- 
 eminently to Mr. Gladstone. So it was that the 
 "stern and unbending Tory" became the ad- 
 vanced Liberal chief who initiated the later elec- 
 toral reform ; that the champion of " church and 
 state " became the disestablisher of the Irish 
 church; that the ardent protectionist of 1832 
 became an abolisher of the corn laws in 1845 > 
 and that the colleague of Wellington became 
 the colleague of Bright and the friend of Cobden 
 and Mill. All his life, Mr. Gladstone has been 
 "thinking aloud;" he has reached every stage 
 of his progress along the political highway, 
 across open plains, where his every movement 
 and step could be seen by a nation. 
 
 Added to these noble qualities, Mr. Gladstone 
 possesses others which together place him on 
 the highest plane of pure and moral statesman- 
 ship. It would be too much, perhaps, to say 
 that Mr. Gladstone has not desired office, and 
 is not fond of power. But if he has been thus 
 ambitious, there is every reason to conclude that 
 neither selfish greed of authority, nor a selfish 
 wish to be conspicuous and laden with honors, 
 has entered into his ambitions. Mr. Gladstone
 
 GLADSTONE. 2 1 
 
 is an indomitable toiler. He is passionately fond 
 of hard, long-sustained, absorbing labor. Idle- 
 ness for him is a misery of miseries. And he 
 has always been thoroughly in love with politi- 
 cal work. He has always delighted in the per- 
 plexities of figures, in the complications of 
 diplomacy, and in the evolution of practical 
 improvement out of sentimental grievances and 
 moral or religious injustices. If he has desired 
 office and aspired to power, it was that he might 
 bring this intense zeal for work, this profundity 
 of conviction, to the service of the people. He 
 has again and again showed himself utterly reck- 
 less of the personal consequences to himself of 
 the line of reform he has bravely adopted. 
 Never was there a more unmanageable party 
 man, a more incorrigible party chief. To tem- 
 porize and conciliate on a great matter when 
 the well-being, political and social, of masses 
 of men and women has been at stake, have 
 always been abhorrent to him. If he was in 
 office, he was there to do a certain work ; and 
 into it he always plunged with an ardor and a 
 determination which quite swept party interests 
 and personal perils out of sight. To make Eng- 
 land just, as well as great and prosperous, has 
 been one of his most persistent aims.
 
 22 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 The same qualities which have made Mr, 
 Gladstone a great statesman and reformer 
 his unselfish and ardent adherence to his con- 
 victions, and his readiness to change those con- 
 victions when otherwise persuaded have made 
 him one of the very worst party leaders who ever 
 appeared in parliament. The tact and supple- 
 ness, the spirit of conciliation and harmonizing, 
 the patience and perseverance by which the suc- 
 cessful party chief succeeds in reconciling fac- 
 tions, and in bringing men of different views to 
 act together for the sake of party victory, seem 
 to have been almost utterly wanting in him. He 
 lacks, too, those lighter graces of leadership 
 which have made Mr. Disraeli so consummate 
 a political general. Mr. Gladstone has never 
 taken pains to encourage and put forward the 
 promising younger members of his party. He 
 has been very sparing of praise and encomiums 
 to his lieutenants. He neglects the suaviter in 
 modo which sometimes disarms the spirit of re- 
 volt in crotchety statesmen, and is too prone to 
 wrap himself in proud solitude in the midst of 
 his followers. His control over his rather bilious 
 and irritable temper has not always been supreme. 
 He has not always cared to conceal his impa-
 
 GLADSTONE, 2$ 
 
 tience and vexation at an expressed differ- 
 ence of opinion among his fellow Liberals ; has 
 sometimes broken out in a grim severity of sar- 
 casm directed against his own colleagues; and 
 that, too, when he was prime minister and the 
 leader of the House. He is not conspicuous 
 for those social qualities which especially tell in 
 politics. Always grave, always earnest and in- 
 tense, Mr. Gladstone seems always to brand by 
 his manner any play of humor or touch of pleas- 
 ant familiarity as flippant. He was never, there- 
 fore, thoroughly popular in the Liberal party in 
 parliament. There was no stint to the admira- 
 tion of his genius which his followers felt and 
 betrayed ; no man was ever more respectfully 
 looked up to ; every Liberal felt his own infe- 
 riority to this lofty, intellectual figure. But in 
 this exalted admiration there evidently was but 
 little mixture of that personal liking, and even 
 affection, which Mr. Disraeli, a really colder- 
 hearted man, has succeeded in inspiring among 
 the Tories, especially among the rising talent of 
 Torydom. These causes served to make Mr. 
 Gladstone a disastrous party leader. Succeed- 
 ing to the command of a powerful and pretty 
 compact party organization, he so badly led it
 
 24 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 that he carried it to defeat, almost to disorgani- 
 zation and disruption ; and the comparative fee- 
 bleness of Liberalism to-day, when it is rather a 
 conglomeration of factions than a party, is due 
 more to Mr. Gladstone's fatal inability to lead 
 than to any other one circumstance. 
 
 Not only is Mr. Gladstone a bad leader; he 
 is, if possible, even a worse follower. Four 
 years ago he threw up his leadership, and the 
 judicious Marquis of Hartington was chosen tc 
 succeed him. Mr. Gladstone took his place in 
 the rank and file. But he has proved quite 
 insubordinate to party discipline. More than 
 once he has interposed a voluntary leadership 
 of his own, in interference of that of Lord Hart- 
 ington. Again and again he has proposed 
 measures and resolutions, and urged his Liberal 
 friends to follow him, in spite of the advice and 
 even entreaties of the recognized Liberal chief. 
 He vehemently opposed the line taken by Lord 
 Hartington on the subject of Ritualism, and 
 divided the House of Commons against him. 
 He as vehemently separated from Lord Hart- 
 ington on the Turkish question, and proposed 
 and urged resolutions which created a serious 
 breach in the Liberal ranks. The fact is, the
 
 GLADSTONE. 2$ 
 
 commanding intellect and figure of Mr. Glad- 
 stone can never be compressed into the uniform 
 of a party private. He must rule men's minds 
 by his eloquence, his ardor, his eager enthusi- 
 asm of conscience. As long as he sits in the 
 House of Commons, he must be a chief, subject 
 to no other chief, with inevitable power in his 
 voice, and dominating authority in his utterances 
 on political policy. 
 
 We have scarcely yet glanced at Mr. Glad- 
 stone's qualities as a practical statesman ; yet 
 those qualities are, like all that pertain to him, 
 remarkable. "In the power of giving legislative 
 form to the policy on which the nation has deter- 
 mined," says an English writer, " of organizing 
 complex and difficult details into a complete 
 and orderly scheme, and of recommending it 
 by inexhaustible resources of exposition and 
 illustrations to parliament, Mr. Gladstone never 
 had a superior, or, we may venture to say, an 
 equal." In the intuitive recognition of what 
 England has become in earnest in demanding, 
 and ripe to receive, Mr. Gladstone strikingly 
 resembles our own Lincoln. He has always 
 kept just abreast of the people; and, sensitive 
 to their needs and well-being and ripe desire
 
 26 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 beyond any other statesman of his time, he has 
 also been their masterly interpreter, and their 
 most efficient servant. Like Lincoln, quick to 
 perceive and transfer into practical policy the 
 popular need of the day, like Pitt he is skilful 
 in moulding such a policy into law; but in this 
 respect he is certainly greater than Pitt. It is 
 rarely that noble eloquence is joined, in the 
 same man, with a high capacity for practical 
 work and the mastery of dry detail; yet Mr. 
 Gladstone is the ablest financier England has 
 produced in this century. As Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer, his Budgets were triumphs of 
 the financial art; not only in the rare interest 
 he lent to figures by fascinating and illustrative 
 statement, but in the soundness, the solidity, 
 and the resource of the financial policy they 
 embodied. They were exhaustive in the treat- 
 ment of the money affairs of the nation, and in 
 the fine and well-balanced adjustment of taxes 
 and of the public expenditure. But his financial 
 have been, perhaps, the least certainly they 
 are the least conspicuous of his triumphs in 
 practical statesmanship. It is probably true, as 
 has been remarked of his public career, that in 
 it, more than in that of any other man who has
 
 GLADSTONE. 27 
 
 lived through the same period, " the history of 
 England during the past forty years is reflected." 
 Sir Robert Peel had no more effective coadjutor 
 when he abolished the corn laws ; Mr. Gladstone 
 is one of the historic group who share the honor 
 of having accomplished that brave and wise act. 
 The second reform of 1867, which was carried, 
 it is true, by Mr. Disraeli, was based upon the 
 proposals elaborated the year before by his 
 rival ; and it may be added that Mr. Gladstone, 
 although in opposition, did very much to give 
 that reform its final practical and complete 
 shape. He might be well content to rest his 
 fame for statesmanship upon the two great acts 
 of his own premiership the Irish land reform, 
 and the disestablishment of the Irish church. 
 The latter betrayed no less the supremacy of 
 his conscience over the impulses of his heart, 
 than his splendid talent for constructing a most 
 difficult and perplexing public measure ; for he 
 was as ardent a churchman in 1871 as he had 
 been in 1835. To apply practical relief to the 
 grievances of Ireland was a herculean task, as 
 many a statesman had found to his cost before 
 him; but Mr. Gladstone brought to it all the 
 fiery zeal, the enormous capacity for work, the
 
 28 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 ability to frame a most effective statute out 
 of a chaos of bewildering materials, for which 
 he is conspicuous far above all his contempora- 
 ries. Those two acts, the one according a large 
 measure of justice to Irish tenant farmers, the 
 other relieving Catholic Ireland of the intolera- 
 ble burden of an alien state church, are noble 
 monuments to Mr. Gladstone's political genius. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone is a many-sided man. An 
 orator and statesman of the first rank, he is 
 also a scholar, versatile in many branches of 
 study and research, and in some profound. 
 His studies of Greek literature and antiquities 
 are well known, for he has written works on 
 these subjects which would have made him 
 famous in the learned world, had he never sat 
 in parliament or wielded the destinies of the 
 British Empire. In " Juventus Mundi," espe- 
 cially, we have the fruits of an ardent and 
 exhaustive research into the evidences of the 
 historical fact of the Trojan war, which has 
 gone far to enlighten the controversies inspired 
 by the Homeric books. It is hard to tell 
 whether Mr. Gladstone is more in love with 
 classical or ecclesiastical studies ; he is assuredly 
 deeply in love with both. His earliest essay in
 
 GLADSTONE. 2$ 
 
 letters was his book on the " Relations of Church 
 and State," which called forth Macaulay's fa- 
 mous searching but not on the whole unkindly 
 criticism; and to this day Mr. Gladstone has 
 snatched leisure from even the busiest periods 
 of his political career, to write essays and books 
 on the changing phases of ecclesiastical ques- 
 tions. He has always plunged with as much 
 enthusiasm into church debates in the House, 
 as into those on finance or on the Eastern prob- 
 lem ; and within the past few years, especially, 
 the reviews and magazines have afforded fre- 
 quent evidence of the continued vitality of his 
 interest in such topics, as well as the sustained 
 vigor of his intellectual strength. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's writings, indeed, fully deserve 
 the permanent form in literature which has re- 
 cently been given to them. In them are to be 
 perceived the same sturdy force of conviction, 
 the same absorbing earnestness to persuade, the 
 same zeal for the higher good of mankind, and 
 better than all, the same lofty moral tone of 
 thought, which appear in his forensic productions. 
 He wrote one essay, at least, that was far more 
 than an essay ; it was an historic event. This was 
 his series of letters on the outrageous tyranny
 
 30 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 of the Bourbon rule in Naples. Never was there 
 a production more fruitful of great results ; for 
 it is not too much to say that Mr. Gladstone's 
 letters to Lord Aberdeen did more to set Naples 
 free, and thus indirectly to give impetus to the 
 Italian craving for unity, than all the plots of 
 Mazzini or even the guerilla raids of Garibaldi. 
 It is always interesting to observe and note 
 the personal traits of a great man. Those of 
 Mr. Gladstone maybe somewhat judged by what 
 has already been said of the qualities which have 
 been portrayed in his public capacities. Mr. 
 Gladstone is dead-in-earnest, even in his recrea- 
 tions. Consider what are the favorite pastimes 
 of this indomitable worker on the political field, 
 this knight-errant of political morals among the 
 nations, this hot controversialist, this one-time 
 ruler of the greatest of the world's empires ! 
 Were you to visit the picturesque manor of 
 Hawarden, in Wales, some time during the autumn 
 months, you would very likely see this man of 
 seventy, with coat off and huge axe in hand, at- 
 tacking as vehemently the trunk of a giant oak, 
 as in the House he sometimes does what he re- 
 gards as the dishonoring subterfuges of an insin- 
 cere cabinet. All the country round, he is
 
 GLADSTONE. 3 1 
 
 famous as the feller of big trees ; and he seems 
 to be intent on thus working off, by the most 
 stalwart physical exercise he can find, the super- 
 fluous vitality and fire which even politics and 
 polemics have not exhausted. And, for the time, 
 his pleasure is just as great in subduing the stub- 
 born oak a-s it was erewhile in trampling down 
 the specious arguments of Sir Stafford Northcote, 
 or struggling with the champions of anti-Rit- 
 ualism. 
 
 The ex-premier has, however, other and serener 
 pleasures. He is an accomplished player on the 
 piano, which has time and again proved a sooth- 
 ing solace to his restless and overworked brain. 
 His voice, the most musical voice heard with- 
 in the walls of parliament, is also singularly 
 sweet and powerful when, as he loves to do, he 
 blends it with the harmonies of his favorite in- 
 strument. It is said that when he was prime 
 minister he was wont, after some late and excit- 
 ing debate, to return to his house in Carlton 
 Gardens in the small hours of morning, sit down 
 at his Erard and play a recent ballad, or perhaps 
 an older one, suited to restore repose to his feel- 
 ings of the moment. He is more fond, we are 
 told, of sacred and ballad music, Scotch airs, and
 
 32 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 the plaintive melodies of his old friend Moore, 
 than of the more fashionable compositions of the 
 German masters. 
 
 In the recess, Mr. Gladstone likes to gather a 
 circle of choice friends around him, and to visit 
 certain congenial country houses. But those 
 friends are almost invariably serious, intellectual 
 men and women, rather than fashionable people ; 
 and the country houses where he is found are 
 those of scholars, savants, and statesmen, rather 
 than those of brilliant leaders of society. When 
 in London, it is not very often that Mr. Gladstone 
 is seen in the drawing-rooms where statesmen 
 and scholars, as well as fashionables, congregate. 
 Whether in the drawing-room or at the dinner- 
 table, he is always the same grave, thoughtful- 
 mannered personage that he appears in the 
 House or on the hustings. Earnestness is not only 
 the keynote of the man, but seems to pervade his 
 whole life. The mere idea of Mr. Gladstone talking 
 " small-talk " is ludicrous. Yet it would be injus- 
 tice to him to leave so incomplete a picture of 
 his character in the reader's mind. He is far 
 from being cold-hearted or anchoritish. On the 
 contrary, the very intense warmth and largeness 
 of his heart glow in his eternal earnestness. He
 
 GLADSTONE. 33 
 
 loves the causes to which he devotes himself 
 the bettering of both the moral and the social 
 condition of the people, the greatness of the 
 church, the down-trodden Italian, the long-per- 
 secuted Bulgarian Christian, the memory of 
 Homer, the rendering of justice to the Irish 
 with an ardor which comes more from the large 
 heart than from the luminous intellect. Indeed, 
 Mr. Gladstone's struggle throughout his career 
 seems to have been to accommodate matters be- 
 tween his heart and his reason. His feeling and 
 training lead him to prefer patrician society ; his 
 enemies have ridiculed his alleged fondness for 
 the companionship of dukes. The refinement, 
 the grace, the scholarship, the elegant manners, 
 the social culture of the noble caste, undoubtedly 
 appeal strongly to his inbred tastes. For nobility 
 in the abstract, too, Mr. Gladstone has an historic 
 and deeply rooted respect. At moments when 
 his indignation at the obstructive course of the 
 peers has been at its hottest, he has scarcely 
 ever been betrayed into visiting them with the 
 lash of his sarcasm, of which he has a supply so 
 abundant for adversaries in the Commons ; and 
 there can be no doubt that his most congenial 
 personal associations are with the titled and an- 
 3
 
 34 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 ciently descended ranks of society. But the pro- 
 cess of profound reflection extending through 
 long years, and strongly affected by the progress 
 of events and an ever-widening sphere of obser- 
 vation, have led him, on the other hand, to an 
 intellectual sympathy with the masses of the 
 people; and instead of consorting in political 
 association exclusively with the heads of historic 
 families, and politicians by right of birth, he at 
 last finds his most intimate colleagues among 
 the statesmen and politicians who have risen 
 from the middle and common classes. The 
 friend of Peel and Herbert and Newcastle has 
 become the friend of Bright, Fawcett, and 
 Dilke. Similar has been his experience in his 
 religious relations. Of all men, he long stood as 
 the most ardent and zealous champion of the 
 Church of England ; and to this day there is no 
 more enthusiastic or devout churchman. Yet his 
 intellectual growth in gradual antagonism to his 
 feelings and impulses has been such that he, of 
 all men. became the chosen instrument to aim 
 the first indirect blow at the church establish- 
 ment through its Irish sister; and signs are not 
 wanting that his may become the hand to strike 
 the axe at the trunk of the English state church
 
 GLADSTONE. 35 
 
 itself. Thus his reason and his conscience seem 
 ever to be forcing him to chastise the objects of 
 his love ; to cut adrift from old beloved associa- 
 tions ; to part from congenial friendships, and to 
 form new ties which he has not much liked to 
 form, but which he has felt it right to form. 
 
 And herein is to be recognized the moral 
 greatness of the man. The struggle between his 
 reason and conscience on the one hand, and the 
 natural impulses of his heart on the other, is the 
 same internal struggle in which each individual of 
 mankind is for ever engaged. Mr. Gladstone's 
 self-triumphs have ever been conspicuously brave 
 and heroic. The tremendous motive of ambition, 
 naturally apt to be so strong in an ardent-souled 
 young man who begins public life with a bril- 
 liant success, has never swerved him from the often 
 rugged and dreary path of duty. Great as he is 
 as an orator, as a practical statesman, as an en- 
 thusiastic student, as an untiring worker, he is 
 certainly greatest in his moral aspect. No 
 statesman in recent English political history is 
 so conspicuous above all others for this trait. 
 We read that history, and we find Pitt and Fox, 
 Canning and Peel, Russell and Derby the 
 ablest and best of that illustrious roll engaged
 
 36 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 in bitter party struggles for personal supremacy. 
 Not one of them was entirely free from yielding 
 to the temptations, by yielding to which power 
 came within their grasp. Mr. Gladstone's rise 
 to power has been in spite of his moral supe- 
 riority to all personal temptation. Indeed, his 
 succession to the premiership was due, not to his 
 own persistent seeking for it, but to his tran- 
 scendent ability, and the confidence that all man- 
 kind had in the nobility of his aims. No man 
 ever took office with a more solemn conviction 
 that it was not a reward or delight, but a responsi- 
 bility, a trust, and a burden. So pure and lofty 
 a fame as his will surely be enduring ; and its 
 best lesson to future generations will be its 
 moral example.
 
 II. 
 
 BISMARCK. 
 
 r I ""HE rough and rugged majesty of Bismarck's 
 person and bearing is a fine external typi- 
 fication of his mental and moral calibre. He 
 belongs physically, as well as intellectually, to 
 the race of the world's giants. The Branden- 
 burgian breed of men is neither very tall nor, 
 among other Germans, mentally superior. But 
 the Bismarcks have been for centuries stalwart 
 personages, stern and strong of feature and char- 
 acter. They have long towered among their 
 Pomeranian countrymen ; the present Bismarck 
 has only carried upon a far vaster field the power 
 and influence locally wielded by his ancestors 
 for many generations. There is always a sense 
 of disappointment and, in some sort, of astonish- 
 ment, to find in a famous man of whom one has 
 long read or heard, a diminutive person, an in- 
 significant face. On the other hand, you are 
 gratified to observe such a man to be as marked 
 and superior to others in physical form and
 
 38 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 expression, as he is in the qualities that have 
 made him great. It is not pleasant to think of 
 poets like Pope and Scarron, warriors like Lux- 
 embourg, as pitiful and sickly humpbacks; it 
 adds something to our estimate of men like 
 Washington, Napoleon, Cromwell, Chatham, 
 and we may well add, Bismarck, to know that 
 their very personal appearance carried some- 
 thing exceptional and distinguished in it. 
 
 No one would pass Bismarck, even in a crowd- 
 ed assemblage of celebrities, or a court gathering 
 of statesmen, soldiers and nobles, without paus- 
 ing to look a second time. In stature he rises 
 quite to the lofty height of his imperial master, 
 and that master's equally tall heir apparent. His 
 herculean shoulders seem to have been framed 
 and knitted to bear the burdens of war and em- 
 pire. His haughty, erect bearing, the chest full 
 and solid beneath the tightly buttoned military 
 coat, the round head, with its shining bald knob, 
 thrown proudly back ; the firm, grim mouth, set 
 rigidly by the massive jaw; the heavy sweeping 
 mustache, not long since tawny, but now almost 
 snow-white; the large, round, glistening, cold, 
 gray eyes, always full open, and made more stern 
 by bushy, overhanging brows, indicate, as clearly
 
 BISMARCK. 39 
 
 as features ever did, noble birth, patrician in- 
 stincts, and self-conscious power. 
 
 It was in the great gala year of 1867, when 
 Napoleon III., then in the summit of his imperial 
 career, was entertaining the sovereigns and states- 
 men of Europe at the Exposition, that I first saw 
 Bismarck. He was then fifty-four years of age, 
 and he, too, seemed at that time to have reached 
 the full height of his renown. Interesting as it 
 was to see the stalwart old soldier who occupied 
 the throne of Prussia, the manly beauty of the 
 autocrat of the Russias, the grace and loveliness 
 of Eugenie, the secret, expressionless face of the 
 imperial host himself, it is doubtful whether 
 either of these potentates attracted the attention 
 which universally sought that great Pomeranian, 
 who already seemed a world-mover, and wore 
 the historic as well as the personal aspect of a 
 hero. The brilliant Bohemian victories of the 
 year before, every one knew, were of his doing 
 in their preparation and political plan. There 
 was no doubt that the vast project of an united 
 Germany had shaped itself quite definitely and 
 practically in his mind ; and that his resolute 
 soul the imperious and ambitious soul that he 
 had inherited from his mother was determined
 
 4<D CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 to bring the scheme to a not distant realization. 
 Not a few suspected that this very Paris, now so 
 gay and bedecked and joyous, which was feting 
 him as one of her choicest guests, was looked 
 upon by him with an eye not entirely single to 
 its beauty, and with thoughts not absolutely ab- 
 sorbed by admiration and gratitude. It was be- 
 lieved that of the two chief obstacles to German 
 unity under the chiefship of Prussia, only one 
 the opposition of Austria had been swept away ; 
 and that the next bold step of the Prussian pre- 
 mier would be to crush the hostility of France. 
 Yet here he was, the guest of the sovereign whom 
 it was doubtless in his mind sooner or later to 
 assail, and the recipient of the bounty of the 
 beautiful city which, three years later, he was des- 
 tined to enter as a conqueror. 
 
 Bismarck showed himself freely everywhere in 
 Paris. Each day he was to be seen riding to and 
 fro in the imperial carriages, sometimes with the 
 Prussian king or the emperor, sometimes quite 
 alone. He always appeared in that command- 
 ing military costume, with glittering peaked hel- 
 met and long blue cloak, which he seems to take 
 pride in wearing on all proper occasions. Be- 
 neath the helmet, the tawny hair, the long, sweep-
 
 BISMARCK. 41 
 
 ing, red-brown mustache, the stern eyes, the ruddy 
 blond complexion, the strange, grim expression 
 of the features, soon became familiar in the Paris 
 streets. Some one has remarked his peculiar re- 
 semblance to an English bull terrier; and cer- 
 tainly his face has the same look of irascibleness, 
 tenacity, and stubborn pluck which we recognize 
 in that animal's countenance. He bore himself 
 haughtily and silently amid the fantastic festivi- 
 ties of Paris. Rarely was it that a smile lighted 
 up the iron features ; seldom was he seen en- 
 gaged in conversation with his companions. 
 One could not help feeling, as he appeared sit- 
 ting bolt upright in the carriage, and now and 
 then looking down at the lively crowds with a 
 glance of apparent contempt, that Bismarck felt 
 uneasy at being there at all, and was half con- 
 scious that it was not quite the thing for him to 
 be guest of a people whom the rapid tide of 
 events was hastening to compel him to chas- 
 tise. That visit to Paris, indeed, was a rather 
 embarrassing interlude in that large political 
 drama which he had already set upon the stage 
 of Europe ; and it was probably with a sigh 
 of relief that he at last whirled away from Paris 
 and from France, and returned to the Friedrich- 
 strasse to prepare the next thrilling act.
 
 42 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 Bismarck, as has been said, is the scion of an 
 ancient and noble family. He was born and 
 reared amid the luxury of ancestral acres and 
 social rank. He was educated with all that re- 
 finement of painstaking which wealthy Germans 
 are apt to lavish upon their children. He was a 
 student at Gottingen, Griefswald, and Berlin. In 
 his youth, he was called by all his comrades and 
 neighbors, " mad Bismarck." Stalwart of frame, 
 robust in health, his animal spirits were leonine 
 in their roughness and exuberance ; he had ag- 
 gressive daring, was quick to give blow for blow, 
 drank, revelled, and rode hard, fought duels at 
 the university by the score, was now and then 
 plunged into the gloomiest fits of melancholy, 
 made love like a sentimental giant, and studied 
 when at all with an absorbing energy and 
 intentness that would have soon shattered a 
 weaker constitution. With all these qualities, 
 Bismarck was an aristocrat to the marrow of his 
 bones. His pride outstripped that of his ances- 
 tors. From youth up, he was a Junker of Junkers. 
 He inherited and improved upon the inheri- 
 tance intense loyalty to his lord the king and 
 to the Protestant faith, and a sublime contempt 
 of the common people, and what they absurdly
 
 BISMARCK. 43 
 
 called their " rights." It is important to remem- 
 ber the toryism of his breeding and his nature, 
 in order to interpret rightly the motives which 
 have inspired his policy, and to explain the oc- 
 casional apparent inconsistencies of his public 
 career. 
 
 It is almost trite to say that Bismarck is the 
 ablest statesman that any European country has 
 produced during the present century. The re- 
 sults of his public labors have been simply colos- 
 sal. He did not, of course, invent the project of 
 German unification ; it had been the dream of all 
 the Teutonic peoples for generations. It was 
 however, an enormous, seemingly a hopeless task. 
 Its realization needed a hand no less firm, a soul 
 no less courageous, a mind no less prompt and 
 fertile in resources, an energy no less exhaust- 
 less, than Bismarck proved to possess. At the 
 age of thirty he was a member of the Prussian 
 Diet, and was chiefly noted for the extreme vio- 
 lence of his absolutist opinions. Men thought 
 him " mad," as his college mates had done. He 
 cut a figure in the Diet rather grotesque than 
 otherwise. We first hear of him as violently op- 
 posing a plan of German unity; yet at that very 
 moment nothing was so near his heart as to see
 
 44 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 Germany one. It was because he saw that the 
 time was not ripe; that Austria was yet too 
 strong as a German influence ; that Prussia had 
 not grown to her full stature. Very probably 
 at that early period, Bismarck had formed a 
 unification plan of his own. But he was 
 always has been a Prussian before he was a 
 German. He was resolved that Germany should 
 only become united under the leadership and 
 sovereignty of the house of Hohenzollern. To 
 restore the Imperial diadem to the Catholic 
 Hapsburgs was the very last thing to which he 
 would consent. 
 
 When, a little later, we find him acting upon 
 the broader fields of diplomacy and the confed- 
 eration, reading his course then by what we know 
 of his subsequent policy, it is not difficult to see 
 that the purpose to unify Germany under Prus- 
 sian chiefship was already matured, and that 
 already he had begun, by sometimes apparently 
 reckless means, to put his mighty scheme into 
 operation. We need not follow him step by step 
 from his entrance upon the diplomatic stage at 
 Frankfort to his elevation to supreme power in 
 1862. During that period he was vigorously bat- 
 tling with the pretensions of Austria, observing
 
 BISMARCK. 45 
 
 narrowly the temper of the French emperor and 
 court, and gathering about him a group of ad- 
 herents and instruments who were to be of use to 
 him in the not distant future. Meanwhile, he had 
 won the confidence of the king, and impressed 
 the evidence of his genius upon the minds of the 
 German people. 
 
 Called, in 1862, to the presidency of the Prus- 
 sian cabinet, Bismarck for the first time found full 
 scope and elbow-room in which to pursue his 
 almost insuperable design. And now for the 
 first time he displayed those marked qualities and 
 characteristics, which have since become so fa- 
 miliar to men. Bluntly and brutally frank ; con- 
 temning the tortuous and mysterious methods of 
 diplomacy which had become traditional in 
 Europe ; imperious alike towards colleagues and 
 towards opponents ; plain, pithy, and strong in 
 speech; indefatigable in labor; assuming the 
 whole burden of administration ; defiant of op- 
 position ; rude, rough, and little scrupulous in 
 means; arbitrary and irascible of temperament; 
 iron-willed, riding rough-shod over everybody and 
 everything in his way, it is no wonder that dur- 
 ing the first year or two of his premiership, Bis- 
 marck was by all odds the best-hated man in
 
 46 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 Prussia. Diet after Diet was chosen to oppose 
 him, and only went to Berlin to vote down every 
 proposal he brought before them. But to this 
 Junker noble, the constitution that had been 
 granted was an evil, possibly a blunder. He was 
 apparently as indifferent to popular opposition 
 as to Austrian intrigues. He was sublimely con- 
 temptuous of the representatives of the people. 
 When, therefore, they voted down his schemes, 
 he simply resorted to methods as natural to a 
 man of his bringing-up and temperament as any- 
 thing in the world. He truculently told them he 
 could do without them, and sent them about their 
 business. He was bound to rule and to carry out 
 his great project, constitution or no constitution, 
 people or no people. Every Diet that opposed 
 him was incontinently packed off home. He 
 thus virtually had the whole field to himself; 
 with his large personality he occupied it, and held 
 it against all comers, even against the Prussian 
 people. Popular rights were nothing to him ; 
 what were they to this herculean despot, com- 
 pared with the realization of that glorious dream 
 of national unity which had long been dreamed 
 by the most illustrious German statesmen and 
 poets? Nor was German unity the only lofty
 
 BISMARCK. 47 
 
 prize at which he was grasping. To make Ger- 
 many supreme in Europe, as well as a unit in 
 herself, was the purpose of his daring ambition ; 
 to make William of Prussia a greater potentate 
 than Napoleon of France or Alexander of the 
 Russias, was the object he set before him ; and 
 every obstacle in the way of this, be it a Diet, a 
 people, or three or four foreign nations, he was 
 grimly resolved to crush. 
 
 See with what consummate adroitness and stern 
 courage he advanced to the consummation of 
 his purpose; on how vast a scale his design was 
 developed ; what a far and mighty reach his 
 mind, long foreseeing and toweringly ambitious, 
 took ! That design was scarcely less gigantic 
 than was that of Napoleon himself; and there 
 was this difference between Napoleon and Bis- 
 marck, that the latter succeeded. His idea was a 
 loftier one than mere personal glory and advance- 
 ment; loftier even than the aggrandizement of 
 a nation ; it was the unification of a race. The 
 first step was to avail himself of the opportunity, 
 afforded by the death of the King of Denmark, 
 to detach Schleswig and Holstein from the Scan- 
 dinavian kingdom. This Bismarck did with the 
 aid of Austria, meaning at that very time to filch
 
 48 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 from Austria every fruit of the joint victory. It 
 is needless to point out with what success this, 
 first move in the mighty game was played. 
 Then the time was ripe to depose Austria from 
 her predominance in the Germanic confederation, 
 and to put Prussia in her place. Not only the 
 political plan, but a considerable part of the mili- 
 tary plan of the memorably short, sharp, and 
 decisive campaign of 1866, was conceived in 
 Bismarck's brain; a fortnight's action, and a 
 single great battle, drove Austria from all federal 
 connection with her sister German states, and 
 so crippled her as to satisfy Bismarck that he 
 would not henceforth have her hostility to reckon 
 with. The mightiest and most uncertain strug- 
 gle was still to come. There is no doubt that, 
 from the moment Sadowa had been won, Bis- 
 marck and Von Moltke directed their thoughts 
 to the inevitable conflict with France. Napoleon, 
 indeed, had proclaimed aloud the doctrine of 
 nationalities. But the Prussian statesman well 
 knew that Napoleon would not, without resis- 
 tance, permit the application of that doctrine to 
 Germany. The smaller German dynasties 
 Hanover, Wurtemberg, Bavaria, Saxony, Nas- 
 sau lay prone at the feet of the Hohenzol-
 
 BISMARCK. 49 
 
 lerns ; but so long as a hostile nation frowned from 
 the banks of the Rhine, they might still hope to 
 be released from their new and galling bondage. 
 If the war of 1870 appeared to the superficial 
 looker-on as recklessly provoked and forced on 
 by France, it is one more testimony to the mas- 
 terly adroitness of Bismarck. He succeeded in 
 luring France into war at the moment when Ger- 
 many was prepared for the encounter, and France 
 was not ; and not only that, but in casting upon 
 France the onus and odium of being the first to 
 disturb the peace of the world. We now know 
 that the plan of the campaign of 1870 lay in Von 
 Moltke's pigeon-holes in 1866; and that at least 
 three years before it opened, Bismarck had pre- 
 dicted it almost to the very month, and had clearly 
 foreshadowed its political as well as its military 
 results. The candidature of a Hohenzollern to 
 the Spanish throne, the insult to Benedetti, were 
 dramatic situations prepared deliberately in the 
 Friedrichstrasse at Berlin. Bismarck knew only 
 too well Napoleon and the French. He had 
 served to good purpose as an ambassadorial 
 spy at the court of the Tuileries : he proba- 
 bly knew the inner tone and feeling of Napo- 
 leon's counsels, and the temper of the French 
 4
 
 5<D CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 people quite as well as Ollivier and Gramont. He 
 chose his time ; his plans were ripe. He counted 
 beforehand on what took place ; every move in 
 the game was foreordained. No statesman ever 
 achieved a more magnificent triumph than that 
 which Bismarck enjoyed when, on the i/th of Jan- 
 uary, 1871, he stood in the stately hall at Ver- 
 sailles, panoplied in his military gear, and listened 
 to the proffer by Bavaria, Saxony, and Wiirtem- 
 berg, of the imperial diadem to William of Prussia. 
 There were no longer formidable enemies to fear. 
 The two colossi who had barred the way were 
 prostrate in the dust. The German states had 
 become reconciled by the pitiless logic of force 
 to Prussian ascendency; and the stupendous 
 plot conceived at least nine years before had 
 been brought to at least material fruition. 
 
 It might be thought that such a result would 
 have sated the ambition of any public man. 
 Had Bismarck retired to the always-welcome 
 repose of Varzin, to his much-loved family, his 
 horses, dogs and fruitful fields, after returning 
 from France, and left to others the imminent task 
 of imperial reconstruction, he would have left a 
 renown more illustrious than that of any states- 
 man of the century. But his iron energies
 
 BISMARCK. 5 1 
 
 seemed to derive new strength from military suc- 
 cess. He bent himself to the drier duties of state- 
 craft with the same keen and tireless vigor which 
 had already accomplished so much. If he had 
 lesser obstacles to encounter, they were never- 
 theless perplexing and harassing. It is easier to 
 pull down than build up, as is testified by the fate 
 of the Ephesian dome. To compel the complete 
 reconciliation of dynasties stripped of pomp and 
 power, and of peoples jealous and distrustful of 
 Prussian rule, to carry out a plan which should 
 at once secure German unification and Prussian 
 predominance, to grapple with the intrusive 
 authority of the Pope and subordinate an hither- 
 to almost independent church to the control of 
 the state ; these were the labors immediately 
 before the chancellor, and pressing upon him. 
 But these were not all. There was that other 
 ambition, already partly fulfilled, but still not 
 permanently achieved ; the ambition to set Ger- 
 many above the nations, to make her the arbiter 
 of Europe, to institute her the guide, director, 
 and pioneer of the march of European events ; 
 to hold the deciding voice in the areopagus of 
 the world. Bismarck was as sternly bent on this, 
 it would seem, as upon German unity itself.
 
 52 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 The period which has elapsed since the treaty 
 of Versailles has developed in a clear light Bis- 
 marck's qualities as a statesman dealing with 
 home affairs, and as a party leader. He has, 
 indeed, been a party leader in but one sense. 
 He has never been the recognized and consist- 
 ent chief of either of the great parties which 
 divide German opinion ; he has only led those 
 combined sections of parties which have come 
 together from time to time to support his policy. 
 It has been said that Bismarck is a patrician by 
 birth, breeding, and conviction settled upon ex- 
 perience. The idea of making a free as well as 
 a united Germany seems rarely to have occurred 
 to him; and only on such occasions as it ad- 
 vanced some ulterior end he had in view, has 
 he appeared to lean to the liberal side. His 
 part has been to attain military and national 
 glory and power. When was Bismarck ever 
 known to become warm in the advocacy of 
 oppressed peoples; unless, indeed, to cham- 
 pion the cause of oppressed peoples was to reach 
 some end entirely apart from their liberation? 
 For the well-nigh obsolete Prussian constitution 
 he has never pretended to cherish any exalted 
 respect. He has not hesitated to violate it with
 
 BISMARCK. 53 
 
 cynical frankness and autocratic disdain when- 
 ever it served his purpose. His rule, indeed, 
 from first to last, has been that of an autocrat. 
 He has absorbed the royal power into his own. 
 The old emperor has never ventured to resist 
 him, not even when Bismarck, quite recently, 
 dictated the loosening of the close and affec- 
 tionate ties which, owing in a large degree to 
 the near relationship of the sovereigns, have 
 for years bound Germany with Russia. It is 
 well known that within the circle of the German 
 court Bismarck has enemies who would be for- 
 midable against any other man on earth. It 
 seems to matter little to him, however, that the 
 empress and the crown prince have long desired 
 to strip him of his authority. He apparently 
 rises from each assault of opposition, whether 
 from the palace or in the Reichstag, endowed 
 with a fresh and more obstinate strength. Patri- 
 cian and autocrat as he is to the marrow of his 
 bones, however, Bismarck has been forced some- 
 times into strange party alliances. Cynically 
 unscrupulous in his methods, he has espoused 
 causes in which he had no heart, and has joined 
 with men with whom he had no real sympathy, 
 in order to reach some far-seen goal, of which
 
 54 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 his whilom political bed-fellows had no glimpse. 
 When the aristocratic Junkers, narrower of vision 
 than himself, feared lest Germany should swallow 
 Prussia, instead of Prussia Germany, and so op- 
 posed his schemes, he made truce with the lib- 
 erals and led them from victory to victory. He 
 waged successful war on the Catholic hierarchy ; 
 he granted some minor reforms ; he accepted 
 colleagues like Falk, and even dallied with so- 
 cialists like Hasselmann. When, in the great 
 work of German unification, he found it unne- 
 cessary or impossible any longer to wear the 
 mask of reform, he stood not on the order of 
 his desertion of his liberal allies, but deserted 
 them abruptly, and sought and easily won the 
 support of the Junkers and the Catholics. 
 
 It is interesting to observe Bismarck as, in the 
 legislative palace at Berlin, he sits on the central 
 bench of the Reichstag, which is set apart for 
 the imperial ministers. He usually enters just 
 before the house is called to order, and with a 
 haughty nod here and there, sits plump down 
 into his chair, apparently unconscious of the mul- 
 titude of eyes that are fixed upon him. He begins 
 at once his work of signing papers, glancing 
 rapidly over despatches, and giving orders to
 
 BISMARCK. 55 
 
 the secretaries who stand by. Now and then 
 he throws a quick glance across the chamber; 
 then settles down again, folds his arms across 
 his breast, and seems to be carrying on a double 
 process of listening to what is said, and of mean- 
 while thinking hard. But if Herr Lasker or 
 Herr Haenel happens to be delivering an elo- 
 quent tirade against the government, you can 
 easily read upon the chancellor's grim face, and 
 in his nervous, petulant movements, the emotion 
 which is agitating him. He is not one of those 
 nerveless men who can listen with a stolid face 
 and contemptuously placid smile to the invec- 
 tives of his antagonists. Irritable, imperious, 
 yet thin-skinned and sensitive, Bismarck never 
 seems to care to conceal the annoyance or anger 
 so easily aroused in his breasL by opposition. 
 At such a time you will see him contract his 
 bushy brows, look rapidly around the chamber 
 as if to take stock of his enemies, and finally 
 rise to his feet amid a sudden hush and breath- 
 less attention. In a delivery broken, abrupt, 
 spasmodic, with a voice husky and apparently 
 always finding its breath with difficulty, ex- 
 cept at certain moments of high passion, when 
 it rings out strong, clear and defiant, with his
 
 56 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 big hands clutching the shining buttons of his 
 military tunic, or savagely twirling and twisting 
 a paper or a pencil, he proceeds to reply to the 
 attack. His round gray eyes flash brightly and 
 fiercely, his large frame sways to and fro, his 
 face grows red, his legs are sometimes crossed, 
 then suddenly drawn wide apart; and he goes 
 on in the simplest, clearest, frankest language, 
 to justify his acts and repel the assertions of his 
 antagonist. Every one is astonished at his frank- 
 ness; his blunt avowal of his motives; his un- 
 equivocal declarations of future policy; his 
 merciless handling, not only of his immediate 
 opponent, but of all his opponents, and of men 
 and courts outside of Germany. It is a part of 
 his adroitness to seem imprudently frank ; his 
 apparent imprudence and recklessness are, we 
 may be sure, calculated beforehand. But there 
 can be no doubt that his wrath is genuine; or 
 that the greatest difficulty he encounters in de- 
 bate is that of keeping in check his most unruly 
 temper. 
 
 When we follow Bismarck from the chancel- 
 lerie and the Reichstag, from the palace and the 
 council chamber, to his homes in the Friedrich- 
 strasse and at Varzin, he appears to us under
 
 BISMARCK. 57 
 
 many fresh and more pleasing aspects. For 
 this grim, iron-souled chief, whose courage, will, 
 determination, and despotic temper are so irre- 
 sistible on the public arena, is really one of 
 the most human of men. He is still, though 
 often oppressed by well-nigh insufferable neural- 
 gic pains, as fond of a frolic as a boy. He is 
 far happiest in his home, surrounded by a family 
 than which there never was a family more ten- 
 derly and chivalrously beloved. He has a great, 
 affectionate, generous heart ; his ardent devotion 
 to those who have won his love is in the mouths 
 of all Germany. His home, too, is a temple, in 
 which the household gods are many. In speak- 
 ing of his quiet, domestic, sweet-tempered wife, 
 he once said, " She it is who has made me what 
 I am." At one of the most brilliant periods of 
 his life he wrote to this congenial partner : " I 
 long for the moment when, established in our 
 winter quarters, we sit once more around the 
 cheerful tea-table, let the Neva be frozen as 
 thick as it will." These winter quarters were 
 the massive, three-story house, No. 76 Fried- 
 richstrasse, the chancellor's official residence. 
 A sentry's box at the front gate indicates its 
 public nature; within, liveried attendants mov-
 
 58 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 ing to and fro betray that this great man, simple 
 and robust as are his tastes, must still maintain 
 some show of state. The broad stairway is 
 adorned by two stone sphinxes, which seem to 
 symbolize Bismarck's policy, if not his character. 
 Beyond, are the larger apartments of the house, 
 the drawing and reception rooms ; while still 
 more remote, and only accessible to those espe- 
 cially honored by Bismarck's friendship, is the 
 large, plain, curiously furnished library, where 
 he at once performs the burden of his labors 
 and takes his chief comfort. The windows of 
 the library overlook an umbrageous park; the 
 room itself is garnished with suits of armor, box- 
 ing gloves, foils, swords, and other paraphernalia 
 of war and the " manly arts." Time was when 
 Bismarck used to sit there, drinking big draughts 
 of mixed porter and champagne, smoking a 
 bottomless student pipe, and working like a 
 giant, till far into the earlier hours of the morn- 
 ing. Latterly, tortured by neuralgia, he has given 
 up these midnight indulgences and labors, and 
 sits with his family in the common sitting-room. 
 
 It is not here in the Friedrichstrasse, however, 
 amid the bustle of the crowded city and swarms 
 of officials and satellites, that Bismarck takes his
 
 BISMARCK. 59 
 
 chief delight. It is only at Varzin, near by his 
 ancestral home, among . the scenes of his mad 
 and rollicking youth, that he most fully enjoys 
 the luxury of living. When away, he is con- 
 stantly longing for Varzin. He once said : " I 
 often dream that I see Varzin all the trees 
 that I know so well, and the blue sky; and I 
 fancy that I am enjoying it all." 
 
 Ample acres, and all the appurtenances of a 
 prosperous and well-kept landed estate surround 
 the spacious Pomeranian mansion of the chan- 
 cellor. The stables shelter many thoroughbreds, 
 the kennels are crowded with Bismarck's favor- 
 ite dogs. The conservatories teem with rare 
 fruits and flowers ; and in all these things the 
 master takes a keen and watchful interest. But 
 he is most often found at Varzin, as at Berlin, in 
 his study. This is a six-sided apartment, furnished 
 with rugged simplicity. An enormous chimney 
 and open fireplace fill in one of the corners ; on 
 either side of which rises a column bearing a coat- 
 of-arms on an emblazoned shield. Bismarck is 
 proud of his blood and his ancestry. After the 
 French war, he added to his coat-of-arms the 
 banners of Alsace and Lorraine, and chose as 
 his motto, " Trinitate Robur," "My strength
 
 6O CERTA1A T MEN OF MARK. 
 
 in trinity," - an old family device. "And," 
 suggested a friend, " it may also signify ' my 
 strength in the three-in-one God.' " " Quite 
 so," replied the prince, gravely. " That was 
 what I meant." A bust of the emperor sur- 
 mounts the chimney; while before it are placed 
 two stiff, high-backed chairs. The walls are 
 adorned, as Bismarck everywhere is fond of 
 adorning them, with many curiosities ; there are 
 Tunisian sabres and Japanese swords, Russian 
 hunting knives and braces of pistols, military 
 caps and quaint bits of armor. The furniture 
 of the room comprises sofas, divans, and the 
 chancellor's writing-desk covered with green 
 cloth, and having upon it a white porcelain 
 inkstand and a two armed student lamp ; on 
 a small table at one side is a large Bible, evi- 
 dently much used; everything is solid, plain 
 and substantial, like Bismarck himself. This 
 feature of simple comfort is discernible, indeed, 
 throughout the house. Nor is it without its 
 mysterious staircase. Such a one leads from 
 a corridor into unknown regions. " The castle 
 keep?" once asked a friend, pointing to the 
 door. "That is my sally-port," said Bismarck; 
 and he went on to explain that it led to a path
 
 BISMARCK. 6 1 
 
 in the woods, whither the great man was fain 
 incontinently to retreat when threatened by a 
 raid of unwelcome guests. 
 
 Many of Bismarck's most attractive personal 
 traits are hinted to us by his surroundings. 
 Once within the serene atmosphere of Varzin, 
 the stern chancellor becomes the devoted family 
 man, the enthusiastic sportsman, the frank and 
 talkative friend, and even the genial wit. Those 
 who have been privileged to hear his conversa- 
 tion, declare it to be replete with brilliant sallies, 
 humorous hits, and graphic descriptions. At 
 his ease he is one of the frankest, most genial, 
 most entertaining of men. Adamant as he 
 seems in public, he has been known to feel so 
 bitterly the stings of hostile sarcasm and criti- 
 cism as to give way to fits of weeping. When, 
 during the Austrian war, the German generals 
 desired to push on and invade Hungary, Bis- 
 marck strenuously opposed the project; but his 
 arguments were vain. Chagrined at his failure 
 to convince them, he suddenly left the room, 
 went into the next, threw himself upon the bed, 
 and wept and groaned aloud. "After a while," 
 he says, " there was silence in the other room, 
 and then the plan was abandoned." His tears 
 had conquered where his arguments had failed.
 
 62 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 His mode of life is peculiar. Being often 
 sleepless, his usual hour of rising is ten in the 
 morning. His breakfast is simple, consisting 
 generally of a cup of tea, two eggs, and a piece 
 of bread. At dinner he eats and drinks, like a 
 true Pomeranian, copiously and freely. His 
 princely appetite, indeed, is described as being 
 truly voracious. His table groans with a super- 
 abundance of rich and indigestible food, and 
 dizzy concoctions of champagne and porter, 
 sherry and tea. " The German people," said 
 he on one occasion, alluding to the many ham- 
 pers of his known favorite meats, fish, and fruits 
 sent him from all quarters, " are resolved to 
 have a fat chancellor." 
 
 Sometimes, like lesser folks, Bismarck has fits 
 of the blues and of brooding ; which can scarcely 
 be wondered at when we consider his self-indul- 
 gence at table. On these occasions he distresses 
 those around him by the most forlorn reflections. 
 Once he declared that he had made nobody 
 happy by his public acts neither himself, nor 
 his family, nor the country. " I have had," he 
 went on gloomily, " little or no pleasure out of 
 all I have done on the contrary, much annoy- 
 ance, care and trouble." In brighter moods
 
 BISMARCK. 63 
 
 he takes all this back, and revels, with almost 
 boyish exultation, in the splendor of his state 
 strokes, and the new face he has put upon the 
 world's events. 
 
 "Where is my dog?" was Bismarck's first 
 exclamation when, on a recent visit to Vienna, 
 he alighted from the railway train. Never did 
 a man cherish a fonder affection for the brute 
 creation than this king-maker and world-mover. 
 He watched by the side of his dying " Sultan " as 
 he might have done over a favorite child, and 
 begged to be left alone with him in the final 
 hour. When the faithful old friend gasped his 
 last breath, Bismarck, with tears in his eyes, 
 turned to his son and said : " Our German fore- 
 fathers had a kind belief that, after death, they 
 would meet again, in the celestial hunting- 
 grounds, all the good dogs that had been their 
 faithful companions in life. I wish I could be- 
 lieve that ! " For children Bismarck has an 
 ardent fondness. His bright little grand-chil- 
 dren are the very joy of his old age. On every 
 occasion, he seems to take delight in humoring 
 and pleasing the young. Curiously commingled 
 in his large nature are sentiment and satire, kind- 
 liness and humor. One day he was taking a
 
 64 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 walk with his wife at the famous watering-place 
 of Kissingen. As they were about to turn down 
 a side path, the chancellor saw just beyond a 
 rustic family, evidently anxious to catch a good 
 glimpse of him. The youngest daughter, a girl 
 of ten, started forward, and with an expression 
 half-timid, half-bold, approached, staring at him. 
 Bismarck at once turned aside and sat down on 
 a rustic bench by the road, until the girl had 
 passed ; when rising, he bowed his most stately 
 bow to her, said gravely, " Good morning, miss," 
 and proceeded down the secluded path. 
 
 There can be no doubt of Bismarck's sturdy 
 personal courage. One striking incident in his 
 career has proved that to all time. One day in 
 1866, as he was returning home from the palace 
 through the Under den Linden, he was shot from 
 behind by an assassin. He turned short, seized 
 the miscreant, and though feeling himself 
 wounded, held the man with iron grasp until 
 some soldiers came up. He then walked rapidly 
 home, sat down with his family and ate a hearty 
 dinner. After the meal was over, he walked up 
 to his wife and said, " You see, I am quite well ; " 
 adding, "you must not be anxious, my child. 
 Somebody has fired at me; but it is nothing, as
 
 BISMARCK. 65 
 
 you see." It was the first intimation she had had 
 of the attempted tragedy. 
 
 These necessarily rapid glances at Bismarck's 
 career and character may fitly be brought to a 
 close by referring to the depth and sincerity of 
 his religious faith and feelings. In an age when 
 scepticism and atheism are especially rampant 
 among his countrymen, Bismarck adheres stout- 
 ly to the sturdy creed of his fathers. " I do 
 not understand," he once wrote to his wife, 
 " how a man who thinks about himself, and yet 
 knows and wishes to know nothing of God, can 
 support his existence, out of very weariness and 
 disgust. I do not know how I bore it formerly. 
 If I were now to live without God as then, I 
 would not know in very truth why I should not 
 put away life like a soiled robe." 
 
 This simple fervor of humble and deep-rooted 
 faith seems to me to shed greater lustre on his 
 full, troubled, but triumphant life, than the con- 
 quest of Austrian or Frank, the rebuilding of a 
 fallen empire, the sway of a power which bends 
 all Europe to its will, or even that lofty mastery 
 over event and circumstance which must record 
 his name the highest on the illustrious roll of 
 the statesmen of our century. 
 5
 
 III. 
 
 GAMBETTA. 
 
 TMAGINE a figure of medium height, but 
 ungainly, awkward, heavy, somewhat obese, 
 and loose-jointed ; the limbs short, large, and 
 far from firmly knit; the head joined to rounded 
 shoulders by a short thick neck suggestive of a 
 tendency to apoplexy; the shoulders not only 
 rounded, but high and heavy; the head larger 
 below than above, broad near the neck and at 
 the jaws, narrow and rather flat at the top ; 
 wanting in veneration, as the phrenologists 
 would tell us, but great in passion, in comba- 
 tiveness, and in language ; a fine, well-set fore- 
 head, however, wide just above the eyes, and 
 slightly sloping to the hair; a still finer intel- 
 lectual brow, the best feature but one of the 
 countenance that one being an exceeding- 
 ly well-cut, expressive, handsome, full-lipped 
 mouth, but half concealed beneath mustache and 
 beard ; one eye apparently permanently closed, 
 the other small, black, at times piercing and
 
 G AM B ETTA. 6/ 
 
 wide-open, but usually half-closed, like the 
 eye of a near-sighted man who brings his 
 lids together the better to discern some object, 
 or like a shrewd person who would let you 
 know, by " the expression of his eye," that 
 he knows more than he tells ; a large, thick, 
 unsensitive nose, bold and Jewish, with small 
 nostrils ; the attractive mouth shaded by a 
 heavy, jet black mustache, which joins on 
 either side a beard also mostly jet black, with 
 a slight tinge of gray; the hair fine, straight, 
 once black, but nearly gray now just where 
 it is smoothly brushed back from the temples 
 over the large ears, and falling in a curve be- 
 hind over the neck: the complexion of an un- 
 healthy, bilious hue of pale yellow; the face 
 indolent in general expression, giving scarcely 
 the slightest hint of unusual ability of any sort, 
 and the movement slouchy and careless, non- 
 chalant and often heavy, as if the man were 
 weary of carrying his superabundance of flesh. 
 This man, too, is evidently uneasy at being 
 well-dressed. He is manifestly uncomfortable in 
 the broadcloth and white necktie which the eti- 
 quette of his high office has forced upon him. 
 The broadcloth does not fit, the white necktie
 
 68 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 is clumsily tied, and is usually awry. He cannot 
 help an old Bohemian habit of his, of hanging 
 his fat hands lazily in his trousers' pockets, 
 whither they are always wandering, even when 
 the moment requires an attitude of dignity. 
 Observe him as he saunters through the fres- 
 coed corridors of Versailles, talking, perhaps, 
 with half a dozen of his colleagues as he goes. 
 He says little ; the others talk and he nods, and 
 now and then utters, in a deep, sonorous voice, 
 a sentence to which the others pay respectful 
 heed. His hands are hanging in his pockets ; 
 the little white flower in his button-hole is crum- 
 pled ; he almost seems out of place among these 
 elegantly attired, trim-whiskered, elegant-man- 
 nered men, the legislators of France. Yet there 
 is no duke or statesman among them to whom, 
 as he passes among the ever-increasing group of 
 deputies, so much deference is paid as to this 
 rather uncouth and not at first sight at all pre- 
 possessing personage. 
 
 He enters the old Versailles theatre, on whose 
 boards Moliere once jibed and gambolled, and 
 where the magnificent monarch used to lounge 
 amid his gorgeous court; now the hall of the 
 deputies of republican France. He passes
 
 GAMBETTA. 69 
 
 slowly among the benches of the Left. There 
 he is at once surrounded by a large, admiring 
 group. The talk is of the important events or 
 measures of the day. This man is the centre of 
 attraction, the unquestioned oracle of the group. 
 And now he rouses himself. He is no longer 
 the listless fat man of the corridor. His voice 
 rolls out loud, full, deep, in tones as warm and 
 as musical as ever man heard. He gesticulates 
 every gesture is force, vigor, eloquence. He 
 talks with a warm inspiration, in an authorita- 
 tive manner, quite conscious of his mastery over 
 his companions, and utters ideas which none 
 dispute, or more than demur at. 
 
 There was a time a year or two ago 
 when he would have taken a seat in the midst of 
 the deputies of the Left; and would have sat, 
 when the president rang his bell to call the 
 Chamber to order, in a slouching attitude, now 
 and then turning right or left to say something 
 to a neighbor, and listening intently to what 
 went forward. Then, when a scene of excite- 
 ment occurred as it often did and does in that 
 Chamber when deputies were drowning the 
 voice of the speaker in the tribune, and shaking 
 their fists in each other's faces, and hurrying
 
 70 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 down to confront each other with hostile gesture 
 and menace of tongue and attitude in the open 
 space below the benches on such an occasion 
 you might have seen him rise, raise his arm, ex- 
 tend his hand, and by the powerful persuasion 
 of his voice and manner quell the tumultuous 
 mood of his hot-headed followers. Then, too, 
 amid a stillness as deep as that of a mountain 
 solitude, you might have seen him at a certain 
 moment leap from his seat, thrust back his 
 straggling locks, and with long stride and head 
 aloft advance to and ascend the tribune ; whence 
 would thereupon flow the richest and most re- 
 sistless eloquence that a French assemblage has 
 heard, since, in the same Versailles, Gabriel Ri- 
 quetti de Mirabeau shook throne and caste with 
 the sudden thunder of his wordy onslaught. 
 
 But now the personage we have described 
 ascends, not the tribune, but the presidential 
 platform, and promptly at the designated hour 
 rings his bell and summons deliberation out of 
 the babel of voices. The dignity in which he 
 seemed so lacking a little while ago, now sits as 
 easily upon him as did his indolence; while the 
 strong grasp with which he once held his parti- 
 sans, now holds the entire assembly. He is their
 
 G A MB ETTA. J\ 
 
 master, and readily and vigorously maintains 
 his mastery. An intense and impetuous parti- 
 san, he shows himself capable of a Roman im- 
 partiality. The sharp stroke of reprimand, the 
 quick check of parliamentary order, fall upon 
 republican and monarchist alike. The power 
 of the chair is sustained intact. His presence of 
 mind is never once suspended. The despatch of 
 business under his rule is marvellously rapid. 
 He holds the reins of this turbulent, excitable, 
 sometimes riotous body, with the hand and 
 nerve of a Titan ; every deputy feels the bit jerk 
 in his mouth at the slightest rebellion. Every 
 man feels that there resides in the chair a 
 power within a power; the power of individual 
 strength and command supplementing the power 
 endowed by the rules, by the representation of 
 law, and typified by the mace. A more un- 
 promising presiding officer than this man would 
 have seemed to be a year ago, could not be 
 conceived. An awkward, heavy person, a man 
 easily aroused to white-hot passion, who often 
 broke through all self-restraint and violated 
 every rule he is now called on to enforce, whose 
 whole being seemed wrapped in the design to 
 crush out one of the great parties in the nation,
 
 72 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 one who could not be supposed, considering his 
 unstudious and careless habits, to have deeply 
 conned parliamentary procedure, seemed to be 
 the last person capable of filling well the fauteuil 
 of M. GreVy and M. Buffet. Yet he has proved 
 a far more able president than either. 
 
 Sometimes men leap from obscurity to fame 
 in a day. One of this rare sort is Leon Gam- 
 betta. It would, perhaps, be too much to say 
 that his sudden rise was the result of accident ; 
 for had he not been a man of genius, the op- 
 portunity would have been offered him in vain. 
 But the opportunity to show men what there 
 was in him was accidental. On a certain day in 
 1868, Jules Favre, the renowned advocate, states- 
 man, and academician, had a great cause to 
 plead ; a cause, however, more political than 
 legal. But that day he was ill ; some one must 
 take his place ; and, at a somewhat rash venture, 
 he chose as his substitute an almost absolutely 
 unknown, out-at-elbows, loud-talking Bohemian 
 cafe-orator. M. Favre knew Gambetta but little ; 
 and mainly knew him as an ardent and out- 
 spoken republican. The mere issue of the 
 trial, which was that of certain editors for open- 
 ing their columns to the Baudin subscription,
 
 GAME ETTA. 73 
 
 was nothing. At a time when, under the em- 
 pire, free speech was forbidden the republicans 
 on the platform, such trials were seized upon by 
 republican orators as the occasions of fierce 
 attacks upon the Napoleonic regime. What was 
 needed, then, was a bold, eloquent, devil-me- 
 care, red-hot republican, who would stand up 
 and lash the empire without mercy, before a 
 bench of imperial judges. 
 
 Gambetta electrified all France by his speech. 
 It was a tremendous indictment against Napole- 
 onism. Never did an orator produce a more 
 immediate or more overwhelming effect. When 
 Gambetta lay down that night his name was ring- 
 ing in every club and on every boulevard in Paris. 
 
 The broad road of political fortune lay open 
 before him. The next day he was a recognized 
 leader among the republicans. His audience 
 had long been the seedy loungers of the Cafe 
 Procope. It now included all France, and there 
 were many listeners outside of France. Yester- 
 day an impecunious Bohemian, living in a garret, 
 shabby of dress, and often short in the matter of 
 food; to-day a deputy-elect of the city of Mar- 
 seilles (as the successor of Berryer), taking 
 counsel with and listened to by the " silver-
 
 74 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK, 
 
 grays " of the republican party ; very soon the 
 man in the Chamber who, of all others, was 
 most dreaded and hated by Rouher and his in- 
 tolerant imperialist majority. For now Gam- 
 betta talked as no other man talked. He spoke 
 more boldly, what was worse, far more elo- 
 quently, than the boldest and most eloquent 
 sages of the days of '48. 
 
 Nowhere is the curiosity about the antece- 
 dents of a man who has become notorious 
 strained to a higher pitch than in gossiping Paris. 
 People began to ask who this oratorical ath- 
 lete was, and whence he came ; and on inquiry 
 learned that he was the son of an Italian grocer 
 at Cahors, in midland France, " of poor but re- 
 spectable parents," descended from grocers on 
 one side, and chemists on the other; of warm 
 Genoese blood ; destined, at first, to be a priest, 
 as were Renan, Victor Hugo, and Rochefort be- 
 fore him ; expelled, however, from the priest- 
 making seminary to which he had been sent, 
 with the message to his father from the superior, 
 " You will never make a priest of him, he has an 
 utterly undisciplinable character; " resolved now 
 to be a lawyer and a politician. It was told how 
 that, one day, he was playing in a carpenter's
 
 G A MB ETTA. 75 
 
 shop, when one of his companions, in sport, 
 made a lunge at him with a pointed stick, which 
 thrust the right eye out of its socket; and so 
 his disfigurement, apparent to all men, was ex- 
 plained to the world. 
 
 Gambetta, as a republican chief in the omi- 
 nous days of 1868-70, carried with him into the 
 arena all his old audacity, big-voiced loudness, 
 Bohemian indifference to dress and manners, 
 and absolute ignorance of what fear is. As he 
 appeared in those days in the Chamber, accord- 
 ing to one who then saw him, " He disdained all 
 the classic attitudes of rhetoric, flung his arms 
 about him, banged his fist down upon the first 
 thing that came uppermost, book, hat, or 
 desk, rang his voice through the wildest 
 changes from the roar to the falsetto, and would 
 have seemed to a deaf man the maddest contor- 
 tionist at large. But if you listened to him, you 
 were not likely to forget it. His oratory had all 
 the defiance, energy, and fire of youth in it. 
 He never hesitated for a word, spoke headlong, 
 every one of his phrases being colored with that 
 picturesque imagery of the south, always vivid, 
 always new, and soaring at times to surprising 
 heights in beauty of sentiment."
 
 76 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 It was when thus roused to a great and noble 
 oratorical effort, in the face of an irresistible and 
 submissive imperialist majority, and defiant of 
 the prevailing influences around him, that the 
 writer first saw the future dictator, on the floor 
 of the Chamber in the Palais Bourbon. The 
 contrast between his heavy, uncouth figure, his 
 slouching manner, his shabby dress, his rather 
 repelling tout ensemble, and the appearance and 
 bearing of the group of republican deputies 
 around him, was the first impression conveyed 
 to the mind. There were the venerable and 
 pfim-looking Garnier-Pages ; the leonine Jules 
 Favre, his thick locks feathering high above his 
 forehead ; the portly Jules Simon, as stately and 
 sedate as a count of the old regime ; and Eu- 
 gene Pelletan, with dark flashing eye, and deli- 
 cate refinement of feature, the beau ideal of a 
 cultured Frenchman of letters. How little they 
 seemed to have in common with this big, loud, 
 burly, rough, ill-dressed fellow, who appeared as 
 an intruder among them ! Yet, in another five 
 minutes, when his deep, full voice rang out, or 
 sank to sweetest and gentlest accents ; when he 
 held a hostile chamber absolutely spell-bound 
 and silent with the matchless magic of his elo-
 
 G A MB ETTA. 77 
 
 quence ; how he was transfigured, how you for- 
 got the shabby coat, the Bohemian slouch, 
 how noiv he towered above every one of the 
 historic figures around him ! 
 
 He became, indeed, terrible to the empire. 
 He boldly told Ollivier, the " reform " premier, 
 from the tribune, that the "irreconcilables " only 
 accepted Ollivier's concessions as " a bridge to 
 the republic." As events drew near to the 
 supreme catastrophe after Sedan, Gambetta 
 foresaw what was coming, and felt that his op- 
 portunity for dealing a fell blow at Napoleonism 
 was near. But now he was walking amid myste- 
 rious dangers. Shortly after the first defeats of 
 the French in 1870, and after Paris had been 
 put in a state of siege, an attempt was made by 
 the Palikao ministry to kidnap the popular trib- 
 une. " All my footsteps are dogged," said Gam- 
 betta to a friend ; " and my poor aunt advises 
 me to carry a revolver. But that would do no 
 good." Before he could be got rid of, however, 
 Sedan was fought and lost. Gambetta saw that 
 the time for action had come. The Chamber, 
 next day, was crowded. No sooner had it been 
 called to order than Jules Favre rose and moved 
 the deposition of the Napoleon dynasty. The
 
 78 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 motion was^ passed with but feeble opposition. 
 Then Gambetta rose with one hand grasping the 
 lapel of his coat, the other raised high above his 
 head, and in a stentorian voice that, it is said, 
 was clearly heard by the crowd in the courtyard 
 outside, moved that the republic be declared 
 established. Again the assembly yielded assent 
 to the demand of the republican chiefs. The 
 next thing was to form a provisional govern- 
 ment ; nor from this could Gambetta be left out. 
 Its three principal members were Gambetta, 
 Jules Favre, and General Trochu. It had not 
 been in existence a fortnight before Gambetta 
 was confessedly its ruling spirit; a month had 
 not elapsed before he was the provisional gov- 
 ernment, its other members being virtually his 
 clerks and messengers. 
 
 At thirty-two years of age, then, the son of 
 the grocer of Cahors was the absolute dictator 
 of France. It is often asked what opportunity 
 Shakspeare could have had to acquire the 
 legal and medical knowledge displayed in his 
 dramas. It is no less a puzzle, perhaps, where 
 and when Leon Gambetta learned the arts of 
 government and war. His wonderful mastery 
 of men, his tremendous will, his genius for per-
 
 GAME ETTA. 79 
 
 suasion, the ceaseless activity of his brain, the 
 immense vigor of his action, the rapidity of his 
 perceptions, were perhaps innate ; but where 
 did he pick up the vast knowledge of detail in 
 two of the most difficult of human sciences, 
 which he displayed during that troublous and 
 terrible time when he held, undisputed, the 
 reins of absolute power? Yet see what he did 
 in that gloomy period. He himself organized 
 the only army the army of the Loire which 
 even temporarily checked the flood of German 
 invasion; the only army which won a victory. 
 The chaos in the civil administration of France, 
 brought about by the collapse of the empire 
 and the unparalleled disasters which had fallen 
 on the country, Gambetta transformed into order. 
 Riot and insurrection in the hot-beds of fanati- 
 cism were repressed by his strong hand. He 
 raised money to equip troops, and send them to 
 the front. He created generals, prefects, mayors. 
 He presided over the councils of the central au- 
 thority, and himself carried into prompt effect 
 the decisions of those councils. The wonder is, 
 as we read of the immense amount of work he 
 went through from day to day, when he could 
 have eaten or slept. Practically and actually he
 
 8O CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 was at once the chief magistrate and the com- 
 mander-in-chief. If he failed to rehabilitate 
 France, to expel the German hordes from her 
 soil, to protect Paris from the desecrating pres- 
 ence of the foe, it was because no amount of 
 genius could have achieved these results. But 
 he proved himself a statesman of the very first 
 order. His talent for organization was shown to 
 be as marvellous as the power of his eloquence 
 and the strength of his individuality. 
 
 Nor is there evidence wanting of Gambetta's 
 fervent patriotism. What an opportunity this 
 warm-blooded, ambitious young man of thirty- 
 two had to imitate the role of a Napoleon ! All 
 the powers of the state in his hands ; the generals 
 and the prefects men of his own choice; the 
 country, rent by its misfortunes, seeming to need 
 a master spirit; his colleagues submissive to his 
 Titanic will ; opposition disarmed and powerless. 
 He had not even the perils of an Eighteenth 
 Brumaire or a Second of December to fear. 
 To seize upon supreme power, and to use it 
 to make his dictatorship not only supreme, 
 but permanent, was apparently easy. Yet no 
 thought of such treachery seems to have entered 
 his head. Just as soon as he could he appealed
 
 GAME ETTA. 8 1 
 
 to France to elect an Assembly to make peace 
 with the Germans. He knew well that this As- 
 sembly would take to itself the vast executive 
 powers he now wielded. He knew that the 
 representatives of France must be, for a time, 
 its supreme governors. He himself must step 
 down from the exalted height to which circum- 
 stances and his own genius had raised him. But 
 he did not delay a day in summoning this power, 
 that must supersede his own, into existence ; and 
 when the National Assembly met at Bordeaux, 
 he laid his authority at its feet as quietly and 
 submissively as if no passion of ambition had 
 ever stirred his breast. 
 
 His almost superhuman toil during those 
 stormy months had impaired a constitution 
 never very robust ; and now the reaction came. 
 Throughout the negotiations for peace, the for- 
 mation of the government of the " National De- 
 fence," the rise and bloody suppression of the 
 commune, Gambetta lived in enforced retire- 
 ment. His spirit was amid those exciting scenes, 
 but his state of health warned him to keep aloof 
 from them. It was not until the administration 
 of Thiers had succeeded alike in making peace 
 with the victorious Germans, and in establishing 
 6
 
 82 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 itself as the executive authority in France, that 
 the ex-dictator again reappeared upon the scene. 
 His entrance as a deputy into the Assembly was 
 so quiet that it might be said to have been al- 
 most unnoticed. Indeed, at that moment he was 
 unpopular. The rashness and unavailing bold- 
 ness of his defence of the territory were sharply 
 criticised on almost every hand. Thiers, in a 
 moment of vehement passion, called him " a 
 furious fool." It was wise in him, then, to re- 
 enter the public arena by a side door, and to 
 shelter himself in the shadow of a corner. 
 
 The genius of Gambetta soon surmounted the 
 ephemeral obloquy under which he rested. Al- 
 ready he had won the renown of being the very 
 first among living French orators ; and this was 
 saying much, at a time when Thiers, Victor Hugo, 
 Jules Favre, and Louis Blanc were yet alive. 
 He had also proved himself a great organizer 
 and administrator, despite his inevitable failure. 
 But hitherto he had exhibited only tremendous 
 energy, headlong rashness, extreme opinion, and 
 a hot and impetuously partisan method of urging 
 it. His head was strong, but had not been 
 thought " level." As a politician and party 
 leader he was as yet untried. His eloquence
 
 GAME ETTA. 83 
 
 was sure to be a power ; his magnetic influence 
 over men would inevitably make him a consider- 
 able personage in the Assembly. But had he 
 tact, judgment, resource, in party warfare ? When 
 he reappeared at Versailles there was not prob- 
 ably a man in France who did not regard him 
 as a radical of radicals ; an irreconcilable, per- 
 haps a socialist, possibly a friend of the com- 
 mune. Thiers counted on his violent hostility; 
 and the old statesman, for once not shrewd, con- 
 temned his opposition. 
 
 It is not too much to say that within three 
 years after Gambetta, bearing such a character 
 as has been described, had taken his seat in the 
 Assembly, he had proved himself the ablest and 
 most consummate party chief in the France of 
 this century. So far from turning out to be a 
 "furious fool," incapable of self-control, imprac- 
 ticable, revolutionary, hot-headed, and vindictive, 
 Gambetta and Gambetta alone gathered the 
 discordant factions of the republican party into 
 a compact and harmonious body, reconciled their 
 differences, patched up their personal quarrels, 
 soothed their contending ambitions, made them 
 a united army crusading for a great and practi- 
 cable cause, and himself led them to one of the
 
 84 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 most memorable political victories ever won. 
 He was a wonderful magician in his use of party 
 tactics. He restrained or let loose the ardor of 
 his followers at will, each at the moment when 
 restraint or when display would be most effective 
 for the end in view. His resources in the fencing 
 and manoeuvring of the parliamentary struggle 
 were simply inexhaustible. His temper, self-re- 
 straint, presence of mind, rapidity of decision, 
 tact, and ingenuity ; his masterly management of 
 the monarchial opposition ; the faith in his hon- 
 esty, his aims, and his methods, with which he 
 inspired not only the republican rank and file, 
 but stubborn minds like those of Thiers, Re- 
 musat, and Dufaure ; his ceaseless activity, his 
 absorbing pursuit of the great end in view the 
 secure establishment of the republic betrayed 
 that his genius for party leadership was not less 
 conspicuous than his genius for eloquence and 
 for vigorous administration. 
 
 The republic, indeed, as it is to-day, owes its 
 very existence more to Gambetta than to any 
 other one man. Step by step he won advan- 
 tages in the Assembly over a bitter monarchical 
 majority. He made the utmost of the dissen- 
 sions of the monarchists among themselves ;
 
 GAMBETTA. 85 
 
 forced them to proclaim the republic because 
 nothing else could be agreed upon ; compelled 
 them to actually elect a majority of republican 
 life senators among the seventy-five to be chosen 
 by the Assembly. Temporarily discomfited by 
 the resignation of Thiers and the election of the 
 monarchist MacMahon to the Presidency, Gam- 
 betta carried on his party warfare with so much 
 vigor and wisdom that he rendered MacMahon 
 helpless, and developed the fact that France had 
 become republican to the core of its heart. 
 
 When, early in 1879, MacMahon found him- 
 self at last compelled to resign, Gambetta, had 
 he chosen, might have secured the Presidency as 
 the Marshal's successor. But, with that keen 
 and wise foresight for which he is remarkable, 
 he saw that the time was not yet ripe ; and, 
 with the same patriotic self-abnegation with 
 which, in 1871, he had laid absolute power at 
 the feet of the Assembly, he now turned away 
 from the glittering prize which might easily have 
 been his. He accepted, instead (to the surprise 
 of most men), the chair of the Chamber of 
 Deputies. It has almost seemed as if Gambetta, 
 throughout his romantic public career, had de- 
 sired to show the world how wide is the versatility
 
 86 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 of his talents ; to prove himself brilliantly capa- 
 ble in many capacities. As has already been 
 said, his conduct as the presiding officer of the 
 most turbulent assemblage in the world has been, 
 by universal confession, conspicuously able. He 
 has sustained the dignity as well as enforced the 
 power of the chair. He has compelled respect* 
 from his bitterest and most violent enemies ; 
 and he has guided business and debate in such 
 a manner as to secure every deputy his right, 
 and every interest of the nation its hearing. 
 
 Gambetta has proved himself to be, in his 
 later career, anything but an impracticable radi- 
 cal. This is shown, if by nothing else, by the 
 fact that he succeeded in winning the confidence 
 of Thiers, while he has shaken that of the ex- 
 tremists, Victor Hugo and Louis Blanc. The thor- 
 oughly practical character, not only of his party 
 leadership, but of his statesmanship, has been 
 amply demonstrated over and over again during 
 the past seven difficult years. He has supported 
 moderate men and measures, and adopted 
 moderate methods. He is, as he always has 
 been from early youth up, a republican to the 
 heart's core. He waged uncompromising war- 
 fare, first upon the second empire, then upon
 
 GAMBETTA. 87 
 
 the Bonapartism, Legitimism, and Orleanism of 
 the Assembly. He has devoted herculean 
 labors to the establishment of the republic. 
 There can be no sort of doubt of his sincerity 
 and ardor in its cause. But to class him as a 
 socialist or a communist, to suspect him of 
 rash schemes, of visionary projects, to imagine 
 that he would introduce into the republic the 
 maxims of Proudhon or the ideas of Marat, is 
 to utterly misread his career. There is every 
 reason to suppose that Gambetta sees in the 
 conservative democracy of the United States 
 his ideal of a free government. He would have 
 the central power strong enough to preserve 
 order and to dispense equal justice to all. While 
 no French statesman is more emphatic in his 
 denunciations of a political and educating church, 
 Gambetta is far from seeking to inspire a crusade 
 against religion. He would place every church 
 on an equal footing, and equally exclude every 
 church from the domain of politics. He would 
 have the public education of France purely sec- 
 ular. In these opinions he is at one with many 
 leading and by no means revolutionary English 
 liberals, and agrees with Americans of a conser- 
 vative type. At first suspected of a secret sym-
 
 88 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 pathy with the commune, Gambetta soon purged 
 himself of that suspicion. He upheld Thiers in 
 his measures against the insurrection, and even 
 in the numerous executions on the field of Satory. 
 Later he has opposed that complete amnesty for 
 which eloquent radicals like Louis Blanc have 
 clamored. He supported the cabinet of the ex- 
 Orleanist Dufaure, and still more heartily has 
 sustained that of the more liberal Waddington. 
 Indeed, Gambetta has for several years held the 
 fate of ministries in the palm of his hand. By a 
 signal of his finger he might at any moment have 
 overthrown Dufaure ; Waddington or de Frey- 
 cinet could not have remained Premier a day but 
 for the sufferance of the great republican chief. 
 Ambition might have prompted Gambetta more 
 than once to act the part of a cabinet-maker; 
 but his devotion to the republic, and his keen 
 perception of the necessity of compromise, of 
 the utility of stooping to conquer, has always 
 held his personal aspirations in effectual check. 
 
 In personal characteristics, Gambetta is in 
 many respects as simple and democratic as he 
 was in the old impecunious days, when he in- 
 habited the Paris Bohemia, and vainly awaited 
 briefs. At that time, however, the out-at-elbows
 
 GAME ETTA. 89 
 
 student and lawyer was, we fear, a roisterer and 
 reveller. The stories of his escapades and dissi- 
 pation, of the orgies of which he was the stormy 
 spirit, and the lawlessness of the offending of 
 which he was the head and front, still float about 
 the clubs and cafes. He was rather idle, reck- 
 less, fond of noisy pleasures, lavish when he had 
 that with which to lavish, and apparently fast 
 travelling a down-hill road. In these respects, 
 at least, he was made a new man by his sudden 
 leap into fame. Politics often have a reforming 
 influence upon dissipated young men of brains. 
 It is said that the Marquis of Hartington, re- 
 cently the leader of the English Liberal party, and 
 one of the soundest and most respected of Eng- 
 lish statesmen, was weaned from headlong dissi- 
 pation by the firing of his soul with political 
 ambition. His father compelled him to go into 
 the House of Commons ; and the prizes which 
 there glittered before his eyes sobered him for 
 life. In like manner Gambetta seems to have 
 been sobered and purified by finding that, by an 
 hour's speech, he had awakened the admiration 
 and homage of France. He was then thirty 
 years of age ; young enough to have his head 
 turned, and to convert his recklessness into
 
 90 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 almost equally ruinous conceit. But Gambetta 
 was not spoiled by sudden, dazzling, intoxicating 
 success. He did not even play the part of 
 Henry V., and discard his old roistering boon 
 companions. For some time after, he was still 
 the loud-tongued oracle of the Cafe Procope. 
 With fees now coming in plentifully, as a sub- 
 stantial fruit of his quick fame, he still lived 
 modestly, in an upper apartment of the musty 
 Latin quarter, and did not put on any airs. It 
 may be that the celebrated little white flower, 
 always now to be seen in his button-hole, first 
 made its appearance there in the dawn of his 
 prosperous days. Otherwise, alike in dress, and 
 in democracy of manner, he continued to be, as 
 he had been, unostentatious and simple. 
 
 Gambetta remained a poor man throughout 
 his deputyship, his dictatorship, and his long 
 career in the Assembly and afterwards in the 
 Chamber. No taint of corruptibility or dishon- 
 esty ever clung to his skirts. He might easily 
 have become a millionaire, by not very wide de- 
 partures from the recognized code of political 
 morality ; but down to the time that he moved 
 into the palace set apart for the President of the 
 Chamber, his mode of life was that of a man in
 
 GAME ETTA, 91 
 
 very moderate circumstances. It is well known, 
 too, that he is not thrifty ; that he spends freely 
 what he gets. He is not of the saving sort. 
 After his instalment in the Presidential palace, 
 he displayed such show and ostentation as he 
 thinks befitting the dignity of the second office 
 of the republic in point of importance. The 
 receptions he gave, indeed, rivalled in brilliancy 
 those of President Grevy. He has always shown 
 himself a genial and graceful host, and his style 
 of hospitality would not have disgraced one born 
 in the purple of hereditary rank. 
 
 His daily life as a legislative prince this 
 Bohemian son of a rustic tradesman gives an 
 insight into his personal traits. Like many 
 Frenchmen, he is a late riser. He takes a cup 
 of coffee and a roll in bed, then gets up, reads 
 the morning papers, and goes through the large 
 pile of letters that await him. At ten o'clock 
 he envelops his portly form in a long dressing- 
 gown, and passes into a small cabinet, where he 
 receives the crowd of satellites and friends who 
 daily make it a point to pay their court to the 
 most powerful man in France. 
 
 " The moment the conversation becomes in- 
 teresting," says Figaro, describing the scene, 
 " the door opens quietly, and a man with a severe
 
 92 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 countenance enters with a card. 'All right,' says 
 Gambetta, ' I am coming down ; ' and he tries 
 to continue the conversation. But the man, 
 placid and implacable, remains till his master has 
 changed his dressing-gown for a more solemn 
 attire. He does not withdraw till Gambetta 
 leaves the room. From this moment Gambetta 
 devotes himself body and soul to politics. It is 
 in vain that Louis, at eleven o'clock, announces 
 that breakfast is served. The breakfast must 
 wait. At length, when Gambetta tries to relish 
 a couple of fried eggs, his favorite dish, the 
 severe-looking man again presents himself, like a 
 statue, with card in hand. First of all, Gambetta 
 tries not to see this household Banquo. He 
 buries his nose in his plate. But the man is not 
 to be balked ; and, presenting the card with one 
 hand, and pointing majestically to the name it 
 bears with the other, he still stands firm at his 
 master's side. This means something serious, 
 and Gambetta obeys Banquo. Who is this mys- 
 terious person? He is Pere Dumangin, an old 
 republican the watch-dog, reminder, the time- 
 piece of his master and friend. When Dumangin 
 has spoken, the matter is settled. Gambetta re- 
 ceives only those who please Dumangin." 
 
 Gambetta is a bachelor ; but he has not lived
 
 G A MB ETTA. 93 
 
 so long without having at least contemplated 
 marriage. The story of his engagement to an 
 heiress in western France, and its sudden break- 
 ing-off, give us a fresh glimpse of his character. 
 From the time of his leaving his humble home 
 at Cahors, till his rise to the highest rank of pub- 
 lic personages, Gambetta lived with a faithful, 
 loving, devoted aunt, who had followed him to 
 Paris, and who made, everywhere he went, a 
 pleasant home for him. She was at once his 
 maid-of-all-work and his congenial companion ; 
 and he was as deeply attached to her as she to 
 him. His engagement to a handsome and accom- 
 plished girl, with a dowry of seven millions, was 
 a shock to the good aunt ; but she yielded grace- 
 fully to the inevitable. When the arrangements 
 for the marriage were being discussed, however, 
 the young lady took it into her head to make it 
 a condition of their union that the aunt should 
 be excluded from the new establishment. She 
 'was scarcely elegant enough to adorn gilded 
 salons. Gambetta explained how much his aunt 
 had been to him ; the rich beauty was only the 
 more obdurate. Gambetta took up his hat, and 
 with a profound bow, "Adieu," said he; "we 
 were not made to understand each other." And 
 the marriage was put off forever.
 
 94 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 At the early age of forty-one, Gambetta may 
 be said to stand midway in a career, which, if 
 closed now, would be regarded as one of the 
 most striking, romantic and successful in the 
 annals of political biography. He must already 
 be confessed to be a great orator, an able prac- 
 tical administrator, a consummate party leader, 
 a statesman fertile in /esources, a presiding offi- 
 cer of rare vigor, tact, and mastery over public 
 assemblies. A brilliant future seems to lie before 
 him. Aside from his eminent capacity, his ser- 
 vices to the republic, which owes its existence 
 to him more than to any one man, entitle him to 
 its highest .honors when the fitting time shall 
 come. The vicissitudes of public life in France 
 are well expressed by the epigram, that in that 
 country " nothing is probable except the unfore- 
 seen." It may be that the greatest of living 
 Frenchmen will miss the Presidency, as in this 
 country did Webster and Clay. But all present 
 indications point to the probability that ere 
 Gambetta passes the ripe prime of middle age, 
 he will be elevated to the seat already so emi- 
 nently adorned by Adolph Thiers and Jules 
 Gre"vy, and which he is fitted to adorn none the 
 less than they.
 
 IV. 
 BEACONSFIELD. 
 
 r I ""HE romance of politics contains no more 
 strange and striking chapter than the story 
 of the career of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Bea- 
 consfield. It is not improbable that that career 
 is already rounded and finished. Lord Beacons- 
 field is in his seventy-fifth year. He has retired 
 from a long and perplexing tenure of power ; 
 a power embracing the sway of a vast and mighty 
 Empire, and which must have tried the mental 
 energies and the physical strength of a man 
 young and hale. But Lord Beaconsfield's health 
 has for years been feeble, and more than once 
 his life has seemed imperilled by his exhaust- 
 ing labors. It is little likely, therefore, that he 
 will resume the rule which he held with such 
 bold and audacious purpose for the six years 
 between 1874 and 1880. What years he has yet 
 to live will perhaps be spent in the august re- 
 pose of the House of Peers ; that house in which 
 he still seems out of place, almost an intruder,
 
 96 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 yet in which he has achieved some of his most 
 notable triumphs of eloquence and statecraft. 
 
 This supposably rounded romance, therefore, 
 may be observed as a whole ; and so looking at 
 it, we cannot but be struck by its similarity to 
 the romance of the skilful novelist, in the crown- 
 ing glories of its ending. At the outset, we see 
 a young, gay, gilded dandy, who has written 
 some very queer novels of society, is petted by 
 the half-aristocratic, half-Bohemian circle of Gore 
 House, is a curiosity as an Anglicized Jew, has 
 wit and fine manners, is strikingly handsome, 
 and altogether a bright and breezy presence in 
 a drawing-room. Everybody sees that he has a 
 perfectly imperturbable audacity, that he pro- 
 poses to make his way in the fashionable, not 
 less than in the literary, world ; but few suspect, 
 at first, that he dreams of political distinction. 
 His grandfather was a kindly and hospitable old 
 Italian Jew, who used to give neat suppers to 
 men of note at Enfield. His father was a book- 
 ish scholar, full of literary research and anecdote, 
 a quiet but genial old man, who lived in pleasant 
 simplicity in Bloomsbury. No one imagined 
 that a gay young fop, with the despised Hebrew 
 blood in his veins, could aim higher than the
 
 BEACONSFIELD. 97 
 
 pleasure of being a momentary lion among the 
 West End fashionables. To be feted as the 
 author of "Vivian Grey," to be admired for 
 the exquisite cut of his coats, the sparkle of his 
 jewelry, and the harmonious colors of his cravat 
 and waistcoat these seemed to be the bounds 
 of his ambition. 
 
 Yet had that superficially reading West End 
 coterie, where he was so pleasantly welcomed, 
 perused with more care and insight the novels 
 concerning which they so generously flattered 
 him, they might have discovered between the 
 lines an ambition far loftier and more arrogant. 
 This truth gradually dawned upon his circle as 
 novel after novel, and then satire after satire, ap- 
 peared from his pen ; each of which took on a 
 more and more distinct political hue. But 
 almost before it became recognized that his at- 
 tention was directed to politics, he suddenly 
 appeared as a candidate for the House of Com- 
 mons. With " sentiments which were Tory, 
 and presentiments which were Radical," he 
 boldly contested the borough of High Wycombe 
 with no less an antagonist than a brother of 
 Earl Grey, then prime minister of England. 
 Defeated there, a few months later he again 
 
 o 
 
 7
 
 98 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 appeared in the field, only to suffer, first at 
 Marylebone, and then at Taunton, two more dis- 
 comfitures. Not a whit daunted, he made a 
 further struggle to win a seat in Parliament, and 
 this time, aided by powerful friends, he at last 
 succeeded, being chosen in 1837 a member by 
 the borough of Maidstone. Soon after this tri- 
 umph, he was introduced to Lord Melbourne, 
 who had now become Prime Minister. Lord 
 Melbourne looked at the gorgeously attired 
 young legislator, with his glistening curls and his 
 large, bright black eye, with a feeling of mingled 
 amusement and curiosity. " What do you wish 
 to be?" he asked him. "Prime Minister of 
 England, my lord," was the startling and auda- 
 cious reply. Lord Melbourne thought the an- 
 swer an epigram. Disraeli expressed in it the 
 whole volume of his political ambition. 
 
 It is not at all my purpose to follow Benjamin 
 Disraeli through that brilliant and energetic 
 career, each step of which, as now appears, 
 brought him nearer the lofty goal upon which 
 his eyes were ever fixed. His first ignominious 
 failure, when he rose to address his maiden 
 speech to the House ; his patient waiting to re- 
 cover from its effect; his oratorical triumph on
 
 BEACONSFIELD. 99 
 
 the occasion of his second attempt; his quarrel 
 with Sir Robert Peel, in which he exhausted 
 every resource of the bitterest invective to over- 
 whelm the Tory leader with humiliation ; his 
 passages-at-arms with O'Connell ; his audacity 
 in seizing upon the Tory leadership ; the surprise 
 with which England rubbed her eyes and stared 
 to see him her chancellor of the exchequer; his 
 long-continued and magnificent forensic combats 
 with Gladstone ; his ascent to the premiership in 
 1868, and his courageous gift of household suf- 
 frage to the people ; his later triumphs as premier ; 
 his promotion to the House of Lords as Earl of 
 Beaconsfield, and his assumption of the envied 
 insignia of Knight of the Garter ; these are history, 
 and oft-repeated history, a tale told, especially of 
 late, with copious iteration, and with every degree 
 of friendly panegyric and of hostile criticism. 
 
 But such a man, with a career so strange, an 
 origin so alien and despised, and triumphs so 
 entirely without parallel in English political an- 
 nals, must always be an extremely interesting 
 study. It is safe to say that no English states- 
 man, remote or modern, has been the subject of 
 so many diverse surmises and theories, has been 
 so difficult to read and interpret, or has given
 
 IOO CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 rise to so many utterly contradictory estimates, 
 both as to moral and intellectual qualities, as 
 Benjamin Disraeli. He is scarcely less of a riddle 
 now, when he has been in the full blaze of public 
 notoriety for forty years, than he was the day 
 that he entered the House, with confident, dainty, 
 and dandified step, tripping across its historic 
 floor. There are many thousands of people in 
 England to whom he is the great figure of the 
 age ; who trust him, admire him with unbounded 
 enthusiasm, unquestioningly follow him in paths 
 however mysterious, and believe alike in his 
 statesmanship and in his sincerity. There are 
 other thousands to whom he is as utterly odious, 
 who look upon him as a political Mephistopheles, 
 a theatric poser in statesmanship, a charlatan, 
 absolutely selfish and devoid of moral feeling, 
 who would with untroubled heart sacrifice Eng- 
 land and Englishmen to triumph in a policy and 
 to retain a hold on power. 
 
 The first time that I saw Benjamin Disraeli, 
 now Earl of Beaconsfield and Knight of the 
 Garter, was in the House of Commons, in the 
 early summer of 1863. It was a period when 
 the relations between England and the United 
 States were, to say the least, somewhat strained.
 
 BEACONSFIELD. IOI 
 
 The Peterhoff matter had well-nigh brought the 
 two countries to an actual rupture. A week 
 before I had been at Oxford, and one night, in 
 one of the many cosey inns of the ancient univer- 
 sity city, I had heard college proctors talking 
 excitedly about a speech that Palmerston had 
 just made, foreshadowing war with America. 
 Palmerston was then prime minister, Gladstone 
 was his chancellor of the exchequer, Lord Derby 
 was the Tory leader, and Disraeli was his faithful 
 and brilliant lieutenant in the House of Com- 
 mons. It was on a memorable night in the 
 House that I first visited that famous assembly. 
 Gladstone was to make one of his greatest efforts 
 in favor of taxing the great, rich public charities. 
 House, lobby, and galleries were crowded. It 
 was interesting to observe, for the first time, the 
 distinguished assemblage which was and is really 
 the governing power of the great British Empire. 
 It was yet more interesting to hear the consum- 
 mate orator of the Liberals, with his clear, 
 silvery, persuasive voice, pleading that Christ's 
 Hospital and other rich charitable corporations 
 should assume their share of the financial bur- 
 dens of the state. But most interesting was it, 
 to me at least, to look along the crowded benches
 
 IO2 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 which hung on the chancellor's words with 
 breathless interest, and to note the faces and 
 bearing of the famous men who composed the 
 chief adornments of the body and of British 
 statesmanship. 
 
 And to me, the most remarkable and striking 
 face and figure of all, were those of him who sat, 
 almost alone, in the very centre of the front 
 opposition bench, whose hat was well jammed 
 down over his eyes, who sat motionless from the 
 beginning to the end of Gladstone's speech, 
 and who seemed rather to be in a deep reverie, 
 or perhaps half-asleep, than attentive to what 
 was going forward in the House. Now and then 
 the hat would be removed for a few moments 
 from the head ; and then I had an ample op- 
 portunity to observe the features of the man 
 who, all things considered, had even then reached 
 the position of the most successful politician of 
 his age. 
 
 Let me describe him as he appeared at the 
 age of fifty-seven. The first impression was of 
 his wonderful youthfulness. At the distance 
 where he sat from the Speaker's Gallery, he 
 looked scarcely more than thirty; and his attire 
 served to confirm this impression. A black coat,
 
 BEACONSFIELD. 1 03 
 
 buttoned tightly at the waist; an immaculate 
 shirt bosom; a carefully tied necktie; large, 
 light-gray trousers, cut in the nick of the fashion ; 
 hair glossily black and curly, betraying the 
 scrupulous care with which each particular curl 
 must have been arranged in its place; large, 
 rather dreamy, and indifferent black eyes; a 
 thick, heavy, Jewish nose ; a large mouth, with 
 thick, colorless lips ; a longish chin, covered 
 with a tuft of gray-black beard ; a sallow com- 
 plexion, almost deathly sallow; a strong, well- 
 knit, rather high-shouldered figure; these were 
 the external features that attracted the cursory 
 glance of the eye. It has been said that Disraeli, 
 leader and chieftain as he is, has always seemed 
 a man alone and apart from his colleagues ; so 
 un-English that he has not been able to fuse with 
 the rest; solitary amid all the hurly-burly bustle 
 of politics ; keeping himself within himself; with 
 few or no ardent bosom friends ; amiable, patient, 
 and courteous, perhaps, but maintaining a dis- 
 tance between himself and his most intimate 
 advisers. Looking down upon him as he sat in 
 the House, this theory appeared to be confirmed 
 by superficial observation. He sat alone, with a 
 space between him and the next man on either
 
 104 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 side. It was very rarely that he turned to speak 
 to this or that one ; then, the conversation seemed 
 almost monosyllabic. It was evident, to say the 
 least, that he was not a chatty man like Palmer- 
 ston, nor a vehement talker like Gladstone. Closer 
 scrutiny made it apparent, however, that he was 
 far from indifferent about what was going for- 
 ward. A quiet smile crossed his face as Glad- 
 stone, now and then, went rather out of his way 
 to direct a shaft of sarcasm at his own breast; 
 and when, an hour or two after, Disraeli rose to 
 take his share in the debate, it soon became clear 
 that all that had been before said had been care- 
 fully fixed in his mind. This imperturbability 
 and apparent unconsciousness of what is going 
 forward, whether it be affectation or tempera- 
 ment, has always struck lookers-on in the House 
 of Lords and Commons. " However fierce the 
 debate," says one of them, "or heated the House, 
 or pressing the crisis, there sits Disraeli, occa- 
 sionally looking at his hands, or the clock ; 
 otherwise, silent, unmoved, and still. Yet an 
 Indian scout could not keep a more vigilant 
 watch ; and immediately an opportunity occurs 
 he is on his legs, boiling with real or affected 
 indignation."
 
 BEACONSFIELD. 105 
 
 There never spoke an orator more curious and 
 interesting to observe, more puzzling to estimate, 
 more entertaining to study. After the House 
 had been filled and was still echoing with the 
 silvery vehemence and trembling earnestness of 
 Gladstone's voice, it was indeed a very abrupt 
 contrast to listen to the more quiet, more studied, 
 more even and steadily sustained and carefully 
 poised periods of his rival. If Disraeli's first 
 speech in the House forty years ago was the 
 very bathos of attempted melodramatic force, 
 the histrionic air and study of effect have at least 
 never since been lost. It is clear that in his 
 own un-English and unexampled style, Disraeli 
 is a parliamentary speaker of the first rank. He 
 never thrills an audience to generous enthusiasm, 
 like Bright ; nor has he the strong capacity of 
 Gladstone to strike conviction pressing home 
 to the minds of those who listen to him. But 
 he is superior to either in making a perfectly 
 clear, brief, yet exhaustive parliamentary state- 
 ment. In the literary perfection, the variety, 
 the polish of his style, it would be hard to point 
 out his equal. His self-possession and self-com- 
 mand never desert him. He never really loses 
 his head in fine frenzies of passion, though it is
 
 IO6 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 sometimes his cue to appear to do so. As you 
 listen to him, you cannot but feel that this 
 singular and effective eloquence is the product 
 of long and patient self-training ; that it is the 
 outcome of a lengthened devotion to oratory as 
 an art ; and that this art has been studied with 
 an especial view to its use in the British House 
 of Commons. Adroitness in the management 
 alike of thought and phrases, is a trait speedily 
 recognized. Each is suited precisely to the 
 speaker's purpose for the moment. If that pur- 
 pose is to lash an antagonist into a fury, or to 
 divert him from the issue, you will have a quick 
 succession of sparkling epigrams and barbed 
 shafts of ridicule. Disraeli is a master of all the 
 tortures supplied by the armory of rhetoric. 
 For years he was able, almost at will, to sting 
 Gladstone out of his self-control ; and it was 
 always a source of extreme irritation to Glad- 
 stone, that he could never produce a like effect 
 upon his rival. Indeed, Disraeli has always had 
 a habit of rather obtrusively showing the House 
 that he was perfect master of himself when " on 
 his legs." It has been related that on one occa- 
 sion, when in the midst of a long and important 
 speech, he stopped, took an orange from his
 
 BEACONSFIELD. IO/ 
 
 pocket, punched a hole in it with his knife, and 
 began deliberately to suck it; and continued to 
 do so at intervals during the rest of his address. 
 There are many peculiarities of manner, each of 
 which seems to have been artistically fixed upon 
 beforehand, as if to produce its especial result. 
 Invariably, when he rises to speak, he wears a 
 slight smile, which seems to hint that the argu- 
 ments on the other side, specious as they seem, 
 are not overwhelming, and are about to be effec- 
 tively answered. There is a saucy gleam of the 
 black eye, too, which lends aid to the significance 
 of the smile. His speech is full of rhetorical 
 " hits ; " each hit is accompanied by gestures 
 extremely expressive, and by a measuring of the 
 tones of the voice so as to produce surprise and 
 instant effect. A grimace or a shrug of the 
 shoulders will give "point" to the epigram; and 
 when it has thus been delivered, Disraeli alone 
 in the assemblage will preserve an impassive 
 face, while every one is laughing and cheering 
 around him. At other times he ascends to 
 greater heights in the art of eloquence. He can 
 evidently warm up at will ; many of his flights of 
 simile, or appeals, or apostrophes, are so flowery 
 that they come to the very verge of bombast,
 
 IO8 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 and escape by the narrowest line from passing 
 into bathos ; but the line is never, in these later 
 and riper years, actually crossed. A happy turn, 
 a fine finishing off, always saves the rhapsody, 
 and makes it effective. Disraeli certainly has 
 more humor than either of the two orators who 
 have so long disputed the palm with him. Glad- 
 stone, indeed, has no humor, and that of Bright 
 is somewhat grim and puritanic. The Tory chief 
 has clearly made as much of a study of humor 
 as of any other rhetorical weapon. To quote 
 again the writer before cited, " he has made 
 himself master of the greatest weakness of the 
 House of Commons its love of a good laugh." 
 No living English orator has said so many good 
 things, applied so many apt epithets, that have 
 " stuck." His happy phrases, his well-considered 
 jests, upon the various characters of the House 
 in which the greater part of his political career 
 was spent, are eagerly enjoyed still, and are more 
 numerous than those uttered by any other pro- 
 fessed wit in politics. In describing Gladstone 
 recently, as a " sophistical rhetorician, drowned 
 in the exuberance of his own verbosity," he came 
 just near enough the truth to make a telling hit, 
 and thereby did more to confirm Tory animosity
 
 BEACONSFIELD. 1 09 
 
 towards the Liberal leader, than if he had ex- 
 hausted hours in elaborate denunciation of him. 
 Many of his neat little personal witticisms are 
 still afloat, and are repeated whenever the names 
 of the victims of them are mentioned. The 
 " Batavian grace " of Mr. Beresford Hope's man- 
 ner, the "want of finish" in Lord Salisbury's 
 invective, the description of Goldwin Smith as 
 " an itinerant spouter of stale sedition," Sergeant 
 Dowse's "jovial profligacy," will long be repeated 
 with appreciative chuckles in the region of the 
 Pall Mall clubs, and in the centres of Tory re- 
 unions. There is not a single Liberal leader 
 whom Disraeli has not labelled with some apt and 
 witty designation, which has clung and will 
 always cling to him, as long as he is a figure of 
 British politics. Disraeli has shown, too, that 
 he can wield the force of fierce invective quite 
 as vigorously as he can lighten the prosy pro- 
 ceedings of parliament by airy and not ill-natured 
 humor. His onslaughts on Sir Robert Peel were 
 as cruel and ferocious as they were powerful and 
 effective. 
 
 When on his feet, Disraeli is more liberal in 
 gesture than most parliamentary speakers. He 
 uses his hands and arms freely, and often sways
 
 1 IO CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 his body forward, as if bowing. His voice is 
 neither harsh nor musical. It has neither the 
 persuasive tones of Gladstone, nor the grating 
 sounds produced by Lord Russell, Lord Lytton, 
 and some other English orators. He seldom 
 hesitates for a word ; but sometimes appears to 
 do so, evidently to increase the effect of what 
 follows. No English public man probably more 
 carefully prepares his speeches. There is ample 
 evidence of study and polish in each of them. 
 He is never so happy in a debate suddenly 
 sprung upon him, as on a field night when one 
 party delivers deliberate battle to the other. Let 
 it be added that advancing age and persistent 
 
 111 health do not seem to have diminished his 
 oratorical powers. His last speech in the House 
 of Lords, before the dissolution of the parliament 
 which he so long and so completely swayed, was 
 as audacious, vigorous, and brilliant as any he 
 has delivered for years. It bristled with bold 
 statement, bright epigram, and energetic defi- 
 ance. He has always been a better after-dinner 
 speaker than Gladstone ; for his gifts as an orator 
 incline him to delight in the lighter and airier 
 graces of the art, while Gladstone is ever too 
 dcad-in-carnest to use or cultivate them. Dis-
 
 BE A CONSFIELD. 1 1 1 
 
 raeli's speeches at the dinners of the Royal 
 Academy, and at the annual feasts of the Lord 
 Mayor in the Guildhall, will long be remembered 
 for their cheery grace and pungent wit. 
 
 Disraeli's statesmanship will no doubt be a 
 subject of warm difference of opinion among 
 Englishmen. His inconsistency, in the earlier 
 years of his public life, in passing rapidly from a 
 strange sort of Oriental radicalism into the ultima 
 tJiule of Tory belief, and in outdoing any other 
 Tory leader in his denunciations of Sir Robert 
 Peel for an apostasy prompted by patriotism, is 
 still bitterly criticised by his Liberal rivals, es- 
 pecially by those Liberals who were once Peel's 
 devoted followers. His attempts to restore pro- 
 tection as the economic policy of England, after 
 accepting the dogma of free trade, are still re- 
 membered. Perhaps nothing that he ever did 
 more completely disturbed the equanimity of his 
 opponents than his sudden adoption of house- 
 hold suffrage as the basis of a sweeping electoral 
 reform. The Liberals had tried in vain for years 
 to frame a reform bill that would be acceptable 
 to the House and the country. They had lost 
 power in 1866 by offering a moderate and well- 
 considered measure. They regarded electoral
 
 112 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 reform as their special mission and function. It 
 never entered their heads that on their own 
 ground they would be distanced by a Tory chief, 
 followed by a Tory party. But no sooner had 
 Disraeli found himself in office than, as he him- 
 self afterwards airily boasted at Edinburgh, he 
 began " to educate his party." It was no com- 
 mon triumph of political tactics to bring the 
 stolid Tory squires and the proud Tory lords to 
 assent to a sweeping extension of the suffrage ; 
 and it is safe to say that Disraeli was the only 
 living politician who could have done it, or who 
 would even have been bold enough to try. To 
 " steal the thunder of the Whigs," however, was 
 quite in harmony with his audacious, adventur- 
 ous nature ; nor could those who admired Peel, 
 for doing precisely the same thing in the matter 
 of the corn laws, very loudly blame him. What- 
 'ever may be thought of his later foreign policy, 
 there can be no doubt that the accomplishment 
 of household suffrage, which was Disraeli's own 
 work, and in a large measure his personal victory, 
 was an act producing great and most beneficial 
 results. Were his political fame to rest upon 
 that alone, it is difficult to see how future gener- 
 ations, at least, can deny him the title to effective
 
 BEACONSFIELD. 113 
 
 and substantial statesmanship. The household 
 suffrage reform extended the suffrage to thou- 
 sands of the lower classes ; and for this reason 
 the obstacles in the way of Disraeli's being able 
 to induce the Tories to accept it were tremendous. 
 By patience, by tact, by appeal to the ambition 
 for party victory, and by sheer pluck, he over- 
 came them. He predicted, amid the jeers of 
 his opponents, that among the working classes 
 there was a strong Tory substratum. The pre- 
 diction, strangely as it sounded, was fulfilled 
 when, in 1 874, the new electorate carried Disraeli 
 into power by an overwhelming vote. 
 
 Then began a new and much more thrilling 
 chapter in the record of his public acts. For 
 the first time, he presided over a cabinet which 
 was supported by an ample, compact, and sub- 
 missive majority in both Houses of Parliament. 
 His rule was unfettered and unobstructed. From 
 the beginning, it was clear that his bold spirit 
 and strong individuality constituted the central 
 and controlling force of the administration. He 
 had no rival in influence in his cabinet. One and 
 all were his subordinates and followers. It was 
 emphatically his policy which was pursued 
 throughout the long and perplexing crisis of 
 8
 
 114 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 the Eastern Question in its later phase ; and 
 those of the cabinet Lords Derby and Carnar- 
 von who would not follow his policy to the 
 end, never thought of contesting his authority in 
 that body, but retired from it. One of Disraeli's 
 most remarkable feats, in recent years, has been 
 his conversion of the proud, irritable, and arrogant 
 Marquis of Salisbury from an inveterate personal 
 foe into a warm friend and a submissive adherent. 
 Despite the " un-English " reputation which 
 many writers have succeeded in giving Disraeli, 
 it can scarcely be questioned that his Eastern 
 policy was thoroughly English in its precedents 
 and bearing. He seems to have closely followed 
 in the footsteps of Wellington, Peel, and Palmer- 
 ston. The corner-stone of the English policy in 
 regard to the Eastern Question has been for fifty 
 years the principle that, in order to check the 
 aggression of Russia, Turkey must be preserved, 
 defended, and propped up. Even the Liberals, 
 including Gladstone and Granville, adhered to 
 this principle at the time of the Crimean war, 
 and have only within a few years drifted away 
 from it. It animated Disraeli's course through- 
 out. Whether effectually or not this is a 
 matter still to be decided by the lapse of time
 
 BEA CONSFIELD. I I 5 
 
 and the current of events he steadily labored 
 to preserve as far as possible the power of the 
 Sultan, and to curb as far as possible the power 
 of the Czar. He resolved, moreover, that Eng- 
 land should no longer hold aloof, as she had 
 done in the days of Liberal ascendancy, from 
 participation in continental politics. She should 
 resume her old place as an active and self-assert- 
 ing great power. Her voice should be heard in 
 the Areopagi of nations, her influence felt in 
 every international concern. " The honor and 
 power of the Empire," this was the brave shib- 
 boleth often heard in his mouth and the mouths 
 of his colleagues. It was the counterpart to the 
 Liberal motto of " Retrenchment and Reform ; " 
 and long sounded more sweetly in the people's 
 ears. 
 
 Success has attended Disraeli's efforts, at least 
 so far as to bring England once more into active 
 relations with other powers, and to give her a 
 more commanding voice in the direction of 
 European events. This result he brought about 
 by bold and often surprising and theatrical 
 courses. The creation of the title of Empress of 
 India, the purchase of the Suez Canal shares, 
 the importation of Hindoo troops into the Medi-
 
 Il6 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 terranean, the entrance of the British fleet into 
 the Dardanelles, and the acquisition of Cyprus, 
 were acts the wisdom of which has to be proved 
 by the sequence of events yet to occur, but 
 which, there can be no doubt, were resolute and 
 striking strokes of statesmanship. Whether Dis- 
 raeli's Eastern policy, or that of his successors, 
 will prove to be the best for the preservation of 
 the British Empire, remains still a problem to be 
 solved by the future. 
 
 In one statesmanlike quality in sagacious 
 foresight no American, at least, ought to un- 
 derestimate Disraeli's abilities. Whatever his 
 motive, he, almost alone of English statesmen of 
 either party, favored the cause of the North in 
 our civil war, and steadily, even at the darkest 
 periods, predicted its final triumph. When Glad- 
 stone was eulogizing Jefferson Davis, and declar- 
 ing that he had made " an independent nation ; " 
 when Sir John Ramsden was exultingly boasting 
 that "the republican bubble had burst;" when 
 Palmerston was plotting with the Emperor Na- 
 poleon, with a view to a recognition of the 
 Southern confederacy; when Lord John Russell 
 was asserting that the war was one " for empire 
 on one side and independence on the other;"
 
 BE A CONS FIELD. 1 1 / 
 
 when Lords Derby and Cranbourne (the latter 
 now Marquis of Salisbury) were hotly declaiming 
 against the arrogance of the North in attempting 
 to preserve the Union, Benjamin Disraeli saw 
 the right, and foresaw the victory. The friendly 
 feeling he displayed towards us throughout the 
 war found most eloquent expression in noble 
 speech, when the assassination of Lincoln thrilled 
 Europe as well as America, with itsdreadful shock. 
 
 " In the character of the victim," he declared, 
 " and even in the accessories of his last moments, 
 there is something so homely and so innocent, 
 that it takes, as it were, the subject out of the 
 pomp of history and the ceremonial of diplo- 
 macy ; it touches the heart of nations, and appeals 
 to the domestic sentiment of mankind." 
 
 Then, after showing that the assassination of 
 rulers seldom changes the history of mankind, 
 and remarking that Lincoln had " fulfilled his 
 duty with simplicity and strength," he thus closed 
 one of the most moving and evidently heart-felt 
 addresses he ever made : 
 
 " In expressing our unaffected and profound 
 sympathy with the citizens of the United States 
 at the untimely end of their elected chief, let us 
 not, therefore, sanction any feeling of depression ;
 
 Il8 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 but rather let us express a fervent hope that 
 from out of the awful trials of the last four years, 
 of which not the least is this violent demise, the 
 various populations of North America may issue 
 elevated and chastened, rich in that accumulated 
 wisdom and strong in that disciplined energy 
 which a young nation can only acquire in a pro- 
 tracted and perilous struggle. Then they will 
 be enabled not only to renew their career of 
 power and prosperity, but they will renew it to 
 contribute to the general happiness of mankind." 
 Whatever may be thought of the wisdom, in 
 many respects, of Disraeli's career as a practical 
 statesman, there can be but one opinion as to his 
 genius for party leadership. Herein he presents 
 a very suggestive contrast to Gladstone. Not 
 even Palmerston, with all his bonhomie and 
 faculty for conciliation, was Disraeli's equal in 
 this respect. The English government is organ- 
 ically one of party. No statesman can be com- 
 pletely successful unless he is a skilful party 
 leader; and this leadership demands a combina- 
 tion of qualities which it is not very frequent to 
 find combined. No situation more emphatically 
 needs a command of exhaustless patience, per- 
 severance, and pluck; and these qualities Disraeli
 
 BEACONSFIELD. 1 19 
 
 showed that he possessed, to a remarkable degree, 
 at a very early period of his public career. 
 Never had a party chief more formidable dif- 
 ficulties with which to contend. The party 
 which he aspired to lead, and upon whom he 
 fairly fixed his leadership by making his bril- 
 liant talents absolutely necessary to it, was, of 
 all parties, that whose prejudices were deepest 
 against his race, and whose contempt of parvenus 
 and self-made men was the most inveterate. Yet 
 he took this obstinate and haughty party in hand, 
 drilled, massed, and " educated " it, and so fash- 
 ioned its line of action that he brought it into 
 power and sustained it there. He became the 
 irresistible leader of a compact and submissive 
 party organization, which has acted for many 
 years under his inspiration with the discipline, 
 precision, and force of a thoroughly trained army. 
 Throughout the period of his Tory chiefship he 
 has maintained an even and unruffled patience, 
 a constant good temper, and an unflagging per- 
 sistency. Thoroughly capable in this branch of 
 leadership, he has been able to supplement it in 
 parliament by his consummate skill in debate, 
 his resources as an orator, and his adroitness in 
 party tactics ; by his audacity in attack, and his
 
 I2O CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 ever ready and equal courage in orderly retreat; 
 by his sagacity in marking out plans of parlia- 
 mentary campaigns, his assiduous cultivation of 
 the younger and rising talents in his ranks, and 
 the inexhaustible fertility of his resources in the 
 most bitterly contested party battles. For years 
 it has been recognized that no other Tory chief 
 was possible while Disraeli lived and remained 
 in public life. Many a time he with difficulty 
 saved the party from the consequences of Lord 
 Derby's rashness, and the timidity and narrow- 
 ness of his lieutenants. In the cabinet, he alone 
 could have formed the connecting bond which 
 so long held statesmen so diverse in tempera- 
 ment and opinion as the Marquis of Salisbury 
 and Sir Stafford Northcote, Gathorne Hardy and 
 the present Lord Derby. In the art of concilia- 
 tion, there never was a more consummate adept; 
 he has known how to smooth over irritated 
 susceptibilities, to soothe ruffled pride, to soften 
 down bitter prejudices, and to smother threatened 
 revolt, with a hand at once gentle and firm, and 
 the influence of a suavity which not more 
 charmed than it imposed the will which prompted 
 it. The Tory party of this generation cannot 
 hope to secure such another leader. If he retires,
 
 BEA CONSFIELD. 1 2 I 
 
 content with his earldom, his Garter, his triumph 
 at Berlin, and the proud consciousness of having 
 for six years brilliantly ruled the mighty Empire 
 of Britain, it is highly probable that his party 
 must abide for years in the old shade of opposi- 
 tion ; for the near future, at least, seems to be 
 secured to the Liberals, to whose power a con- 
 summate Tory leader alone would be dangerous. 
 The same sparkle of social wit and bright 
 epigram which makes Disraeli so attractive an 
 after-dinner speaker, gives him popularity in the 
 amenities of private life. Amid all the turmoil 
 and cares of a long and stirring public career, he 
 has never lost the talent of making himself 
 agreeable in society, which he so carefully culti- 
 vated in the days of his youth. Essentially a 
 courtier, he has made himself especially agree- 
 able to the Queen and the royalties ; and he is a 
 welcome guest in those country-house gatherings 
 which are so delightful a feature of English social 
 life. He is an elegant and graceful host; and 
 alien as he is called, he has contrived to become 
 thoroughly and aristocratically English in this 
 regard. In the fine old manor of Hughenden, 
 in Buckinghamshire, he entertains royal princes 
 and ministerial colleagues with equal suavity and
 
 122 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 genial manner; yet, with all his aptitude and 
 talent for society, he seems most often especi- 
 ally since his wife's death to prefer solitude, 
 amid his books and papers, with the sole com- 
 panionship of one who is at once his most inti- 
 mate friend and his private secretary. 1 For the 
 national sports of Englishmen, Disraeli appears 
 to have little taste. It is rarely that he follows 
 the hounds to the hunt, or shows himself on the 
 world-famous racing grounds ; nor does he in- 
 cline to such methods of violent physical exercise 
 as delight his great rival, Gladstone. On the 
 other hand, he is known in his own neighbor- 
 hood as a model landlord. Considerate towards 
 his tenantry, entering with zest into the interests 
 of the farms, making his appearance familiarly 
 at the harvest-homes, Disraeli thus sets an ex- 
 ample to those English landed magnates who 
 desert their acres for the pleasures of the great 
 capitals. His married life, though he married a 
 lady some years older than himself, was a very 
 happy one throughout its duration of forty years. 
 There was something touching and noble in the 
 way in which he always referred to her in his 
 public addresses. His constant and chivalrous 
 
 1 Montagu Corry, now Lord Rowton.
 
 BEA CONSFIELD. 1 2 3 
 
 devotion to her was often remarked. Once he 
 spoke of her, in a speech at Hughenden, as the 
 " best wife in England ; " he dedicated his 
 romance, " Sibyl," to " the most severe of critics, 
 but a perfect wife ; " he declared, in an address 
 in Scotland, that it was to her encouragement 
 and support that he owed his eminence. When 
 the Queen offered him a peerage on one occasion, 
 he declined it, and begged that if any such 
 honor were to be conferred, it should be upon 
 Mrs. Disraeli ; who thereupon was created Vis- 
 countess Beaconsfield. Her death, a year or 
 two before his second premiership, seemed to 
 overwhelm him with a grief from which he has 
 perhaps never quite recovered. 
 
 In closing this rapid study of the remarkable 
 man whose name has been so often in men's 
 mouths during the past six years, I quote what 
 was recently and truly said of him by one of his 
 admiring fellow-countrymen : 
 
 " His career is a romance; but it is a romance 
 that teaches a thousand useful and noble lessons, 
 that will have power, in times when the party 
 passions of to-day shall be cold, to fire many a 
 young soul with the highest ambition, and to fill 
 many a tender heart with sympathy for him 
 whose storv it records."
 
 V. 
 
 CASTELAR. 
 
 ~\T 7HAT is to be the fate of the Latin nations 
 of southern Europe, is an interesting and 
 curious problem. Are they even now sinking, 
 more or less gradually, into decrepitude and 
 decay? Is the great part played by the Latin 
 races in the world nearly played out? Has em- 
 pire in war and letters passed away forever from 
 the Spaniard, the Italian, and the Frenchman? 
 Is the future for the Teuton, the Scandinavian, 
 the Saxon, and the Sclave? And are the Latin 
 nations sinking into the condition in which we 
 now see their predecessors in imperial power 
 into the condition of Phoenicia, of Egypt, and of 
 Greece? Or will they become revivified by the 
 new stimulus of liberty; by the abandonment of 
 old enthralments, the shaking off of absolute 
 kingship, and the perhaps still more binding 
 despotism of priestcraft; will they be leavened 
 by democracy, regain their savor by the salt of 
 republicanism?
 
 CASTELAR. 125 
 
 Certain it is that for a long time the Latin 
 races have been declining and waning under the 
 old condition of things ; that, had Bomba reigns 
 in Italy, rules of later Ferdinands and Isabellas 
 in Spain, and Bourbon incubi in France, con- 
 tinued, this descent would have gone on. No 
 doubt, too, this descent has been, to the ob- 
 server's eye, arrested by the new life infused 
 by revolution. France is surely to-day better, 
 stronger, more self-contained, for the young Re- 
 public which has so completely altered the politi- 
 cal aspect of things during the last seven years. 
 Will this improvement continue is it perma- 
 nent and become organic? Or is it but a tem- 
 porary delay in the general downward course of 
 the brilliant and thrifty Gallic race? 
 
 Equally apparent is it that Italy, united and 
 become constitutional, refreshed by the wise, 
 temperate, reasonable rule of Victor Emmanuel, 
 whose successor has had the sober sense to fol- 
 low in his father's footsteps, is a better, and in 
 many senses a more prosperous country than it 
 was, or could possibly have been, under Bomba 
 and the Austrians and the petty Dukes. But 
 Italy, too, is on trial, like the French. In the 
 long stretch of particular events and special
 
 126 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 phases in the progress of a nation, the constitu- 
 tionalism, the reign of the house of Savoy, even 
 the unity of Italy, may be but bright incidents, 
 to be followed by anarchy and perhaps reim- 
 posed tyranny of kings and priests. 
 
 Of these Latin races, the Spanish are behind 
 their brother heirs to the legacy of the Roman 
 conquerors of Europe. Spain seems to have 
 been marked out for the very worst scourges 
 which the ingenuity of political and priestly 
 tyrants could devise. It has not been split up, 
 like Italy, into fragments, each fragment the vic- 
 tim of a different despot. It has not been so 
 frightfully desolated by hotly raging wars and 
 invasions humiliating the people in the dust, as 
 France. Perhaps Spain to-day would be better 
 off had she passed through these fiery furnaces. 
 She has suffered ills perhaps even yet more 
 far-reaching in their results, penetrating more 
 deeply, leaving graver and more obstinate moral 
 and political disease. It would probably have 
 seemed to a thoughtful student, twenty-five years 
 ago, as if nothing good could come out of Spain. 
 Such a student would have been puzzled to 
 recognize, under the dismal, gloomy, brazen, 
 corrupt reign of Isabella, the Spain which, within
 
 CASTELAR. I2/ 
 
 the period of a single century, between 1540 and 
 1640, had displayed warrior sovereigns like 
 Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second, soldiers 
 like Alva, conquerors like Pizarro, painters like 
 Velasquez and Murillo, churchmen like Loyola, 
 and writers like Cervantes and Calderon de la 
 Barca. Indeed from the time of Calderon, who 
 died in 1687, down to very recent years, Spanish 
 history, as far as either national glory or intel- 
 lectual activity is concerned, presents an almost 
 uniformly dreary blank. Who can name a single 
 Spanish statesman of the rank of Ximenes, or 
 any Spanish writer or painter of any extended 
 reputation at all, who lived and labored in the 
 eighteenth century? Italy had at least Alfieri. 
 France teemed with keen, inquiring, brilliant 
 minds. But of Spanish intellectual effort, of any 
 such thing as searching politico-philosophic ac- 
 tivity, it would be hard to find a definite stamp 
 between the accession of Philip the Fifth and 
 the deposition of Isabella the Second. The in- 
 tellectual torpor seemed absolute; and out of a 
 soil so drearily barren, how could we expect any 
 excellent intellectual fruit to grow and thrive? 
 
 Yet it is true that, within the past ten years, 
 signs that eloquence, philosophy, culture, and
 
 128 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 political wisdom have rather been dormant than 
 extinct in Spain, have here and there pretty 
 plainly shown themselves. Certain Spanish fig- 
 ures have appeared, who have astonished men 
 by their attitude, dignity, talent and sound sense. 
 And when such figures do appear in a nation's 
 career, and make themselves seen, heard, lis- 
 tened to and respected, all hope of that nation 
 cannot be lost. That the art of eloquence still 
 survives in Spain, that enlightenment in its very 
 highest intellectual form is still a possibility 
 there, that great principles of government and 
 liberty may even yet find nourishment in its so 
 long sterile soil, may be seen in the character 
 and career of Emilio Castelar. 
 
 It is curious and somewhat mysterious how 
 this professor of history, young, handsome, and 
 with a romantic name, came forth from the 
 cloistral quiet of the University of Madrid, to 
 become at one time a stormy petrel of street re- 
 volt, at another a fervidly eloquent orator in the 
 Cortes, and again the rather impracticable Presi- 
 dent of a short-lived republic. He burst as 
 suddenly into fame, as far as the trans-Pyrenean 
 world was concerned, as Gambetta had done at 
 Paris ; and all at once the world was shown that
 
 CASTELAR. 1 29 
 
 Spain was still capable of producing genius, 
 learning, and political foresight. 
 
 Castelar was born at Alicante, of a good but 
 not noble family, in 1832. At forty-one he held 
 the chief executive power of Spain, and was for 
 a short time its absolute dictator. Now, at 
 forty-seven, he has still, undoubtedly, a brilliant 
 career before him. The records of his earlier 
 years, before he became known as the undaunted 
 chief of the republicans, are scant, and of no 
 large interest. He went up to the University 
 from Alicante in his teens ; was soon known as 
 one of the most enthusiastic of its students ; as- 
 sumed and kept the head of his various classes ; 
 betrayed a special taste for history and political 
 philosophy; and on graduation was appointed 
 an instructor. But long before this he had 
 plainly declared the principles accepted by his 
 reason, which the ripening of his mind and his 
 somewhat rough experience in life seem only 
 to have confirmed. At the age of sixteen he 
 harangued a Madrid mob with such surprising 
 power of speech that he became an object of 
 dread to the government itself. In that harangue 
 he avowed extreme republican opinions ; his ap- 
 peal to the people was hotly revolutionary. In- 
 9
 
 I3O CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 deed, Castelar has since declared, " I have been 
 a conspirator from boyhood." Before his beard 
 was grown he was consorting with insurgents, 
 attending secret conclaves held in dark by- 
 streets, writing fiery proclamations to be posted 
 in the dead of night on the walls of Madrid, and 
 holding correspondence with republicans of note 
 in other lands. But conspiracy in Spain is not 
 only permanently fashionable ; it does not there 
 seem in the least to affect a man's standing, or 
 to taint his personal honor. Every Spanish 
 statesman, of whatever party, has been a con- 
 spirator at some time or other. When O'Don- 
 nell was in power, Espartero conspired; when 
 Espartero was in power, Narvaez conspired. 
 Serrano and Prim conspired against the throne ; 
 Figueras against Serrano and Prim. Royal blood 
 is infected with this mania. The Duke of Mont- 
 pensier has been a life-long conspirator; and 
 Don Carlos has never ceased either plotting or 
 rebelling. 
 
 In spite of Castelar's republican zeal, he was 
 in early manhood appointed professor of his- 
 tory in the University. He was the best man 
 in Spain, perhaps in Europe, to fill that chair; 
 but it is strange how it came to pass that he was
 
 CASTELAR. 1 3 1 
 
 allowed to assume it. The government of Isa- 
 bella was singularly capricious in its tolerance 
 and its tyranny. Towards some classes, it was 
 as bitterly despotic as were the Philips ; but it 
 saw, apparently without protest, the election 
 of a learned rebel to the chair of history. 
 The new professor by no means ceased from 
 plotting after entering upon his duties. He 
 taught republicanism and revolution in his very 
 class-room. He gathered about him the ardent 
 youths of the University, and saturated their 
 receptive minds with the idea and principle of 
 political liberty. He told them, with an accu- 
 racy of fact and a correctness of interpretation 
 which in a Spaniard was nothing less than mar- 
 vellous, the story of the rise and progress of the 
 free republic of the United States ; and pointed 
 to it and its constitution as the model which he 
 aspired to have Spain adopt. He argued in 
 favor of the abolition of slavery, of a confedera- 
 tion of Spanish provinces, abolition of the tie 
 between Church and State, universal suffrage, 
 free education. All this was going on under the 
 very eyes of Isabella's ministers, and it was not 
 stopped. The professor was not content to show 
 the faith that was in him by mere words alone.
 
 132 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 He was still consorting with conspirators, the 
 central spirit of midnight cabals. Then came a 
 day of revolt in the streets of Madrid ; and in 
 the midst of the mob appeared the figure of the 
 professor, as little professorial in speech and 
 action as possible; now a fervid orator, pouring 
 out language of incendiary eloquence, and leading 
 his hot-headed followers boldly to barricade and 
 barracks. We should be somewhat astonished 
 to hear of the dean of Christ Church, Oxford, or 
 the professor of moral philosophy at Cambridge, 
 leading a London mob to an attack on Bucking- 
 ham Palace. It evidently did not appear strange, 
 however, to the Madrid populace, to see the uni- 
 versity expounder of history in full insurrection. 
 Marshal Serrano speedily put down this rising, 
 which was the forerunner of that later rising 
 which he himself successfully led. Castelar was 
 taken prisoner and thrown into prison. His of- 
 fence, however, was a very commonplace and 
 usual one. He was not very strictly guarded, 
 though he was condemned to death. By the aid 
 of friendly rebels outside, he soon, with little 
 difficulty, escaped. He went to Geneva and 
 thence to Paris, at both of which places he was 
 warmly received by fellow-exiles. Meanwhile,
 
 CASTELAR. 133 
 
 he kept a keen watch on events in Spain ; he 
 guessed what was coming. The time of waiting 
 did not hang heavily on his hands, for he had a 
 more than facile pen. Spain has not produced 
 in modern times a more brilliant, lucid and pro- 
 lific writer. He had already served a long 
 apprenticeship in journalism. While still quietly 
 pursuing his professorial duties, he had been a 
 frequent contributor to no less than four Spanish 
 newspapers, in all of which he luminously and 
 vigorously argued for the republican cause. 
 Now, at Paris, he wrote for English and French 
 periodicals, besides sending heavy rolls of manu- 
 script to Madrid. 
 
 At the first forewarning sound of the revolu- 
 tion of 1868, Castelar hurried back to his native 
 land. He was sorely needed by his eager repub- 
 lican countrymen, and he instantly responded to 
 their call. He hoped that Serrano, Prim, and 
 Topete might do the work of democracy. Isa- 
 bella's rule had become insufferable in its cor- 
 ruption, degradation and imbecility, even for 
 those stout old soldiers and courtiers. At all 
 events, in the hurly-burly of civil war, the oppor- 
 tunity to attempt the establishment of a republic 
 must not be lost. Castelar was welcomed home
 
 134 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 with the wildest enthusiasm, and with Orense and 
 Figueras at once took the lead of a republican 
 movement. But the trio of old soldiers were, at 
 the time, too much for these radicals. They had 
 the army and navy with them, while Castelar had 
 with him only the mob of Madrid, Barcelona and 
 a few other large towns ; and Madrid is not to 
 Spain what Paris is to France. Prim became 
 dictator, with the understanding that he was to 
 keep the seat of power warm until a sovereign of 
 the pliant sort could be hunted up and got ready 
 to take it. But at the same time the republican 
 chiefs were chosen to seats in the new Cortes. 
 Castelar sought election as deputy for his native 
 town, Alicante, but was defeated by priestly 
 influence. While urging his claims at Alicante, 
 with pardonable pride, he suddenly exclaimed, 
 " My fellow-citizens, my name is sculptured from 
 the Alps to the Andes ! " His rejection there 
 did not exclude him from the Cortes, for he 
 was soon after chosen as one of the representa- 
 tives of the capital. 
 
 It \vas during that memorable first session of 
 the revolutionary legislature that Castelar ap- 
 peared in his full stature as a statesman and as 
 an orator. It was one thing to fire a mob with
 
 CASTE LAR. 135 
 
 burning appeals ; another to discuss grave meas- 
 ures, to aid in shaping a new constitution, and 
 to produce a practical effect upon a sober as- 
 semblage composed at once of the best minds 
 and of the most inveterate prejudices of Spain. 
 Yet there was no old royalist hidalgo so dull and 
 obstinate as not to recognize at once the splen- 
 dor of his eloquence, rich with the ripest and 
 aptest illustrations drawn from vast and well- 
 digested lore, or the broad reach of his political 
 ideas, which comprehended lessons drawn from 
 the experience of every race, ancient and mod- 
 ern. With a small minority of republican col- 
 leagues to sustain him by their votes, Castelar 
 was yet a formidable power in the constituent 
 Cortes. Prim, with all his force of brevity and 
 directness, with all his strong sense and practical 
 knowledge of politics, found out very early that 
 he was no match for Castelar in debate ; and the 
 priest orators of the Cortes, the best, as a rule, 
 that it contained, soon evidently shrank from 
 crossing rhetorical lances with him. His mis- 
 sion in this Cortes was plain to get the con- 
 stitution as near the republican form and spirit 
 as possible, and to educate Spaniards to a faith 
 in, and appreciation of, republican institutions.
 
 136 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 As each grave question came up, Castelar was 
 found ready to meet it with a solution deduced 
 from his own political creed. His first action 
 was to insist that that life-long royal conspirator, 
 the Duke of Montpensier, should be removed 
 from the command-in-chief of the army. Topete, 
 one of the trio of successful revolutionists, was 
 known to favor Montpensier's elevation to the 
 vacant throne, in which Prim was serving as a 
 sort of warming-pan; and it was suspected that 
 Prim himself was not averse from this ctinoue- 
 tnent. Failing to attain his purpose, Castelar 
 next fervidly attacked the proposal that mon- 
 archy was the form of government desired by 
 the nation. Here he had the enemy in the open 
 field, and he assailed them along the whole line. 
 Nothing could exceed the courage, the vigor, 
 the exhaustive illustration, the infectious warmth 
 with which he now spoke. The speeches which 
 he delivered at that critical moment are still 
 clearly remembered and often quoted by Span- 
 iards. He painted in the most vivid colors the 
 blight which monarchy had already spread over 
 the land; the abasement which Spain, under the 
 Bourbons, had long ago reached, and in which 
 she still remained. " Sefwres," he exclaimed in
 
 CASTE LAR, 137 
 
 tones of passionate indignation and sorrow, 
 " look abroad in Spain ! We are a vast charnel- 
 house, stretching from the Pyrenees to the Gulf 
 of Cadiz. We have no agriculture, no industry, 
 no trade ; that is what your kings have done 
 for us ! " Stretching his arm toward Italy, he 
 said, " In Italy, Garibaldi held a crown in his 
 hand at Naples. Instead of destroying it, he 
 gave it to the house of Savoy. But the house 
 on whose head he put a crown, put a bullet into 
 his body at Aspromonte, and a deeper one into 
 his heart at Mentone ! " 
 
 But Castelar was soon to rise to a yet loftier 
 height of eloquence than that of his speeches 
 against monarchy, inspired as he now was by a 
 yet nobler cause than that of giving a republican 
 form to the future government. This was the 
 cause of religious toleration. The " last ditch " 
 of the old-time power of the Romish priesthood 
 seems to be in Spain. After France had become 
 alienated, and Austria had grown cold, Spain 
 was still fervid in superstition, intolerance, and 
 blind devotion to the Papal crown. The Cortes 
 swarmed with able, and subtle, and tireless bishops 
 and priests. Their whole force and influence 
 were bent upon preserving the traditional pro-
 
 138 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 scription of their church and orders. With 
 them they held the fractions of the reactionary 
 parties which had secured a representation in the 
 chamber. The battle between the elements of 
 progress and those of ecclesiastical despotism 
 raged for days. It strained both sides to their 
 utmost desperate exertions. Castelar then had 
 to meet, one after another, the most powerful 
 clerical orators of Spain ; and one after another 
 he put them completely to rout. 
 
 Prim, who was as liberal as he dared to be, 
 proposed a constitutional clause establishing 
 complete religious toleration for both Spaniards 
 and foreigners ; and on this question the whole 
 body of republicans rallied enthusiastically to 
 his side. The clause was assailed by the clerical 
 deputies, who declared that it was inspired by 
 atheists and iconoclasts. This charge brought 
 Castelar promptly to his feet. He launched out 
 in an address which is said to have overwhelmed 
 all sides with literally speechless admiration. 
 Every deputy hung spell-bound on his lips. He 
 drew upon all the vast resources of history to 
 emphasize his plea that religious oppression 
 should be forever abolished from the soil of 
 Spain. In the deepest colors he depicted the
 
 CAS TEL AR. 139 
 
 crushing and desolating religious oppressions of 
 Philip the Second, and held up degraded, deso- 
 lated and impoverished Spain before the eyes of 
 his breathless auditors. Then, drawing him- 
 self up, and in solemn and trembling tones, he 
 ended with this sublime burst of passionate elo- 
 quence: 
 
 " God is great in Sinai ; the thunder precedes 
 Him, the lightning attends Him, the light en- 
 shrouds Him, the earth trembles, the mountains 
 fall in fragments. But there is a greater God 
 than that. On Calvary, nailed to a cross, 
 wounded, thirsting, dying, He prays, ' Father, 
 forgive my executioners, pardon my persecu- 
 tors, for they know not what they do ! ' Great 
 is the religion of power, but greater is the reli- 
 gion of love. Great is the religion of implacable 
 justice, but greater is the religion of pardoning 
 mercy. And I, in the name of that religion 
 I, in the name of the Gospel appeal to you, 
 legislators of Spain, to place in the front of your 
 fundamental constitution, liberty, equality, fra- 
 ternity with all mankind ! " 
 
 The effect of this rhapsody upon all who heard 
 it is said to have been electric and amazing. 
 The deputies sprang to their feet, as if moved
 
 140 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 by a single impulse of irrepressible admiration. 
 The President left his platform to embrace the 
 orator. He was nearly smothered by the dem- 
 onstrations of his friends. The session was sus- 
 pended spontaneously, without formal motion ; 
 the bishops and canons could not, that day, find 
 words in which to clothe their opposition. 
 
 When, several days after, the discussion was 
 resumed, Castelar, flushed with his recent tri- 
 umph, again returned to the plea for religious 
 liberty. He declared himself still to be a faith- 
 ful Catholic " the religion typified by the 
 marble cross that stretches its holy arms over 
 the spot most sacred of all the earth to me 
 the tomb of my mother ! " Then turning to the 
 benches where the priest-deputies sat, he ex- 
 claimed, quoting the words of Jesus concerning 
 toleration, " Gentlemen, you are at war with the 
 Head of your church ! Were I a priest, I would 
 pray God, ' bless these legislators, who are enact- 
 ing on the earth Thy justice and Thy grace !' " 
 
 In this struggle Castelar happily formed one 
 of the majority. Toleration was decreed as an 
 article of the new constitution, by a vote which, 
 it is not too much to say, was greatly swelled by 
 the influence of his splendid eloquence. In so
 
 CASTELAR. 141 
 
 using it, too, Castelar had much augmented his 
 own political authority. Prim courted and tried 
 to make terms with him. The older republican 
 chiefs willingly admitted him to a full equality 
 with themselves in the councils of the party. A 
 little later, he displayed the wisdom of states- 
 manship as well as republican ardor. A radical 
 revolt broke out in Madrid. Its chiefs and insti- 
 gators were his friends. But he used every 
 effort to calm the storm of popular fury, and 
 urged upon the insurgents patience and self-con- 
 trol. Prim was savagely indignant at the revolt, 
 and proposed to suspend liberty and to resort to 
 martial law. Castelar and his colleagues met this 
 threat by another, that if it was carried out they 
 would retire from the Cortes. Prim appealed to 
 him not to do so, and made a further threat. 
 " If we remain in the Cortes," answered Castelar, 
 " it will be from patriotism not from fear." 
 Prim's motion was carried ; Castelar and his 
 friends retired ; and he did not for some months 
 reappear in his seat. 
 
 The republicans found themselves, for a period, 
 helpless. They could not prevent the election 
 of the Italian prince Amadeus as king; but they 
 remained quiet, for they foresaw that his rule
 
 142 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 would soon prove a failure. The sudden abdi- 
 cation of Amadeus, early in 1873, at last left the 
 way open to Castelar, Figueras, and Echegeray 
 to try the experiment of a republic. It was one 
 of those peaceful revolutions that sometimes take 
 the whole world by surprise sudden, bloodless, 
 and for the time at least, complete. The repub- 
 lic was formally declared in a hitherto monarchi- 
 cal Cortes by a vote of two hundred and fifty-six 
 to thirty-two. A provisional government was at 
 once created, and a project for a constituent as- 
 sembly matured. Figueras, a remarkable type 
 of character for a Spaniard, grave, pure, puri- 
 tanical in the soberness and tenacity of his re- 
 publican faith, a man of fifty, in delicate health, 
 frank, but too little used to practical politics, was 
 chosen President of the republic ; and Castelar 
 became his Minister of Foreign Affairs. But 
 this young government, composed of able and 
 eloquent but in public affairs inexperienced men, 
 had infinite difficulties with which to contend. 
 Spain became a seething vat of conspiracy. 
 Serrano and Sagasta began to plot; the military 
 men were jealous and disaffected ; the Mont- 
 pensier party were busy seeking an opportunity 
 to seize upon power; the Isabellists on one
 
 CASTELAR. 143 
 
 hand, the Carlists on the other, continually 
 threatened the existence of the new and essen- 
 tially experimental regime. Then again, the ar- 
 dent republican ministers tried to do too much. 
 Sweeping schemes of reform teemed in their 
 brains, and bloomed into measures at once gener- 
 ous and impracticable. To abolish slavery in 
 Cuba, and gradually throughout the dominion of 
 Spain, and to create in Spain herself a federal 
 government after the pattern of the United 
 States, were only two of the many purposes 
 which Castelar was eager, in the moment of his 
 authority, to carry out. The republic had its 
 hands more than full even to get itself accepted 
 and tolerated, even to get permission to put itself 
 on trial. Unhappily, Castelar who, from the 
 first, was the controlling genius aimed to meta- 
 morphose Spanish opinion, custom, form, and 
 aspirations in a year's time. 
 
 In a few months the strain proved too much, 
 at least for the frail-bodied and, in action, rather 
 timid Figueras. In August, 1873, Castelar ex- 
 changed his portfolio for the presidential chair 
 of the new Cortes ; and it was but a few weeks 
 later, on the sixth of September, that Figueras 
 resigned, and Castelar was elevated to the presi-
 
 144 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 dency of the republic. His first act on assum- 
 ing the direction of the executive power gave 
 promise of an at least energetic administration. 
 He suddenly dissolved the Cortes, and assumed 
 the dictatorship of Spain. This was done with 
 the honest intent to serve the cause of republi- 
 can liberty; but how sadly Spanish it was! 
 After all, he could only follow in the track of 
 Prim and O'Donnell. He then tried, by extraor- 
 dinary measures, to subdue the Cuban insur- 
 rection on the one hand, and the Carlist rebellion 
 on the other. But he failed, as the generals 
 would not heartily co-operate with him. Then 
 the dictator was forced to summon a new Cortes 
 into existence. This was opening the jar which 
 let out upon him the giant who was destined to 
 crush him. The Chamber met on the first of 
 January ; its first act was to pass a vote of want 
 of confidence in the President; its next, to re- 
 ceive and accept his resignation. Then General 
 Pavia captured the government with his troopers, 
 sent the astonished legislators about their busi- 
 ness, gave the dictatorship to Serrano, and the 
 republic had vanished. 
 
 It would be unjust to pass a very harsh judg- 
 ment on Castelar's brief Presidency. He was
 
 CASTELAR. 
 
 145 
 
 honest, ardent, full of faith, intensely patriotic, and 
 full of energy. He did not measure at their true 
 magnitude the difficulties that confronted him on 
 every side. He overestimated the intelligence and 
 the political sense of Spaniards. He sadly wanted 
 experience in office. He was betrayed by jeal- 
 ousies and plottings in his own party. He was 
 eager to go too fast. He fell sooner than he 
 might, from excess of zeal ; however able and 
 practical, he must, in Spain at that time, have 
 fallen later, if not sooner. The experiment was 
 not a success ; but it may be said that perhaps 
 it has left a germ out of which success may 
 some time bud and bloom. Spain is more likely 
 to become a republic from the fact that it has 
 been one. 
 
 When the dictatorship of Serrano gave way to 
 the Bourbon restoration in the person of Alfonso, 
 Castelar retired for a while from political life, 
 resigned his professorship in the University, and 
 took up his residence at Geneva. After remain- 
 ing there a year, however, he returned to Spain, 
 and once more took his seat in the Cortes as the 
 representative of the city of Madrid. This seat 
 he still holds. At the age of forty-eight, 
 Castelar still has doubtless a brilliant career in
 
 146 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 scholarship and letters, if not in politics, before 
 him. Indeed, while in the midst of the political- 
 hurly-burly, he has never, except at short inter- 
 vals, allowed his attention to altogether stray 
 from his favorite studies and literary labors. 
 While Minister of Foreign Affairs, many articles 
 from his brilliant pen appeared in English and 
 other periodicals; one in particular on his chief, 
 Figueras, was read with especial admiration in 
 the pages of the Fortnightly Review. His range 
 of literary production has been by no means 
 confined to political studies. Besides such works 
 as " Democratic Ideas " and " The Republican 
 Movement in Europe," he has published books 
 on " Popular Legends," " Civilization in the First 
 Five Centuries of Christianity," " Celebrities of 
 the World of Letters," and a most graphic de- 
 scription of " Old Rome and New Italy." It is a 
 matter of special interest to Americans to know 
 how profound and appreciative a study Castelar 
 has made of our institutions. There is some- 
 thing marvellous in the intimacy of his knowl- 
 edge and the accuracy of his interpretation of 
 them. Without ever having crossed the Atlan- 
 tic, he seems, by the intuition of sympathetic 
 genius, to have caught their very spirit as success-
 
 CASTELAR. 147 
 
 fully as did De Tocqueville himself. Both in his 
 speeches in the Cortes and in the products of his 
 pen, he has constantly referred to the United 
 States as the example he would have Spain set 
 before herself; and many of his most forcible 
 illustrations have been drawn from the same 
 source of political knowledge. Castelar seems 
 to have been especially struck by the guarantees 
 of order and liberty afforded by the federative 
 feature of our government. While in office, he 
 made a bold but futile attempt to introduce it 
 into Spain. He imagined that, with the local 
 peculiarities and dissimilarities to be found 
 among the Basques of the Pyrenees, the Cas- 
 tilians of central Spain, and the Granadans and 
 Andalusians of the South, their veins darkened 
 and heated by a tinge of the Moorish blood, the 
 federative principle, affording at once local self- 
 control and a central bond of union, would be 
 likely to insure the endurance of the young re- 
 public. It was a dream which may be realized 
 sometime in the future. What is especially strik- 
 ing is the high enlightenment of Castelar's views 
 and government; the astonishing historic lore he 
 has betrayed, ranging from Russia to North and 
 South America, from Spain to the far Orient,
 
 148 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 including a profound knowledge of the sources 
 of the Bible, and an easy familiarity with every 
 political system that has prevailed in the world 
 from the most remote to the most recent periods. 
 He has, besides, a memory of which Macaulay 
 might have been jealous, and a power of atten- 
 tion which Sir William Hamilton would scarcely 
 fail to recognize as genius. 
 
 As an orator, Castelar probably has in Gam- 
 betta his only rival in continental Europe. He 
 has been called " the Wendell Phillips of Spain." 
 Colonel John Hay, who was our Secretary of 
 Legation at Madrid during the brief career of 
 the republic, and who knew Castelar intimately, 
 says of his eloquence : " There is something 
 superhuman in his delivery. His speech is like 
 a torrent in its inconceivable fluency, like a raging 
 fire in its brilliancy of color and terrible energy 
 of passion. His action is most energetic and 
 impassioned. The whole man talks, from his 
 head to his feet." And if he rivals Gambetta in 
 the fluency, the fire and the persuasiveness of 
 his manner, in certain respects in the richness 
 and fulness of his historical illustrations, in the 
 glowing splendor and inexhaustible resources of 
 his rhetoric, and in the cosmopolitan breadth of
 
 CASTE LAR. 149 
 
 his ideas he certainly surpasses the great 
 French tribune. Some quotations from his 
 speeches in the Cortes have been given ; but 
 these can only give an inadequate impression of 
 his oratorical powers. Suffice it to say that he 
 never spoke, even to an audience deadly hostile 
 to his cause, without holding every mind en- 
 thralled under his magic spell. 
 
 Castelar does not, in his personal appearance, 
 belie the brilliancy of his intellectual or the 
 warmth and nobility of his moral qualities. 
 Colonel Hay thinks that he resembles Shake- 
 speare, as portrayed in marble by a sculptor of 
 the present century. " He reminds you con- 
 stantly," he says, " of Chantrey's bust of the 
 greatest of the sons of men. The same pure 
 oval outline, the arched eyebrows, the piled-up 
 dome of forehead stretching outward from the 
 eyes, until the glossy black hair, seeing the hope- 
 lessness of disputing the field, has retired dis- 
 couraged to the back of the head." It may be 
 inferred from this that Castelar's personal ap- 
 pearance is prepossessing. Of medium height, 
 or perhaps a little below medium height, his 
 shoulders are broad, his chest is deep, and his 
 bearing of the body is commanding. His face
 
 I5O CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 is a long oval, after the Spanish type ; the only 
 beard worn is a long sweeping mustache, dark, 
 glossy and evidently carefully cultivated, which 
 nearly covers the weakest feature of the face 
 the mouth. It is not a mouth from which one 
 infers a very great amount of firmness of char- 
 acter. The complexion is a dark, clear, smooth 
 olive. The chin shares with the mouth the lack 
 of strength which we usually expect to see in 
 the countenance of a man of action especially 
 in a revolutionary chief; but it is handsomely 
 smooth and round. The forehead, while lofty, 
 is rather narrow, and the eyes are expressively 
 large, full, and dark, and give its tone to the 
 whole face. They are the eyes of a poet, an 
 orator, a man of keen sensibility, a theorizer, a 
 dreamer of mystical utopianisms. His manner 
 is simple, dignified, and his gestures are expres- 
 sive, quick, natural and nervous. When talk- 
 ing, the mobility of his features adds to the elo- 
 quence of his words. In attire, Castelar is little 
 heedful of appearances. His dress is careless, 
 almost slovenly ; and this was at one time a pro- 
 lific subject of the satire of his enemies. 
 
 Castelar's mode of living has always been 
 simple, modest, economical, after what he con-
 
 CASTELAR. 1 5 I 
 
 ceives to be a republican fashion. Even when 
 President of the republic, he failed to assume 
 any of the state which might naturally be sup- 
 posed to be appropriate to that station. A single 
 soldier guarded the entrance to the presidential 
 mansion ; the President, who is a bachelor, lived 
 upon the third floor, in the apartment of his 
 sister and brother-in-law. Miss Kate Field, in 
 " Ten Days in Spain," thus describes her visit to 
 this apartment : 
 
 " On ringing the bell, a man without livery 
 appeared. Sefior Castelar would be disengaged 
 shortly. Nothing could be plainer than the two 
 small rooms into which I was ushered. Engrav- 
 ings of the Spanish masters hung upon the walls. 
 Besides these, a bronze statuette of Don Quix- 
 ote, another of Mirabeau, a few books, and an 
 enormous bouquet, were the sole ornaments of 
 the apartment." 
 
 In private life, Castelar is respected for the 
 severity of his tastes and correctness of his 
 habits, and is beloved for the sweetness, the 
 amiability, the accessibility, and the unaffected 
 fervor of his nature. His resemblance to Gam- 
 betta as an impassioned orator is not greater 
 than his resemblance to Gambetta as an incor-
 
 152 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 ruptible tribune of the people, living (as Gam- 
 betta lived down to the period of his assumption 
 of the Presidency of the Chamber of Deputies) 
 in modest lodgings, dressing with almost affected 
 carelessness, and either having or assuming a 
 democratic manner with everybody. On the 
 other hand, Castelar lacks evidently what we 
 should call the " grit " of Gambetta ; his immense 
 ability to direct events ; his consummate tact as 
 well as vigor in the use of the weapons of prac- 
 tical politics. He is, besides, more of a bookish 
 man than Gambetta; fonder of literature, and a 
 far riper product of long-continued self-culture. 
 
 His voice is less often heard in the Cortes than 
 formerly; and it seems doubtful, even should 
 the republic be restored, whether Castelar would 
 be its directing spirit. But he is still, and will 
 always be, the centre of a devoted group of 
 political adherents who love, trust, and follow 
 him. His task would seem rather to educate 
 Spaniards in republicanism than to guide the 
 helm after it has been attained ; to illustrate it by 
 his vast learning and his matchless eloquence, 
 rather than to frame its codes and execute its 
 mandates. He by no means despairs of the 
 cause in which he was at one time the prophet,
 
 CASTELAR. 153 
 
 and at another the martyr ; he regards the mon- 
 archy as a temporary makeshift and the repub- 
 lic as certain to return in due time. Meanwhile, 
 his republican preaching through the press, at 
 the weekly reunions that are held at his house, 
 and in quiet conferences here and there, goes on 
 bravely and ceaselessly. Such a man is capable 
 of leavening a large lump of Spanish ignorance 
 and prejudice; and it is not unlikely that his 
 name will live in history as at least the founder 
 of the republican idea in the so long despot- 
 ridden and priest-ridden Iberian peninsula.
 
 VI. 
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 /^\N a certain dismal, drizzly afternoon in Sep- 
 tember, 1870, a large crowd assembled, in 
 spite of the inclement weather, at the Northern 
 railway-station in Paris. It was an eager, expect- 
 ant crowd ; mostly in the blouse of the lower 
 orders, though here and there were well-dressed 
 men, and men of distinguished appearance and 
 presence. Paris was at that moment in deep 
 mourning. Sedan had just been lost; the effort 
 to bar the German flood of invasion had failed ; 
 and the enemy was now known to be swarm- 
 ing towards the dismayed and anarchy-stricken 
 capital. 
 
 After the crowd had waited till the fane rain 
 had penetrated to their skins, a long train rolled 
 into the station. A part of it, however, remained 
 outside the building when it stopped; and to 
 this part the crowd hastily huddled. In another 
 moment a loud, enthusiastic cheer resounded in 
 the air. Brawny arms were stretched out toward
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 155 
 
 the platform near one of the cars ; hats were 
 waved convulsively ; the crowd became a solid, 
 compact mass as near this spot as possible. 
 
 An old man, with bare, gray head and flushed 
 face, stood upon the platform. His chest heaved 
 with emotion. He waved his hands nervously 
 towards those who had come to welcome him. 
 He held his head high, as if proud to be so 
 greeted : and waited for the cheers to subside 
 before he opened his mouth to speak. 
 
 The venerable face and figure were well worth 
 observing. The remarkable feature of the form 
 was its proud erectness, though sixty-five years 
 of a life full of vicissitude rested upon it. Of me- 
 dium height, the figure was thick-set and solid ; a 
 strong, healthy one, the result of life-long tem- 
 perance and plenty of physical exercise. The 
 head was round, the forehead high, and arched, 
 and white, the face a broad oval ; the hair was 
 cut short and of snowy whiteness, the beard and 
 mustache were also cropped close, gray, and fast 
 whitening. The complexion told a cheerful tale 
 of ruddy health and moderateness of habit; it 
 has been described as that of " a ripe winter 
 apple ; " fair and rosy as a child's, and as yet 
 but little wrinkled. The most beautiful feature was
 
 156 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 the eye, large, jet-black, magnificently brilliant, 
 earnest, with the fire of imagination and genius 
 burning brightly in it; yet, as he looked down 
 upon his welcomers, kindly, paternal, moist with 
 the profoundest emotion. This eye lighted up 
 the whole face, and made it an irresistibly attrac- 
 tive one. It was not, perhaps, what would be 
 called a handsome face, but it surely had been, 
 years ago ; it was now a noble, intellectual, be- 
 nevolent face ; that, unquestionably, of a man 
 above and apart from his fellow-men. 
 
 There were gray-heads in the crowd who re- 
 membered this man when, just about twenty 
 years before, he had been driven an exile from 
 France, to which he now for the first time re- 
 turned ; and they called to mind how, when he 
 went, his hair had been almost raven-black, and 
 his face had beamed with all the glories of the 
 intellectual beauty of younger manhood. He 
 had greatly changed ; but age had ennobled 
 him, and made him look far grander than before. 
 
 Strange words strangely eloquent and pow- 
 erful, and altogether surprising were those 
 which, when his clear, warm voice could be 
 heard, greeted the ears of his hearers. He 
 plunged into a harangue in which pathos, imagi-
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 157 
 
 nation, poetry, and extravagance of language, 
 were grotesquely blended. He spoke of France 
 as the focus of civilization, and of Paris as the in- 
 tellectual metropolis of the globe. In splendid 
 diction, with sentences bejewelled with epigram 
 and studded with simile, he sounded all the 
 glories of his native land. He told his auditors 
 that the Germans would never dare to lay their 
 vandal hands upon sacred Paris ; that as she sat 
 there, peerless amid her hills, her very aspect 
 would awe the intruder into hasty retreat. Then, 
 stretching forth his arms in the drizzling rain in 
 the direction whence the German armies were 
 approaching the capital, he addressed to them 
 an appeal, which at one moment we are prone to 
 think of as sublime, and in the next as ludicrous. 
 He besought the German hosts to dethrone their 
 kings, to desert their generals, to lay down their 
 arms, to hasten to the embrace of their French 
 brethren, and, with them, to declare " the uni- 
 versal republic ! " 
 
 The life of this greatest of all French roman- 
 cers for what French novel-writer, living or 
 dead, could match any one of his own works with 
 " Les Miserables "? has been itself a romance. 
 One shrinks from attempting to portray that
 
 158 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 meteor-like career, the splendor of its tri- 
 umphs, the depth of its sorrows, its unexpected 
 denouements, its displays of passion, of fancy, of 
 profound thought, of a charity and humane 
 yearnings that have embraced all mankind, its 
 creations of literary schools, and its defiances of 
 autocratic power; and still less hopeful is the 
 task of justly weighing and describing the quality 
 and characteristics of this genius, which has 
 moved and startled men for more than fifty years, 
 and the resources of which are apparently far 
 from being even yet exhausted. 
 
 This ardent republican is the son of a Bona- 
 partist general and of a Legitimist mother, and 
 the grandson of an old noble who was guillotined 
 by Robespierre. Born when the power of Na- 
 poleon was at its height, he was reared amid the 
 thrilling and troublous events which marked 
 Napoleon's decline and fall. He is, moreover, 
 of noble blood ; for General Hugo, his father, 
 dated his nobility two centuries back, and his 
 mother was patrician enough to have joined in 
 the royalist conspiracy of La Vendee. Victor 
 Hugo's childhood was passed amid scenes well 
 fitted to nurture the soul of a poet. That pov- 
 erty which he has portrayed so often and with
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 159 
 
 such tender eloquence, he himself never suffered. 
 His beauty and brightness as a child were the 
 theme of all who saw him. Before he had 
 reached his eighth year he had seen more of the 
 great world than most men during their lives. 
 His first recollections brought before his mind's 
 eye the new-fangled and showy court of the 
 great Napoleon. At five, he found himself amid 
 the Calabrian mountains, where his father was 
 busy trapping the famous brigand, Fra Diavolo. 
 Pie travelled in Italy, studied in a convent, learned 
 to read the Latin historians precociously soon ; 
 again lived in Spain, and took in all that he saw 
 and learned with keen eye and rapid mind. These 
 early associations made a gentleman, and a 
 scholar, and a poet of Victor Hugo ; and he has 
 carried the polish of intellectual refinement and 
 the grace of the old-time manner then learned, 
 through revolution, riot, the storms of the trib- 
 une, and his apostolate of the rights of the 
 people. 
 
 Victor Hugo published poetry worth reading 
 and remembering at ten years of age. Four 
 years later he produced a tragedy ; at fifteen 
 he wrote an essay for the prize of the Academy, 
 which was only withheld from him because the
 
 160 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 Academicians could not believe that such a strip- 
 ling composed it. Then began that marvellous 
 literary career which has continued to amaze 
 mankind for more than half a century. A mere 
 record of Victor Hugo's literary triumphs would 
 go far to exhaust the space at my disposal. He 
 was a distinguished man at twenty, the favorite 
 poet of the Bourbon Restoration, the master of 
 the revels at the games of Toulouse, christened 
 by Chateaubriand " the sublime child," granted 
 a pension by the king, and admired throughout 
 Paris for his noble grace and bearing and his 
 brilliant personal beauty. It then seemed as if 
 Victor Hugo was destined to become another 
 Racine ; an elegant ornament of courts, a starred 
 noble, perhaps a staid politician, and a prospec- 
 tive, polite and loyal minister of fine arts. His 
 imagination, now crystallizing into beautiful and 
 vigorous forms, decorated the Bourbon throne 
 with floral crowns and wreaths of poesy such as 
 had never before adorned it. He endowed the 
 dull and narrow-souled Charles X. with knightly 
 qualities and heroism such as his genius alone 
 could have lifted and protected from the laugh- 
 ter of the world. Royal mouths spoke of him as 
 Orpheus and Apollo in one. But at that time
 
 VICTOR HUGO. l6l 
 
 no one suspected in the young bard, who had 
 already drunk in the full meaning of Lamartine's 
 " Meditations," other thoughts or aspirations than 
 those inspired by a blind idolatry of thrones. 
 
 To a mind at once so clear, so susceptible, 
 and so sensitive as that of Victor Hugo, the 
 awakening to the consciousness that the idols of 
 his childhood and youth were coarse and com- 
 mon clay, must have been a terrible one. His 
 happiness and his ambition rested in his thoughts ; 
 and to find that he had wasted the rich gold of 
 his fancy upon that which was unworthy, seems 
 to have gradually transformed him. Victor Hugo 
 for the first time became a politician when his 
 fair dreams of royal honor and beneficence were 
 rudely dispelled, and his eyes were opened to a 
 suffering people struggling beneath the throne. 
 The young poet then betrayed the nobility of 
 his nature ; its courage, its sincerity, and its 
 deep-feeling humanity. He boldly cast his false 
 gods behind him. He approached the political 
 descendants of those who had guillotined his 
 grandsire ; of those whom his revered mother, at 
 the risk of her very life, had conspired to over- 
 throw. The glamour of the Napoleonic legend 
 faded and shrivelled before his eyes ; the divinity
 
 1 62 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 that had seemed to him to hedge kings, deserted 
 the throne, and hovered now above the people. 
 The new thoughts did not come upon him all at 
 once ; he was not converted, like Paul, in a blind- 
 ing flash of light. His muse at first became dumb. 
 There were no more magnificent pseans sung to 
 the surpassing excellence of Bourbon royalty. 
 The crowding thoughts were stemmed and pent 
 up. This teeming, unresting mind was for a time 
 congested with unuttered thoughts and imagin- 
 ings. It must be confessed, too, that praise was 
 sweet to him, and that his silence was freezing 
 the praise that lingered on high-born lips, ready 
 to lavish itself when he should sing again. 
 
 Then he cut adrift from the past. The word 
 went forth that the pet poet of the Restoration 
 was no longer its flatterer and laureate. He 
 turned from the composition of sycophantic odes 
 to that of virile and fiery romances. He founded 
 a liberal club. He began to talk fervidly of the 
 rights of the people. He established and edited 
 a paper devoted to literary and political reform ; 
 and now that he was fairly abroad on the new 
 road, he gave bold battle to other things that 
 were ancient besides the monarchy. The false 
 gods of the throne were not the only ones
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 163 
 
 against whom he hurled the whole force of his 
 eloquence and genius. He became the apostle 
 of a new literature. He braved the big-wigs of 
 the Academy itself; revolted from classic per- 
 fection of form, and championed the cause of 
 pure and great ideas ; he sought to pull down 
 Aristotle from his pedestal, and Racine from his ; 
 he praised Voltaire ; he locked arms with La- 
 martine; and in his tragedy of "Cromwell," 
 given to the world when he was twenty-five, laid 
 the corner-stone of that romanticism which has 
 become the Parthenon of French literature. No 
 one can, probably, conceive of the intensity of 
 the conflict which then raged between the old 
 and new literary schools, who did not live in its 
 midst; its issue we know, for the triumph of 
 Hugo and Lamartine, if slow, has been complete. 
 It would seem as if this struggle, and with it 
 the full awakening to a new intellectual life, 
 served to develop powers in Victor Hugo's mind 
 which, with all his reputation and promise, had 
 hitherto been unsuspected. For it was in the 
 very last years of the reign of Charles X., that 
 he produced the dramas which at once placed 
 him above every dramatist of his time, and which 
 contained the revolutionary ideas which he has
 
 164 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 since only elaborated. " Marion de 1'Orme " 
 aroused the terror of the palace, of the Academy, 
 of the patrician classes, of the dramatic censor- 
 ship. Had it been only revolutionary and com- 
 monplace, it might have been ignored with 
 contempt; but it was literary genius flourishing 
 the sword of revolution. Its fiery utterances went 
 straight to the heart and the reason of the people. 
 It was more powerful than Manuel in the Cham- 
 ber, Royer-Collard at the Sorbonne, or Thiers in 
 the sanctum. It appealed to the popular heart 
 in its recreations. Its performance was for- 
 bidden. Then came " Hernani," which was 
 allowed. This leniency was as fatal as the former 
 intolerance had been. " Hernani " inspired a riot 
 on the very eve of Charles's downfall; Victor 
 Hugo was vindicated by the fists of the mob. In 
 his hands the theatre became an engine of revo- 
 lution quite as effective as the eloquence of the 
 tribune or the power of the press ; and in the 
 alliance which effected the final expulsion of 
 the Bourbons, we must reckon the drama, as 
 used by him, as not the least formidable con- 
 federate. 
 
 His dramas and poems had made him a polit- 
 ical as well as a literary figure. So far, however,
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 165 
 
 was he from the ultimate goal of republican 
 faith, when the revolution of 1830 took place, 
 that he seems for the moment to have regretted 
 the Bourbon downfall. It was at this period that 
 he produced the first of his great works of endur- 
 ing fiction, " Notre Dame de Paris ; " and it is 
 scarcely an exaggeration to say that up to that 
 time, no romance written by a French pen had 
 so stirred the feeling of the masses. Almost for 
 the first time, we find in " Notre Dame " that 
 profound and tender sympathy for, and commis- 
 eration with, the unfortunate, which was in the 
 process of years to make Victor Hugo, above all 
 writers, the champion of poverty and humble 
 virtue. Nor could the reader of " Notre Dame " 
 fail to discover, in many of its brilliant passages, 
 the germ of that belief in the brotherhood and 
 the equality of men, which became the central 
 idea of Victor Hugo's political creed. Scorn 
 of kingship, contempt of hereditary privilege, 
 fiery indignation at the oppressions of the great, 
 burst forth in its pages, here and there, seem- 
 ingly almost against the writer's will. 
 
 But two years had not elapsed of the reign of 
 the citizen king, before Victor Hugo again 
 assailed palace and crown through the avenue of
 
 1 66 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 the drama. Rejected though this no longer 
 questioned genius had been by the Academy, 
 regarded still in polite society as a brilliant but 
 erratic visionary, not yet accepted by the 
 tribunes of the people as one of themselves, as 
 yet more conservative in politics than Thiers or 
 Lamartine, more radical in literature than Royer- 
 Collard or Beranger, Victor Hugo had never- 
 theless made his power felt over the hearts and 
 imaginations of the masses. "Le Roi s'Amuse " 
 a thunderbolt of satire and ridicule aimed at 
 the uselessness and caprices of kingship 
 raised such an uproar even in a " bourgeois " 
 reign, as to terrify Louis Philippe and his min- 
 isters, and to cause it to be suppressed by official 
 decree. This seemed a violation of that popular 
 liberty which the revolution had been supposed 
 to secure ; but it was also so much the more an 
 unwilling tribute to Victor Hugo's genius. He 
 now became a popular idol ; and if, at that 
 moment, he had chosen to leave the field of 
 literature for that of politics, he might have taken 
 his place among the chiefs of the popular party. 
 At the age of thirty, however, with the con- 
 sciousness of his past triumphs and his ripening 
 genius to inspire him, literature was still too
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 167 
 
 beloved a mistress to quit. The decade between 
 1832 and 1842 was. the most fruitful in his whole 
 life in amount and quality of literary production. 
 He did not in that period reach the very summit 
 of intellectual achievement; that was to be at- 
 tained when, twenty years later, the incomparable 
 " Les Miserables " was read by a wondering 
 world. But it was between 1832 and 1842 that 
 appeared " Lucretia Borgia," " Marie Stuart," 
 and " Ruy Bias," three magnificent historical 
 dramas which still hold the stage, and have won 
 triumphs in every civilized country; that his 
 masterly " Study of Mirabeau," his " Literature 
 and Philosophy," " Songs of Twilight," the bold 
 martial poem of " The Rhine," " Inner Voices," 
 and " Angels," were written and published. It 
 is not too much to say that at the end of this 
 period, Victor Hugo had attained a degree of lit- 
 erary renown far eclipsing that of Chateaubriand, 
 Lamartine, or Balzac, and only surpassed in the 
 previous century by Voltaire. 
 
 It has been said of the contrast between the 
 greatest Greek and the greatest mediaeval Italian 
 sculptor, that while Phidias executed serene 
 gods, Michael Angelo portrayed suffering he- 
 roes. As one compares the works of Victor
 
 1 68 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 Hugo those already mentioned with the 
 performances of the preceding French classics, 
 a similar contrast suggests itself. The revolt 
 which Victor Hugo began at twenty against the 
 formality, the correctness, the rule and measure- 
 governed style of Racine, Corneille, and their 
 schools, he carried on persistently and hotly 
 throughout his literary career. In twenty years 
 he had so far established romanticism as the 
 vital principle of a virile and enduring literature, 
 that scholarly France was very evenly divided 
 between it and the older school; and in 1841 
 romanticism achieved a victory and unequivocal 
 testimony to its influence, by the admission of 
 Victor Hugo, at last, into the august circle of the 
 French Academy. Four years later a very dif- 
 ferent and much more singular honor was con- 
 ferred upon him. Louis Philippe created him 
 a senator of France; but Victor Hugo, though 
 he was well fitted to play a conspicuous part as 
 an academician, was quite out of place among 
 the formal and prosy pundits who then com- 
 posed the upper house ; and his appearances as 
 a " senator " were few and rare. No one as yet 
 suspected that Victor Hugo was capable of high 
 political eloquence ; but this was soon to be 
 proven beyond all cavil.
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 169 
 
 The revolution of 1848 came to stir every 
 Frenchman with patriotic instincts to the most 
 anxious thought and earnest endeavor in behalf 
 of his country. Victor Hugo seems to have 
 hesitated now for the last time between the in- 
 fluences of his childhood and the convictions of 
 his ripened intellect. At first he thought of re- 
 sisting the revolution. When it had become an 
 accomplished fact, he entered the Constituent 
 Assembly to cast the weight of his fame and in- 
 fluence in the moderate scale. He feared the 
 return of the Terror, and shrank from the pros- 
 pect of Jacobin rule. It is a curious fact that in 
 those days he sat near Louis Napoleon Bona- 
 parte in the Chamber, and more^ften voted with 
 him than on the other side. He was democratic 
 and republican, but looked askance at the Moun- 
 tain. Events soon rapidly changed his view of 
 the political course he should pursue. He was 
 alarmed at the election of Bonaparte to the 
 presidency, and already foresaw the shadow of 
 the Empire lowering over France. In the Leg- 
 islative Assembly, which succeeded the Constit- 
 uent, and in which Victor Hugo sat as one of 
 the representatives of Paris, he finally took his 
 stand as a champion of popular liberty and
 
 I/O CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 equality, and from that hour to this he has never 
 once swerved from that creed. 
 
 And now, at the age of forty-eight, Victor 
 Hugo proved himself a brilliant orator. It was 
 impossible for him to espouse such a cause as 
 this, which fired his imagination and satisfied his 
 intellect, without plunging into it with all the 
 glowing and intense fervor of his nature. He 
 was never a judge, but always a vehement parti- 
 san. Of a physical type and presence which 
 filled and attracted the eye, with raven-black 
 hair, a " great, curious eye," an erect, defiant 
 form, a manner absorbingly intent and earnest, 
 a clear, high voice, with every tone and every 
 movement full of passion; and, added to these 
 traits, wit 1 " 1 pre-eminent renown as a poet and 
 dramatist; it is no wonder that Victor Hugo 
 commanded spell-bound attention. His deliv- 
 ery was tempestuous, rapid, flashing, and, it 
 must be said, often arrogant ; he hesitated at no 
 violence or extravagance of language; he did 
 not spare even the most illustrious of his antago- 
 nists ; he exhausted the resources of a vocabu- 
 lary overflowing with epithets upon those whom 
 he assailed ; with scorn and withering contempt, 
 with denunciations white-hot and scorching, with
 
 VICTOR HCGO. I/I 
 
 ridicule that hissed and seethed, as, like molten 
 lava, he poured it out upon the objects of his 
 hostility, he battled for the cause he had wedded 
 and was intent on bringing to realization. Those 
 who heard his almost daily forensic conflicts 
 with Montalembert, a foeman worthy of his 
 steel, and one who had the advantage of him at 
 least in temper and logic, speak of those scenes 
 as scenes never to be forgotten ; and those who 
 sat well-nigh paralyzed, as he hurled his anathe- 
 mas upon the faithless President of the repub- 
 lic, who \vas subjecting that republic to a slow 
 process of assassination, declare that they can 
 still hear the strident voice and the relentless 
 words ringing in their ears. Enough has been 
 said of the character of Victor Hugo's political 
 temperament and eloquence to show why he 
 could never be a statesman or a practical politi- 
 cian. It provokes a smile to think of this vehe- 
 ment and extravagant genius framing a formal 
 code, or leading, by patience and tact, a party 
 to victory. He was, evidently, an apostle and 
 preacher of republicanism, and not a law-maker. 
 He dealt with abstract ideas ; sublime ones, in- 
 deed, but ideas which could scarcely be so codi- 
 fied as to govern well the Frenchmen of 1850.
 
 1/2 CERTAIN ME A' OF MA A' A'. 
 
 He could see whither poor worried France was 
 drifting, and the traitor hand preparing the 
 death-blow for the republic ; declamation could 
 not hold France back, or the traitor hand ; yet, 
 unfortunately, declamation was all that this 
 proud patriot knew how to do. The greatest 
 and noblest of the romanticists was in politics 
 a visionary ; and his eloquence, glowing, ardent, 
 fierce, tremendous in bitterness, scorn and ridi- 
 cule as it was, could avail nothing, unless it were 
 to rouse more practical minds from their torpor, 
 and to inflame the popular mind to revolt against 
 oppression. The ample proof that Victor Hugo, 
 brilliant as an orator, vehement as a partisan, 
 and absorbingly zealous as a patriot, was really 
 out of place as a politician, lies in his utter help- 
 lessness at the supreme moment when the 
 catastrophe which he had long foreseen the 
 coup d'etat occurred. That his eloquence had 
 power and danger in it, however, was abundantly 
 confessed by the usurper; one of whose first 
 acts was to banish the brightest literary light of 
 France from her soil. Then came the long exile 
 in Jersey, Guernsey, and Brussels; the scornful 
 rejection of amnesties offered and even urged; 
 the terrific onslaught upon the Emperor in
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 173 
 
 " Napoleon the Little ; " and there turn of Vic- 
 tor Hugo, fortunately for the world and for his 
 fame, to literary labors. It was during his exile 
 of nineteen years that he wrote " Les Chati- 
 ments," a poem of which, as has been well said, 
 " every line breathes living fire, and branded his 
 enemy with indelible disgrace ; " that he pro- 
 duced those profound and unsurpassingly pa- 
 thetic reflections, "Les Contemplations;" that 
 he wrought -out that masterpiece of his genius, 
 " Les Miserables ; " and that he betrayed many 
 other evidences of his versatility as well as of his 
 feeling and fancy. 
 
 It behooves the student of Victor Hugo's 
 works, no matter how appreciative and loving, 
 to speak cautiously and with measured words 
 of his splendid genius ; for there is that in his 
 noblest work which so dazzles and enthralls that 
 the reader is most easily thrown off the balance 
 of his judgment. One is tempted to declare 
 that the entire philosophy and practical teaching 
 of the Christian religion lie between the covers of 
 "Les Miserables; " that not even in Shakespeare 
 is there such deep penetration into human char- 
 acter; that in the chapter on "the Dissection 
 of a Soul," the profoundest depth of spiritual
 
 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 probing has been reached ; that the pathos and 
 the passion, the minute shades of character, the 
 marvellous humanity, the all-embracing sym- 
 pathy, the dramatic power, the superb descrip- 
 tion, to be found in that romance, have never 
 before been combined within a single book. 
 Even the staid Blackwood reviewer is lured from 
 judicial measure of language when he comes to 
 speak of " Les Miserables " and " Notre Dame." 
 He says that " they dwarf everything that can 
 be put by their side ; " that there is nothing in 
 modern literature " which would not look pale 
 in their presence ; " and that " there is no 
 Frenchman who can be so much as thought of 
 in any possible aspect of rivalry " with Victor 
 Hugo. Once the laureate of thrones, in the pas- 
 sage of years and the process of intellectual 
 growth he became of all men the literary tribune 
 of poverty and misfortune. Every subject that 
 he handles, too, completely possesses him. 
 Even in his most extravagant passages and 
 there are many which to most readers seem to 
 be enthusiasm gone clean mad there is appar- 
 ently no studying for mere effect. Of all things, 
 Victor Hugo is inartificial. It is not the mere 
 art of a skilled writer that is observed ; this
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 175 
 
 quality is there, it is true, for without it the 
 splendid dramatic effects, the surprises, situa- 
 tions, and denouements, the rapid and brilliant 
 transitions from scorn to pathos, from pathos to 
 sunny merriment, and from joy to the most som- 
 bre tragedy, could not have been wrought out to 
 such artistic perfection. There is, however, 
 within and behind, the real and sacred fire of 
 genius ; a harmonious union of imagination and 
 enthusiasm and dead-in-earnestness. As one 
 recalls one after another of Victor Hugo's pro- 
 ductions, he is tempted to think that love is the 
 key-note of his soul. He loves France with a 
 fervor more than patriotic ; he almost worships 
 the grandeur of Paris ; he fondly loves nature, 
 and all things beautiful within it; his mighty 
 heart reaches forth and embraces mankind ; 
 above all, his tenderest affection is lavished, in 
 glowing words that fire with like feeling every 
 other heart that is not dead, with the choicest 
 flowers of his fancy, the brightest gems of his 
 intellectual wealth, and the most far-sought 
 phrases of affection his language affords, upon 
 the down-trodden and the stricken, the victims 
 of man's injustice, the desperate hunted ones of 
 society.
 
 1/6 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 And this quality of great love that appears in 
 his writings, is also the noblest personal quality 
 of the man himself. Between him and the mem- 
 bers of his family there has always been the 
 most ardent and devoted affection. There is 
 not an author living sharper at a trade with the 
 publishers; he exacts his due to the uttermost 
 centime. And his due received, it is lavished 
 with bounteous hand right and left, to relieve 
 suffering, to scatter joy, to comfort the lowly, to 
 confer pleasure. All exiles were welcomed to 
 his exiled home at Guernsey with open arms and 
 to a bounteous table. The unfortunate of all 
 lands were his guests and his pensioners. After 
 the fall of the Commune, when Victor Hugo had 
 retired to Brussels, he filled his house there with 
 Communist refugees ; and this at the risk not 
 only of his property, but his life. His enthu- 
 siastic affection for children is betrayed alike in 
 his works and in his daily acts. There are no 
 more exquisitely beautiful passages in his ro- 
 mances than those in which he describes child- 
 hood. There is a caress in every tone, and a 
 benediction in every touch. " The babes," says 
 the reviewer already quoted, "are as distinct as 
 the heroes, every pearly curve of them tender
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 177 
 
 and sweet as rose-leaves, yet complete creatures, 
 even in the most delicious softness of execution." 
 With what loving tenderness does he follow the 
 growth from childhood to loveliest girlhood, and 
 noble womanhood, of Cosette ! How you can 
 see his heart wrapt up in this gentle creature, 
 and almost feel it bound with pleasure when he 
 returns, from lurid scenes and dreary wicked- 
 ness, to attend her in another step of her career ! 
 The wrongs done to children make his heart 
 bleed, and force from him groans of anguish and 
 agony. " The Man who Laughs " is judged by 
 the world his least attractive and least creditable 
 work of fiction ; and truly its wild extravagance, 
 its historical inaccuracies, its imagination gone 
 to seed, its endless detail, its riot of words and 
 ideas, render it a not pleasant book, even to his 
 most zealous admirers. But in " The Man who 
 Laughs " is the most terrible indictment against 
 the cruelty of the great and rich that ever was 
 drawn; and to intensify the enormity of the 
 selfish barbarism of the class at which he aimed, 
 he reproduced a most awful example in the per- 
 son of a bright and tender-hearted child, made 
 hideous for life for courts and crowds to jeer at. 
 To the cursory reader, Gwynplaine, " the man
 
 1/8 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 who laughs," is a hideously romantic hero. To 
 those of deeper insight, he is the terrible symbol 
 of the people, whose souls have been mutilated 
 by kings and laws, so that they laugh forever at 
 their own appalling debasement. 
 
 It is pleasant to think that the green old age 
 of this master-spirit of literature, this man who 
 is renowned alike as a poet, a novelist, a drama- 
 tist, a philosopher, an editor, and an orator, who 
 has worked so splendidly in the cause of the 
 lowly, who has given forth ideas that will surely 
 live, who has uttered truths which must make 
 men better as they spread, and who has shown 
 in his own noble, unselfish, fruitful life, what 
 good things are temperance, benevolence, and 
 self-sacrifice, it is pleasant to think that his 
 green old age is being passed in the Paris he so 
 dearly loves, and amid the scenes of all his tri- 
 umphs; that he may contemplate, with serene 
 delight, the founding of a French republic likely 
 to endure, and may himself sit as a life senator 
 of France among its grave councillors. Victor 
 Hugo has never affected the roughness of life 
 and dress, and vulgar familiarity of manner, by 
 which the demagogue sometimes seeks to gain 
 favor with the multitude. He has always lived
 
 VICTOR HUGO. 179 
 
 like a gentleman and a scholar. His house has 
 always been the centre of elegant literary re- 
 unions; his chosen companions have been men 
 of culture and intellect. His modest though 
 cosily garnished house in the Rue Clichy has be- 
 come, since the return of the great exile, the 
 centre of frequent political and literary recep- 
 tions, at which the first minds in France have 
 gathered to discuss measures and books. Thrice 
 in three years the shadow of death fell upon 
 his house, depriving him of a faithful and be- 
 loved wife, and two sons on whose future he had 
 rested the most sanguine hopes. These great 
 griefs passed, and left the grand old man sadly 
 serene ; for he believes in a future life with all 
 his soul, and knows that ere long his own sum- 
 mons must come to rejoin them. No one can 
 approach him without being irresistibly attracted 
 by his beneficent face, his big, kindly glowing 
 eyes, his cordial, almost affectionate warmth of 
 greeting. To every one alike he is approach- 
 able, genial and talkative. As his sympathies 
 reach down to the humblest, so his bearing with 
 all men is outwardly fraternal. What he is in 
 his books, he is in his daily walks ; and one has 
 only to read them, to derive an excellent idea of
 
 ISO CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 his conversation. It is sparkling, epigrammatic, 
 flowing, full of warmth and feeling, accompanied 
 by expressive action of the features and the 
 hands. He is ready and glad to talk about 
 everything, and amazes by the extent of his eru- 
 dition, especially in common things. He is 
 easily aroused to a long and brilliant monologue 
 by the introduction of a subject that especially 
 interests him. He never tires of declaiming 
 for it is declamation about the hopeful outlook 
 for the republic ; about the enormity of the 
 coup d^tat ; about the necessity of abolishing, 
 by the spread of knowledge, all crime, war, and 
 poverty. His ideas naturally take poetic and 
 grandiose forms as he warms to his theme. He 
 quotes freely from his own works, with graceful 
 apology ; and there is throughout an air of what 
 would be called vanity in a lesser man, but which 
 in him is warranted by the consciousness of his 
 pre-eminent fame, and of the reverent admiration 
 of all the world. 
 
 In certain respects Victor Hugo has been 
 compared to Thomas Carlyle ; and it is hard to 
 think of any other British writer with whom such 
 a comparison could be possible. Carlyle and 
 Hugo, however, have the same panoramic pic-
 
 VICTOR HUGO. l8l 
 
 turesqueness of delineation, the same poetic in- 
 sight into events and character, the same com- 
 plete and powerful method of portraiture, the 
 same scorn of sham, pretence and privilege, and 
 the same feverish aspirations for a better world. 
 But Victor Hugo, as he has grown old, has 
 grown too in his faith in men ; his sympathies 
 for the oppressed and outcast, his tenderness for 
 the individual, have broadened and deepened. 
 But age has made of Carlyle a scoffing cynic, 
 a disbeliever in human excellence lying beneath 
 ignorance and poverty, and a fierce advocate of 
 hero-worship and what he calls beneficent des- 
 potism. His beliefs what few are left to him 
 wander in a maze of bewilderment, and refuse to 
 be defined. Victor Hugo may not be a Catholic ; 
 he may ridicule the stories the priests tell the 
 people as " old wives' fables ; " he may thunder 
 against the spiritual tyranny of prelates and the 
 exactions of the clergy ; but he who wrote " Les 
 Miserables " can scarcely be otherwise than a 
 devoutly-believing Christian. And in this Victor 
 Hugo rises a long degree higher than almost 
 every other intellectual Frenchman of his time. 
 
 On one occasion, when Victor Hugo was 
 charged with being an apostate, he replied with
 
 1 82 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 not less truth than vanity, " They call me an 
 apostate ; I believe myself to be an apostle." 
 This seems accurately to define his place, alike 
 in letters and in politics. He has been the 
 apostle, truly, of a new, vital, vigorous, soulful 
 literature, which is moral, elevating, fervid, 
 imaginative, moving, and full of inspiration. He 
 has been the apostle of a republicanism too 
 broad and pure, no doubt, for this generation of 
 Frenchmen. But it is the apostle's part to pre- 
 pare for the future, and to be far in advance of 
 his age ; to foreshadow that which shall rightly 
 be, long after his own death. Already he sees 
 the approach to his ideal in the republic 
 founded. " Kings," he recently said, " are for 
 nations in their swaddling-clothes ; France has 
 attained her majority." In the " Chatiments " 
 he declared that in the twentieth century, not 
 only would America wonderingly exclaim, 
 "What! I had slaves?" but Europe would also 
 say, with a shudder, "What! I had kings?" 
 And so the apostle has become a prophet also ; 
 and these are the titles by which he himself 
 would be most proud that his fame should de- 
 scend to posterity.
 
 VII. 
 JOHN BRIGHT. 
 
 A GREATER contrast cannot easily be im- 
 agined than that between the subject of the 
 preceding chapter of this series, and that of the 
 present one. Yet, in their very different man- 
 ners and methods, Victor Hugo and John Bright 
 have labored during their lives for very similar 
 general ends. In his grandiose, florid, rhapso- 
 dical way, Victor Hugo has been asserting the 
 individuality and equality of man, the right and 
 necessity of political and social liberty; free- 
 dom, too, has been the fervent aspiration, advo- 
 cated with a strong, straightforward, obstinate, 
 persistent, dogged perseverance, of him who has 
 been graphically called "the great Thor of Eng- 
 lish politics." The rich and overflowing imagi- 
 nation of the Frenchman has led him to envelop 
 the advocacy of his cause in the ornate forms of 
 allegory, drama, poesy, and satire. The hard 
 English head of Bright has meantime been closely 
 reasoning, framing solid argument, stoutly and
 
 1 84 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 bravely preaching a long unpopular creed from 
 the hustings and the platform. Victor Hugo's 
 fancy has been soaring always above and beyond 
 the region of practical politics, among the air- 
 castles of an ideal state ; John Bright, a product 
 of British common sense and the commercial 
 shrewdness of industrial Lancashire, has bounded 
 his aim to that which he might reasonably hope 
 to attain at a period not very distant from that 
 at which he began to agitate. Both have been, 
 as the current expression is, " ahead of their 
 time; " but while Hugo has his mental eye fixed 
 on the twentieth century, at the nearest, John 
 Bright aims to build greater liberties upon the 
 broad foundations of the British Constitution as 
 he goes. Of these two sincere and ardent trib- 
 unes of the people, Hugo rages, anathematizes, 
 loses himself in a bewildering amplitude of mag- 
 nificent rhetoric ; while Bright, though often 
 strong in invective and stormy indignation, 
 clearly never loses his self-control, nor allows 
 himself to overshoot the mark he has set up. 
 
 Let us revert to a very critical period in this 
 country's history; the early summer of 1863. 
 We were in the midst of the Rebellion ; and the 
 cause of the Union seemed dark indeed. Vicks-
 
 JOHN BRIGHT. 185 
 
 burg, besieged, had not yet fallen. Nor was it 
 scarcely the worst of the misfortunes of the mo- 
 ment, that no decisive step had been taken in 
 the defeat of treason. War with England gravely 
 threatened us. English public opinion was 
 roused angrily, and it seemed overwhelmingly, 
 against us. Palmerston had not long before 
 made a bitterly bellicose speech in the House of 
 Commons. It was, at that moment, an act of 
 rare courage to stand up in the face of English 
 wrath, and defend the Northern cause. 
 
 Provided with a letter of introduction to John 
 Bright, from a distinguished member of the 
 United States Senate, I repaired one afternoon 
 in early June, 1863, to the lobby of the House 
 of Commons. Something was to be said, that 
 evening, about American affairs ; and this was 
 an especial attraction to an American about to 
 visit the " great debating society " for the first 
 time. In the lobby was a confused crowd of 
 members hurrying in and out, and a still greater 
 crowd of friends, satellites, and anxious constit- 
 uents. Many faces, become familiar by the pho- 
 tographs of celebrities in the London shop win- 
 dows, were recognized as the bustle became 
 greater, and the arrivals more numerous, just
 
 1 86 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 before the House was called to order. The 
 grave, sallow countenance of Gladstone ; Disra- 
 eli, with his shock of glossy, jet-black curls, his 
 big nose and thick lips, and springy gait; the 
 jaunty premier, Palmerston, with bushy side- 
 whiskers, twinkling gray eyes, and hat cocked 
 airily on one side of his head ; the tall, straight, 
 square form of Sir George Grey; the delicate 
 intellectual face of Sidney Herbert; the round, 
 blond face and flat nose of Lord Stanley (now 
 Earl of Derby) ; and the pompous, yet rather 
 attractive aspect of Sir John Pakington; these 
 were observed as one and another rapidly passed 
 within the guarded door. 
 
 The letter of introduction, with a card, was 
 duly sent in to Mr. Bright, and I took my place 
 in the line of the waiters on the convenience of 
 noble lords and honorable gentlemen. But I 
 had not long to tarry ; for presently out came, 
 with a bustling manner and brisk step, a vigor- 
 ous, full-bodied gentleman, whom I knew at 
 once to be John Bright. He glanced rapidly 
 around upon the line of expectants ; and in a 
 moment recognized, no doubt by the American 
 type of the features, the face of which he was in 
 search. Drawing me aside into a window, he
 
 JOHN BRIGHT. l8/ 
 
 began to ask a number of rapid questions about 
 the war, in an abrupt, intent way which was soon 
 seen to be characteristic of him. The state of 
 feeling in the North, Grant's prospects at Vicks- 
 burg, the campaign in Virginia, the likelihood of 
 emancipation, were all asked about, the questions 
 following close upon the heels of each preced- 
 ing response. Then, learning that I desired to 
 see the House in session, he said, " Follow me, 
 and I will get you a better seat than you can se- 
 cure in the strangers' gallery." 
 
 Thereupon he ascended the staircase on the 
 right of the entrance to the House, the attend- 
 ants bowing low on either side as he passed ; 
 and I soon found myself seated in the Speaker's 
 gallery, below that of the strangers, whence there 
 was an excellent view of the House, and where I 
 found myself directly behind a gallery where 
 were seated the Prince of Wales, the Duke of 
 St. Albans, and other notabilities of high rank. 
 
 " Shall I hear you this evening, Mr. Bright? " 
 I asked. 
 
 " It may be that I shall say something an hour 
 or two hence. I shall, if the American matter 
 comes up. It will be an interesting session, and 
 I advise you to wait."
 
 I 88 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 With which, and with a parting friendly word 
 added, he abruptly left the gallery and I soon 
 after saw him, with his light, quick step, pass up 
 the aisle, and take his seat on the government 
 side, on those benches " below the gangway " 
 reserved for the independent members of the 
 House. 
 
 It is related that once a party of Americans 
 entered a studio where a fine portrait, just com- 
 pleted, was standing on the artist's easel. 
 
 " Oh," said one of the Americans, " that must 
 be John Bull." 
 
 " No," quietly responded the artist, " it's John 
 Bright." 
 
 The anecdote forcibly illustrates the truly Brit- 
 ish physical type of the Quaker orator and states- 
 man. In personal appearance, certainly, he is 
 an Englishman of Englishmen. Robut, though 
 not corpulent, of body; with a round, full face, 
 and bold, straight nose ; his countenance rounded, 
 open, healthfully ruddy, having a remarkable 
 purity of complexion and fine texture of skin; 
 the eyes large, gray, clear, bright, sometimes 
 stern and defiant, but in repose often gentle and 
 kindly ; decision and vigor most plainly ex- 
 pressed in the resolute mouth and firm jaw and
 
 JOHN BRIGHT. 189 
 
 chin ; a face less mobile than calm and set ; the 
 brow broad and white, and arched high at the 
 top ; the whole frame strong, well-proportioned, 
 almost massive, indicating great powers of en- 
 durance, and giving, even at his present age, no 
 hint of that delicacy of health which has in 
 later years impaired his public activity. In his 
 company, one has a keen sense of his power; 
 one feels himself in the presence of a born leader 
 of men. He holds his head high, and looks you 
 and every one full in the face ; and that with a 
 keen, searching glance that rather robs you of 
 your ease. Self-reliance, honesty, pride of in- 
 tellect, resolution nay, even intolerance may 
 be read in his expression. 
 
 At the time to which I have referred, John 
 Bright seemed almost absorbed by his interest 
 in the American struggle ; and this was, of 
 course, the circumstance which especially at- 
 tracted Americans to him, and made them eager 
 to hear, see, and read of him. He then stood 
 almost alone as the outspoken advocate of the 
 Union in the House of Commons. Palmerston 
 was openly hostile. Lord John Russell had 
 proved himself unfriendly at the very outset of 
 the war. Gladstone was talking about the South
 
 190 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 having become a nation. Roebuck was eagerly 
 trying to bring about the interference of Eng- 
 land, with the co-operation of the French Em- 
 peror. Disraeli, who was at heart our friend, at 
 this period thought it the part of discretion to 
 be silent. Among the chiefs and orators of the 
 House, this clear, bold voice of John Bright's 
 was almost the only one ever heard, defending 
 the cause of liberty, and uttering, amid all the 
 gloom, hopeful prophecies. Already, before the 
 war had been in progress a year, he had, in 
 words of rare fervor and eloquence, foreshad- 
 owed that valiant championship of the North 
 which he was to display, in stormy times and 
 serene, from the beginning to the end of the 
 struggle. 
 
 " Whether the Union will be restored or not," 
 he said, " or whether the South will achieve an 
 unhonored independence or not, I know not, 
 and I predict not. But this I think I know ; that 
 in a few years a very few years the twenty 
 millions of freemen of the North will be thirty 
 millions, or fifty millions ; a population equal 
 to, or exceeding that of this kingdom. When 
 that time comes, I pray it may not be said 
 among them, that, in the darkest hour of their
 
 JOHN BRIGHT. IQI 
 
 country's trials, England, the land of their fa- 
 thers, looked on with icy coldness, and saw un- 
 moved the perils and calamities of her children. 
 As for me, I have but this to say : I am one in 
 this audience, and but one in the citizenship of 
 this country. But if all other tongues are silent, 
 mine shall speak for that policy which gives 
 hope to the bondmen of the South, and tends 
 to generous thoughts and generous words and 
 generous deeds, between the two great nations 
 who speak the English language, and from their 
 origin are alike entitled to the English name ! " 
 
 John Bright is now (1880) in his sixty-ninth 
 year. He is two years younger than Gladstone 
 and six younger than Lord Beaconsfield ; and as 
 English statesmen are a peculiarly vigorous race, 
 and often continue their public activities into 
 the eighties, it may be hoped that he has still 
 some years of labor in the cause of reform be- 
 fore him. His public life began in 1843, when 
 he was thirty-two years of age, in which year 
 he was elected to Parliament by the old historic 
 city of Durham. Four years later, he took his 
 seat for the first time as the representative of 
 the great progressive constituency of Manches- 
 ter. His career in the House of Commons,
 
 IQ2 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 therefore, has extended over a period of thirty- 
 seven years. 
 
 From the first he was known as a tribune of 
 the people and an apostle of reform. Before 
 entering the House, he had greatly distinguished 
 himself as an orator. He was scarcely twenty 
 when he spoke stirringly to his fellow-townsmen 
 of Rochdale in favor of the great reform bill. 
 He strenuously advocated the abolition of church 
 rates, and was one of the most conspicuous as 
 well as most fervent agitators in favor of putting 
 an end to the unjust corn laws. He preached 
 free trade doctrines, and so soon began to be 
 known as the inveterate foe of landed privilege 
 and aristocratic political control. 
 
 When John Bright entered Parliament, it was 
 not merely unpopular, it was fairly odious to be 
 recognized as holding the extreme opinions he 
 boldly avowed. Social ostracism, the distrust 
 and holding aloof of men of all parties, the most 
 contemptuous and hatred-breeding scoffs of al- 
 most the entire British press, the horror of the 
 masses of not only educated men, but of the 
 common people, inevitably followed the utter- 
 ance of radical principles. For years and years, 
 John Bright's name was a bugbear in British
 
 JOHN BRIGHT. 193 
 
 politics. He rested under a perpetual cloud of 
 obloquy. The men, who, like noble Richard 
 Cobden, were brave enough to stand by him, 
 shared the stigma cast upon himself. There 
 was, however, in this contumely and avoidance, 
 on the part of party leaders and the party rank 
 and file, something very like fear. It was mon- 
 strous that such sentiments should openly be 
 declared in the House of Commons; but was it 
 not also dangerous, especially considering that 
 this commercial Quaker who uttered them could 
 make his voice heard, and was not at all dis- 
 mayed, and had, moreover, a certain power of 
 character and eloquence? 
 
 At all points he was at vigorous variance with 
 the long-settled convictions and prejudices of 
 Old England ; and when the Crimean war was 
 imminent, he rose to the greatest height of elo- 
 quence he had yet displayed, in opposing the 
 big British armaments, advocating a reduction 
 of the forces, and pleading for a permanent pol- 
 icy of peace and non-intervention in European 
 affairs. So long ago, he foreshadowed the policy 
 which has since been adopted by the wisest heads 
 of the Liberal party. But then it was only his 
 masterly eloquence and strength of character
 
 194 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 which saved him from the political annihilation 
 which the Liberal chiefs would gladly, in their 
 wrath, have visited upon him. Bright was, per- 
 haps, the only man in Parliament whom the 
 jaunty Palmerston could not laugh or sneer 
 down. Palmerston was then omnipotent in Lib- 
 eral councils; though if ever there were a Tory 
 at heart, it was he. He used to the uttermost 
 his influence over the dullest prejudices of Eng- 
 lishmen, to disarm this troublesome antagonist, 
 who stood just within his own camp. But the 
 calm reader of the annals of the parliamentary 
 duels of twenty years ago will have no doubt 
 who had the best, at least in intellectual and 
 prophetic points of view, of those formidable 
 frays. Opposition, abuse, vituperation and ridi- 
 cule, were the food that made this Quaker ath- 
 lete stronger ; the jeers of Palmerston only 
 endowed him with new vigor and refreshed 
 perseverance. 
 
 There came, one day, as if out of a clear sky, 
 a thunderbolt from the Radical corner, which 
 sent dismay through the Liberal ranks. A reso- 
 lution was sprung upon the House, in favor of 
 household suffrage. The right to vote in Eng- 
 land at that time was restricted by a high prop-
 
 JOHN BRIGHT. 195 
 
 erty that is rental and rating qualification. 
 The Radicals sought to reduce this to the mere 
 occupancy of a house, however small. The bat- 
 tle of household suffrage was then fought with 
 immense fire and energy by Bright, Cobden, 
 and that most learned and noble-minded lawyer, 
 William Page Wood. So splendidly, indeed, 
 did Page Wood rush to the charge, that when 
 the vote on the resolution was proceeding, and 
 Bright met Wood in the lobby, he grasped him 
 warmly by the hand, and exclaimed, " When 
 we form a household suffrage cabinet, you shall 
 be its chancellor." 
 
 Eighteen years from that time, it was an- 
 nounced one day that John Bright had become 
 one of her Majesty's ministers ; and quick on 
 the heels of this intelligence came the news that 
 William Page Wood had been raised to the cov- 
 eted woolsack, with the title of Lord Hatherley. 
 It was not in a household suffrage cabinet; but 
 despite that, the realization of the prophecy 
 was a most striking circumstance. Political 
 prophecy, indeed, seems a real gift with John 
 Bright. He seems endowed with a remarkable 
 faculty of prevision. He has foretold many of 
 the important political changes which have taken
 
 196 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 place in recent years in England ; and we well 
 know how his prophecies about the American 
 Union have turned out. May his more recent 
 forecast of the great and prosperous destiny be- 
 fore us prove equally true ! 
 
 In a speech delivered to his constituents John 
 Bright once declared that he had for a quarter 
 of a century " endured measureless insult, and 
 passed through hurricanes of abuse." But after 
 all, this was only showing one, and that the 
 darker side of the estimation in which he was 
 held by the public. If he was the terror and 
 bete noir of all shades of toryism and prescrip- 
 tive prejudice, he was also the idol and hope 
 of that new, vigorous, radical, bold-thinking 
 class which had rapidly risen to large influence 
 and electoral power, and which has been called 
 the " Manchester school." Of the Manchester 
 school John Bright has ever been the apostle 
 and the idol. There was one short period, in- 
 deed, during which his political disciples trem- 
 bled lest their great tribune should alienate 
 himself from them. This was when, on the ac- 
 cession of Gladstone to the Premiership in 1868, 
 John Bright entered the cabinet as President of 
 the Board of Trade, and sat as the colleague of
 
 JOHN BRIGHT. 197 
 
 Peelite baronets and whig marquises. It seemed 
 to the Manchester radical, at that moment, as if 
 Mirabeau had once more kissed the hand of 
 Capet, as if Rienzi had again paid court to 
 Colonna. It was strange to hear of the " Great 
 Thor" dancing attendance at Windsor, flattered 
 by the compliments of the Princess Royal, hold- 
 ing obsequious speech with the Queen, and wear- 
 ing, like a very ill-fitting though finely decked 
 garment, the title of Right Honorable. The 
 question arose, has Whiggery gone over to 
 Bright, or has Bright been absorbed by Whig- 
 gery? And indeed, there were signs that the 
 Quaker statesman wavered at that time in his 
 radical faith. As a minister, he was cautious, 
 reticent, and as Delphically official in his utter- 
 ances as the veriest old-fashioned pupil of state- 
 craft. His opinions seemed to grow lukewarm 
 and moderate in the official atmosphere, which 
 was so unlike the invigorating free air of the in- 
 dependent benches he had hitherto breathed. 
 But, as we look back now at the brief period 
 during which he held a cabinet portfolio, we 
 are able to perceive that such a trust had only 
 affected him, as heavy responsibilities must affect 
 any man of honest purpose and sensitive patri-
 
 198 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 otism. He felt for the first time the gravity of 
 the task of governing; for the first time saw 
 questions on all their sides, obstacles in all their 
 formidableness, and difficulties which he had 
 probably never before suspected. There was 
 one other circumstance which will go far to ex- 
 plain John Bright's acceptance of office, and his 
 caution and moderation when installed in high 
 place. This was his thorough, and as it proved, 
 justifiable faith in his chief. He undoubtedly 
 knew more of Gladstone's real feelings and in- 
 tentions than any other of their colleagues ; and 
 he felt that Gladstone's aims and his own were 
 much more nearly identical than people in gen- 
 eral suspected. There can be no doubt that 
 Bright's influence in the cabinet, moreover, which 
 was large for his resignation on account of polit- 
 ical differences would probably have broken it 
 was really devoted to the accomplishment of 
 reforms which he had long advocated. There 
 is no question that that article of his creed which 
 demanded "justice to Ireland," was pressed by 
 him upon his colleagues, and that he found the 
 mind of the Premier ripe to receive it. The toil, 
 the anxieties of office, and perhaps also an un- 
 dercurrent of consciousness that he was really
 
 JOHN BRIGHT. 199 
 
 out of place, and that his arena was otherwhere, 
 soon wore upon even his massive constitution. 
 His health broke down, and he retired from the 
 Board of Trade; to enter, in 1880, Gladstone's 
 second cabinet as chancellor of the Duchy of Lan- 
 caster. No sooner had the restraints of authority 
 been thrown off, and his health to a large degree 
 been restored, than he resumed the great part 
 for which of all living Englishmen he is best 
 fitted that of a tribune of the people. In 
 his later career, as an independent member of 
 Parliament, there has been no uncertain sound 
 in John Bright's tones. So recently as in the 
 spring of 1879, we find him denouncing in the 
 old, brave, plain-spoken and impressively elo- 
 quent way, the existing land tenure of England, 
 and pressing upon English opinion the crying 
 necessity of abolishing, once for all, the laws of 
 primogeniture and entail. Hating war, and a 
 perhaps too intense lover of peace, he has ex- 
 hausted a most copious vocabulary of vitupera- 
 tion and epithet in denouncing the " spirited 
 foreign policy" of Lord Beaconsfield. Indeed, 
 in John Bright's strong and fiery hatred of tra- 
 ditional abuses and aristocratic privilege, in his 
 fierce scorn of Toryism and all that Toryism
 
 200 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 generates, there is fanaticism and intolerance. 
 His mind is so thoroughly possessed of the ini- 
 quity of Lord Beaconsfield and all his following, 
 that he cannot accord them credit for any good 
 act, for any motives excepting bad and vicious 
 ones, or even for patriotism, however blundering 
 and mistaken. Broad and liberal and even cos- 
 mopolitan as is the calibre of his mind, here 
 he becomes a violent partisan and a relentless 
 enemy ; and on this subject he disdains to meas- 
 ure his words. It requires a large amount of 
 courage for a man to stand up in such a country 
 as England a proud land, believing intensely 
 in itself, rather contemptuous of foreign methods, 
 customs, and laws ; a land which is, perhaps, 
 best of all described as "insular" and praise 
 another country at the expense of his own ; es- 
 pecially, to praise another country which his 
 own has always been in the habit of looking 
 down upon and condescending towards, and 
 patronizing by fits and starts. Yet this John 
 Bright has done more than once ; and more em- 
 phatically than ever, within the past few months. 
 In the most glowing tribute which was perhaps 
 ever paid to the United States by a foreigner, 
 he contrasted our prosperity with England's
 
 JOHN BRIGHT, 2OI 
 
 depression, our democratic government with 
 England's expensive paraphernalia of royalty, 
 our little army with England's costly legions, 
 the freedom of our soil with England's law- 
 fettered land monopoly, our freedom from 
 alliances, diplomatic complications, and bur- 
 densome colonies, with England's constant em- 
 broilment in European politics, and England's 
 perpetual necessity to defend distant possessions 
 at an enormous cost of blood and money, and 
 ever widening care and responsibility. Nor did 
 John Bright point this contrast with all the rich 
 wealth of his Saxon eloquence without a pur- 
 pose. He does not hesitate to hold America up 
 to England as an example, in many of its fea- 
 tures to be followed. He would have English 
 land liberated ; he would withdraw her from the 
 entangling alliances of the continent ; he would 
 reduce her armaments ; he would have her cease 
 to acquire new territory in savage and semi- 
 civilized lands ; it is not certain that he would 
 not see with satisfaction her severance from the 
 burdens of Indian empire; he would extend the 
 suffrage, and still further reform the House of 
 Commons, so that it might be more truly than 
 now the representative body of the great masses 
 of the people.
 
 2O2 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 There has always been much difference of 
 opinion as to which is the greater orator, Glad- 
 stone, Beaconsfield, or John Bright. The con- 
 trast between the eloquence of the three is very 
 marked ; by contrast only can their various ora- 
 torical powers be compared. But, as time has 
 gone on, the numbers of those who give the pre- 
 eminence in this respect to John Bright have 
 rapidly increased. There is a charm of musical 
 sweetness, and a glow of warmth, of earnestness 
 and enthusiasm, about Gladstone's speeches, 
 which certainly make one hesitate to judge any 
 one his superior in eloquence. There is a finish, 
 a subtlety and grace, a sparkle and a fine-edged 
 wit about Beaconsfield's addresses, which make 
 him a master among parliamentary speakers, 
 and leave him facile princep s in his own peculiar 
 style of forensic oratory. Bright's eloquence, 
 however, is a marvellous exhibition of simplicity 
 combined with strength, of absolute perfection 
 of language, of measured ease and deliberation, 
 of natural gifts of a very high order most care- 
 fully trained and finished, of powerful appeal to 
 the average common sense, and of the most skil- 
 ful fitting of the utterance to the thought. The 
 first impression of Bright, as amid the most abso-
 
 JOHN BRIGHT. 2O3 
 
 lute stillness he rises, with every eye upon him 
 and every ear eagerly intent, to address the 
 House of Commons, is far more striking than 
 the first impression made by either of his ora- 
 torical rivals. His presence at once attracts and 
 more than satisfies the eye. His snow-white, 
 flowing hair, his rotund form, his erect posture, 
 his perfect self-possession, his large, bright gray 
 eye, his clear, strong voice that immediately 
 charms the ear, take possession of one at the 
 very outset of his address. As, with measured 
 sentences, he proceeds, you are constantly struck 
 by the simplicity, directness, purity, and fitness 
 of every word and every sentence. " His lan- 
 guage," says a shrewd observer, " is more thor- 
 oughly and racily English than that of any 
 speaker in either House." Unlike many Eng- 
 lish orators, Bright rarely quotes from the clas- 
 sics. Robert Lowe loads down his harangues 
 with a wearying wealth of quotations from Virgil 
 and Horace, Homer and Herodotus. Gladstone 
 cannot resist the temptation to often adorn his 
 addresses with the images of his beloved Greek 
 masters. Beaconsfield not seldom turns a smooth 
 joke with an apt borrowing from the Latin. At 
 least equal to either of these in the abundance,
 
 2O4 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK, 
 
 the beauty, and the fitness of his illustrations, 
 Bright almost invariably draws them from two 
 main sources. He either finds in the master- 
 pieces of English poetry Shakespeare, Chau- 
 cer, Milton, Spenser the materials for his 
 similes; or he resorts for this purpose to the 
 Bible. No one can have read the best speci- 
 mens of English and American eloquence, with- 
 out having observed what telling use can be 
 made, before either a select or a miscellaneous 
 assemblage, of Biblical allusions. Illustrations 
 from that high and universally familiar source 
 have a power peculiarly their own ; and cer- 
 tainly no orator has ever made more powerful 
 use of them than John Bright. Could there 
 ever have been anything, for instance, more 
 effective than when, during the debate on the 
 Reform Bill of 1866, he made use of the story of 
 David's escape from Achish, King of Gath, to 
 brand the Liberal bolters as inhabitants of the 
 " Cave of Adullam." From that time forth, the 
 " Adullamites " were as much a recognized party 
 name as Whig or Tory. More recently, speak- 
 ing of the grumbling discontent of the Tories at 
 Gladstone's policy, he humorously declared that, 
 " had they been in the wilderness, they would
 
 JOHN BRIGHT. 2O$ 
 
 have complained of the ten commandments." 
 The fitness and force of his illustrations are 
 equally apparent whether Bright draws them from 
 secular legend, or literature, or from common, 
 every-day things and sayings. Like Disraeli, he 
 is a notable inventor of nicknames and epithets ; 
 and hesitates as little to apply them right and 
 left. He once alluded very effectively to Dis- 
 raeli as " the mystery man of the ministry ; " on 
 another occasion, about the period of the " Adul- 
 lamite " defection from the Liberals, he referred 
 to Mr. Lowe and Mr. Horsman combined as a 
 " Scotch terrier, of which no one could with cer- 
 tainty say which was the head and which the 
 tail." Not less stinging was his satire upon the 
 Tory minister, Sir Charles Adderly, that " I hope 
 he thought he was telling the truth ; but he is 
 rather a dull man, and is liable to make blun- 
 ders." Bright is always readily severe upon 
 pride of ancestry ; and once said of the ancestors 
 of a man who boasted that they had come over 
 with the Conqueror, that " I never heard that 
 they did anything else." Soon after John Bright 
 had yielded to the illness which compelled his 
 retiring from the cabinet, a Tory lordling took 
 occasion to remark in public that Providence, in
 
 2O6 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 order to punish Bright for the misuse of his tal- 
 ents, had afflicted him with a disease of the 
 brain. " It may be so," said Bright in the House 
 of Commojas, after his recovery ; " but in any 
 case, it will be some consolation to the friends 
 and family of the noble lord to know, that the 
 disease is one which even Providence could not 
 inflict upon him ! " Sometimes Bright's images 
 rise into regions of grandeur ; and at such times, 
 they never pass into that of bathos, though 
 sometimes approaching near it. When the ne- 
 gotiations were going on at Vienna, with a view 
 of closing the Crimean War, Bright made a pow- 
 erful speech in favor of peace, in the course of 
 which he used the finest image, perhaps, that he 
 ever uttered. " The Angel of Death," he said, 
 with deep, slow, solemn voice and uplifted hand, 
 " has been abroad throughout the land ; you 
 may almost hear the beating of his wings ! " 
 " That was a noble idea!" exclaimed Cobden, 
 meeting him afterwards in the lobby. " But if 
 you had said the ' flapping ' of his wings, the 
 House would have roared you down with laugh- 
 ter." Many other passages of the most genuine 
 eloquence are quoted from Bright's speeches ; 
 especially two, in one of which he pathetically
 
 JOfLV BRIGHT. 2O7 
 
 pictured the wrongs of Ireland, and in the other 
 he a few years ago defended his course in Par- 
 liament before his constituents at Birmingham. 
 He has always seemed to take special delight in 
 throwing ridicule on Disraeli ; and having spo- 
 ken of him as the " mystery man," he afterwards 
 somewhat more roughly characterized him as 
 " the mountebank with a pill for the earth- 
 quake." A very marked trait of Bright's elo- 
 quence is its simple, but profound and often 
 thrilling pathos. His speeches, indeed, have 
 sometimes been described as monotonously 
 sombre and gloomy ; an effect only relieved by 
 the vivacity of his manner and gesture. But in 
 recent years this sombreness has become less 
 and less noticeable, as he has emerged from the 
 obloquy and hatred inspired by his early and 
 loud-voiced radicalism, and has become a real 
 political power in the land. Meanwhile his 
 power in the use of pathos has ripened and 
 deepened. " For the expression of pathos," 
 says an English writer, " there are inexpressibly 
 touching tones in his voice ; tones which carry 
 right to the listener's heart the tender thoughts 
 that come glowing from the speaker's, and are 
 clad in simple words as they pass his tongue."
 
 208 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 Especially is this so, when, as is often the case, 
 he is pleading the cause of the oppressed, or 
 " denouncing a threatened wrong." The bold- 
 ness and aggressiveness of his oratory have been 
 already illustrated by his epithets and his per- 
 sonal characterizations. " Mr. Bright's rhetoric," 
 says one, " has certainly a great deal of the 
 clenched fist in it; and when it exhibits the 
 open hand, it is usually to administer a slap in 
 the face." But if a man's eloquence may be 
 tested by its palpable results, by its hold upon 
 the assemblies it addresses, by its conversions 
 and inspiration of multitudes, by its quotable 
 properties, by its use of every sub-art of oratory, 
 from appropriateness of gesture and fitness of 
 language to the skilful wielding of rhetoric, sar- 
 casm, humor, pathos, scorn, persuasiveness, and 
 logical force, it is very certain that John Bright 
 is one of the world's great orators. 
 
 Is John Bright also a statesman? He once 
 himself said that the name of statesman was so 
 often misapplied, and has taken on so often an 
 unenviable significance, that he cared very little 
 to have it applied to him. A statesman of the 
 old-fashioned, official, mysterious, office-drilled, 
 adroitly managing, compromising sort, he cer-
 
 JOHN BRIGHT. 2O9 
 
 tainly is not. No man could be more unlike 
 Palmerston, or Russell, or Pitt, or even Sir Rob- 
 ert Peel, than he. His experience of official 
 responsibility was, as has been seen, brief, and 
 not very fruitful in practical evidences of admin- 
 istrative capacity. Indeed, the Board of Trade 
 scarcely furnishes a scope for broad measures 
 of public policy, or widely extending reforms. 
 John Bright's main use in the Cabinet, indeed, 
 was as a participant in -its general councils; as 
 the adviser of Gladstone in such imperial matters 
 as the disestablishment of the Irish church, and 
 the abolition of purchase in the British army. 
 He has not been himself the originator of many 
 important measures, nor the author of many 
 momentous bills. But in another sense, John 
 Bright may claim the title of statesman in its 
 best and highest meaning. He is surely not, 
 like Victor Hugo, a declaimer, prophet, apostle 
 only. His view of politics and events is much 
 more Englishly practical. Radical and some- 
 times extreme as his public life has been, it has 
 had a strong leaven of good sense, and has often 
 shown a keen discrimination of what has been 
 and what has not been possible to attain. He 
 has seldom or never lost himself in fine dreams 
 14
 
 2IO CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 of an ideal future ; while yet he has not, like the 
 technical statesman, confined himself to the cal- 
 culation and detail of the present. His sweep 
 of vision has been broad, and before him, more 
 than behind or around him. His mind has been 
 clear outside of and above considerations of the 
 precedents and usages of the past. He has ever 
 abhorred the Tory idea that whatever is, is right. 
 He has boldly aimed to destroy, but he has 
 always known very well what he would put in 
 place of the thing destroyed. His bump of 
 political veneration is small indeed ; but he is 
 not by any means a revolutionist pure and 
 simple. There can be no doubt, indeed, that 
 John Bright has set an indelible mark on the 
 legislation of his time ; that his influence has 
 been large in effecting not only broad, but per- 
 fectly practicable reforms. He had much to 
 do with bringing about the repeal of the corn 
 laws. He proposed an amendment to the meas- 
 ure for abolishing church rates, which went far 
 towards making it an effective instrument. A 
 profound student of India, and the relations of 
 that great dependency to the British Empire, he 
 has more than once brought about modifications 
 in its government which have vastly improved it.
 
 JOHN BRIGHT. 2 1 1 
 
 He was one of the moving spirits who succeeded 
 in securing the famous Cobden treaty of com- 
 merce with France ; and from his lips came the 
 earliest proposal of an arbitration court for set- 
 tling the Alabama difficulty between England 
 and the United States. Nor can it be justly de- 
 nied that his speeches on the Eastern question, 
 though he sat with a hopeless minority on the 
 opposition benches, have had a powerful effect 
 in shaping, by the formation and inspiration of 
 public opinion, England's foreign policy. 
 
 There was, therefore, much injustice in the 
 epigram of one of his opponents, that John 
 Bright " possesses Cicero's eloquence, and Cati- 
 line's love of conspiracy." No man could be 
 further from assuming the role of a conspirator. 
 Whatever Bright has said or done has been 
 open and above board. While sometimes bitter 
 in his denunciation of royal extravagance, he has 
 never been disloyal to the person of the Queen ; 
 whose virtues, on the other hand, he has often 
 extolled with warm and evidently sincere pane- 
 gyric. While he has boldly spoken of the 
 House of Lords in contemptuous tones, as the 
 last refuge of political ignorance and passion, it 
 is doubtful whether he would engage in a crusade
 
 212 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 against the existence of that body ; lest the evils 
 brought about by that overturning should prove 
 to overweigh the good. 
 
 His eloquence has always captivated, and of- 
 ten convinced the multitudes who have thronged 
 everywhere to hear him ; his arduous and en- 
 thusiastic service in the cause of the oppressed 
 has endeared him to thousands who never heard 
 his clear, clarion voice, or beheld his flowing 
 white hair and his sturdy English frame; while 
 his friendship, so thoroughly tried, for his kins- 
 men across the seas, will yield him as great 
 honor from future generations of Americans as 
 the name of Chatham receives from ours.
 
 VIII. 
 THREE EMPERORS. 
 
 the many World's Exhibitions that have 
 taken place within the past thirty years, 
 perhaps the one which most deeply impressed 
 those who witnessed it, and which will linger 
 longest in the memory of men, was that held at 
 Paris in the summer of 1867. It was not, per- 
 haps, that its display of the products of human 
 industries and arts was the most various and 
 elaborate ; or that the magnificence of the build- 
 ings and grounds which included these exceeded 
 that of other exhibitions; or because of the 
 recreations which Paris so bountifully and at 
 such extraordinary prices provided its myriad 
 guests of all nations. The distinctive feature of 
 the exhibition of 1867 that which made it 
 altogether exceptional, unique, unprecedented 
 was its display of human and personal pa- 
 geantry. Napoleon III., then apparently at the 
 height of his power and imperial splendor, em- 
 ployed one masterly device to lend unrivalled
 
 214 CERTAIN MEN OF AT ARK. 
 
 glory to the festival. To it he lured in turn 
 nearly every considerable potentate of the earth. 
 Emperors, Sultans, Shahs, were his daily guests. 
 Paris revelled in a perpetual round of gorgeous 
 fetes, of which the central figures were the 
 greatest rulers of Europe and Asia. The stran- 
 ger abiding there saw pass before him, as in a 
 panorama, the personified might of the nations, 
 surrounded by all the traditional paraphernalia 
 of majesty, until he who was but a King of Por- 
 tugal, or a Grand Duke of Mecklenburg, passed 
 almost unnoticed amid the loftier figures. 
 
 And among these potentates, who thus lent 
 themselves to reflect a greater lustre upon the 
 crown of the parvenu Bonaparte (whom once 
 they had disdainfully refused to recognize at all), 
 by all odds the most conspicuous were the three 
 monarchs who still, at seventeen years' dis- 
 tance, rule the three most powerful empires of 
 continental Europe. The Czar Alexander and 
 King William of Prussia (now Emperor of Ger- 
 many) were in Paris at the same time, attended 
 by their two famous chancellors, Gortschakoff 
 and Bismarck, and accompanied by their stal- 
 wart sons and heirs; and it was my fortune to 
 see them both, more than once, riding through
 
 THREE EMPERORS. 21$ 
 
 the streets beside the Emperor Napoleon, in one 
 of those enormous old-fashioned royal coaches 
 which had been dragged out of their dusty ob- 
 scurity to lend an air of ancient royalty to the 
 occasion. The Emperor Francis Joseph of Aus- 
 tria came later, alone ; and received, unsharing it 
 with others, the profuse hospitalities of his "well- 
 beloved brother " of France. However strongly 
 imbued he might be with Republican ideas, no 
 American could witness these hereditary rulers of 
 men without curiosity and interest. There is a ro- 
 mance about kingship, to the citizen of a distant 
 republic, which the subjects of kings never feel. 
 It does not partake of awe, and has no essence 
 of loyalty to the principle of heredity in power. 
 It is purely picturesque ; to see a famous sov- 
 ereign is like finding the hero of an old romance 
 in real life. The contrast, too, between the 
 stately accessories that surround a king, the 
 ceremonial dignities, the military accompani- 
 ments, and the simplicity of republican custom, 
 adds its glamour to the curiosity thus aroused 
 and gratified. It was, therefore, with eagerness 
 that I availed myself of the opportunity not only 
 to witness the pageantry with which these sov- 
 ereigns appeared, but to scrutinize their features,
 
 2l6 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 to observe their movements, to watch the chang- 
 ing expressions of their countenances. The 
 memory of their long descent from rude rulers 
 and doughty warriors and of their famous prede- 
 cessors of Rurick and Rudolph, of Frederick 
 Von Zollern and Vater Fritz, of Peter the Great 
 and the wicked Catherine, of Maria Theresa and 
 Frederick Barbarossa aided much to intensify 
 the gratification I felt at beholding these men 
 made great by right of birth. 
 
 Much more interesting do these three poten- 
 tates become, when it is added that each is a 
 man of decided ability and of conspicuous vir- 
 tues. We will not stop to discuss the problem 
 of the heredity of brains, or the transmission 
 of mental qualities in the blood ; or to decide 
 whether or not the royal lines of Europe prove 
 or disprove Mr. Galton's attractive and ingen- 
 ious theory. It is at least certain that, in our 
 own day, the realms of Europe are remarkably 
 fortunate in the abilities and personal characters 
 of their royal heads. No nation is to-day cursed 
 by a very bad or a very imbecile ruler. Since 
 the deposition of Bomba in Naples and of Isa- 
 bella in Spain, no crying scandal has clung to 
 a European throne. On the other hand, a
 
 THREE EMPERORS. 21? 
 
 large majority of the sovereigns betray more 
 than average capacity, and more than ordi- 
 narily good personal traits. The Queen of 
 England is a model of strong good sense and 
 domestic virtue. The Kings of Italy, Portugal, 
 Spain, and Belgium are wise and liberal rulers, 
 content to be constitutional, and to govern ac- 
 cording to the wishes of their people. The 
 King of Sweden is a man of culture, and politi- 
 cally sagacious as well as a talented poet. The 
 King of Denmark is a mild and popular mon- 
 arch, a pattern Scandinavian father of a well- 
 brought-up family of charming children. The 
 King of Holland is rather dull, but not aggres- 
 sively offensive to his subjects. The King of 
 Bavaria is a musical monomaniac, but has very 
 little governing to do, being relieved mostly of 
 such cares by his subordination to the German 
 Empire. The last may also be said of the Kings 
 of Wiirtemberg and Saxony, who are, moreover, 
 estimable and amiable German gentlemen, sym- 
 pathetic with the artistic tastes of their subjects, 
 and inspiring a patriarchal respect and affection 
 in their hearts. 
 
 Returning to the trio of Emperors, there can 
 be no doubt of their excellence of personal traits,
 
 2l8 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 their more than common ability, or the affection 
 with which they are regarded by the millions 
 whom they rule. In these modern and revolu- 
 tionary days, the individual characters of heredi- 
 tary monarchs count, perhaps, for less and less 
 every year. But no one will question that the 
 characters of the three Emperors have had very 
 much to do with current events in Europe dur- 
 ing the past quarter of a century. Two of them 
 are still absolute despots ; the third was so dur- 
 ing the first eighteen years of his reign. It is 
 certain that it was the Czar's personal act to 
 emancipate the serfs ; that it was largely owing 
 to William's military tastes and training that 
 Prussia became the head of a unified Germany; 
 and that a less wise or less patriotic sovereign 
 than Francis Joseph might have failed to concil- 
 iate Hungary, and have refused to grant a con- 
 stitution to his dual realm. 
 
 Of the Imperial trio, William of Germany is 
 at once the senior in point of age, and the junior 
 in the number of years that he has reigned ; 
 while Francis Joseph is at once the youngest 
 man and the oldest sovereign. Francis Joseph 
 is about fifty, ascended the throne in 1848, and 
 has reigned nearly thirty-two years. William is
 
 THREE EMPERORS. 21$ 
 
 eighty-three, ascended the throne in 1862, and 
 has reigned eighteen years. Alexander is sixty- 
 two, ascended the throne in 1855, and has reigned 
 just a quarter of a century. 
 
 While the sovereigns of Russia and Austria 
 are, in personal appearance and bearing, modern 
 Emperors, William of Germany has a certain 
 quaint air and flavor about him of real old-time, 
 typical royalty. His big, stalwart, strongly knit 
 frame, which at eighty-four sustains bravely the 
 fatigue of military pageantry and the crowding 
 business of a vast state ; his lofty, knightly, yet 
 courteous bearing ; his clear, cold, slowly gazing 
 light-blue eye ; his finely arched and tufted eye- 
 brows of snowy white; his sweeping military 
 mustache ; his strong, broad chin and jaw, and 
 thin lips ; his air of having ever the conscious- 
 ness of majesty; his voice, with its command- 
 ing tones, its thick Berlinese accent, its slow and 
 measured cadence, that of one who chooses his 
 words and expects to be listened to ; his fault- 
 less memory, a trait that the warrior sovereigns 
 of old cultivated and prided themselves upon ; 
 his fondness for the table, for the lusty sports of 
 the Fatherland, for domestic reunions, for mili- 
 tary show and the grim realities of war, all
 
 22O CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 stamp him as the stalwart monarch of a stalwart 
 people, the successor of Hochmeisters and Kur- 
 fiirsts, who boldly typifies alike the physical and 
 the mental traits of his rough and stormy ances- 
 tors. With the proud bearing of a knight of 
 the Hospitallers, his head ever high in air, Wil- 
 liam has the thorough patriarchal good-nature 
 of the Teuton. Anecdotes are related of him, 
 exceedingly expressive of his quaint, blunt, 
 homely character, which we should never think 
 of hearing related of his brother Emperors. 
 Once at a state ball, he saw a young officer 
 rather rudely turn his back on an English lady 
 of rank. The Emperor strode up to him, took 
 him by the shoulder, and turned him sharply 
 round. " Never turn your back to a lady, sir," 
 he said in his thick, loud voice. On another 
 occasion, he observed an officer dancing awk- 
 wardly ; and at once sent an aide to him, with 
 the command that he must not dance again till 
 he could dance better. The kindliness of his 
 nature a rough, bearish, but very genuine 
 kindliness - is illustrated by a hundred anec- 
 dotes always afloat in Germany. Once, not long 
 after the splendid victory of Sadowa, he was 
 strolling through the gardens of the Kursaal at
 
 THREE EMPERORS. 221 
 
 Ems, when he met an old soldier, who had been 
 badly wounded on the Bohemian battle-field, 
 hobbling along with difficulty on his crutches. 
 The old soldier, on perceiving his sovereign, 
 hastily took off" his hat, which fell from his hands 
 to the ground. William at once stooped, picked 
 up the hat, and put it upon the veteran's head. 
 The soldier began to deprecate a favor of which 
 he thought himself unworthy. " Tut, tut, my 
 worthy man," replied the King, " William reigns 
 at Berlin ; but this day he is happy to serve at 
 Ems." 
 
 The German Emperor's habits are such as 
 may be inferred from the slight glimpse of his 
 traits already given. At eighty-three he is to all 
 appearance as hale and vigorous, as clear of in- 
 tellect and as cheerful in disposition, as capable 
 of enduring physical fatigue, as indefatigable in 
 the performance of his political and military 
 tasks, as he was when he came to the throne. 
 His appetite is still Teutonic in its capacity, and 
 he still, as for years, goes sturdily through the 
 severe routine of every day, which brims with 
 employment for him. He may be seen periodi- 
 cally inspecting his pet regiments, sometimes 
 seated on his big white horse, remaining firmly
 
 222 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 fixed in the saddle for hours together, and some- 
 times on foot, striding with strong tread athwart 
 the front of a long line of grenadiers, in the 
 Schloss-Platz at Potsdam. William is and always 
 has been an early riser. Leaving a by no means 
 luxurious couch with the dawn, his first act is to 
 read a chapter in the Bible. This betrays to us 
 one of his most conspicuous traits. Like his 
 great chancellor, Bismarck, the Emperor is a 
 firm believer in Protestant Christianity. His 
 piety, too, has all the simplicity and directness 
 of a nature too frank and honest ever to assume 
 religious faith as a cloak. Those who remember 
 his remarkable despatches to his wife from the 
 seat of war in 1870, cannot have failed to be 
 struck with the constant allusions to his grati- 
 tude to God, and the reference of events to the 
 divine source. There was something quite Crom- 
 wellian in their blunt utterance of fervidly pious 
 faith ; nor did any one question that all that he 
 expressed, he deeply felt. 
 
 Having performed his devotions the Emperor, 
 booted, spurred, and in the military costume he 
 almost invariably wears, goes into his study, a 
 room looking out upon the square in front of the 
 palace. From its window he may, if he chooses,
 
 THREE EMPERORS, 22$ 
 
 derive daily inspiration from the noble eques- 
 trian statue of the great Frederic, that stands in 
 the square. He takes his place at a little desk 
 in the corner of the study, where a small cup of 
 coffee is served to him, after partaking of which 
 he rapidly scans the morning newspapers. The 
 heavy mail which has just arrived next claims 
 his attention, and it is no slight task to go 
 through it. He makes notes of instructions to 
 his secretaries on the envelopes, and places them 
 in the large bags which are ready to his hand on 
 the floor. The first audience is given to an aide- 
 de-camp, who makes each morning a report on 
 the state of the garrisons in Berlin ; and then the 
 Emperor gives the aide a list of the persons he 
 will receive. It is now perhaps half-past nine, 
 and time for breakfast. William proceeds to the 
 Empress's apartments, and greets her for the first 
 time in the day; and there the Imperial couple 
 sit down to a substantial German breakfast. 
 While at table, the bill of fare for dinner is 
 brought, inspected, and approved. The venera- 
 ble pair almost invariably breakfast alone. The 
 repast leisurely discussed and over, they go 
 down into the luxurious saloons that overlook 
 the Platz. Here they are joined by the Crown
 
 224 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 Prince and Princess, and the Empress reads aloud 
 an hour or two, while her lord sits in a luxurious 
 arm-chair. Later in the morning, the Emperor 
 goes to his official reception-room, and there re- 
 ceives the officers of his household, persons to 
 whom he has accorded an audience, ministers, 
 ambassadors, and military officers. Then fol- 
 lows, in the Emperor's presence, the Cabinet 
 council. He sits at the head of a long table, 
 covered with green baize, surrounded by his 
 advisers ; and there the destinies of Germany 
 and Europe are discussed, and mighty events 
 have now and then been decreed. This room, 
 also, looks out upon the spacious Platz ; and 
 often, in the middle of the day, may the venera- 
 ble monarch be seen standing at one of the win- 
 dows, looking out at the people passing to and 
 fro, and chivalrously returning their respectful 
 obeisances. If a military company marches by, 
 he straightens up, buttons his military coat to 
 the throat, and with erect, martial bearing, gives 
 it the regulation salute. The back of the day's 
 work is broken by three o'clock, by which time 
 the Emperor has lightly lunched on black bread, 
 a bit of cold meat, and a glass or two of Moselle. 
 He then begins to take his ease, and indulge in
 
 THREE EMPERORS. 22$ 
 
 the lighter duties and pleasures of royalty. He 
 spends, perhaps, an hour or two looking at his 
 books and maps, examining his new works of 
 art, of which he is passionately fond, and chat- 
 ting with his wife or son. Then, seated in an 
 open carriage, drawn by a span of coal-black 
 horses, he takes a rapid drive through the Under 
 den Linden, and around the Thiergarten. Every- 
 where he is received with unmistakable signs of 
 the veneration and affection of his subjects ; to 
 their greetings he responds with smiles and gra- 
 cious wavings of his hand. No sooner has he 
 returned to the palace than he finds himself 
 closeted with Bismarck, who has brought the 
 daily report of the state of the German Empire. 
 It is no doubt a relief when the grim chancellor 
 retires, and his somewhat tired majesty may sit 
 down to a frugal but plenteous dinner, of which 
 he partakes alone with the Empress. It is only 
 occasionally that there are guests at the table ; 
 at these rare times the guests are few. It is a 
 thoroughly quiet, simple, domestic meal. The 
 brief interval between dinner and the opera or 
 theatre is spent in reading letters and telegrams, 
 and conferring with secretaries, the lingering 
 remains of the state toils of the day. William is 
 15
 
 226 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 intensely fond both of the opera and the drama. 
 Nearly all his evenings are spent at one or the 
 other ; and there alone, it would appear, can he 
 entirely throw aside the burdens and cares of 
 sovereignty, and thoroughly enjoy himself. He 
 is quite German in his enthusiasm for music, and 
 it is a serious obstacle which can keep him away 
 from the first representation of a masterpiece by 
 a famous composer. 
 
 The Emperor William prides himself on being 
 " the father of his people." He bears himself 
 easily and naturally in the r61e of a royal patri- 
 arch. His paternal care and solicitude for his 
 subjects are displayed alike in the assiduity with 
 which he devotes his labors to matters of state, 
 and in the grave gentleness with which he re- 
 sponds to their salutations. There are indul- 
 gence and kindness in his patriarchal bearing; 
 but the Prussians have long since learned that, 
 though genial, his rule is thoroughly autocratic. 
 There is at least, in the palace, no idea of the 
 concession of popular liberties. When his sub- 
 jects appear to be getting impatient of the re- 
 straints of autocratic government, and demand 
 some modicum of constitutional freedom, the 
 venerable monarch seems to smile a lofty smile,
 
 THREE EMPERORS. 22/ 
 
 and has the air of saying, "Why, really, my 
 children, you are crying for the moon ! " Among 
 all the good things William has done for Prussia 
 and for Germany, among all the glories and pow- 
 ers that he has won for them, it would be diffi- 
 cult to find a single act designed to share with 
 the people the government of the nation. He is 
 a despot, though a genial and loving despot; 
 and Germany must probably await the advent of 
 a less popular ruler, before she can hope to win 
 that freedom which seems to us the only proper 
 complement and crowning of her unity. 
 
 Between the stalwart, bluff, and hearty old 
 German Emperor, and his nephew, the Czar of 
 the Russias, the contrast is very striking. It is 
 true that Alexander II. had a German mother 
 (William's sister), received his education in Ger- 
 many, and in tastes and character seems more 
 of the mild and studious German type than of 
 that of the rude, bold Russian. In many of the 
 kingly qualities of William, however, he is quite 
 wanting; while he has neither the haughty and 
 cruel spirit of his father, the Czar Nicholas, nor 
 the active temperament and gracious bearing of 
 his uncle, the Czar Alexander I. He is perhaps 
 the gentlest and most humane and best meaning
 
 228 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 sovereign who ever sat on the Muscovite throne. 
 His inclinations have always been manifestly for 
 peace, progress, and improvement. So little did 
 he inherit of the military taste and spirit of his 
 ancestry, that Nicholas his father disliked, al- 
 most despised him, and had at one time serious 
 thoughts of excluding him from the succession. 
 There can be little doubt that Alexander has 
 always shrunk from making war, and that he 
 has never without reluctance entered upon it. 
 His dislike of parade and show, of figuring at 
 reviews and attending military pageants, is well 
 known. He always avoids them when it is pos- 
 sible. His almost feminine timidity and ner- 
 vousness have long been remarked. There have 
 been many incidents of his life which indicate 
 that personal courage is not one of his conspic- 
 uous traits. The various attempts which have 
 been made upon his life have shattered his com- 
 posure, and rendered him a constant prey to the 
 dread of sudden and violent death. Sometimes 
 this dread has so haunted him as to well-nigh 
 deprive him of reason. He is a confirmed hypo- 
 chondriac. It is very rarely that a smile flits 
 across his handsome, but most melancholy coun- 
 tenance. This sadness of feature is greatly in-
 
 THREE EMPERORS. 229 
 
 creased of late ; at sixty-three, he looks seventy. 
 His once rich brown hair, and military mustache 
 and whiskers, are thin, shaggy, and gray; deep 
 lines, as of care and sorrow, cross his face ; his 
 air is that of a man long hunted, and desper- 
 ately weary of being hunted. Uneasy, indeed, 
 lies at least this head that wears the proud 
 crown of Rurick. Perhaps there is no more un- 
 happy man in all Russia than its ruler. There 
 is more than one cause for the miserable exist- 
 ence which, in sombre contrast with the hearty 
 enjoyment of life and of majesty experienced 
 by the German Emperor, is led by the mighty 
 potentate of Russia. Time was when the motto 
 of every Russian was, " My life for the Czar ! " 
 His person was sacred, as his will was law. 
 But the times have changed. The vast, occult 
 conspiracy of Nihilism has literally turned thou- 
 sands of Russian hands against the heart of him 
 who is their Pope as well as their sovereign. 
 His despotism is in these days more than ever 
 " tempered by assassination." The Czar lives 
 daily in just terror of secret conspiracy. Death 
 may lurk in his food, beneath the floor of his 
 palace, in the very letters he opens, behind the 
 curtains of his bed. The effect of this perpet-
 
 230 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 ual threat, at all hours and in all places, upon 
 a finely strung, nervous, timid, sensitive organ- 
 ization as is that of the Czar, may be imagined. 
 But, aside from this Damocles' sword, forever 
 suspended above his head, the Czar is tortured 
 by the unruly conduct of his son and heir, a 
 young man in whom is revived the old, rough, 
 fierce, overbearing, warlike spirit of the haughty 
 house of Romanoff. He is perplexed by the 
 clamors of his nobles ; he is driven into courses 
 from which he is averse, by the powerful " Old 
 Russia" party; the cares of government press 
 heavily upon him ; the chief joy of his life, his 
 only daughter, lives in a distant and unfriendly 
 country; his feeble health is an almost constant 
 torment. 
 
 The resources and tastes of the Czar happily 
 in some degree mitigate the darker aspects and 
 influences of his life. He is polished and schol- 
 arly, fond of books, enjoys best of all the hours 
 when he is left in solitude and quiet, in the midst 
 of his family, in his library, and amid the luxu- 
 rious retreats which it is one of the few privi- 
 leges of his rank to possess. When out of sight 
 of the world, and among trusted friends, he loses 
 something of his melancholy, and enters into the
 
 THREE EMPERORS. 
 
 pastime of the hour with gentle zest. His man- 
 ners, while grave and quiet, are not dignified. 
 He quite lacks the hauteur of his father Nicho- 
 las. There is, however, a certain kindliness in 
 his bearing which wins the hearts of those who 
 are permitted to approach near enough to dis- 
 cover his real self. " He produces the impres- 
 sion," says an English writer who has often seen 
 him, " that one would like to know him better, 
 if only he were not an Emperor. There is some- 
 thing extremely sympathetic about him." Alex- 
 ander is not devoid entirely of a taste for the 
 robust sports of his hardy northern land. He is 
 fond of a good horse ; and until within a few 
 years was somewhat noted as a huntsman, hav- 
 ing achieved much success in the hunting of 
 bears. But in these days, to go hunting would 
 be to add to the chances of assassination. Not 
 many years ago, one of the Czar's favorite pas- 
 times was to walk, almost or quite unattended, 
 through the streets of his capital, or in the gar- 
 dens surrounding his palace. This, too, he has 
 given up, since the repeated attempts upon his 
 life. More and more each year he inclines to 
 the seclusion of a recluse. His sleep is uneasy 
 and troubled. At table he is abstemious and
 
 232 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 simple ; it is only on the occasion of a state din- 
 ner that the Imperial table groans with the good 
 things brought to the ice-bound capital from 
 southern and western Europe. He seldom stays 
 long in the brilliant court balls which ever and 
 anon break the usual solemn silence of the Win- 
 ter Palace ; and his visits to the opera become 
 more rare every year. When he goes out now, 
 it is in his carriage or drosky, swiftly driven, 
 and flanked on either side by heavily armed and 
 fierce-looking mounted Cossacks. If he travels 
 by rail, it is in a closely shut compartment, and 
 only after every precaution has been taken to 
 keep the track clear and the way safe. 
 
 During his long and eventful reign, the Czar 
 Alexander has many times shown his desire, 
 even his anxiety, to confer solid benefits upon 
 his people. This inclination, indeed, appeared 
 almost immediately after he ascended the throne. 
 Unlike Nicholas, his disposition was liberal and 
 magnanimous ; it was perhaps the observation 
 of his father's unbending cruelty and remorse- 
 less rule, that actuated him to diverge so soon 
 and so completely from his father's policy. He 
 established many reforms in the public adminis- 
 tration during the early years of his reign ; and
 
 THREE EMPERORS. 233 
 
 thus soon won that hostility of the nobles, and 
 of the warlike and arbitrary " old Russia " party, 
 which has been kept alive ever since. He 
 brought about improvements in the system of 
 education in Russia, and freed the universities 
 from some of the odious restrictions imposed on 
 them by Nicholas ; he relieved the military pres- 
 sure which had existed over civil affairs ; and he 
 abolished the most irksome laws restricting the 
 Russian press. Towards the inveterately discon- 
 tented Poles he manifested a studied gentleness 
 and leniency; granting a universal amnesty in 
 the second year of his reign, and removing many 
 of the despotic measures that weighed upon the 
 unhappy subject kingdom. Then came the 
 noblest of all his acts, an act which must pre- 
 serve for him a loftier and sweeter renown than 
 attaches to the name of any other Russian 
 autocrat. Suddenly, without consultation with 
 family or nobles, he struck the shackles from the 
 swarming millions of serfs who toiled beneath 
 the yoke of the proud, cruel, and indolent Rus- 
 sian landed proprietors. To be sure, this eman- 
 cipation was far from complete ; nay, is not by 
 any means complete to this day. But it was 
 nevertheless a bold and grand act, the outcome
 
 234 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 of a lofty impulse; and it may be fairly said 
 that as far as it lay in the Czar Alexander's 
 power to do it, the whole body of Russian serf- 
 dom was made free. 
 
 The later features of his reign, unfortunately, 
 have not sustained its wise and brave beginnings. 
 The attempts upon his life, the rise and formi- 
 dable growth of Nihilism, the influence of strong 
 wills like that of Gortschakoff and of grand 
 dukes and despotic nobles, acting upon a ner- 
 vous and unhappy temperament, have resulted in 
 inducing Alexander too often to resort to the 
 old, hard, cruel methods of his predecessors. 
 The press has again become the slave of rigid 
 censorship ; Siberia once more receives her mis- 
 erable quota of victims year by year ; the Poles 
 feel, as of old, the terrors of the quiet that reigns, 
 under Russian bayonets, at Warsaw; and the 
 great cities scarcely breathe, under the oppres- 
 sion of the stern martial law which has been 
 proclaimed over them. The Czar seems, indeed, 
 in these latter days, quite powerless, autocrat as 
 he is, to do those things for his people which his 
 own liberal and generous impulses would natu- 
 rally prompt; and we can scarcely conceive of 
 a more wretched situation than that of a well-
 
 THREE EMPERORS. 
 
 disposed arbitrary monarch, who finds himself 
 responsible for all the oppressions and injustices 
 that are done to his people, and yet who is un- 
 able to lift his hand to protect them from it. 
 
 The Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria is a 
 good and wise sovereign, and an amiable and 
 high-minded gentleman. No living European 
 ruler more thoroughly deserves the affections of 
 his subjects and the respect of the world. Al- 
 though only fifty years of age, he has reigned 
 thirty-two years ; and those years have been full 
 of vicissitude, turmoil, misfortune, and struggle 
 with him. His task has been more difficult than 
 that of any other European potentate ; and he 
 has acquitted it with a degree of judgment, tact, 
 sincere patriotism, and patience, which stamp 
 him as one of the most able hereditary govern- 
 ors of men now living. Called to rule over a 
 polyglot empire, composed of five or six different 
 and mutually jealous races, each pulling against 
 the others, each clamoring for that which it was 
 contrary to the interests of the others to con- 
 cede, his course has been through the most dan- 
 gerous passes and channels, amid constantly 
 confronting perils. If he yielded to the de- 
 mands of the Czechs, he offended the Germans ;
 
 236 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 if German influence was uppermost in his coun- 
 cils, Hungary was rebellious. Besides these in- 
 ternal perplexities, he had the hereditary exter- 
 nal complications and quarrels of the Empire on 
 his hands. It was his task to maintain the posi- 
 tion of Austria as a great power; to make exi- 
 gent alliances, at times to enter into wars from 
 which he emerged discomfited, beaten, and de- 
 prived of territories. Amid all these troubles, 
 the Emperor Francis Joseph has borne himself 
 with dignity, prudence, self-control, and, more 
 than once, with a fine spirit of self-sacrifice, 
 when his prerogatives as a monarch were to be 
 restricted and lessened for the benefit of his 
 subjects. 
 
 Francis Joseph is perhaps the only potentate 
 who has passed from the position of a despot 
 into that of a constitutional sovereign, without 
 being forced to do so by actual revolution. It 
 is to his eternal honor that he has cheerfully 
 and loyally given constitutional freedom to all 
 his subjects ; that under his beneficent sway, 
 Austria to-day enjoys a degree of political and 
 social liberty which places her far in the van of 
 her sister empires of Russia and Germany. The 
 wisdom of his self-abnegating policy is seen in
 
 THREE EMPERORS. 237 
 
 the comparative content in which the diverse 
 populations of Austro-Hungary now dwell to- 
 gether. Hungary, once stormily insurgent, is 
 the most loyal of his Imperial dominions, the 
 strongest support to his throne. Francis Joseph 
 has pursued this enlightened course with great 
 firmness and steadfastness, against formidable 
 obstacles. His family, the court, his noble 
 counsellors, have often urgently opposed the 
 conciliatory steps which he has nevertheless 
 boldly taken. With conspicuous magnanimity, 
 he accepted as his chancellor the Hungarian 
 Count Andrassy, upon whose head the Emperor 
 himself had once been obliged to set a price, as 
 a traitor and rebel. When he went to Pesth to 
 be crowned King of Hungary with the ancient 
 iron diadem, he visited the stubborn old patriot, 
 Francis Deak, in his garret, and urged him in 
 vain to accept the marked favors which it is 
 the privilege of royalty to bestow. His treat- 
 ment of Italy, who took from him some of his 
 fairest provinces, has been exceedingly gener- 
 ous and friendly; his relations with other po- 
 tentates have always seemed to be seized by 
 Francis Joseph as opportunities to maintain the 
 peace of Europe. Never once, since Austria
 
 238 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 became a constitutional state, has he evinced 
 any restiveness under the new condition, or any 
 desire to return to arbitrary methods. Yet in 
 his veins courses the blood of the haughty 
 Hapsburgs, the proudest, crudest, most de- 
 spotic race of monarchs, on the whole, who have 
 ever held sway in Europe, unless we except the 
 half-barbarous descendants of Othman and the 
 second Mahomet. Nor is Francis Joseph less 
 proud than his Imperial successors. It must 
 have deeply wounded him to lose, first Milan 
 and Lombardy, and then, seven years later, his 
 still fairer appanage of Venice ; to see the con- 
 quering legions of Prussia encamping on his 
 Bohemian fields; to concede constitutional lib- 
 erty to that truculent and restless Hungary which 
 came near despoiling him of his crown almost 
 as soon as it had been placed upon his head. 
 Unlike the Bourbons, however, he has proved 
 himself able and~ willing to learn the lessons 
 taught by repeated misfortune. In a better and 
 higher sense, therefore, than the term can be 
 applied to the Emperor William, Francis Joseph 
 has been "the father of his people; " sacrificing 
 his pride and his power for their sake. 
 
 In person, Francis Joseph is of medium height,
 
 THREE EMPERORS. 
 
 slim, erect, and with a graceful bearing. His 
 reddish brown hair is scant on the crown, the 
 bareness of which gives an appearance of un- 
 usual size to the high, round forehead. The 
 hair is always cropped as close to the round 
 head as is the fashion with our college youth in 
 summer time. The face is a long, well-filled- 
 out oval ; each cheek is covered with very heavy 
 and long reddish brown whiskers, which fall 
 almost to the breast. The Emperor has the 
 true protruding " Hapsburg lip," which has 
 been a marked peculiarity of the Austrian sov- 
 ereigns for many generations ; but it is almost 
 concealed by a long sweeping military mustache, 
 the ends of which are brushed jauntily upward. 
 The chin is round and handsome; the nose 
 straight and strong; the large dark gray eyes 
 are grave and serious, but not unkindly in ex- 
 pression. So, too, his bearing is always full of 
 sedateness and quiet dignity, by no means ob- 
 trusively haughty, his imperial rank sitting easily 
 and naturally upon him. Unlike the Czar, he is 
 by no means fond of solitude, but like the Czar, 
 he has little taste for state pageantry or court 
 festivities. He used to be fond of the theatre 
 and the opera, but in these latter days is rarely
 
 240 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 seen at the Vienna places of amusement. He 
 has a positive liking for the details of govern- 
 ment. The greater part of his day is spent in 
 official work. His favorite companions are his 
 political servants. He makes himself familiar 
 with every branch of administrative labor ; per- 
 haps there is no man in his dominions more 
 thoroughly conversant with their political and 
 social condition. When Count Von Beust, the 
 Protestant Saxon, became Chancellor of Austria, 
 it was the Emperor who " crammed " him on 
 the state of the realm, and instructed him in the 
 duties he had just assumed. His watchful eye 
 embraces the needs of all his subjects. Reign- 
 ing now under constitutional forms, there is yet 
 no doubt that there is no more weighty voice in 
 the Imperial councils than that of their chief 
 member. It was undoubtedly his personal in- 
 fluence, pitted against the general voice of his 
 advisers, that restrained Austria from going to 
 war in alliance with P>ancc against Prussia in 
 1870; and a very wise restraint it was. 
 
 Francis Joseph is one of the few great princes 
 of Europe against whom scandal has never 
 breathed a suspicion of immorality. From early 
 youth to the present hour his reputation has been
 
 THREE EMPERORS. 241 
 
 morally stainless. His life has been pure, sim- 
 ple, self-controlled. He has been a true and 
 faithful husband to the most beautiful princess 
 in Europe; a good, affectionate, and judicious 
 father to children of whose promising qualities 
 he has every reason to be proud. He told his 
 son and heir, Rudolph, that he should never be 
 compelled to marry for reasons of state, or to 
 secure a brilliant alliance; but in the matter of 
 marriage, should follow the inclinations of his 
 own heart. The father himself had set this ex- 
 ample. His union with the Princess Elizabeth 
 of Bavaria was a love match, and brought Fran- 
 cis Joseph no other advantage than a happy and 
 harmonious wedded life and domestic circle. 
 The Emperor is abstemious and moderate, fond 
 of simple food, and regular and methodical in 
 his habits. He is little addicted to out-of-door 
 sports, and is emphatically a " home body." So 
 virtuous and clean a life is seldom to be found 
 in palaces. Francis Joseph has waxed in popu- 
 larity as his reign has lengthened, until now there 
 is probably no living sovereign held more affec- 
 tionately in the hearts of his subjects. His hand 
 is always ready to give out of the abundance of 
 his economically kept wealth in deeds of quiet 
 16
 
 242 CERTAIN MEN OF MARK. 
 
 charity. Truly, if the nations must still have 
 hereditary rulers, and if their destinies must yet 
 for a while be swayed somewhat by the accident 
 of individual birth, theirs is good fortune to 
 which that accident gives them such monarchs 
 as now reign in Austria and Germany. 
 
 University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge.
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW.