Title: Letters of Lord Acton - To Mary, Daughter of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone
Author: Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, Baron, 1834-1902
Language: English
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[Frontispiece: Portrait of Lord Acton]



LETTERS OF

LORD ACTON


TO MARY, DAUGHTER OF

THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE



EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR, BY

HERBERT PAUL



LONDON

GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD

1904

[All rights reserved]



COPYRIGHT IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 1904



Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co.

At the Ballantyne Press



{iii}

    "_Through such souls alone
  God stooping shows sufficient of His Light
  For us i' the dark to rise by._"



THIS VOLUME

IS DEDICATED TO

LADY ACTON

BY M. D.



{v}

CONTENTS


                                                               PAGE

DEDICATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  iii

PREFACE  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  vii

EDITOR'S PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   ix

INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   xi

LETTERS OF LORD ACTON  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    1

INDEX  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  221



ILLUSTRATIONS


PORTRAIT OF LORD ACTON (Photogravure)  . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

GROUP AT TEGERNSEE, 1879 (Photogravure)  . . . . . _to face page_ 1



{vii}

PREFACE

It does not seem likely that any one, after reading these letters,
would question the desirability of their publication.  In general they
speak for themselves; a few notes have been added to explain allusions
which by lapse of time have become obscure; some names and passages,
and some letters, have been omitted.  After 1885 Lord Acton touched
upon questions which are still matters of controversy, and therefore
the selection closes with that year.  The letters were written to the
daughter who lived with Mr. Gladstone from the time of her own birth,
in the middle of the last century, to the day of his death, at its
close.  The idea of publishing a selection of them arose in 1898; and
Lord Acton, with certain reservations, assented to it.  But it was felt
by competent judges that it would be trespassing in Mr. Morley's
domain; and Mr. Morley himself was strongly of opinion that the
mutilation which at that period would have been necessary, would
seriously impair the interest and the significance of the book.  So,
for the time, the project was abandoned.  On the other hand, in the
judgment of the eminent authorities to whom the letters were submitted,
their value was of such a nature that it was evident they ought to be
published as soon as Mr. Morley should have completed his task.

With the exception of passages critical of himself or his policy, the
letters were not read by Mr. Gladstone; for, while he made it a rule to
shun all that was laudatory of himself, he always welcomed and
carefully studied anything deliberately thought out or written in an
opposite sense.  His own correspondence with Lord Acton extended over a
period of some {viii} thirty years; but it does not cover nearly so
wide a range of subjects, or appeal so much to general interests, as
the series now printed.

To the recipient of these letters from Lord Acton they will always be
precious, not merely for the judgments they contain and the memories
they recall, but also as the outward symbol of an inward and priceless
possession--the treasure of his friendship.

MARY DREW.

10th _January_ 1904.



{ix}

EDITOR'S PREFACE

In compiling the Introductory Memoir which follows I have been chiefly
indebted to Dr. Shaw's excellent "Bibliography of Lord Acton," edited
for the Royal Historical Society, and to a most interesting article in
the _Edinburgh Review_ for April 1903.  I have also consulted Mr.
Bryce's "Studies in Contemporary Biography," Sir Mountstuart Grant
Duff's "Out of the Past," and an obituary notice in the _Cambridge
Review_ for October 1902, signed "F.W.M."  Mr. Morley was good enough
to lend me the copies of Lord Acton's letters to Mr. Gladstone which
had been made for the purposes of his Biography.  Neither the materials
at my command nor the circumstances of the case justified me in
attempting to write a Life of Lord Acton.  I have merely sought to
furnish such information as the readers of these letters would
naturally desire to possess.

HERBERT PAUL.



{xi}

INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR

Lord Acton was dimly known to the general public as a prodigy of
learning.  He left no great work behind him, and is often quoted as an
example of natural gifts buried under an accumulation of excessive, or
ill-digested knowledge.  The image of a Dryasdust, of a bookworm, of a
walking Dictionary was excited by his name among those to whom he was a
name, and nothing more.  To those who had the privilege of his
acquaintance he appeared almost the precise opposite of a picture too
unlike the truth to be even a caricature.  For Lord Acton was a
thorough man of the world.  An insatiable, systematic, and effective
reader, he was anything but a recluse.  No man had a keener zest for
the society of his intellectual equals.  No one took a stronger
interest in the events of the day, and the gossip of the hour.  His
learning, though vast and genuine, was never obtruded.  Always ready to
impart information, he shrank from the semblance of volunteering it.
Indeed, if no direct appeal were made to him, he would let people
without a tithe of his knowledge lay down the law as if they knew
everything, and would betray no other sign of amusement than an
enigmatical smile.  He had something of Addison's tendency, exhibited
in a much more remarkable and much less agreeable form by Mr. Froude,
to draw out rather than to repress the sallies of conceited ignorance.
But for any one who wished to learn his resources were in their fullest
extent available.  To be in his company was like being in the best of
historical libraries with the best of historical catalogues.  A
question produced {xii} not only a direct and complete answer, but also
useful advice, about the books which the inquirer ought to consult.  On
matters of opinion he was much more reticent.  Sometimes, without a
moment's warning, he would utter a paradox which from any one else
might have seemed the mere recklessness of sciolism, but which, coming
from him, was treasured in the memory.  I remember, for instance, his
telling me that Rousseau had produced more effect with his pen than
Aristotle, or Cicero, or Saint Augustine, or Saint Thomas Aquinas, or
any other man who ever lived.  But such sweeping assertions were few.
His general attitude was one of rigid adhesion to certain facts, and
careful avoidance of hasty judgments.  It was not that Lord Acton had
no strong opinions.  Few people had stronger opinions than he, and
their foundation was so solid that it was almost impossible to displace
them.  But he liked to hear all sides of every question, and to make
allowance for all errors which did not involve a violation of the moral
law.  Any apology, or even excuse, for departure from the highway of
the Decalogue he regarded as in itself a crime.

The force and originality of Lord Acton's conversation are reflected,
and may be inferred, from his epistolary style.  In absolutely
uncongenial company he would maintain the silence of the tomb.  But
when there was any community of taste or subject, he shone equally as a
talker and as a listener.  It was not that he tried to shine.  He did
not aim at epigram, and his humour was as spontaneous as it was
delightful.  He loved to stimulate conversation in others, and no man
had more sympathy with a good thing which he had not said himself.  His
manner was such that his compliments sometimes suggested a faint
suspicion of insincerity.  The suspicion, however, was unjust, and was
merely the result of a subtle, half ironic manner.  He was entirely
free from jealousy, vanity, and egoism.  {xiii} A merciless
intellectual critic he could hardly help being.  He had so trained and
furnished his mind that it rejected instinctively a sophism or a false
pretence.

  Antonio Stradivari has an eye
  That winces at false work and loves the true.


His intimate friends agreed that he was the raciest and most
stimulating of companions, with an instinctive perception for the true
significance of a hint, so that they never had to tell him a thing
twice, or to explain it once.  That letters take their tone from the
recipient as well as from the writer is a commonplace, almost a
platitude.  While therefore only Lord Acton's half of this
correspondence is printed, the nature of the other half may be surmised
from what he says himself.  Such letters as the criticism of "John
Inglesant," or the view of Mr. Gladstone as he will appear to
posterity, or the estimate of Ultramontane ethics, stand out as solid
documents with a permanent and independent value of their own.  The
more numerous specimens of his more familiar writing will readily
suggest why he found this correspondence so congenial, and what was the
reason in each case for his choice of topics.  The pliability and
adaptability of his mind, his easy transitions from grave to gay, his
sympathy with all a friend's interests and feelings, are visible in
every page.

Lord Acton's personality was a negative of all shams.  His spacious
forehead, his deep sonorous voice, his piercing eyes, and his air of
vigilant repose, were the outward signs of genuine power, in which the
latent force behind is greater than anything the surface displays.  He
might well have sat to Titian for one of those ecclesiastical statesmen
whose mingled strength and subtlety have attracted the admiring gaze of
three hundred and fifty years.  He was a good talker because he was a
good listener, always interested in the subject, not seeking to exhaust
it, rather putting in from time {xiv} to time the exactly appropriate
word.  To draw Lord Acton out, to make him declare himself upon some
doubtful or delicate point, was a hopeless task.  His face at once
assumed the expression of the Sphinx.  To students, on the other hand,
his generosity was unbounded, and the accumulations of a lifetime were
at the disposal of any one who was willing to profit by them.  It will
be seen from these letters that Lord Acton was not merely a learned
man.  His perceptions were quick and shrewd.  His judgment was clear
and sound.  He watched every move in the political game with a vigilant
keenness quickened by the depth of his interest in the great leader
whom he followed to the end.  Circumstances had made him from his
boyhood familiar with the best political society not merely of England
but of Europe.  He was as much at home in Italy and in Germany as in
his native land, so that he could compare Mr. Gladstone with foreign
statesmen of his own time as well as with British statesmen of the
past.  Although it has been roughly estimated by his friend Mr. Bryce
that Lord Acton read on an average an octavo volume a day, as often as
not in German, he was never a bookworm.  When he was in London he
constantly dined out, and he corresponded freely with continental
friends.  Few people were more agreeable in a country house.  No one
assumed more naturally the aspect of disengaged leisure, and it was
possible to live in the same house with him for weeks without ever
seeing him read.  Even the frivolities of the world were not beneath
his notice.  He liked to know about marriages before they occurred.  He
was an excellent judge of cookery and of wine.  Yet the passion of his
life was reading.  It was, as has been well said, like a physical
appetite, and it seemed, if it changed at all, to grow stronger as he
grew older.  His reading was chiefly historical.  He was no great
classical scholar.  The voluminous notes to his inaugural lecture at
Cambridge {xv} do not contain a single quotation from any classical
author of Greece or Rome.  He cared little for poetry, for art, or for
pure literature, the literature of style.  Of physical science he knew
only what most educated men know.  But he was well versed in
metaphysics, he was a deep theologian, and his knowledge of modern
history was only bounded by the limits of the theme.

John Emerick Edward Dalberg Acton was born at Naples on the 10th of
January 1834, the only son of Sir Richard Acton, seventh baronet, and
the heiress of the German house whose name, Dalberg, he bore.  An
Italian birthplace, a German mother, and an English father stamped him
from the beginning as a citizen of the world.  His grandfather, Sir
John Francis Acton, had been Prime Minister of Naples under Ferdinand
the Fourth, and had reorganised the Neapolitan navy.  His maternal
grandfather entered the service of France, and represented Louis the
Eighteenth at the Congress of Vienna.  No wonder that Lord Acton spoke
German and Italian as well as French, or that the chief foreign
languages were as familiar to him as his own.  In fact, as well as in
blood, he was only half an Englishman.  His entire freedom from insular
prejudice, which was peculiarly noticeable in his opinions on Irish
affairs, must be attributed not less to his religion than to his
origin.  He adhered throughout his life, notwithstanding many
difficulties which would have shaken a less profound faith, to the
Church of Rome.  Nor was he one of those Catholics who remain Catholics
because they do not care enough about the matter to change.  Liberal as
he was, tolerant as he was, broad as he was, the central truths of the
Christian religion and of the Catholic Church were not merely articles
of his creed, but guiding principles of his conduct.  If these letters
show anything, they show that in Lord Acton's mind, and in his estimate
of human affairs, religion overmastered all mundane considerations.  It
was with {xvi} him first, and last, and everywhere.  Upon that noble
text, "Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty," his life and
writings are a sermon.  Hating Ultramontanism and Vaticanism as only a
passionate believer in the Church which they disfigured could hate
them, cherishing the right of private judgment within the widest limits
which Rome had ever allowed, he died, as he was baptized, in the faith
of his ancestors.  Perhaps his allegiance was none the less staunch
because it was ethical and rational; because he clung always and before
all things, in the clash of creeds, to "those things which are certain
still, the grand, simple landmarks of morality."  "If," said the
greatest preacher in the Church of England sixty years ago, "if there
be no God and no future state, yet even then it is better to be
generous than selfish, better to be chaste than licentious, better to
be true than false, better to be brave than to be a coward."  Lord
Acton would have been unable to conceive the protasis.  The apodosis he
would not have denied.

Sir Richard Acton died while his son was a child, and at the age of
nine Sir John was sent by his mother to the Roman Catholic College at
Oscott, of which Dr. Wiseman was the head.  Wiseman, until Mr. Wilfrid
Ward published his excellent biography, was chiefly known to English
Protestants as the instrument of papal aggression, and the subject of
Robert Browning's satirical poem, "Bishop Blougram's Apology."  He was
in truth an able and accomplished man, a really great organiser,
thoroughly well qualified to preside over an educational establishment
like Oscott.  He was not in any sense of the word a Liberal, and in
later years the pupil did not always agree with the master.  But of
Oscott Lord Acton always spoke with affection, and the five years which
he spent there in the pursuit of knowledge were among the happiest in a
happy existence.  It was the young man's own desire to enter {xvii} the
University of Cambridge.  For he did not, like some Catholics, hold it
sinful to receive education from a Protestant source.  The law would
not even then have prevented him from matriculating at Cambridge, as it
would at Oxford, and yet the colleges, more bigoted than the law,
refused, on what they doubtless considered religious grounds, to
receive a student as hungry for learning as ever sought admission
within their venerable precincts.  Sir John Acton, so peculiarly fitted
by nature and education to adorn and illustrate a University, may well
have asked with Macaulay, what was the faith of Edward the Third, and
Henry the Sixth, of Margaret of Anjou, and Margaret of Richmond, from
whose foundations the head of a Catholic family was turned away.  If
Acton had gone to Cambridge, he would have known more about Herodotus
and Thucydides, Cæsar and Tacitus.  Of history in its more modern
sense, and its more specially ecclesiastical aspects, he would probably
have learnt less.  Instead of keeping his terms under the walls of the
Fitzwilliam, he went to Munich, and studied with the illustrious
Döllinger.  Döllinger was distinguished for learning even among German
professors, and though, unlike his pupil, eminent in classical
scholarship, as well as in theology, was before all things an
historian.  He it was who taught Acton to look at everything from the
historical point of view, and to remember that, in the immortal words
of Coleridge, "The man who puts even Christianity before truth will go
on to put the Church before Christianity, and will end by putting
himself before the Church."  The time came both to Döllinger and to
Acton, when the voice of the Church said one thing, and the voice of
truth another.  They did not hesitate.  But the results to the priest
were different from the results to the layman.

At Munich, meanwhile, Sir John Acton laboured prodigiously.  Latin and
Greek he never mastered as {xviii} he would have mastered them under
Munro and Kennedy.  But he learned them well enough for the purposes of
an historian, with more help than Gibbon had, though not with the same
innate genius.  Of French, German, Italian, and Spanish, he became a
master.  At any subsequent period he would just as soon have written or
spoken in French or German as in English.  About this time he began to
collect the splendid library which he formed in his country house at
Aldenham in Shropshire.  It consisted, when complete, of sixty thousand
volumes, many of them covered with his marginal notes.  Unlike most
libraries, this one had a definite object, and reason for existence.
Lord Acton was from the schoolroom to the grave an ardent, convinced,
and enthusiastic Liberal.  It was his aim to write a History of
Liberty.  The book was never written.  Not indolence but a
procrastination, which resulted from cherishing an impossibly high
ideal, prevented it from coming to the light.  One of his reasons for
not beginning the History of Liberty was that the whole truth about the
French Revolution had not yet been discovered.  But the library was
collected to illustrate the History, and thus the books, now at
Cambridge, have a peculiar interest, or rather a peculiar character of
their own.  When they were at Aldenham, Lord Acton knew the precise
position which each volume occupied in its case and shelf.  It is
related that on one of his visits to his beloved room, while the house
was let, the servants found him reading when they came in the morning
to open the shutters.  He had forgotten to go to bed.  Mr. Bryce
("Studies in Contemporary Biography," pp. 396-97) has described in a
peculiarly vivid and impressive manner how Acton was dominated and
haunted by the idea that he never fulfilled.  Late one night, in his
library at Cannes, while Mr. Bryce was staying with him, it found vent
in speech.  "He spoke for six or {xix} seven minutes only; but he spoke
like a man inspired; seeming as if, from some mountain summit high in
air, he saw beneath him the far-winding path of human progress from dim
Cimmerian shores of prehistoric shadow into the fuller yet broken and
fitful light of the modern time.  The eloquence was splendid, yet
greater than the eloquence was the penetrating vision which discerned
through all events and in all ages the play of those moral forces, now
creating, now destroying, always transmuting, which had moulded and
remodelled institutions, and had given to the human spirit its
ceaselessly changing forms of energy.  It was as if the whole landscape
of history had been suddenly lit up by a burst of sunlight.  I have
never heard from any other lips any discourse like this, nor from his
did I ever hear the like again."

With Professor Döllinger Sir John Acton visited France, and made many
distinguished friends, including the foremost among French Liberal
Catholics, Montalembert; Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous author of
"Democracy in America," whose memoirs record the blunders of the Second
Republic in France with a concentrated irony not unworthy of Tacitus;
and Fustel de Coulanges, whose _Cité Antique_ was as well known thirty
years ago in Oxford as in Paris.  His German friends were innumerable.
Bluntschli, the great jurist, and von Sybel, the historian of the
French Revolution, were among them.  Of the illustrious Ranke he
proclaimed himself a disciple, and it is intensely characteristic of
him that his favourite among the moral philosophers of his own day was
a Protestant, Rothe.  Rothe's _Ethik_, he said, was the book which he
would give to any one whom he wished to turn out a good Catholic.  But
as Lord Acton would not have crossed the room to make ten proselytes,
the value of this selection may easily be exaggerated.  To Protestant
theology he paid as much attention as to Catholic.  Those who feared
{xx} God and followed Christ in every nation belonged to his household
of faith.

Lord Acton deserved as well as Cobden, though for quite other reasons,
to be called an international man.  Not a great traveller, as
travelling is understood in these days of universal locomotion, he was
familiar with the chief capitals of Europe, and, so soon as his formal
education was completed, he paid a visit to the United States.  He was
then, and always remained, an ardent admirer of the American
Constitution, and of the illustrious men who made it.  Its temporary
breakdown in 1861 was scarcely then in sight.  Slave States and Free
States were flourishing side by side, and the vital question whether a
State had the right to secede from the Union, which could only be
determined by civil war, still slumbered in abeyance.  Acton held
strongly Calhoun's doctrine of Sovereign States, and that is why he
"broke his heart over the surrender of Lee."  If the point had been
decided by the letter of the Constitution, so that the Supreme Court
could have given an authoritative decision upon it as upon the right of
recapturing fugitive slaves, many thousands of lives might have been
spared.  When Sir John Acton went to Washington, the Abolitionists,
though busy, were a small minority; they carried their lives in their
hands, and the Republicans were no better prepared than the Democrats
to adopt abolition as a principle.  The Constitution did not expressly
forbid slavery.  Neither, as was often urged, did the New Testament.
But the one said that all men were born equal, without specifying white
men; and St. Paul declared that, within the pale of Christendom, there
was neither Jew nor Greek, neither barbarian nor Scythian, neither bond
nor free.

At the age of twenty-two Sir John Acton found himself in a country
whose institutions differed as widely as possible from those of the
United States.  His mother had married Lord Granville, and he
accompanied {xxi} his step-father to Moscow when Alexander the Second
was crowned there in 1856.  Lord Granville's reception was not a
pleasant one, and even so accomplished a master of tact was driven to
remonstrate against the coldness of his treatment, which was made more
remarkable, though not more agreeable, by the flattering attentions
paid to the French representative, M. de Morny.  The Crimean War was
hardly over, the ink on the Treaty of Paris was scarcely dry, and
already Russia was on better terms with France than with England, while
England was on worse terms with France than with Russia.  The Emperor
Napoleon had taken no pains to secure the fulfilment of the Treaty,
whereas Lord Palmerston could not have displayed more zeal on behalf of
Turkey if he had been the Sultan's Minister instead of the Queen's.
The singularity of the situation could not fail to strike such a mind
as Sir John Acton's.  For the result of a war in which England had
sacrificed twenty thousand men and seventy-six millions sterling to
maintain what were called in a licentious phrase the liberties of
Europe, was that she had not a friend on the European Continent, except
Turkey.  The distinguished company with whom Sir John Acton associated
at Moscow were astonished "by the vastness of his knowledge and his
mode of exposition" (_Edinburgh Review_, No. 404, page 502).  Between
Sir John and his step-father there could not be much real sympathy of
taste or disposition.  Lord Granville, as Matthew Arnold says, had
studied in the book of the world rather than in the world of books.
Nature seemed to have destined him to lead the Liberal party in the
House of Lords.  A thorough and genuine Liberal he always was.  He
belonged to the Manchester school, the school of Cobden and Bright.  At
the same time his finished manners, his imperturbable temper, and his
ready wit, were just the right equipment for the chief of an
aristocratic minority.  He knew little, and cared {xxii} less, about
the serious study of historical ethics, and historical politics, which
was the essential business of Acton's life.

When he was twenty-five, Sir John Acton came to live at Aldenham, his
country house in Shropshire, where there was ample room for many
thousands of books.  At the General Election held in the summer of 1859
he was returned to Parliament.  Although Catholic Emancipation was
thirty years old, its effects were almost exclusively confined to
Ireland.  It was hardly possible for a Roman Catholic to find a seat in
England, and Sir John Acton sat for the small Irish burgh of Carlow,
disfranchised in 1885.  He was counted as a Whig, and a supporter of
Lord Palmerston.  But there was no sympathy, no point of contact,
between the jaunty Premier and the erudite, philosophical, reflective
Member for Carlow.  "No one agrees with me and I agree with no one,"
said Sir John, with unusual tautology.  It was not quite true.  During
those almost silent years of Parliamentary life he watched with
critical and yet admiring interest the career of the illustrious man
who was destined to be Palmerston's successor.  Although Mr. Gladstone
had not time to acquire the learning of his disciple, and upon the
negative results of German scholarship was inclined to look askance, he
was the best theologian, as well as the best financier, in Parliament,
and few men were so well qualified to appreciate the range or the depth
of Acton's researches.  Acton, on his part, was fascinated by the
combination of intellectual subtlety with practical capacity which made
the Chancellor of the Exchequer the first man in the House of Commons.
It was Palmerston's House, not Gladstone's, and the Derbyites were
almost as numerous as the Palmerstonians.  There was then no
Gladstonian party at all.  The Peelites were disbanded.  Some had
fallen back into the Conservative ranks.  Some, {xxiii} like Sidney
Herbert, who died in 1861, Cardwell, and Gladstone himself, sat in the
Cabinet of Lord Palmerston.  Others had fallen out of public life
altogether.  Mr. Gladstone was still to the general public somewhat of
an enigma.  So lately as May 1858 he had been earnestly entreated both
by Lord Derby and by Mr. Disraeli to accept the Board of Control on the
resignation of Lord Ellenborough.  He had voted for the Conservative
Reform Bill of 1859, and against Lord Hartington's motion which turned
Lord Derby out.  When he accepted office in a Liberal Administration,
his Tory constituents at Oxford were so much surprised and annoyed that
they did their best to deprive him of his seat, and almost succeeded.
The Whigs regarded him as a Tory and a Puseyite.  The Tories bore a
grudge against him because he had imposed a succession duty on landed
estates.  The Radicals considered him a lukewarm reformer, and in short
hardly any one except his personal friends knew what to make of him.
Then came the opportunity, and with it was displayed the full grandeur
of the man.  The Parliament of 1859 passed no successful or memorable
legislation which was not connected with finance.  Mr. Gladstone's
Budgets were the great events of the Sessions from 1860 to 1865, and
nothing at all like them has been known since.  Almost every year taxes
were repealed, expenditure was diminished, revenue was increased.
After an obstinate conflict with the House of Lords the paper duty
disappeared, and with it the power of the Lords to interfere with the
taxation of the people.  The duties on tea and sugar were so reduced as
to bring those commodities within the reach of the working classes.
The income-tax fell from ninepence to fourpence.  The Commercial Treaty
with France preserved the peace of Europe, and by the trade which it
created between the two sides of the English Channel more than made up
for the {xxiv} losses inflicted upon British commerce by the American
War.  The speeches in which Mr. Gladstone's Budgets were expounded,
especially those of 1860 and 1861, are superb specimens of the
eloquence which increases, while it dignifies, the force of reason.
His speech on the taxation of charities in 1863, though it failed to
convince the House that charitable endowments should be taxed, was
pronounced by a French critic to combine the grandeur of Berryer with
the subtlety of Thiers.  Acton was no financier.  Neither his tastes
nor his training qualified him to be a critic of Budgets, and when he
became, as will presently appear, a political editor, he left that
business to Mr. Lowe, claiming, with some apparent justification, that
he thus made him Chancellor of the Exchequer.  But he loved historical
processes quite as much as historical results, and the hours which he
spent in the House of Commons while the future leader of the Liberal
party proved himself to be the economic successor of Walpole, Pitt, and
Peel, fixed his political allegiance for the remainder of his life.

All the time that Mr. Gladstone was dazzling the country by the
brilliance of his finance, and convincing practical men by the hard
test of figures at the year's end, he had to fight his colleagues in
the Cabinet as well as his opponents at St. Stephen's.  Lord John
Russell nearly ruined the Budget of 1860 by the persistency with which
he pressed his unlucky Reform Bill.  Lord Palmerston was continually
demanding money for safeguards against a French invasion in which the
Chancellor of the Exchequer would not believe.  Cobden, from the
outside, was urging the one genuine economist in the Cabinet to promote
the cause of economy by resigning.  Acton, though dissatisfied with
"bald Cobdenites," as he termed them, was always on Gladstone's, and
never on Palmerston's side.  On the other hand there was a question of
{xxv} European importance which united Mr. Gladstone hand and glove
with the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary.  Italian unity, and
Italian independence, were as dear to Palmerston and Russell as to
Gladstone.  Lord John's famous despatch of October 1861, vindicating
the right of the Italians to choose their own rulers, was greeted with
enthusiastic delight throughout the Italian peninsula.  The cause for
which Cavour lived, only to die in the moment of its triumph, was
nowhere pleaded with more persuasive power than by Mr. Gladstone in the
Parliament of 1859.  Although Lord Palmerston's Government could never
reckon upon a majority of fifteen, the opposition to their Italian
policy came chiefly from a few Irish Catholics.  Sir John Acton, though
a Roman Catholic, and an Irish Member, took no part in it.  He was
deeply imbued with the spirit of liberty, and he held with all the
strength of his mind that the cause of religion was the cause of
freedom.  To maintain Austria in Italy, or even the temporal power of
the Pope, did not belong to Catholicism as he understood it.  To
identify soundness of faith with arbitrary rule was, in the eyes of a
Liberal Catholic like Acton, one of those blunders which are worse than
crimes.  He was drawn to Mr. Gladstone both by admiration of his
splendid capacity and by agreement with his continental Liberalism.  In
the House of Commons he hardly ever spoke.  For six years he only put
two questions, and made one speech (May 4, 1860).  The questions were
unimportant.  The speech was characteristic.  It was in effect an
appeal for information about the government of the Papal States.  No
Catholic, said Sir John Acton, would defend bad government because it
was exercised in the name of the Pope.  In this case the evidence was
contradictory, and all he wanted was the truth.  Lord John Russell was
unable to give a satisfactory reply, because {xxvi} the Queen had no
accredited representative at Rome.  Macaulay's description of the Papal
States a few years before this time is well known.  If, he said, you
met a man who was neither a priest nor a soldier, and who did not beg,
you might be pretty sure that he was a foreigner.  Sir John Acton,
though he deprecated hasty judgments, was incapable of defending
oppression or injustice.  The fact that it was the work of Catholics,
so far from prejudicing him in its favour, would simply have increased
the severity of his condemnation.  It would, in his eyes, have been
falling from a higher standard.

The two political questions to which Sir John Acton attached most
importance were ecclesiastical establishments and agrarian reform.  The
land laws were safe from disturbance under a Premier who flippantly
remarked that tenant right was landlord wrong.  The Irish Church, to
which, as a Catholic and an Irish Member, Acton could not be
indifferent, suddenly flashed into fatal prominence, when, on the 28th
of March 1865, Mr. Gladstone declared that it did not fulfil its proper
functions, because it ministered only to one-eighth, or one-ninth, of
the community.  This speech, coupled with his declaration of the
previous year that every man not mentally or morally disqualified was
on the face of it entitled to come within the pale of the Constitution,
gave Mr. Gladstone for the first time the confidence of the working
classes and of the Radical party.  Sir John Acton went with him, then
and afterwards, in all confidence and hope.  As a Catholic he would
naturally have been opposed to the maintenance of Protestant ascendency
by law.  As a Liberal he was in favour of extending the suffrage, and
of religious equality.  But indeed the foundation of his agreement with
Mr. Gladstone lay deeper than any political principle or measure.
Belonging to two different branches of the Christian Church, they both
{xxvii} desired the reunion of Christendom, and both held that religion
was the guiding star in public as in private life.  Between a High
Churchman like Mr. Gladstone and a Liberal Catholic like Sir John Acton
there was plenty of common ground.  Both men became, in every sense of
the word, more Liberal as they grew older, and Acton's belief in his
leader ripened into a reverential devotion which nothing could shake.

At the General Election of 1865, Sir John Acton stood in the Whig or
Liberal interest for Bridgnorth, the nearest town to Aldenham, and then
a Parliamentary borough.  "On that occasion he assured the electors
that he represented not the body but the spirit of the Church of Rome"
(_Edinburgh Review_, No. 404, pp. 375-76).  What the electors made of
this assurance we do not know, and it would be vain to conjecture.
They placed him, however, at the head of the poll.  But his majority
was a single vote, which disappeared on a scrutiny, and he never again
took his seat on the green benches of the House of Commons.  He had
none of the gifts required for winning large popular constituencies,
even if his creed had not been a fatal objection in the mind of the
average voter five-and-thirty years ago.

While Sir John Acton sat in the House and silently voted with his
party, he had not been inactive.  The views of the most cultivated and
enlightened among English Catholics were expressed in the fifties by a
monthly periodical called the _Rambler_.  The editor of the _Rambler_
was the greatest of converts, John Henry Newman.  In 1859 an article of
Newman's on consulting the laity in matters of doctrine was condemned
by authority at Rome, and Newman withdrew from the editorial chair.  He
was succeeded by Sir John Acton, and no better choice could have been
made.  He edited the _Rambler_ till 1862, when it became merged in the
_Home and Foreign Review_.  His first contribution, {xxviii} in
November 1859, was a criticism of Mill on Liberty, which he took up
again in the following March.  The subject was peculiarly his own,
though he could not, as a Catholic, approach it from Mill's point of
view.  He wrote, contrary to his custom, in the first person singular,
and signed the article "A"; which, in his own review, amounted to
acknowledgment.  "By liberty," wrote this Liberal Catholic, "I mean
absence of accountability to any _temporal_ authority," and he added,
"I make no reservations."  He afterwards learned that liberty was
positive, and that spiritual as well as temporal authority might be
pushed to a point inconsistent with freedom.  These youthful
contributions to his favourite theme show rather the wonderful
knowledge which he had acquired at five-and-twenty than the delicate
and subtle discrimination which distinguishes his later work.  One
exquisite quotation deserves to be quoted again.  _Cui Christus vim
intulit?_ wrote Count Boniface to St. Augustine.  _Quem coegit!_  To
whom did Christ apply violence?  Whom did he coerce?  The final failure
of persecution was in Sir John Acton's opinion the act of Louis the
Fourteenth when he revoked the Edict of Nantes.  "Coercion," he added,
"is an educational instrument which Western Europe has outgrown,"
though indeed it had not much success in the age of the Cæsars.  On the
Inquisition he was discreetly silent.  But he concluded with a plea for
the sacredness of moral responsibility, which hardly came within the
scope of Mill's eloquent and powerful treatise.  For a Catholic organ,
however, the treatment of Mill is, if not sympathetic, at least
appreciative and respectful.  Of this article Mr. Gladstone wrote to
the author, "I have read your valuable and remarkable paper.  Its
principles and politics I embrace; its research and wealth of knowledge
I admire; and its whole atmosphere, if I may so speak, is that which I
desire to breathe.  It is a truly English paper."

{xxix}

Among Sir John Acton's other contributions to the _Rambler_ one of the
most interesting is his account of Cavour, which appeared in July 1861,
just after the Italian statesman's death.  Acton had an abhorrence of
Carlylean hero-worship, and he did less than justice to Cavour's
regeneration of Italy.  His criticism of a man who for many years of
his too brief life was engrossed in a desperate struggle for national
independence is cold and dry.  He cannot conceal either the scanty
resources which Cavour had at his disposal, or the magnitude of the
results which those resources were made to achieve.  But, true to his
favourite subject, he analysed the Minister's conception of liberty,
and found it wanting.  It was liberty for the State, not liberty for
the individual, nor for the Church.  Yet Cavour's cherished ideal was
"a free Church in a free State," and he would probably have replied
that from the purely individual point of view Piedmont might well
challenge comparison with the Austrian provinces of Italy or the States
of the Church.  If Cavour's life had been spared, we may be sure that
he would, as his dying words about Naples imply, have governed in
accordance with the principles of constitutional freedom.  A year
later, in July 1862, Acton inaugurated the _Home and Foreign Review_
with a characteristic article on "Nationality."  He traced the rise of
national sentiment in Europe to the infamous partition of Poland, of
which Burke said that no wise or honest man could approve.  It was
fostered by the French Revolution, and became afterwards the instrument
by which Napoleon fell.  The Holy Alliance suppressed it for a time,
but it soon revived in Italy.  By Nationalism, which Englishmen forty
years ago favoured everywhere except in Ireland, Acton meant, as he
explains, "the complete and consistent theory that the State and the
nation must be coextensive."  "Exile is the nursery of nationality," he
proceeds, "as oppression is the school of liberalism; {xxx} and Mazzini
conceived the idea of Young Italy when he was a refugee at Marseilles."
To the idea of Nationalism, as he defines it, Acton opposed the
principle that "the combination of different nations in one State is as
necessary a condition of civilised life as the combination of men in
society."  To overcome national differences was the mission of the
Church, and patriotism was in political life what faith was in
religion.  There could be no nationality with any claim upon men's
allegiance except what was formed by the State.  "The Swiss are
ethnologically either French, Italian, or German; but no nationality
has the slightest claim upon them, except the purely political
nationality of Switzerland."  The instance was well chosen.
Unfortunately Acton goes on to say that "the citizens of Florence and
of Naples have no political community with each other," which had
ceased to be true before the article appeared.  Nor was it altogether a
fortunate prediction that no organised State could be formed in Mexico,
which after the departure of the French became a stable Republic.
Paradoxical as the essay in some respects was, it is valuable as an
analysis of political ideas, and its concluding sentence is full of
suggestion even to minds which do not accept the opinions implied.
"Although," so it runs, "the theory of nationality is more absurd and
more criminal than the theory of Socialism, it has an important mission
in the world, and marks the final conflict, and therefore the end, of
two forces which are the worst enemies of civil freedom--the absolute
monarchy and the revolution."

There is nothing in Sir John Acton's essay on "Nationality" which would
be likely to excite suspicion at the Court of Rome.  But the _Home and
Foreign Review_ was known to be a Liberal as well as a Catholic organ.
It was marked by independence of tone, as well as by originality of
thought, and it soon fell under suspicion.  Even its motto, _Seu vetus
est verum diligo sive {xxxi} novum_, "I love the truth, whether it be
old or new," was ambiguous.  For how can Catholic truth be new?  In the
month of August 1862, Cardinal Wiseman, the acknowledged head of the
Roman Catholic Church in England, received an address from his clergy.
His reply contained a severe censure of the _Home and Foreign Review_
for the "absence of all reserve or reverence in its treatment of
persons or of things deemed sacred, its grazing even the very edges of
the most perilous abysses of error, and its habitual preference of
uncatholic to Catholic instincts, tendencies, and motives."  The
particular charge of personal misrepresentation against which the
Cardinal protested has long since lost whatever interest it may once
have had.  The general tone of Acton's remonstrance, made in his
editorial character and in the periodical condemned, illustrates his
attitude towards the Church to which he belonged.  Of Wiseman he writes
not merely with the reverence due to his ecclesiastical rank, but with
the affection of an old pupil at Oscott.  "In the Cardinal's support
and approbation of our work," he says, "we should recognise an aid more
valuable to the cause we are engaged in than the utmost support which
could be afforded to us by any other person."  He then proceeds to
describe the foundation of the _Review_.  "That foundation is a humble
faith in the infallible teaching of the Catholic Church, a devotion to
her cause which controls every other interest, and an attachment to her
authority which no other influence can supplant.  If in anything
published by us a passage can be found which is contrary to that
doctrine, incompatible with that devotion, or disrespectful to that
authority, we sincerely retract and lament it.  No such passage was
ever consciously admitted into the pages either of the late _Rambler_
or of the _Review_."  The aim of literature and the function of the
journalist are declared to be on a lower level than the work and duty
of the Church, {xxxii} though directed to the same ends as hers.  "The
political and intellectual orders remain permanently distinct from the
spiritual.  They follow their own ends, they obey their own laws, and
in doing so they support the cause of religion by the discovery of
truth and the upholding of right."  These manly and sensible words are
followed by a still more eloquent and significant passage, which
expresses the deepest convictions of Acton's mind.  "A political law or
a scientific truth may be perilous to the morals or the faith of
individuals; but it cannot on this ground be resisted by the Church....
A discovery may be made in science which will shake the faith of
thousands; yet religion cannot regret it or object to it.  The
difference in this respect between a true and a false religion is, that
one judges all things by the standard of their truth, the other by the
touchstone of its own interests.  A false religion fears the progress
of all truth; a true religion seeks and recognises truth wherever it
can be found."

When Acton wrote thus, the Darwinian controversy was at its height, and
many Protestants, who thought that they believed in the right of
private judgment, showed much less tolerance than he.  Against the
timid faith which feared the light, against the false morality which
would do evil that good might come, Acton waged incessant war.  Truth,
morality, and justice could not in his eyes be inconsistent with the
doctrines of the Church.  If they appeared to be so, it must be because
the doctrines were erroneously expressed or imperfectly understood.  To
identify the Church with a cause, with a party, with anything lower
than morality and religion, was a betrayal of duty and a surrender of
the fortress.  The policy of the _Home and Foreign Review_, as
expounded by the editor, was to leave the domains of faith and
ecclesiastical government alone, but on all other matters to seek the
highest attainable certainty.  The progress of political right {xxxiii}
and scientific knowledge, the development of freedom in the state and
of truth in literature, were its objects.  Here for the time the
quarrel rested.  It is not to be supposed that Pius the Ninth and his
advisers were satisfied with this lucid and pungent exposition of
Liberal principles.  But Wiseman had learned from experience that the
interests of Catholicism in England were not promoted by a policy of
aggression, and he was aware that Sir John Acton spoke for most of
those Catholics who did not belong to the extreme or Ultramontane
school.  For nearly two years Sir John remained editor of the _Home and
Foreign Review_.  Then the final thunderbolt was launched by a higher
power than Wiseman.  At the Congress of Munich in 1863 Acton's friend
and teacher, Professor Döllinger, delivered an eloquent plea for the
union of Christendom, lamenting the want of dogmatic standards among
Protestants, and at the same time urging Catholics "to replace the
mediæval analytical method by the principle of historical development,
and to encounter scientific error with scientific weapons" (_Edinburgh
Review_, No. 404, page 513).  Sir John Acton attended this congress,
and reported its proceedings to his _Review_.  In March 1864 the Pope
addressed a brief to the Archbishop of Munich, in which he declared
that the opinions of Catholic writers were subject to the authority of
the Roman congregations.  After this Acton felt that it was useless to
continue the struggle, or to carry on the _Home and Foreign Review_.
In a farewell article, entitled "Conflicts with Rome," he explained
that he was equally unable to admit the doctrines of the brief or to
dispute the authority which proclaimed them.  In these circumstances he
had only one course to take.  He could not abandon principles he
sincerely held.  He could not reject the judgment of the Holy See
without committing the sin of apostasy.  "The principles had not ceased
to be true, nor the authority to be legitimate, because the two were in
contradiction." {xxxiv} He could only sacrifice the _Home and Foreign
Review_.  He regretted its discontinuance, because, while there were
plenty of magazines to represent science apart from religion, and
religion apart from science, it had been his special object to exhibit
the two in union.  But he had no alternative, if he were to preserve
his intellectual honesty and also his loyalty to the Church.

It would have been difficult to emerge with more credit from a
peculiarly painful and delicate position.  The article, and with it the
last number of the _Review_, appeared in April 1864, when Sir John
Acton was thirty years of age.  The surpassing prudence which
accompanied him from boyhood through life had no connection with
weakness nor timidity.  It resulted from a very rare faculty of
apprehending all aspects of a question at once, and of keeping them
separate in his mind.  In this same year 1864 Acton told one of his
parliamentary friends, now Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, that he had
never felt the slightest doubt about any dogma of the Catholic, meaning
the Roman Catholic, Church.  A time was to come when his faith would be
more severely tried.  But, independent as he had always been, Acton was
not formed by nature to be a leader of revolts.  Moral or intellectual
anarchy was the last thing he desired.  If he had been brought up a
Protestant, he would probably have remained one.  In that case,
however, he would have seen the danger of private interpretation even
more clearly than the perils of dogmatic despotism.  He would have
asked, if, as Bishop Butler says, we must judge of revelation itself by
reason, whose reason it was to be.

At the close of the year 1864, the tenth anniversary of the date on
which he had himself proclaimed the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin
as a dogma, the Pope issued his Encyclical Letter against modern
thought.  In the Syllabus of Errors which this epistle condemned, Pius
the Ninth, who had once been reckoned a {xxxv} Liberal, included the
heresy that the Holy See ought to seek reconciliation with progress,
with Liberalism, and with modern thought.  He further pronounced that
the Catholic religion should be the exclusive religion of the State;
and that liberty of worship, and freedom of the Press, promoted moral
corruption and religious indifference.  There was, he added, no hope
for the eternal salvation of those who did not belong to the true
Church.  Although Sir John Acton had had some share in provoking the
publication of the Syllabus, he made no reply.  He had withdrawn from
the controversy without surrendering either his faith as a Catholic or
his principles as a man.

In 1865 Acton's connection with the House of Commons ceased, and in the
same year he married a Bavarian lady, the eldest daughter of Count
Arco-Valley.  From this time too he abandoned the practice of regular
editing and reviewing, nor did he write again for avowedly Catholic
organs, though he was throughout the remainder of his life an
occasional contributor to secular organs on historical and theological
subjects.  The popular idea that he wrote little, and passed his whole
time in reading or talking, is erroneous.  That he did not put out much
in his own name is true.  But the list of his anonymous articles fills
more than twenty pages of an octavo volume, and their variety is quite
as remarkable as their number.  He read every new German book of the
smallest importance.  In the _Home and Foreign Review_ alone there are
more than seventy critical notices from his pen.  The pen, however, was
not the only instrument by which he imparted to others some fragments
from his vast stores of knowledge.  To his neighbours, one can hardly
call them his constituents, in the little town of Bridgnorth, he
delivered several lectures, now out of print and scarce, which for
range and quality must have been very different from {xxxvi} anything
his audience had heard before.  The first, delivered on the 18th of
January 1866, when he was still supposed to be Member for the borough,
is now only to be found in the _Bridgnorth Journal_ for the 20th.  Its
subject is "The Civil War in America: Its Place in History."  Nothing
can be more characteristic than the tone and temper of this discourse.
Though dated only a few months after the fall of Richmond, when, as
Acton says in one of these letters, he "broke his heart over the
surrender of Lee," it is as calm and judicial, not to say as dry, as if
he were investigating an antiquarian problem.  Its dryness never
becomes dulness.  Unless, however, the Literary and Scientific
Institution of Bridgnorth was far above the ordinary level of such
bodies, they must have been puzzled and perplexed by the paradoxical
subtlety which traced the causes of the war back to the birth of the
American Constitution.  "Slavery," he said, "was not the cause of
secession, but the reason of its failure."  Then what was the cause of
secession?  According to Sir John Acton, it was the failure of
Jefferson, Hamilton, and their colleagues to provide against the
omnipotence of the majority, which he regarded as inconsistent with
true freedom.  They might have answered, if they could have been heard,
that they had made the method of choosing a President indirect, and had
given the Supreme Court control even over Congress itself.  The first
expedient had, no doubt, entirely failed, and the electoral college was
a mere machine for registering the popular vote.  But the Supreme Court
was a substantial reality, and it had before the war decided that a
fugitive slave could be reclaimed by his master even in a free State.
Nobody will now dispute Sir John Acton's proposition that by the middle
of the nineteenth century slavery was an anachronism.  Yet, if the
Southern States had been more instead of less numerous than the
Northern, {xxxvii} they would have probably won, and they would then
undoubtedly have set up a great Slave Power in the heart of western
civilisation.  The immediate, or proximate, cause of hostilities was
not slavery, but the claim of South Carolina to secede from the Union.
Not till the third year of the war did Lincoln proclaim the abolition
of slavery.  Yet without slavery there would have been no war.  If not
the _causa causans_, it was the _causa sine quâ non_.  The value of Sir
John Acton's lecture lies chiefly in the ability with which he dissects
the American Constitution, and indicates, sometimes in the words of its
authors, its weak points.  Whatever may be thought of his constructive
faculty, his critical acumen was not surpassed by any of his less
learned contemporaries.

In 1867, and the early part of 1868, Sir John Acton wrote regularly for
the _Chronicle_, a weekly paper of high repute during its brief
existence, contributing a narrative of current events in Italy during
the period of Mentana and the second French occupation of Rome.  On the
10th of March 1868 he lectured again at Bridgnorth on the Rise and Fall
of the Mexican Empire.[1]  This is in my opinion the best popular
lecture that Acton ever gave, and I do not know where I could lay my
hands on a better.  It is clear, spirited, eloquent, and so perfectly
well arranged that the whole story of Louis Napoleon's Mexican
Expedition, with its plausible pretext, and its miserable failure, was
told, not meagrely but completely, in the compass of an hour.  The
joint intervention of England, France, and Spain in the affairs of
Mexico did not last long.  Its object, like the object of the
Anglo-German intervention in Venezuela, was to obtain redress for
injuries to European residents, and payment of debts {xxxviii} due to
subjects of the three Powers.  England and Spain soon discovered that
the French Emperor had quite other designs, being minded to substitute
a Mexican Empire for the Mexican Republic.  Sir John Acton explained
why in his opinion, which has not been justified by experience, Mexico
was unable to stand alone.  "A society so constituted could not make a
nation.  There was no middle class, no impulse to industry, no common
civilisation, no public spirit, no sense of patriotism.  The Indians
were not suffered to acquire wealth or knowledge, and every class was
kept in ignorance and in rigorous exclusion; when therefore the
Mexicans made themselves independent, the difficulty was to throw off
not the bondage but the nonage in which they had been held, and to
overcome the mental incapacity, the want of enterprise, the want of
combination among themselves, and of the enlightenment which comes from
intercourse with other nations.  They formed a Republic after the model
of their more fortunate neighbours, and accepted those principles which
are so inflexible in their consequences, and so unrelenting in their
consistency."  Between the Mexican Republic and the Republic of the
United States there is no doubt all the difference between Alexander
the Coppersmith and Alexander the Great.  But Benito Juarez was both a
better and an abler man than Acton gave him credit for being, and his
successor, Porfirio Diaz, proved himself to be a most efficient ruler.
A Civil War in Mexico, simultaneous with Civil War in the United
States, gave Napoleon the opportunity he wanted.  The one furnished a
pretext, the other removed a barrier, and it was not till long after
the Austrian Archduke Maximilian had been put upon his pinchbeck throne
that President Johnson was in a position to order the French troops out
of the American Continent.  The poor Archduke himself, basely deserted
by the unscrupulous potentate who had sent him to his {xxxix} doom,
showed a chivalrous honour and an unselfish courage that fully justify
Acton's description of him as "almost the noblest of his race."  The
lecture describes the pathetic isolation of Maximilian in a passage of
singular power.  "There was nothing for him to look forward to in
Europe.  No public career was open to the man who had failed so
signally in an enterprise of his own seeking.  His position in Austria,
which had been difficult before, would be intolerable now.  He had
quarrelled with his family, with his Church, and with the protector to
whose temptations he had hearkened.  And for him there was to be no
more the happiness of the domestic hearth.[2]  In Mexico there were no
hopes to live for, but there was still a cause in which it would be
glorious to die.  There were friends whom he could not leave to perish
in expiation of measures which had been his work.  He knew what the
vengeance of the victors would be.  He knew that those who had been
most faithful to him would be most surely slaughtered; and he deemed
that he, who had never been seen on a field of battle, had no right to
fly without fighting.  Probably he felt that when a monarch cannot
preserve his throne, nothing becomes him better than to make his grave
beneath its ruins."  Sir John Acton closed his lecture with the
expression of a hope that the United States would not undertake the
government of Mexico.  "A confederacy," he observed, "loses its true
character when it rules over dependencies; and a democracy lives a
threatened life that admits millions of a strange and inferior race
which it can neither assimilate nor absorb."  The warning was unneeded,
for the days of American Imperialism were not yet.  But the words have
a perennial wisdom which the new owners of the Philippines might find
it worth their while to consider.

Sir John Acton stood again for Bridgnorth, this {xl} time
unsuccessfully, at the General Election of November, 1868.  His
personal friend and political leader, Mr. Gladstone, became Prime
Minister in December of the same year, and his first legislative work
was the disestablishment of the Irish Church.  With this policy Sir
John Acton, not as a Catholic, but as a Liberal, was in full and
complete sympathy.  He regarded it as "no isolated fact, but an
indication of a change which is beginning to affect all the nations of
Christendom, and bears witness to the consciousness that political
obligation is determined, not by arbitrary maxims of expediency, but by
definite and consistent principles."  "The political connection," he
added, that is, the Liberal party, "which, in spite of many errors and
shortcomings, has been identified with the development of our
constitutional liberties, and with the advance of science in our
legislation, has entered on a new phase of its existence.  And it
follows a wise and resolute leader, at whose call the nation has
arisen, for the first time in history, to the full height of its
imperial vocation" (_Edinburgh Review_, No. 404, p. 516).

Although, as has been said, Acton held that the two great political
questions of the time were first the relations of the Church with the
State, and secondly, the reform of the Land Laws, events were impending
which affected him for a time far more deeply than either.  Believing,
as he did, that "the full exposition of truth is the great object for
which the existence of mankind is prolonged on earth," he could not
allow the Papal Syllabus to deter him from following truth with all the
knowledge and ability he could command.  The _Chronicle_, for which he
had written so often, came to an end in 1868.  But the same editor, Mr.
Wetherell, took over next year the _North British Review_, to which
Acton contributed a learned essay on the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew,
marshalling the facts in favour of {xli} the theory that the murder of
the Huguenots had been premeditated at Rome.  Researches such as these,
and the consequences which they involved, were not congenial to the
Vatican, nor to the personally amiable, dogmatically unbending Pontiff
who was still under the protection of foreign bayonets.  But to no one
was Acton's freedom of speculation and inquiry more repugnant than to
the able and ambitious prelate who had succeeded Wiseman as Catholic
Archbishop of Westminster.  Dr. Manning was at that time a rigid
supporter of extreme Ultramontane doctrine, and of authority as opposed
to freedom in opinion.  With the ardent zeal of a convert, and a
convert, as his recent appointment (1865) showed, much in favour at
Rome, he strove to suppress the religious independence of the English
Catholics.  But an historical controversy with Acton was a serious
affair.  It resembled nothing so much as going in for a public
examination with a reasonable certainty of being plucked, and that
prospect did not smile upon dignified ecclesiastics impressed with a
due sense of their own importance.  Moreover, Manning was already
absorbed in a policy which would put down moral and intellectual
rebellion in the Church of Rome once for all.

So early as the 8th of December 1867 the Pope had signed a Bull,
convening the whole episcopate of his Church to an [OE]cumenical
Council at Rome in the same month of 1869.  Although it was not
officially stated, it was perfectly well known, that the object of the
Council was to proclaim the infallibility of the still Sovereign
Pontiff.  A famous book, emanating from Munich, "The Pope and the
Council," by "Janus," which from the Catholic point of view combated
the doctrine of Infallibility, received appreciative notice from Lord
Acton in the _North British Review_.  This magazine, though
short-lived, and never very widely circulated, appealed more
successfully than any of its {xlii} contemporaries to the lettered and
learned class.  Some of its articles, such as the essays of Thomas Hill
Green, the Hegelian philosopher of Balliol, occupy a permanent place in
the literature of metaphysics.  The article on "The Pope and the
Council" was therefore sure to be read by those who, by voice or pen,
exercise an influence over the minds of others.  The reviewer did not
mince his words.  He pointed out to the bishops that they had already
committed themselves to a very grave extent.  In 1854 they had allowed
the Pope to proclaim a new dogma, the Immaculate Conception.  In 1862
nearly all of them had pronounced in favour of the temporal power.  In
1864 they accepted the Syllabus.  In 1867 they expressed their
willingness to believe whatever the Pope might teach them.  "Janus" had
passed lightly over the Council of Trent, the subject of a work by Fra
Paolo Sarpi which Macaulay considered second only in historical value
to the books of Thucydides.  Lord Acton, who had much in common with
Fra Paolo, expressed his own view with unmistakable energy and force.
"The Council of Trent," he said, "impressed on the Church the stamp of
an intolerant age, and perpetuated by its decrees the spirit of an
austere immorality."  It should be the object of the forthcoming
Council to reform, to remodel, and to adapt the work which had been
done at Trent.

What actually happened was very different from that which Acton
desired, though not very different from what he expected.  Sir John
went to Rome some time before the opening of the Council, full of
interest in the result, and full of sympathy with the distinguished
minority who were prepared to resist the forging of fresh chains upon
their freedom.  Among this minority the most conspicuous was
Monseigneur Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, whose tragic death at the
hands of the Commune encircled his name with the halo of a martyr and a
saint.  "The Archbishop of {xliii} Paris," wrote Acton, "had taken no
hostile step in reference to the Council, but he was feared the most of
all the men expected at Rome.  The Pope had refused to make him a
Cardinal, and had written to him a letter of reproof, such as has
seldom been received by a bishop.  It was felt that he was hostile, not
episodically to a single measure, but to the peculiar spirit of this
pontificate.  He had none of the conventional prejudices and assumed
antipathy which are congenial to the hierarchical mind.  He was without
pathos or affectation, and he had good sense, a perfect temper, and an
intolerable wit" (_Edinburgh Review_, No. 404, page 521).  By the end
of December 1869 Darboy had exacted a promise that the dogma of
Infallibility would not be proclaimed by acclamation, so as to take the
majority by surprise.  Lord Acton wrote frequent reports of the Council
and its proceedings, chiefly to Mr. Gladstone and Professor Döllinger,
some of which were afterwards collected and published as the "Letters
of Quirinus" in the _Allgemeine Zeitung_.  Lord Acton considered that
the cause of the minority was lost when, on the 24th of April 1870, the
Council adopted the Supplement to the First Decree.  This was to the
effect that the judgments of the Holy See must be observed, even when
they proscribe opinions not actually heretical.  Lord Acton's comment
upon this vote of the episcopal majority does not lack incisiveness.
"They might," he wrote, "conceivably contrive to bind and limit
dogmatic infallibility with conditions so stringent as to evade many of
the objections taken from the examples of history; but in requiring
submission to Papal decrees on matters not articles of faith, they were
approving that of which they knew the character; they were confirming,
without let or question, a power they saw in daily exercise; they were
investing with new authority the existing bulls, and giving unqualified
sanction to the inquisitor and the index, to the murder {xliv} of
heretics and the deposing of kings.  They approved what they were
called on to reform, and blessed with their lips what their hearts knew
to be accursed."

A private letter to Mr. Gladstone, written a month before the first
meeting of the Council, shows how gloomy were Lord Acton's
apprehensions.  "Everything," he says, "is prepared here for the
production of Papal infallibility, and the plan of operations is
already laid down in a way which shows an attentive study of Sarpi's
'History of the Council of Trent.'  They are sure of a large majority."
A majority, however, would scarcely do.  [OE]cumenical Councils, if not
absolutely unanimous, are supposed to attain that moral unanimity which
the insignificance of a minority implies.  The attitude of the French,
and still more of the German and Austro-Hungarian bishops, inspired the
Vatican with some alarm.  Darboy and Dupanloup were names known and
esteemed throughout the Catholic world.  Bishops Strossmayer and
Hefele, the latter a man of prodigious learning, were still more
strongly opposed to the Papal policy than their French colleagues.
Against the expediency of promulgating the doctrine there was a
resolute and well-organised mass of opinion in the Council.  There were
few prepared to call the doctrine itself false, and therefore ready to
resist it in the last extremity.  To drive a wedge between the majority
of the minority and the minority of the minority was the obvious
tactics of the Pope and his Ultramontane advisers.  "If the Court of
Rome is defeated," Lord Acton wrote, "it can only be by men of
principle and of science."  He believed that a letter from Mr.
Gladstone, dealing with the secular side of the question, and with the
effect which the decree would have upon the future of English and Irish
Catholics, might do much to counteract the influence of Manning.  It
was impossible for the English Premier to interfere directly with the
{xlv} affairs of another Church.  But he allowed Lord Acton to state
what he thought about the effects of Ultramontanism on the prospects of
educational measures in England.  Lord Acton estimated that the bishops
opposed to the expediency of the dogma were about two hundred in
number, while only as many score would vote against its truth.

No sooner did the Council meet than regulations were issued which gave
the Pope the sole right of making decrees and defining dogmas.  To this
the Council submitted.  "The sole legislative authority," Lord Acton
wrote on the 1st of January 1870, "has been abandoned to the Pope.  It
includes the right of issuing dogmatic decrees, and involves the
possession of all the Infallibility which the Church claims."  "We have
to meet," he added, "an organised conspiracy to establish a power which
would be the most formidable enemy of liberty as well as science
throughout the world.  It can only be met and defeated through the
Episcopate, and the Episcopate is exceedingly helpless."  So it proved.
But Lord Acton, besides helping the minority with the resources of his
knowledge and the power of his logic, endeavoured to invoke the secular
arm.  He was sanguine enough to hope that, as the Pope had
anathematised modern civilisation and progress, the governments of
Catholic and even of Protestant countries would take some steps in
self-defence.  The opposition in the Council, he held, was "almost sure
to prevail if it were supported, and almost sure to be crushed if it
were not."  The change of Ministry in France at the beginning of 1870,
and the substitution of M. Ollivier for M. Rouher, alarmed the Vatican,
although the French ambassador, the Marquis de Banneville, declared
that there would be no change of policy.  De Banneville was wrong.  The
new French Government announced that if the dogma were carried the
French troops would be recalled, although Cardinal Antonelli assured
Count Daru, {xlvi} the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, that the
Council was purely theological, and had nothing to do with secular
affairs.  The threat, however, had no effect.  The Pope had gone too
far to recede, and the forces of the opposition became daily weaker.
There was no hope, and no future, for those bishops who set themselves
against the majority of their colleagues and the head of their Church.
Except in France, they could not look for the protection of the
Government, and the French Emperor was a bruised reed.  "Two days ago,"
wrote Lord Acton on the 16th of February, "a definite message was sent
by the Emperor to Cardinal Antonelli, in which the Emperor declared
that he could not afford to have a schism in France, where all the
_employé_ class, all the literary class, and even the Faubourg St.
Germain are against the Infallibility of the Pope.  He added that it
would dissolve all the engagements existing between France and Rome."
But Antonelli, a remarkably shrewd specimen of the Italian diplomatist,
calculated that if the bishops yielded, the rest of the practising
Catholics would follow them.  In another passage of the same most
interesting letter Lord Acton says that the _Schema de Ecclesiâ_,
already adopted by the Council, "makes civil legislation on all points
of contract, marriage, education, clerical universities, mortmain, even
on many questions of taxation and common law, subject to the
legislation of the Church, which would simply be the arbitrary will of
the Pope.  Most assuredly no man accepting such a code could be a loyal
subject, or fit for the enjoyment of political privileges.  In this
sense the French bishops have written to the French Government, and
that is what they ask me to write to you."  How deep an impression this
letter made upon Mr. Gladstone's mind became apparent when, a few years
afterwards, he entered into controversy with the Church of Rome.
Strange as it may seem, these Gallican prelates appealed through Lord
Acton to the Government {xlvii} of the Queen, seeing "no human remedy
for this peril other than the intervention of the Powers."  But the
British Government could not have acted, even in concert with France,
unless they had been prepared to face a storm of indignation,
Protestant as well as Catholic, which no British interest required them
to encounter.

After the decree of Infallibility had been produced, the German
prelates made an important protest against bishops without sees,
chiefly Roman Monsignori, being allowed to vote, and also complained,
in words furnished by Lord Acton himself, that the claim to enact
dogmas by a majority endangered the freedom, as well as the
universality, of the Council.  But "the minority were in great
confusion and uncertainty, and disposed to rely on external help."
That help they never received.  Lord Acton put the danger as strongly
as he could.  Catholics, he declared, would "at once become
irredeemable enemies of civil and religious liberty.  They would have
to profess a false system of morality, and to repudiate literary and
scientific sincerity.  They would be as dangerous to civil society in
the school as in the State."  But between Catholics who held that with
such matters it would be profane for any Protestant to meddle, and
Protestants who rejoiced that now at last the Catholics were coming out
in their true colours, the Cabinet, if they had taken Lord Acton's
advice, would have had an uneasy, and barely defensible, position.  So
what Acton calls "this insane enterprise" of conferring upon the Pope
an unconditional and unlimited infallibility was suffered to proceed
without any political remonstrance from England.  Mr. Odo Russell,
afterwards Lord Ampthill, Lord John's nephew, was instructed to keep
the Foreign Office informed of what happened the Council, but his
information was much less copious than Lord Acton's.  He was not
instructed to do anything more, and officially he was a member of the
Legation at Florence.  While other governments {xlviii} did nothing,
the Italian Government, in Lord Acton's opinion, made matters worse.
Their measures of what he called confiscation against the property of
the Church would, he thought, prevent some Italian bishops from voting
in the minority who would otherwise have been disposed to do so.  Yet,
if Lord Acton were right in his description of the Papal policy, he
could hardly have been surprised that Liberal governments in Catholic
countries should regard the Church as an enemy.

On the 15th of March 1870, a curious protest was presented to the
Council by some bishops of the United Kingdom.  The substance of it is
thus described by Lord Acton: "They state that the English and Irish
Catholics obtained their emancipation, and the full privileges of
citizenship, by solemn and repeated declarations that their religion
did not teach the dogma now proposed; that these declarations made by
the bishops, and permitted by Rome, are, in fact, the conditions under
which Catholics are allowed to sit in Parliament, and to hold offices
of trust and responsibility under the Crown; and that they cannot be
forgotten or overlooked by us without dishonour."  Lord Acton
complained bitterly of France because she maintained the temporal power
of the Pope, and excluded Italians from their national capital, by her
troops, while yet she would not attempt to restrain him from abusing
the jurisdiction she enabled him to exercise.  "The religious houses
are suppressed, the schools of divinity reduced, the priesthood almost
starved, because France is determined to keep the Pope on his despotic
throne.  It is a policy which degrades the Italian Government in the
eyes of the nation, nurses the revolutionary passion, and hinders the
independence of the country, and which can no longer be defended on the
score of religious liberty.  The French Protectorate has become as
odious to Catholicism as to the {xlix} Italian State, and it is about
to prove as pernicious to other countries as it is to Italy."  When a
division was taken on the dogma of Infallibility, 451 bishops voted
with the Pope, 88 against him, and 62 for further inquiry.  Then the
minority gave up the struggle, and when, on the 18th of July, three
days after the declaration of war between France and Germany, the
principle was formally defined, only two bishops resisted the
acclamation of 533.  A few weeks later the French troops left Rome, and
the temporal power was at an end.

Such was the miserably futile result of the Opposition led by Darboy,
Dupanloup, Rauscher, Schwartzenberg, Kenrick, Conolly, Hefele, and
Strossmayer.  They were borne down by the dead weight of numbers, and
the traditional authority of the Holy See.  Catholics were offered the
choice of submission or excommunication.  The official head of the
English Catholics, Manning, was among the most zealous supporters of
the Papacy.  Newman deeply deplored, but humbly submitted.  So even did
Strossmayer, the brave and eloquent Croat, who had been shouted down at
the Council in violent and abusive language when he denied that
Protestantism was the source of Atheism, and pleaded for the old
Catholic rule of unanimity.  Döllinger, challenged by the Archbishop of
Munich to accept the decree, refused, and was cut off, like Spinoza, to
his eternal honour, from the congregation of the faithful.  Lord Acton,
on the other hand, the stay and support of the minority throughout the
Council and before it, was not molested, perhaps because he was a
layman, perhaps because he was a peer.

While he was at Rome, in November 1869, Acton had received from Mr.
Gladstone, and accepted, the offer of a barony.  For a young man of
thirty-five this was a great and most unusual distinction.  It was {l}
made all the greater by the fact that his name occurred in the first
list of such recommendations submitted by the Prime Minister to the
Queen.  At that time the general public hardly knew Sir John Acton's
name.  But he had all the usual qualifications for a peerage, except
wealth, being connected with the aristocracy by birth and marriage, the
head of an old English family, and the inheritor of an old English
baronetcy, who had gained six years' political experience in the House
of Commons.  "His character," Mr. Gladstone wrote to the Queen, "is of
the first order, and he is one of the most learned and accomplished,
though one of the most modest and unassuming, men of the day" (Morley's
"Life of Gladstone," ii. 430).  No praise could be better deserved, or
expressed with more studious moderation.  Lord Acton pursued in the
House of Lords the same silent course that he had adopted in the House
of Commons.  He remained, unlike many peers of Mr. Gladstone's
creation, faithful to the Liberal party, at that time, and for so many
years afterwards, led by his step-father, Lord Granville.

Lord Acton was made an Honorary Doctor of Philosophy by the University
of Munich in 1872, the last year of the _North British Review_, after
which he ceased to write regularly for the Press.  In 1873 a very
different honour was in contemplation.  He had been consulted by Lord
Granville upon the European situation, then regarded as critical, and
showed such remarkable knowledge of it that the idea of sending him as
Ambassador to Berlin was seriously entertained (_Edinburgh Review_, No.
404, page 528).  The appointment would in many ways have been
desirable, and in some unexceptionable.  For Lord Acton was a born
diplomatist, and, though the German Emperor was a Protestant, half the
empire was Catholic.  But the prize was apparently thought too high for
a man outside the diplomatic service who had filled no {li} other post
under the Crown.  Lord Acton remained at home, and in 1874 found
himself suddenly once again in the thick of a theological battle.  The
echoes of the Vatican Council, and of Papal pretensions, seemed to have
died away, when, in November 1874, Mr. Gladstone, freed from the
trammels of office, and regarding his leadership of the Liberal party
as near its close, startled the world by a pamphlet on "The Vatican
Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance."  He had previously, in
an article on "Ritualism," contributed to the _Contemporary Review_,
expressed his opinion that Romanising in the Church of England was
least to be feared at a moment "when Rome had substituted for the proud
boast of _semper eadem_ a policy of violence and change in faith; when
she had refurbished and paraded anew every rusty tool she was fondly
thought to have disused; when no one could become her convert without
renouncing his moral and mental freedom, and placing his civil loyalty
and duty at the mercy of another; and when she had equally repudiated
modern thought and ancient history."  While in this frame of mind, Mr.
Gladstone paid a visit to Munich, and had many long talks with the
venerable Professor Döllinger.  The spectacle of a man so wise, pious,
learned, and holy under the ban of the Church seems to have kindled in
him a burning indignation against the authors of the Vatican decrees.
He wrote a pamphlet, and informed Lord Acton from Hawarden in October
that he meant to publish it.  Lord Acton deprecated this step.  He was
far nearer to Mr. Gladstone in opinion than he was to the Court of
Rome.  But he had no desire to see the subject reopened, knowing that
the withdrawal of the decrees was impossible, and fearing that public
opinion might be dangerously excited against his fellow-Catholics by so
powerful an onslaught.  He did not sufficiently allow for the great
progress in the direction of tolerance made since the passing of the
Ecclesiastical {lii} Titles Act, which Mr. Gladstone himself had
repealed three years before.  The pamphlet appeared in November 1874,
and more than a hundred thousand copies of it were sold.  The English
Catholics were disturbed.  Some were indignant, and some were alarmed.
But in the end they were none the worse.  On the contrary, Mr.
Gladstone did them a service by giving them an opportunity to declare
that they were, and always would be, as loyal and patriotic as their
Protestant countrymen.  It is impossible not to trace in Mr.
Gladstone's pamphlet, as in the passage already cited from the
_Contemporary Review_, the effect of Lord Acton's letters from Rome in
1870.  The substance of the argument is that the Catholics obtained
emancipation by denying that Papal infallibility was a dogma of their
Church, and that the Power which had changed their faith might change
their allegiance.  The Vatican decrees reversed the policy of Clement
the Fourteenth, who, by overthrowing the supremacy of the Jesuits, had
"levelled in the dust the deadliest foes that mental and moral liberty
had ever known."  Equality of civil rights should be maintained without
regard for religious differences.  But Mr. Gladstone thought himself
entitled to ask the Catholics of England and Ireland whether they would
assist in the re-erection of the temporal power by force.  Many were
the answers to this famous pamphlet.  The most eloquent was Newman's.
The most hostile was Manning's.  The most interesting was Acton's.  It
is characteristic of Lord Acton's courage and candour that he should
have answered at all.  He was regarded at Rome with something more than
suspicion, and nobody quite understood why he had escaped the fate of
Döllinger.  There was nothing that Mr. Gladstone could say of the
decrees too strongly condemnatory to command his assent.  But his
invincible integrity of mind would not allow him, for the sake of his
own peace, to acquiesce in the practical conclusions {liii} which Mr.
Gladstone drew from irrefragable premises.  In several letters written
for the _Times_, one of them addressed personally to Mr. Gladstone,
Lord Acton gave the only reply which could in the circumstances be
given.  Mr. Gladstone's reasoning was unassailable in argument.  But
man is not a logical animal.  People are sometimes better than their
principles, sometimes worse, very seldom consistent.  As Mr. Gladstone
himself had said a few years before, "The limit of possible variation
between character and opinion--aye, between character and belief--is
widening and will widen."  Lord Acton, with all his subtlety and all
his learning, could only take refuge in the old and familiar truth that
what a man will do cannot be inferred from what he believes.  The
_Corpus Juris_, he said (_Times_, November 9, 1874), makes the murder
of Protestants lawful.  Pius the Fifth justified the assassination of
Elizabeth.  Gregory the Thirteenth condoned, or rather applauded, the
massacre of Saint Bartholomew (_Times_, November 24).  Was it therefore
fair to assume that all Catholics who accepted the Vatican decrees, or
even all Ultramontanes, were potential murderers?  "Communion with
Rome," he said at the same time, "is dearer to me than life."  He
concluded his letters in dignified and moving sentences, which made a
deep and just impression upon Catholics and Protestants alike.  "It
would be well if men had never fallen into the temptation of
suppressing truth and encouraging error for the better security of
religion.  Our Church stands, and our faith should stand, not on the
virtues of men, but on the surer ground of an institution and a
guidance that are divine.  I should dishonour and betray the Church if
I entertained a suspicion that the evidence of religion could be
weakened or the authority of councils sapped by a knowledge of the
facts with which I have been dealing, or of others which are not less
grievous or less certain because they remain untold."  It was not to be
supposed that {liv} this language would give satisfaction to the
dominant party in the Church of Rome, which had already been much tried
by Lord Acton's energy behind the scenes during the Vatican Council.
An apology which was more injurious than the attack added fuel to the
flames.  "If I am excommunicated," he wrote to Mr. Gladstone from
Aldenham on the 19th of December 1874, "I should rather say when I am."
Yet he was not.  He satisfied his bishop, Browne of Shrewsbury, that he
was dogmatically sound, and that it would have been inconsistent with
his argument to attack the Vatican decrees.  He had indeed accepted
them as the foundation of his case.  What he wanted to show was that
neither the Jesuits nor the Inquisition, neither false doctrines nor
bad Popes, had made Catholics indifferent to the moral law.  Manning,
now a Cardinal, was not so easily contented as Bishop Browne, or as
Bishop Clifford, who also absolved Lord Acton.  His haughty and
commanding temper had been stimulated by promotion, and by the favour
of the Pope.  It was one of his most cherished aims to humble the pride
of the old Catholic families, and make them feel the discipline of the
Church.  He wrote three letters to Lord Acton, and received, it need
scarcely be said, the most courteous replies, which left him as wise as
he was before.  But he went no further, and the correspondence was
never published.  Manning was not without prudence, and he shrank from
proceeding to extremities with a man whose intellect was as keen as
his, and whose knowledge was vastly superior.  It would not have cost
Lord Acton much research to produce a summary account of the
Inquisition, or a biographical sketch of selected Popes, which would
have done more to prove the soundness of his position than to edify the
Christian world.  The new cardinal, if he had indulged in an historical
controversy with "Quirinus," might have emerged from it with less
credit to himself than amusement to the learned society of Europe.  For
{lv} these, or for other reasons, he concluded to leave Lord Acton
alone.

Henceforth, Lord Acton abandoned theological polemics, and devoted
himself to his true life, the life of a student.  He loved truth too
much to love controversy for its own sake, and he was conscious that,
though he had escaped penalties, orthodox Catholics would not receive
his arguments without prejudice.  Mr. Gladstone wrote another pamphlet,
in which, while maintaining his own position, he accepted the loyal
assurances of the Catholics as sincere, and with that the controversy
ceased.  But in June 1876 Lord Acton wrote him a private letter, which
contains the clearest statement of his own opinion upon Ultramontanism
and Ultramontanes.  "I have tried in vain," he wrote, "to reconcile
myself to your opinion that Ultramontanism really exists as a definite
and genuine system of religious faith, providing its own solutions of
ethical and metaphysical problems, and satisfying the conscience and
the intellect of conscientious and intelligent men.  It has never been
my fortune to meet with an esoteric Ultramontane--I mean, putting aside
the ignorant mass, and those who are incapable of reasoning, that I do
not know of a religious and educated Catholic who really believes that
the See of Rome is a safe guide to salvation....  In short, I do not
believe there are Catholics who, sincerely and intelligently, believe
that Rome is right and that Döllinger is wrong.  And therefore I think
you are too hard on Ultramontanes, or too gentle with Ultramontanism.
You say, for instance, that it promotes untruthfulness.  I don't think
that is fair.  It not only promotes, it inculcates, distinct mendacity
and deceitfulness.  In certain cases it is made a duty to lie.  But
those who teach this doctrine do not become habitual liars in other
things."

With this plain and straightforward language we may leave Lord Acton as
a theologian, and pass to {lvi} other aspects of his busy life.  His
great work should have been, and was intended to be, a History of
Liberty.  For that purpose his library at Aldenham was collected, and
to frame different definitions of liberty was one of his favourite
pastimes.  He loved liberty with all the ardour of Milton, and
investigated it with all the science of Locke.  Even Liberalism, which
may be thought an inferior thing, was with him "the beginning of real
religion, a condition of interior Catholicism" (Acton to Gladstone,
March 22, 1891).  This History was never written, nor even begun.  All
that there is of it, all that there ever was of it, except books and
notes, materials for others to use, consists of two lectures delivered
at Bridgnorth in the year 1877.  One was called "The History of Freedom
in Antiquity," and the other "The History of Freedom in Christianity."
These lectures are exceedingly rare, and the only copies I have seen
are in the British Museum.  If the audience listened to them with
pleasure, and absorbed them with ease, they had intellects of unusual
calibre, and employed them to the best advantage.  Read carefully and
at leisure, they are full of suggestion and of insight.  Their fault is
that, in homely phrase, they pour a quart of liquor into a pint pot.
They are so much crowded with names and references, that to follow the
chief thread of the argument is made needlessly hard.  "It would be
easy," the Bridgnorth Institute was told, "to point out a paragraph in
St. Augustine, or a sentence of Grotius, that outweighs in influence
the Acts of fifty Parliaments; and our case owes more to Cicero and
Seneca, to Vinet and Tocqueville, than to the laws of Lycurgus, or the
five codes of France."  The sentence and the paragraph should have been
pointed out.  Something should have been said, if not about Vinet and
Tocqueville, at least about Cicero and Seneca.  A geographer may have
too many names in his map, and a learned man may condense his knowledge
until it has {lvii} no meaning for those who know less than himself.
But, on the other hand, these lectures contain passages at once lucid
and worth their weight in gold, which could only have come from a mind
at once acute, meditative, and well stored.  Such, for instance, is the
declaration, "By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be
protected in doing what he believes his duty against the influence of
authority and majorities, custom and opinion."  "Liberty," proceeds the
lecturer, "is not a means to a higher political end.  It is itself the
highest political end....  A generous spirit prefers that his country
should be poor, and weak, and of no account, but free, rather than
powerful, prosperous, and enslaved.  It is better to be the citizen of
a humble commonwealth in the Alps than a subject of the superb
autocracy that overshadows half of Asia and of Europe."  This will seem
a hard saying to many, and it is indeed far removed from the sensual
idolatry of mere size that vulgarises modern Imperialism.  But it was
with Lord Acton a fundamental principle, and it is not the size of
Periclean Athens, or of Elizabethan England, which made them
imperishably great.  "It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it
is worse to be oppressed by a majority."  Worse, because more
desperate, with less hope of rebellion, or escape.  We must look, Lord
Acton warns us, to substance and essence, not to form and outward show.
The martyrdom of Socrates was the act of a free Republic, and it was
Caæsar who liberated Rome from the tyranny of Republican institutions.
The fault of the classical State was that it tried to be Church and
State in one, and thus infringed upon individualism by regulating
religion.  The three things wanting in ancient liberty were
representative government, emancipation of slaves, and freedom of
conscience.  In Christian times Thomas Aquinas anticipated the theory
of the Whig Revolution.  The worst enemy of freedom in modern times was
that mock hero of sham greatness, {lviii} Louis Quatorze.  The only
known forms of liberty are Republics and Constitutional Monarchies.
"It was from America that the plain ideas that men ought to mind their
own business, and that the nation is responsible to Heaven for the acts
of the State, ideas long locked in the breast of solitary thinkers and
hidden away in Latin folios, burst forth like a conqueror upon the
world they were destined to transform under the title of the Rights of
Man."  Ever since his visit to America in the days of President Pierce,
if not before, Acton had made a special study of the American
Constitution in its strength and its weakness, in the amplitude of its
safeguards, and in its fatal want of elasticity.  A Monarchy cannot be
too constitutional.  But a too constitutional Republic is a difficult
machine to work.  England, said a French critic, is a Republic with an
hereditary President: the United States are a Monarchy with an elected
King.

From this time forward Lord Acton wrote less, and read, if possible,
more.  Dr. Shaw's careful Bibliography, my obligations to which I have
already acknowledged, contains nothing between 1877 and 1885 except a
review of Sir Erskine May's "Democracy in Europe" for the _Quarterly_
of January 1878.  Sir Erskine May, the well-known Clerk of the House,
was a pleasant and popular writer, who dealt largely in
generalisations, and sometimes condescended to platitudes.  He was an
earnest Liberal, though his office imposed some restraint upon his
opinions, and it is creditable to the impartiality of the late Sir
William Smith that he should have allowed a Liberal critic to deal with
a Liberal author in the traditional organ of Conservatism.  He
certainly had his reward.  For it would be difficult to find in the
_Quarterly Review_ from the days of Gifford and Southey to our own an
article of more fascinating interest and more solid value than this
masterly essay, which its author never took the trouble to republish.
{lix} Notwithstanding Lord Acton's minute and conscientious accuracy in
points of detail, he is always best and most characteristic in broad,
luminous inferences from large masses of history and long periods of
time.  He contented himself on this occasion with a few civil remarks
about the public servant who made so industrious a use of his leisure,
and devoted the rest of his space, which was far too small, to a
comparison or contrast of democracy with freedom.  He showed that for
eleven hundred years, from the first Constantine to the last, the
Christian Empire was as despotic as the pagan; that it was Gregory the
Seventh who made the Papacy independent of the empire; that Luther
bequeathed as his political testament the doctrines of Divine right and
passive obedience; and that Spanish Jesuits, in arguing against the
title of Henry the Fourth to the throne of France, had anticipated the
doctrines of Milton, Locke, and Rousseau.  Passing on, with the ease of
a man at home in all periods of history, to the dynastic change of
1688, he described the Whig settlement not as a Venetian oligarchy, but
as an aristocracy of freeholders, while from the American rebellion of
the following century he drew the moral that a revolution with very
little provocation may be just, and a democracy of very large
dimensions may be safe.  The defect in the principles of 1789 was that
they exalted equality at the expense of liberty, and subjected the free
will of the individual to the unbridled power of the State.

After 1879 Lord Acton ceased to live at his country house in
Shropshire, dividing the months when he was not in London between
Germany and the Riviera.  Besides his great Library at Aldenham, there
was a smaller but complete library in each of his three houses.  He
usually spent the winter at Cannes, and the autumn in Bavaria, at
Tegernsee, which belonged to the family of his wife.  This {lx}
cosmopolitan existence was by no means uncongenial to him, and,
correspondence apart, he was not cut off from his English friends.
Cannes in the season is as much English as French, and when Lord Acton
was in London he made the best use of his time.  The hours he spent in
reading were so disposed that he could enjoy at the close of the day
the sort of society he liked best.  He was a member of Grillions, and
of The Club.  He knew almost everybody worth knowing, and no one so
fond of study was ever more sociable.  But, as these letters show, the
man whom above all others he esteemed and revered was Mr. Gladstone.
Mr. Gladstone, with characteristic humility, always deferred to Lord
Acton's judgment in matters historical.  On the other hand, Lord Acton,
the most hypercritical of men, and the precise opposite of a
hero-worshipper, an iconoclast if ever there was one, regarded Mr.
Gladstone as the first of English statesmen, living or dead.  The
reason for this opinion will be found in the following pages.  The
opinion itself is not the less important because Lord Acton was in many
respects cautious to a fault, and had little of the enthusiasm which
sustained his idol.  Except Döllinger, "the glory of Catholic
learning," as Mr. Bryce well calls him, there was no other contemporary
for whom Lord Acton felt unqualified reverence.  Mere oratory had not
much effect upon him, even if it were John Bright's or the Duke of
Argyll's.  Admiring, as he could not but admire, the charm and power of
Newman's style, he considered Newman himself to be a "sophist, the
manipulator, and not the servant, of truth."  Knowing Mr. Gladstone
from the inside, as few outside his own family knew him, he felt his
simplicity as well as his greatness, and realised that he had no object
except to learn what was true, and to do what was right.  In politics
there was no difference between the two men, unless it were that Lord
Acton could never {lxi} quite forgive Mr. Gladstone's eulogistic
tribute to the memory of Lord Beaconsfield.  Even in religion that
which divided them was small indeed when compared with that which
united them.  Lord Acton was as staunch a believer in religious liberty
as any Protestant, and no Catholic could desire more fervently the
reunion of Christendom.  In politics, as I have said, the sympathy was
complete.  Unlike most Catholics, Acton had been in favour of Italian
independence, so dear to Mr. Gladstone's heart.  He had always belonged
to the school of Liberals who put the rights of the individual above
the claims of the State, and he had as little liking for Socialism as
Mr. Gladstone himself.  He held in utter detestation the foreign policy
of Lord Beaconsfield, and that temper of mind which goes by the cant
term of "Jingoism."  No one rejoiced more heartily over the Liberal
victory of 1880, or attributed it more exclusively to Mr. Gladstone.
No one worked harder to keep him at the head of the Liberal party, and
no one can have foreseen more clearly the disastrous consequences of
his final retirement.  Perhaps the nearest approach to a schism between
Lord Acton and his political chief was that each had a favourite
novelist, and that neither would acknowledge the transcendent merits of
the rival.  Lord Acton was unjust to Scott.  Mr. Gladstone underrated
George Eliot.  Lord Acton's estimate of George Eliot may be found in
some of the ensuing letters, and in the _Nineteenth Century_ for March
1885.  This article, one of the most elaborate Lord Acton ever wrote,
was translated into German, and, so far as the general public were
concerned, might as well have appeared in that language at first.  It
is an extreme and provoking instance of the writer's passion for
condensation, reference, and innuendo.  It is well worth the trouble of
reading, although fiction is not the province in which Lord Acton's
opinion was most {lxii} valuable.  But the trouble is due to congested
sentences, and might easily have been spared.

When in 1886 Mr. Gladstone made his great attempt to settle the Irish
question by Home Rule, Lord Acton gave him a zealous and cordial
support.  Although, as we have seen, he was far from holding the
doctrine of nationality in an unqualified form, he had grasped for many
years with increasing strength the conviction that Ireland could be
orderly and peaceably governed by Irishmen alone.  So far back as
October 1881, when the Liberal Government and the Land League were in
open hostility, and Mr. Parnell was arrested under the Coercion Act, he
wrote, "The treatment of Home Rule as an idea conceivably reasonable
(in the speech at Leeds) which was repeated at the Guildhall, delighted
me."  There were not many readers besides Lord Acton who discerned at
that time the trend of Mr. Gladstone's ideas.  But a very few months
later, in February 1882, Mr. Gladstone, speaking on the Address, used
language of a much more significant kind, to Lord Acton's great
delight.  "I have long wished," he wrote on the 20th of February, "for
that declaration about self-government....  The occasion last week gave
extraordinary weight to the words....  The risk is that he may seem to
underrate the gravity of a great constitutional change in the
introduction of a federal element."  Lord Acton, it will be observed,
much as he desired the change, did not ignore its risks, or even its
perils.  When the decisive moment came, which Mr. Morley has described
with so much eloquence and power ("Life of Gladstone," vol. iii. pp.
311-12), Lord Acton sounded a note of warning in the midst of his
felicitations.  "From the point of view of the ages," he wrote on the
18th of March 1886, "it is the sublime crown of his work, and there is
a moral grandeur about it which will, I hope, strengthen and console
him under any amount of difficulty, and even disaster."  It was {lxiii}
this faculty of seeing the case against his own most deeply cherished
principles and predilections which made Lord Acton so valuable a friend
and counsellor to Mr. Gladstone.  Mr. Gladstone's splendid enthusiasm,
and indomitable optimism, sometimes led him to ignore obstacles against
which he might have provided.  Acton, whose temperament was critical,
as his mind was judicial, pointed out, with the sincerity of true
friendship, though with unfailing tact, the clouds above, and the rocks
ahead.  No man admired Mr. Gladstone more.  No man flattered him less.

The following letter to Mrs. Drew expresses his opinion at the time,
and also the judgment of a distinguished Italian statesman who was
always friendly to England:--


"Your letter comes in the midst of the living echoes of the speech, and
of the uncertainty that follows, and does not quite relieve my feeling
of apprehension.  Rome is not a good place for accurate news, and I
hope for more letters at Cannes in a couple of days.  My old friend,
Minghetti, is sinking under an incurable illness.  The other night,
when several people were attacking me about the Irish Bill, he said,
very solemnly and in his best Italian: 'The one will be happy even if
he fails, and the other will repent even of his success.'  The other
was Bismarck.  Next morning came Herbert's letter saying that he feels
that for himself the best thing would be defeat.

"I hope that there is not any real inconsistency in my language or in
my thoughts at this crisis.  I am more decidedly in favour of the
principle of the measure than anybody; and there can hardly be one
among your father's friends who urged it more decidedly, though some
followed more or less contentedly.  The Bill is better than I sometimes
expected it to be, on one or {lxiv} two important points.  It is not
only right in my eyes, but glorious as the summit of his career, and if
I was on the spot I should be the warmest and the most convinced of its
supporters.

"But what makes it more admirable to me is that the stimulus is not
hope but duty; that it is very much more clearly dictated by principle
than by expediency, that the supreme motive is not strongly sustained
by sordid calculation.  I do not see a real likelihood of its
succeeding in this Session, and I am not sanguine about success in
Ireland.

"Arguments founded on the presumed good qualities of the Irish do not
go very far with me, and I am ready to find the vices of the national
character incurable.  Especially in a country where religion does not
work, ultimately, in favour of morality; therefore I am not hopeful,
and it is with a mind prepared for failure and even disaster that I
persist in urging the measure."


His adhesion to the cause, though it had no weight with the mass of
electors, who did not know his name, had a deep meaning of another
kind.  When many men of the lettered, scientific, and learned classes
left the Liberal party rather than vote for Home Rule, one of the few
English names that enjoyed a European reputation did something to
counterbalance others which were paraded so often that they seemed
indefinitely numerous.

Lord Acton, however, did not come forward as a popular champion of Home
Rule, for which he could have furnished a host of historic precedents.
In the sphere of action he was too apt to distrust himself.  The House
of Lords was not favourable for the purpose, and he never appeared on
public platforms.  He was more congenially occupied in founding the
_English Historical Review_, of which the late Bishop Creighton, then
Professor of Ecclesiastical History at {lxv} Cambridge, was the first
editor.  In 1887 he criticised, not without severity, the third and
fourth volumes of the editor's great work on the Papacy.  Some editors
might have demurred to the insertion of the article.  But Creighton was
far above all petty and personal feelings of that or any kind.  Among
the other books noticed by Acton in the _Historical Review_ were
Seeley's "Life of Napoleon," Bright's "History of England" (by the
Master of University), and Bryce's "American Commonwealth."  Academic
honours were now coming in rapid succession.  In 1888 Lord Acton was
made an Honorary Doctor of Laws at Cambridge, in 1889 a Doctor of Civil
Law at Oxford, and in 1890 an Honorary Fellow of All Souls, thereby
becoming Mr. Gladstone's colleague.  For a man who had published
scarcely anything in his own name these compliments were as rare as
they were just.

When Mr. Gladstone formed his final Administration in 1892, Lord Acton
was appointed a Lord-in-Waiting to the Queen.  This may seem a singular
method of rewarding literary merit.  But the circumstances were
peculiar.  Lord Acton was desirous of showing his devotion to the Prime
Minister, and his belief in the cause of Home Rule.  His Parliamentary
career had not been distinguished enough for more purely political
office, and I am told by those who understand such matters that the
lowness of his rank in the Peerage precluded him from a higher place in
the Household.  The incongruity, however, though Lord Acton felt it
himself, was not quite so great as it looked.  Besides their month's
attendance at the Court, the Lords-in-Waiting are sometimes employed to
represent public departments in the House of Peers, and Lord Acton
represented the Irish Office for the Chief Secretary, Mr. Morley.  In
that character he showed, when occasion came, that his {lxvi} long
silence in Parliament had not been due to incapacity for public
speaking.  At Windsor he was agreeable to the Queen from his German
tastes and sympathies, not to mention the fact that he could speak
German as fluently as English.  Every moment of leisure during his
"wait" there was spent in the Castle library.  Yet the position was an
unnatural one, and Lord Acton soon became anxious to escape from it.
His thoughts turned to his favourite Bavaria, and he humbly suggested
the Legation at Stuttgart as a possible sphere.

But something infinitely better than any political or diplomatic post
remained for this born student and truly learned man.  In 1895, just a
year after Mr. Gladstone's resignation, Sir John Seeley, Professor of
Modern History at Cambridge, departed this life.  The Chair was in the
gift of the Crown, that is, of the Prime Minister, and Lord Rosebery
appointed Lord Acton.  The appointment was singularly felicitous, and
the opportunity came in the nick of time.  For the Liberal Government
was tottering to its fall, and Lord Salisbury was not wont to overlook
the claims of political supporters.  Lord Rosebery's choice was bold
and unexpected.  But it was more than successful; it was triumphant.
Lord Acton was of the same age as his predecessor, and it is a
dangerous thing for a man to begin the business of teaching at sixty.
An academic Board would not have had the courage to appoint Lord Acton.
They would have dreaded his want of experience.  The advantage of
retaining a connection of this kind with the State is that a Minister,
rising above the purely academic point of view, will sometimes overlook
or ignore technical disqualifications in favour of learning or genius.
Even Cambridge herself was at first a little startled by the nomination
of this famous, but rather mysterious stranger.  Lord Acton had to make
his own way, and he was not long in making it.  The opening {lxvii}
sentences of his Inaugural Lecture on the Study of History put him at
once on good terms with his audience, and through his audience with the
University.  "I look back to-day," he said (June 11, 1895), "to a time
before the middle of the century, when I was reading at Edinburgh, and
fervently wishing to come to this University.  At three Colleges I
applied for admission, and, as things then were, I was refused by all.
Here, from the first, I vainly fixed my hopes, and here, in a happier
hour, after five-and-forty years, they are at last fulfilled."  It is
probable that the happiest hours of Lord Acton's life were spent at
Cambridge.  As the writer in the _Edinburgh Review_, so often quoted,
says, "He loved Cambridge from his soul; loved the grounds and the
trees, the buildings and the romance of the old colleges, the treasures
of the libraries, the intercourse with scholars."  In his first lecture
he tried to find some point of agreement with Seeley.  But their views
of History were fundamentally different.  To Seeley, History was purely
political.  In Lord Acton's view it included social and intellectual
movements neither propelled nor impeded by the State.  Lord Acton
reckoned Modern History as beginning with the close of the fifteenth
century, "when Columbus subverted the notions of the world, and
reversed the conditions of production, wealth, and power; Machiavelli
released Government from the restraint of law; Erasmus diverted the
current of ancient learning from profane into Christian channels;
Luther broke the chain of authority and tradition at the strongest
link; and Copernicus erected an invincible power that set for ever the
mark of progress upon the time that was to come."  That "history is the
true demonstration of religion" was one of the maxims which Lord Acton
impressed upon his pupils at the first opportunity.  But perhaps the
most characteristic feature of the discourse is his insistence upon the
necessity of keeping {lxviii} up the moral standard.  Better, he
exclaimed, err, if at all, on the side of rigour.  For "if we lower our
standard in history, we cannot uphold it in Church or State."  When
this brilliant and fascinating lecture came to be published, it was
unfortunately encumbered by more than a hundred notes, all quotations,
many of which merely expressed Lord Acton's meaning in language less
forcible than his own.  "As if," says Macaulay of some pointless
reference to a Greek play by a Shakespearean commentator, "as if only
Shakespeare and Euripides knew that mothers loved their children."
Lord Acton was rather too apt to think that an expression of opinion,
like a statement of fact, required an authority to support it.

Even under the stimulus of Cambridge Lord Acton did not work quickly.
During the five years of his active professorship he only delivered two
courses of lectures.  The first was on the French Revolution.  The
second was on Modern History as a whole.  He would naturally and by
preference have begun with the more general subject.  But the
exigencies of the Tripos, or of the Curriculum, prevailed, and the
thoroughbred animal was put, not for the first time in this world, into
the harness of a hack.  Lord Acton's lectures were, as they were bound
to be, crowded.  But they were only a small part of what he did for
Cambridge.  An Honorary Fellow of Trinity, he received graduate or
undergraduate visitors with equal courtesy and kindness at his rooms in
Nevill's Court.  To them, and to any one who could appreciate it, he
would always readily impart the knowledge he had spent his life in
acquiring.  He was not merely a willing answerer of questions, and a
generous lender of books.  He had boxes full of the notes he had made
since boyhood, each box appropriated to its peculiar subject, and these
notes were at the disposal of all historical {lxix} students who could
make a proper use of them.  His pupils were, as Mr. Bryce puts it,
"awed by the majesty of his learning."  "When Lord Acton answers a
question put to him," said one of them, "I feel as if I were looking at
a pyramid.  I see the point of it clear and sharp, but I see also the
vast subjacent mass of solid knowledge."[3]

The following letter from Dr. Henry Jackson, Fellow of Trinity, for
which my warmest thanks are due to the distinguished writer, will be
interesting to all who desire to know more of Lord Acton's Cambridge
life:--


"You ask me for information about Acton's life and work at Cambridge.
I am not competent to write anything systematic about either the one or
the other; but it is a pleasure to me to put down some of my
recollections and impressions, and I shall be glad if my jottings are
of any use to you.

"When Seeley died in 1895, my first thought was--'If they are good to
us, they will send us Acton;' but I hardly hoped that he would be
thought of, and I did not expect that, if he had the offer, he would
accept it.  So the news of his appointment was to me a very joyful
surprise.  When he came, he appeared heartily to like his new
surroundings--his rooms at Trinity, the collegiate life, the informal
conversation, his lectures, his pupils, and the University library.
Quietly but keenly observant of men and things, he was very soon
completely at home in the University, with which, as he related in his
inaugural lecture, he had wished to connect himself forty years before.

"In hall, in combination-room, and where men smoked and talked, he took
an unobtrusive but effective part in conversation.  His utterances,
always terse and epigrammatic, were sometimes a little oracular: {lxx}
'I suppose, Lord Acton,' said some one interrogatively, 'that
So-and-so's book is a very good one?'  'Yes,' was the reply; 'perhaps
five per cent. less good than the public thinks it.'  But a casual
question not seldom drew from him an acute comment, an interesting
reminiscence, or a significant fact.  'When was London in the greatest
danger?' asked some one rather vaguely.  'In 1803,' was the immediate
answer, 'when Fulton proposed to put the French army across the Channel
in steamboats, and Napoleon rejected the scheme.'

"Others will tell you of his influence upon the historical studies of
the University, of his help given freely to teachers and to learners,
and of his judgment and skill in planning and distributing the sections
and the subsections of the 'Modern History,' which he did not live to
edit.  He was an active member of the committee which recommends books
for purchase by the University Library.  But, in general, he shunned
the routine of business.  Even at the Library Syndicate, though he
followed the proceedings attentively, he seldom or never took part in
discussion or voted.  Indeed, I thought that I noticed in him a paradox
which extended beyond the limits of academic affairs.  On the one hand,
he was observant of everything, and he made up his mind about
everything.  On the other hand, except where supreme principles--Truth,
Right, Toleration, Freedom--were in question, he was cautious and
reserved in the expression of opinion, and he always preferred to leave
action to others.

"Like other specialists, I found that my own study had not escaped his
attention.  He had a good general knowledge of the work done by modern
students of ancient philosophy, and his criticisms of them showed a
sound, clear, and independent judgment.  One or two trifling incidents
seemed to me significant.  The first time that he came to my rooms,
looking quickly along {lxxi} a bookshelf, he soliloquised: 'I never
knew that Bonitz had translated the _Metaphysics_.'  It surprised me,
not that Acton did not know of the posthumous publication of this work,
but that he expected to remember all that a specialist in Greek
philosophy had written.  On another occasion he was talking of German
professors--first of professors of history, afterwards of others.  He
could tell us about all: he had heard many.  At last it occurred to me
to ask him about a forgotten scholar who had written a treatise about
Socrates.  The book was in no way important, but it had given me a very
agreeable impression of the writer's personality.  I found that Acton
had known the man, had attended his lectures, and could testify to the
personal attraction which I had surmised.

"When Acton died, writers of obituary notices appeared to regard him as
one who, while he devoured books and accumulated facts, passed no
judgments, framed no generalisations, and cherished no enthusiasms; and
I fancied that Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff, in his very interesting
letter to the _Spectator_, unconsciously encouraged this
misapprehension.  Nothing could well be further from the truth.  To me
it seemed that Acton never read of an action without appraising its
significance and morality, never learnt a fact without fitting it into
its environment, and never studied a life or a period without
considering its effect upon the progress of humanity.

"His judgments were severe but just.  Neither glamour of reputation nor
splendour of achievement blinded him to moral iniquity.  He had a
wealth of righteous indignation which upon occasion blazed out
fiercely.  'Are you aware,' he once asked, 'that Borromeo was a party
to a scheme of assassinations?'  'But,' said some one, 'must we not
make allowance for the morality of the time?'  'I make no allowance for
that sort of thing,' was the emphatic answer; and {lxxii} the contrast
with the measured and sedate tones of Acton's ordinary utterance made
the explosion all the more impressive.

"This righteous indignation carried with it a corresponding
appreciation of anything good.  I remember well how he told me the
supplement to the old story of the Copenhagen signal--that Parker made
it with the expressed intention of relieving Nelson from
responsibility, but in the confident expectation that, if skill and
daring could do anything, Nelson would disobey.  Acton could admire
Parker's magnanimity as well as Nelson's genius.

"It would be presumption in me to say anything about Acton's historical
attainments; but I may note one or two peculiarities which I noticed in
his attitude to the study.  History, as he conceived it, included in
its scope all forms of human activity; so that scholars whom others
would describe as theologians or jurists were in his eyes great
departmental historians.  This, I thought, was the explanation of his
miscellaneous reading; for he was always methodical, never desultory.

"But despite this width of view, he did not grudge the expenditure of
time and trouble upon details.  On the contrary, he would not only
ransack archives, but also interrogate those who had witnessed, or been
concerned in, great events.  Of course he minutely scrutinised and
scrupulously weighed the testimony thus obtained; but when once he was
satisfied of the accuracy of his information, he was prepared to use it
for the interpretation and explanation of documentary evidence.

"Acton could never have written anything which was not literature of a
high order--dignified, incisive, vigorous; and yet history was to him,
not literature, but political philosophy; not an interesting narrative,
but a scientific study of cause and effect.  He had, {lxxiii} however,
no faith in political forecasts about anything more than the immediate
future.

"It is impossible not to regret that Acton has not made his mark in
literature as the writer of a great book, or in politics as a great
statesman; but he preferred to _know_, and the men who know as Acton
knew are few.  The world is the richer whilst they are with us, and the
poorer when they go.  Acton will not be forgotten at Cambridge."


A brilliant and penetrating judgment of Lord Acton's services to
Cambridge was paid in the _Cambridge Review_ a few months after his
death (October 16, 1902) by Professor Maitland, who had been associated
with him in preparing the "Cambridge History" as a Syndic of the Press.
Himself one of the most learned men in the University, Mr. Maitland was
amazed by the extent of Lord Acton's range.  "If," he writes, with a
laudable wish to avoid extravagance, "we recall the giants of a past
time, their wondrous memories, their encyclopædic knowledge, we must
remember also how much that Lord Acton knew was for them practically
unknowable."  His reading was not for amusement.  His daily consumption
of a German octavo meant mastery of the book, with copious notes in a
neat handwriting on slips of paper, which were always, like his books,
at the disposal of his pupils.  He "toiled," as Professor Maitland
says, "in the archives, hunting the little fact that makes the
difference."  He was "deeply convinced that the history of religion
lies near the heart of all history," while it was his fate to be
suspected by Catholics as a Liberal, and by Liberals as a Catholic.
"This man," I again quote the Professor, "who has been called a miser
was in truth a very spendthrift of his hard-earned treasure, and ready
to give away in half-an-hour the substance of an unwritten book."  Some
writers, especially bad writers, do not shine in conversation, because
{lxxiv} they are keeping their best things for the public.  Lord Acton
would pour out to a sympathetic listener the most recondite history,
or, on a different occasion, the spiciest gossip, if that were the
commodity in demand.  So far as knowledge and power went, and if time
had served, Professor Maitland is convinced that Lord Acton could
himself have written all the twelve volumes of the "Cambridge History."
The "History" is his best memorial.  Another memorial is the famous
Aldenham Library, bought by Mr. Carnegie, and presented by Mr. Morley
to the University of Cambridge.

The article which I have ventured to associate with the name of
Professor Maitland is signed "F.W.M.," a signature which the writer
would not have adopted if he had desired to preserve his anonymity.
The authorship of a letter signed "H.J.," and written from Cambridge,
which appeared almost simultaneously in the _Daily News_, is not more
difficult to identify.  "H.J.'s" words are a memorable and eloquent
protest against the ignorant fancy that Lord Acton spent his life in
the mere accumulation of learning.  The exact opposite, as he says, was
the truth.  Lord Acton "was no mere Dryasdust: he was a watchful
observer of men and affairs.  If he studied the detail of history, it
was in order that he might the better elicit its significance and its
teaching.  He was slow to express an opinion; but in his judgments
there was never any indecision.  In the advocacy of intellectual
freedom he was eager: in the denunciation of tyranny and persecution he
was at a white heat.  He was a man who loved to prove all things, and
to hold fast that which is good."  Every one who knew Lord Acton, or at
least every one who could appreciate him, must recognise the justice
and fidelity of this eloquent tribute.  But it was at Cambridge that he
put forth to the utmost the whole power of his mind.  It was at
Cambridge that he showed most clearly how his whole {lxxv} life had
been devoted to the cause of freedom and of truth.  It was there that
he planned the "Cambridge History" in twelve volumes, of which two, the
first and the seventh, have already appeared.  Unhappily they were
posthumous.  Lord Acton did not live to see them, nor to write the
Introduction.  At the age of sixty-seven he was suddenly struck down by
paralysis, and, after lingering for more than a year, died at Tegernsee
on the 19th of June 1902.  He was "buried by the side of the daughter
whose deathbed he had comforted with the words, 'Be glad, my child, you
will soon be with Jesus Christ.'"[4]  Such through life and in death
was his simple faith.

The lustre which Lord Acton's name reflected upon Cambridge was not
felt more deeply, or more sincerely, than the higher standard of
learning which he introduced into a learned professoriate.  He was the
one man in England, if not in Europe, who could have brought with him
from the outside an equal knowledge of books and of the world.
Cambridge saw his weak side quickly enough.  The keen-witted men who
enjoyed and appreciated his talk, or watched him listening with an
attention that nothing escaped, could understand why Döllinger
predicted that if he did not write a great book before he was forty he
would never write one at all.  As a matter of fact he did not write a
book of any kind, small or great.  He did not even, as he once thought
of doing, republish his Essays.  His contemplated Life of Döllinger
dwindled into an article of forty pages on Döllinger's Historical Work
for the _English Historical Review_.

But the article, which appeared in October 1890, shows Lord Acton at
his best.  His affectionate reverence for his great master gives a
colour and animation to his style, which it often lacked.  This is by
far the most readable of all his essays, and by no means {lxxvi} the
least instructive.  Döllinger was in some respects like himself.
"Everybody felt that he knew too much to write," and the best part of
his erudition was given to his pupils at Munich.  In tracing the course
of Döllinger's studies, and of his mental development, Lord Acton wrote
the best, because the most characteristic, biography of the Old
Catholic leader.  Besides the interest of the subject itself, Lord
Acton contrived to bring into this wonderful summary a number of
judgments on other things and persons as vivid as they are acute.
Freeman rather horrified him by preferring printed books to manuscripts
as material for history.  But then he "mixed his colours with brains."
Lord Acton was inclined to think Stahl, the philosophical and
Conservative statesman of Prussia, "the greatest man born of a Jewish
mother since Titus."  Döllinger, however, considered that this was
unjust to Disraeli, and most Englishmen will probably agree with him in
opinion.

Whether Lord Acton ought to have left the Church of Rome when Döllinger
was excommunicated, or when the Vatican decrees were pronounced, is a
question which it would not become a Protestant to ask, much less to
answer.  He did not shrink from the risk of speaking out, and it was
not his fault that he escaped.  No earthly reward or peril would have
induced him to say what he did not think, or to profess what he did not
believe.  The truths which all Christians hold in common, and the moral
principles to which Sophocles ascribes an unknown antiquity, guided him
in history as in life.  His emphatic statement that he had never felt
any doubt about any Roman doctrine was made some years before 1870, and
the secession of the Old Catholics, which failed for want of an
Episcopate.  In 1878 Pio Nono died, and was succeeded by a more liberal
Pontiff.  Manning lost his influence at Rome, Newman was made a
cardinal, and the Broad Churchmen {lxxvii} in the Roman communion were
tolerated, if not encouraged.  Even Lord Acton's old enemy, Manning,
turned from theological controversy to movements of social
philanthropy, to Irish politics, in which he agreed with Acton, and to
good works among the poor.  The strictest of Roman Catholics were not
sorry to think that the most learned Prelates of the Anglican Church
were less learned than a Catholic layman.  The more a man knew, the
larger was his idea of Lord Acton's knowledge.  But for the years
between 1895 and 1900 that knowledge would have been comparatively
wasted.  It would have profited only a few readers here and there
beyond the circle of Lord Acton's friends.  At Cambridge, the Professor
of History was in perpetual contact with fresh minds eager to know, and
to transmit what they acquired.  He did not altogether understand the
Greek mind, for he told Mr. Gladstone that it was unscientific.  But he
had this much in common with Socrates, the father of science, that he
required the clash of dialectic to bring out his full force.  When
ignorant people laid down the law, Lord Acton smiled, and, it is to be
feared, enjoyed himself in an almost sinful degree.  When scholars and
philosophers conversed with him, they found him often indeed more
inclined to listen than to talk, but always appreciative, suggestive,
and awakening.  To genuine students he was a mine of information, and
would give what was asked tenfold.  Nobody ever entrapped him into a
path which for good reasons he was disposed to avoid.  Attempt to draw
him into controversy, and he became cautious, subtle, enigmatic.  But
every one who came to him, as his Cambridge pupils came, for assistance
and instruction, went away not merely satisfied and enlightened, but
moved and touched by the profundity of his knowledge, the generosity of
his temper, and the humility of his soul.



[1] I owe the opportunity of reading and quoting from this lecture,
reported in the _Bridgnorth Journal_ of the 14th, to the kindness of
Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff.

[2] His wife had become insane on the failure of her mission to France.

[3] "Studies in Contemporary Biography," 398.

[4] _Edinburgh Review_, 404, page 534.



[Illustration:

   Mary Gladstone
  Herbert Gladstone  Mr. Gladstone  Mrs. Gladstone  Dr. Dollinger  Lord Acton

                     Group at Tegernsee, 1879.]



{1}

LETTERS OF LORD ACTON


[Sidenote: _Mentone Oct. 31, 1879_]

You were threatened with a long letter from me, about people at Paris,
but I could not finish it, ... and so I lost the only days on which
Paris information could be of any use.  After a week of care, varied by
pleasant visits from Lacaita, F. Leveson, and H. Cowper, we started,
and rested at Milan and Genoa, and yet were nearly the first arrivals
here.  We expect to have the Granvilles for neighbours at Cannes, as
well as Westminsters.

Let me first of all transcribe a passage from my unsent letter: "If you
see Madame Waddington you will find her a very pleasant specimen of
American womanhood.  Her husband wants the qualities that charm and win
at first, and I suppose he will not hold his own long.  He has no dash,
no _entrain_, no personal ascendency, like the men who succeed in
France; but there is not a deeper scholar, or a more sincere and
straightforward Christian in the country."  I see from your letter that
the unfavourable part of my remarks came true more than the praise.
Something may be due to awkwardness connected with the Ferry[1] Bill.
The interview with Scherer consoles me.  He is a man of the first order
as far as that can be without showy gifts.  But he is guarded, cold,
unsympathising, and {2} the intellectual crisis by which he came to
repudiate the Christian faith was so conspicuous that he is embarrassed
with people who are notable for religious conviction.

I wanted to say so much about Mignet, who was celebrated before your
father went up to college; of St. Hilaire, the best Grecian and
earliest Republican in France; of Dufaure and Simon, the leaders of the
Left Centre, who hold the fate of the Ministry in their hands; of
Laboulaye, the political oracle of Waddington, who solves every problem
by American principles; of Vielcastel, the most sensible and
experienced of Conservatives, and the only surviving Doctrinaire; of
Broglie,[2] who has all but ruined the Republic, in order to expiate
his former ecclesiastical Liberalism; of Pasquier, who possesses the
good qualities in which Broglie is deficient; of Taine, who has almost
the solidity of Scherer, and more than his brilliancy.  But it is all
too late now.

You describe the Professor[3] most justly.  Serenity has grown on him
with years, although they were years of conflict and of the great grief
that men who do not live for themselves can feel for the cause they
have lived for.  Strength, too, though in less degree, by reason of a
vice which besets another great man.  From a sense of dignity and of
charity he refuses to see all the evil there is in men; and in order
that his judgments may be always charitable, generous, and leaning to
the safer side, he is not always exact in definitions or rigorous in
applying principles.  He looks for the root of differences in
speculative systems, in defect of knowledge, in everything but moral
causes, and if you had remained with us longer you would {3} have found
out that this is a matter on which I am divided from him by a gulf
almost too wide for sympathy.

Boutney I never saw.  But he is a sound and useful man, who makes it
his business to spread political knowledge among those classes that
govern France.  A cousin of ours lectures, under his auspices, to
half-educated Parisians.

"Le Gendre de M. Poirier" at the Français is one of the greatest treats
imaginable.  Your stay at Paris must have been full of new impressions
and experiences, even in its levity.

And now, after a short interval of Victor Hugo at Keble, I fancy you
will start for the Midlothian campaign.  You were very wrong to
suppress that second sheet of your letter, and I hope you will make up
for it by letting me know how things go on, and bearing in mind that
one learns nothing at Mentone, except the bare outside of public events.


[Sidenote: _Mentone March 15, 1880_]

There is so much to ask and say that I have not the courage to begin.
I am afraid you will forgive the length neither of my letter nor of my
silence, and will be as much bored by the silver of the one as by the
golden of the other.  But when all the world has its rendezvous in
Harley Street, admit me, perdu in the crowd.

In this out-of-the-way region we have been kept up to the mark in home
politics by pleasant visits from Freddy Leveson--a robust
Gladstonian--Cowper Temple, who told me more than I knew about the
world of spirits; Goschen, who spent several days with us, and whose
footsteps are very visible on the road that leads away from the Liberal
party, through {4} Brookes's, to a moderado coalition; Reay, ... fresh
from Midlothian; Mallet,[4] doctrinaire, disputatious and desponding,
but abounding in criticism of the policy which he represents.  Lord
Blachford passed, but I did not see him.  Nothing carried me back to
England more than the two Italians[5] whom you overheard at Venice, who
were here when I was very ill, but who took me over the whole ground
traversed since 1842.  Bonghi's essays[6] are appearing successively,
and they are meant as a lesson for Italians, and break up the career in
a way which loses the thread of continuity and the law of its progress
and the wealth of the unity therein.  But he is exceedingly intelligent
and sympathetic, and I hope that he will recast his materials when he
puts them together in a volume.  When he asked me: Why is Mr. Gladstone
so much attached to the Church and so much against establishments?  Why
is he so generous towards R. Catholics and so hard on the Pope?  Why is
not Ireland reconciled?  Why is not England won?--you will believe that
I found my voice again.  I don't think the book will ever suit our
public, but I should like it to appear in French.

      *      *      *      *      *

A certain letter of mine acknowledging the gift of the Lancashire
Canvassing Speeches was written between the election and the summons to
Windsor, in November 1868.[7]  If it leads you to look at the Bristol
electioneering speeches mentioned in it, you will be disappointed; for
they will seem to you poor in comparison.  In reality, they are an
epoch in constitutional history.  Burke there laid down, for ever, the
law of the {5} relations between members and constituencies, which is
the innermost barrier against the reign of democratic force.  Charles
Sumner once said to me: "Mr. Burke legislated from those hustings."
When you met John Morley at Glasgow he had just written a very good
life of Burke.  It is impossible not to be struck by the many points of
resemblance between Burke and your father--the only two men of that
stature in our political history--but I have no idea whether they would
have been friends or bitter enemies.

Madame de Staël is the author of that saying about liberty, whom I
commemorate in terms studiously excluding rivalry with George Eliot.

Do you remember a question as to the number of words in Shakespeare and
in Milton?  There is all about it in Brother Mark's[8] "Life of
Milton," which is in the same series as Morley's "Burke."

And another, as to the title of the "Imitation"?  I find that it is not
the title given by the author--so that Milman's very plausible remark
falls through.

Plenty of muffs have written in the _Edinbro'_, but I am not one of
them.

You see so many interesting and eminent men that you can spare a miss
sometimes.  But I am sorry for that silent evening near Lowell.  The
easy brightness of his mind surpasses all I remember in America.  I sat
next to him at a dinner at Boston twenty-seven years ago, and spoke of
the burying, by Constantine, of the Palladium in a vault at
Constantinople.  Longfellow would not believe my story.  I quoted a
passage.  "Yes," said Lowell, "but the passage we want is the passage
into the vault."  Somebody questioned whether the statue of Cromwell
would stand {6} among the sovereigns at Westminster.  "At least," said
he, "among the half-crowns."

I have never met him since.  But if I had been fortunate enough to drop
in that evening at Ripon's, I rather think I should have liked to sit
next to him.  You would have seen the difference between a live dog and
a dead lion.

Scherer ought to be much obliged to me for the conversation and for the
readers I procured him.  He is, I think, one of the three best living
writers in France--deeper and more subtle than Taine, and infinitely
better versed in political questions than Renan.  If you see that arch
person you will find his conversation, easy and tripping as it is, very
inferior to his writings.  There are volumes of essays which I am sure
you would read with pleasure.  And he has a special bone to pick with
the author of "A History of Liberty."[9]

I sent for Seeley,[10] and read him with improvement, with much
pleasure, and with more indignation.  It is hard in a few crowded lines
to explain my meaning on a question so fundamental.  The great object,
in trying to understand history, political, religious, literary or
scientific, is to get behind men and to grasp ideas.  Ideas have a
radiation and development, an ancestry and posterity of their own, in
which men play the part of godfathers and godmothers more than that of
legitimate parents.  We understand the work and place of Pascal, or
Newton, or Montesquieu, or Adam Smith, when we have measured the gap
between the state of astronomy, of political economy, &c., before {7}
they came and after they were gone.  And the progress of the science is
of more use to us than the idiosyncrasy of the man.  Let me try to
explain myself by an example of to-day.  Here is Ferry's article 7.[11]
One way of looking at it is to reckon up the passions, the follies, the
vengeance of the republicans, to admire or deplore the victory of the
Conservatives, to wonder at the Democrats.  But beyond the wishes of
the Democrats there are the doctrines of Democracy, doctrines which
push things towards certain consequences without help from local or
temporary or accidental motives.  There is a state built on democratic
principles, and a society built, largely, on anti-democratic elements,
clergy and aristocracy.  Those elements of society must needs react
upon the state; that is, try to get political power and use it to
qualify the Democracy of the Constitution.  And the state power must
needs try to react on society, to protect itself against the hostile
elements.  This is a law of Nature, and the vividness and force with
which we trace the motion of history depends on the degree to which we
look beyond persons and fix our gaze on things.--This is dreadfully
didactic prose.  But this is my quarrel with Seeley.  He discerns no
Whiggism, but only Whigs.  And he wonders at the mistakes of the Whigs
when he ought to be following up the growth and modifications of their
doctrine, and its influence on the Church, on Toleration, on European
politics, on the English monarchy, the Colonies, finance, local
government, justice, Scotland, and Ireland.  So you may read in Alison
of the profligacy of Mirabeau, the ferocity of Marat, the weakness of
Louis, the sombre fanaticism {8} of Robespierre.  But what we want to
know is why the old world that had lasted so long went to ruin, how the
doctrine of equality sprang into omnipotence, how it changed the
principles of administration, justice, international law, taxation,
representation, property, and religion.  Seeley is as sick as I am of
the picturesque scenery of the historians of sense, but he does not
like to go straight at the impersonal forces which rule the world, such
as predestination, equality, divine right, secularism,
Congregationalism, nationality, and whatever other ruling ideas have
grouped and propelled associations of men.  And my great complaint is
that he so much dislikes the intriguers of 1688 that he does not
recognise the doctrine of 1688, which is one of the greatest forces,
one of the three or four greatest forces, that have contributed to
construct our civilisation, and make 1880 so unlike 1680.  See H. of
L.,[12] page 50,000.  All which things make me more zealous, eager,
anxious about the coming election than you who are in the midst of it,
mindful of the blessing of repose and credulous of Seeley.  Therefore I
read with delight the address to Midlothian--more even than the speech
in Marylebone--and am daily refreshed by Lowe, John Morley, even
Rogers,[13] and fancy how happy the inquisitors were, who put a stop to
the people they disagreed with!  But I can quite feel your sensation in
watching all this.

      *      *      *      *      *

If we win, then there will be no rest in this life for Mr. Gladstone.
The victory will be his, and his only.  And so will the responsibility
be.  Then will come the {9} late harvest and the gathering in of its
heavy sheaves.  And then there will be not much Hawarden for you.

I heartily wish your brothers success--even the riotous
one[14]--especially the riotous one.  I will come and wish him joy.  If
we are beaten, I shall be ashamed to let you see my grief.  And as it
is, I am ashamed to tell you how much I should like to hear from you,
because you will suspect that I only want a supplement to the _Times_,
or a later edition of the _Echo_.  But the next few weeks are going to
be a great turning-point in the history of our lifetime, and I believe
you know how to be generous.  Be generous before you are just.  Do not
temper mercy with justice.

      *      *      *      *      *


[Sidenote: _Cannes April 10, 1880_]

There is nothing to regret.  Your brother has held a conspicuous
place[15] in the most wonderful election contest of this century.  He
has held it in a manner which will never be forgotten in his lifetime,
and which will do as much for him as victory; and the picture of the
young untried son bursting into sudden popularity and turning men's
thoughts from the absorbing exploits of his father adds an affecting
domestic feature to that great biography.  That meeting at Hawarden,
after such a revolution and such a growth, is a thing I cannot think of
without emotion.

So I cannot offer you anything sincere, except congratulation.  We know
now, indeed, that the British Democracy is neither Liberal nor
Conservative in its permanent convictions, and therefore the party
triumph is not as altogether satisfactory and secure as it should be.
But the individual triumph, the homage rendered to a single name, could
not be greater; and {10} there could not be a fuller atonement for the
desertion of 1874, than a success so personal as to convey dictatorial
authority, apart from party merits and combinations.

Your idea has this advantage, that one must strike when the iron is
hot, and it is now at white heat, and our legislative measures, even
though they involve an early dissolution, ought to be begun soon.  What
I should fear most would be that, content with the intense reality of
power, Mr. Gladstone should repeat the unhappy declarations of five
years since in a way that would commit him for all future time;
absolute abdication would be a misfortune all round, and the
Conservative reaction would soon set in.  But if an eventual return to
power is not absolutely excluded, if no word is said of what might
happen under certain contingencies, then we should still feel that we
have an invincible reserve force, that, when our first line is broken,
we can proclaim the Jehad and unfurl the green flag of the Prophet.
For the patchwork settlement of 1875 depends on the life of a man who
is several years older than your father,[16] who is a duke, and who has
a deplorable habit of falling asleep early in the afternoon.  But I
only express this premature fear in view of circumstances which I am
sure every influence in the country, except, perhaps, the influence of
Windsor, will be strained to avert.

Your description of Lowe's generous and feeling sympathy is really
touching.  How little I thought, fourteen years ago,[17] when he was
the hardest hitter your father had to meet, and when your father said
he {11} might well shrink from crossing swords with such a man, that he
would close his active life as your brother's sponsor before vast
constituencies, or that we should come to think of him listening with
tears in his eyes to your brother's speeches, and muttering the words
you tell.

Please tell Herbert that I have followed his proceedings as carefully
as one could at a distance, that I don't think much of his defeat,
that, in short, I go halves with Lowe.[18]

I see that your sister made her way into the fray.  I trust all the
worry and toil was not too much for Mrs. Gladstone.

We are ending the season here, not as far out of the world as you would
suppose; for I just saw your neighbour Westminster, and here are
Argyll, Cardwell, and Goldsmid.

If Disraeli waits to meet Parliament, and to fall in the daylight, I
may hope to have an opportunity of expressing to you myself all my
sense of the meaning of the victory, and my want of sympathy for you in
your defeat.[19]

      *      *      *      *      *


[Sidenote: _Paris May 23, 1880_]

I have been in Paris only a few hours, and have seen nobody yet but
Broglie, Gavard, and Laugel.  I must see Scherer and talk to him about
your visit here in the autumn.  I have not been here for two years, and
many of my friends are growing so old that I don't like putting off my
visit to them.  So I must keep those who have not that defect for a
happier time.

{12}

[Sidenote: _Paris May 14, 1880_]

I shall be delighted to inaugurate breakfasting in Downing Street on
Thursday; and I should very much like to drop in the night before, as
you are to be there.  But it seems very indiscreet; and if I dine with
Lord Granville, I shall not be able to get away until very late, when
you will be gone to bed.  Tegernsee late hours cannot be kept in
London.  I will hope for the best, and keep all I have to say, partly
for next week, partly for some more propitious season.


[Sidenote: _Würzburg May 23, 1880_]

Although ink was not invented to express our real feelings, I improve
my first stoppage between two trains to thank you for three such
delightful days in London.  It was a shame to take up so much of your
busy time, and to persecute you with the serpentine wisdom.  I did not
wish to turn into bitterness the sweetest thing on earth, but I fancied
that there are things good to be observed in your great position which
nobody will tell you if you do not hear them from the most wicked of
your friends.  Hayward, indeed, who walked home with me the other
night, might claim that title and dispute my prerogative; and I thought
he would be useful to you in many ways until I found out that he is
only solicitous about getting invitations for ----.

Since you detected ... lending herself to a humble intrigue, you can
never be surprised at the revelations of disappointment and
self-seeking, and must not believe that the smiling faces you see
express unmixed loyalty and satisfaction.  So I want you to be vigilant
not to resent, but to pursue the work of disarming resentment, and not
easily to persuade yourself that it is done.

To begin at the top.  Here is Lowe, positively {13} wounded at the
letter offering him a peerage instead of power, and wounded by the very
thing which showed Mr. Gladstone's anxiety not to give him pain, by the
absence of any reason given for being unable to offer him office.  For
one so often finds that acts specially showing delicacy and
considerateness, little supererogatory works of kindness, are taken
unkindly.  Now that is just a state of mind you can improve away by an
initiative of civility, bearing in mind that what Lowe says to me, his
wife delivers from the house-tops.

      *      *      *      *      *

The animosity of the defeated party is natural, manifest, and
invincible.  They have offered Greenwood £110,000 for his newspaper,
besides general offers of indefinite sums--enough to start it four or
five times over.  But the danger is not there, but at home; danger of
disintegration and drifting.  Both in church questions, and,
ultimately, in land questions, your father is at variance with the
great bulk of colleagues and followers--Chamberlain and Argyll in one
Cabinet is an anomaly sure to tell in time, especially with Argyll
discontented.  So do not undervalue, or neglect, or waste, the social
influence which centres in your hands.

Bismarck is so angry with Münster, that I hope he will transplant him;
meanwhile it ought to be remembered that he, M., not only scouted the
idea of Tory defeat, but wrote most disparagingly of Mr. Gladstone's
influence and position.

Hayward will tell you what I learn from other sources, that Chenery
really wishes to bring the _Times_ round.  Mr. Gladstone dislikes
thinking of those things, and allowed Delane to slip from him.  Don't
leave the whole thing to be done at No. 18.[20]

{14}

I hope, towards the end of the session, you will consult MacColl about
the Bavarian mystery.  It would be nice if Leeds does not require its
member just then.  Above all things keep a very regular diary.  You
will be so glad afterwards, unless you have some distant correspondent,
and make your letters to him, or her, do for a regular diary, which is
also a good plan.


[Sidenote: _Tegernsee June 1, 1880_]

I received your letter last night on my return from Italy, and read the
enclosure with interest.  There are two things to be said in its
defence.  It is true that Hartington has, of late, shown higher
qualities than the world attributed to him, and so far his adoring
kinsfolk may consider their higher estimate justified.  His whole
attitude during the election was creditable, and his conduct towards
Mr. Gladstone was correct.

Then, there is a grain of truth in the notion that the force that
creates, and sustains in a crisis, is not quite the same that is wanted
in time of prose to continue and to preserve; or in other words, that
creative power makes a great consumption of party resources, and, if
Burke gave up to party what was meant for mankind, it is better still
to give up to mankind what some people mean to use for party.  This is
only a half truth, because party is not only, not so much, a group of
men as a set of ideas and ideal aims; so that I do not admit
Goldsmith's antithesis.[21]  But taking party in the practical and
popular sense, of an instrument for homing office, people are uneasily
conscious that Mr. Gladstone will sacrifice it to loftier purpose
sooner than they would like.  Nothing is more untrue than the famous
saying of an ancient historian, that power is retained by the same arts
by which it is {15} acquired; untrue at least for men, though truer in
the case of nations.

But don't you see, pervading the letter and guiding the pen, the great
intellectual and moral defect of the present day?  I mean, the habit of
dwelling on appearances, not on realities, of preferring the report to
the bullet, and the echo to the report.  To spend and lose a majority
in some great cause, to be abused and ridiculed and calumniated, seems
to the writer a misfortune so great that it is worth while to haul down
one's flag rather than incur the risk of it.  This is the power of
journalism, of salons and club life, which teaches people to depend on
popularity and success and not on the guide within, to act not from
knowledge, but from opinion, and to be led by opinion of others rather
than by knowledge which is their own.  Not only ----, nearly everybody
yields up his conscience, his practical judgment, into the keeping of
others.  I do not accuse Hartington, but it is clear from the words of
---- and ----, that there was a scheme to get Mr. Gladstone out of the
way.  To expect him to take the first step was to expect him to resign.
It is so easy to do a dirty thing with self-satisfaction when it
consists in abstaining from action.  The one letter is only the
plausible, affectionate, amplification of the other's impertinence,
with a saving clause, on the first page, inserted from dictation, when
the grievous indiscretion had been committed....

      *      *      *      *      *

It does not matter seriously; but it serves to corroborate that grave
speech of mine: trust nobody.  I don't want you to think ill of people,
or even to suspect them until the evidence is strong.  It is not their
virtue I question, but their attachment, and {16} consequently their
discretion.  And I question their attachment because I doubt their
thorough agreement with Mr. Gladstone.  I don't say they are
perfidious; but they are bound by an alliance they do not mean to last
for ever.

      *      *      *      *      *

I do not cite Northcote and Carnarvon in confirmation.  Soon after his
resignation Carnarvon certainly wished to come over.  At a solemn
dinner inaugurating him as President of the Society of Antiquaries, he
asked the secretaries to get me to propose his health.  In a preceding
speech he spoke of himself as a true Conservative at heart; and so I
took those words up, congratulating him upon them in an Antiquarian,
and eventually in a Liberal sense, indicating that they meant no more
than we mean by constitutional, that there were no Pyrenees between us,
that we entirely agreed with each other.  We became close friends from
that hour, and he made it very clear that he was pleased to be so
interpreted.  But he got little encouragement afterwards; and I fancied
he honestly took this line--there are intelligent High Church men who
dread, in the looming future, an alliance between democratic
nonconformity and the predestined chief of the stern and unbending
Tories, on the basis of anti-Erastianism.  They say that the late
election, swamping the vulgar Whig, has made those two allies stronger
than ever, making each depend upon the other.  They would stand a
Liberal Government made up of Spencers and Cowpers, but they say that
the demagogues have been strong enough to force their way in, and will
make their power felt.  So that property and the Church are in danger.
I am ashamed to say that I thought this was Carnarvon's line.  But
Liddon knows what he says.  {17} Be sure that I also know what I say
when I assure you that the victoria pilgrimage will be a help to your
father, and that Lady R.'s coachman will grease wheels more important
than her own.  Do go on, this summer at least, and see whether it is
not true.  Lady R. is, moreover, a friend of Lady Blennerhassett, and
will sympathise with your feelings.

      *      *      *      *      *

I should not have supported our side in its attack on Sir Bartle Frere.
It was not merely a question of empire, but of lives he would be unable
to protect, against a savage army[22] far stronger than the whole armed
population of Natal.  I fancy that the analogy, or apparent analogy,
with the Cabul policy, which he had so much promoted, turned Liberal
opinion against him.  But Frere is a strong, an able, and a plausible
man.  It is true that his strength is akin to obstinacy and self-will,
that he is rather too plausible, and that he will gain his ends by
crooked paths when he has tried the straight in vain.  He is a
dangerous agent, but, I should think, a useful adviser.  Indians are
not generally a healthy element in the body politic, and he has the
constant vice of Indians, belief in force.  But he has a breadth of
mind that is rare among them; and I have known people who hated him,
because he is so good.  I do not suggest that that is the motive of the
three Anabaptists who ply you with advice from which I disagree.

Thanks, a thousand thanks, for all the kindness of your letter.  I
enjoyed the Sherbrooke-Airlie-Trevelyan dinner very much, and shall
envy Lady R. every Monday to come....

{18}

      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _Tegernsee June 9, 1880_]

My letter was posted with the one to you, though written, I think, the
night before, so that it must have been stopped and opened by some
postmaster whom the direction attracted, and who, like yourself,
exaggerated its importance.  There are truths so prosaic, so dense, so
dull, that one can hardly state them without suggesting the idea of
something subtler or more interesting beyond.  Of course, to one who
spends his time in watching and trying to understand the progress of
political life and thought, no public event could equal the late
progress from Dalmeny to Downing Street, and no prouder thing could
happen than to be able to serve Mr. Gladstone's policy.  Indeed, if I
was not lured by his genius, his persistent friendship, and a curious
sympathy in many deep questions, I should be, now, by qualities never
so apparent as in the last few days, by the power of grasping principle
in one hand and policy in the other, without clashing, which was shown
in the opium speech, and just before, in the speech on the liability of
employers.  I don't know whether I could ever have been of use abroad,
in other circumstances, if my nearest relation was not Foreign
Secretary,[23] for there is only one place for which I could pretend to
any special fitness.  But as to trying to qualify as a candidate for
anything at home, you would soon be satisfied that it is impossible, if
I had a good opportunity of talking--if we climb a mountain, a very
high mountain, or cross a broad and stormy lake some day.[24]  But I
think I must remind you of the old lady at Carlisle in Forty-Five, who
shut herself up in terror of the Highlanders, and, not being pursued,
{19} grew impatient, and cried out: "When are they going to begin?"

I am a little disturbed at the highly ingenious and easy solution of
the great party[25] question.  It is dangerous, at any time, to
multiply sources of weakness.  Now there is a source of future weakness
in the idea of power assumed only for a term limited and defined.  A
Parliament near its end becomes helpless and unable to act.  When the
period fixed, or supposed to be fixed, is approaching, power will slip
away.  Disappointed people, men impatient of having to wait, hungry,
jealous, reluctant supporters, will gravitate in other directions, will
promote rivalry, will speed the parting chief, will magnify the rising
sun.  By having only Free and Easies, you establish a festive Centre
elsewhere, and the world, revolving in an improper orbit, may lose its
way.  There has been, in this direction, a slight waste of capital....

      *      *      *      *      *


[Sidenote: _June 9, 1880_]

Your card came just after my letter was posted.  I shall be at Munich
on Friday, and have written to Hallam Tennyson, _poste restante_; but I
hope to waylay them at the station.  It will be pleasant to pilot the
great man through Munich, or on the road to Achensthal, and I will do
my best....

I hope you will not quarrel with John Morley, for he seems to be making
the _Pall Mall_ the best Liberal paper in England.  But he has so many
points of antagonism to Mr. Gladstone that I am afraid.  He is a
sceptic; his studies are all French, eighteenth century; in political
economy he is a bald Cobdenite, and will do scant justice to the
political aspects of the {20} French treaty; he is a friend of
Lytton's, and I suspect, of the peccant Strachey;[26] he has the
obstinacy of a very honest mind.  But I perceive that I am getting to
be a bore....


[Sidenote: _Tegernsee June 21, 1880_]

The Tennysons came and went, I am sorry to say, prematurely.  They
spent two days with us, and would have gone by Achensee to Innsbruck,
but the rain sent them back to Munich, where they took the train for
Italy.  You will be surprised to learn that the Poet made a favourable
impression on my ladies and children.  He was not only a gracious Poet,
but he told us lots of good stories, read aloud without pressure,
walked repeatedly with M., and seemed interested in the books he
carried to his room.  Lady Acton took him to Kreuth and round the lake,
and liked him well.  Yet our ways were very strange to him, and he must
have felt that he stood on the far verge of civilisation, without the
enjoyments proper to savage life.  Even I was tamed at last.  There was
a shell to crack, but I got at the kernel, chiefly at night, when
everybody was in bed.  His want of reality, his habit of walking on the
clouds, the airiness of his metaphysics, the indefiniteness of his
knowledge, his neglect of transitions, the looseness of his political
reasonings--all this made up an alarming _cheval de frise_.

But then there was a gladness--not quickness--in taking a joke or
story, a comic impatience of the external criticism of Taine and others
found here, coupled with a simple dignity when reading ill-natured
attacks, a grave groping for religious certainty, and a generosity in
the treatment of rivals--of Browning and {21} Swinburne, though not of
Taylor--that helped me through.  He was not quite well, in consequence
of the damp and of the mountain fare.

I write for news to your hotel at Venice, the weather having been
against the Dolomites.

Hallam is a much better and clearer politician than his father, and the
only time we differed he was the truer Blue.  If I add that I
discovered why he refused a baronetcy, I suspect it is no more than you
know very well already.

      *      *      *      *      *

I have made Liddon's acquaintance at last.  Nothing but Tennyson
prevented me from seeing more of him, for I found in him all that I
love Oxford for, and only a very little of what I dislike in it.

------------

... Let me suppress truths only when they are pleasant, and confess
that I have a doubt about the scene with O'Donnell.  Mr. Gladstone
brought against him an engine as obsolete as the Veto,[27] not for the
sake of France, for he could have his say in another way, but for a
disorderly act which was not the worst on record.  It seemed a stretch
of severity when the claim to have been severely treated is the most
telling feather in an Irish cap, when the fact of having been silenced
in a new way inflates the lungs, if it does not strengthen the hands,
of a Home Ruler.  But perhaps I am so fresh from the history of the
Plebs and their Tribunes that I am not quite sound as to the management
of Obstructives.

{22}

Challemel Lacour is the scholar, the philosopher, the ascetic of that
republican school of which Gambetta is the Tribune and the platform
hero.  He is their Minister in reserve; and Albert Gate is so
manifestly the stepping-stone to power, he is so conspicuous a leader
of untried policy, that the civility of his reception will be taken in
France as a tribute to his party in a way there has been no example of.
He is probably the most interesting specimen in existence of the school
from which Robespierre would have chosen his colleagues.  I should
very, very much like to know how he impresses you; and there is so much
more I should very much like to know, that I must learn to be less
obtrusive.

... If the Bavarian Fawcett[28] opened one of my letters, I suspect it
was because they have not got over their perplexity at the Queen
informing the King of Bavaria of the Rammingen misalliance.  Only, when
I ask indiscreet questions do not suspect me of asking for indiscreet
answers.

I think Reay deserves a seat in the H. of L. (in the vulgar sense of
those mystic letters),[29] because he would perhaps not recognise your
portrait of a barren, contradictory, envious, dissolving cynic.  But
the cap fits only too well, and I must acknowledge the fidelity of the
likeness, and the art of Lenbach in the deeper shades.  Do you
remember, now, my prophecy on the Piazzetta, when I rejoiced that you
would not stay long enough to learn to hate me?

In worldly quarters you will probably meet with the objection to Reay
that he is more instructive than amusing; but I hardly know a more
genuine good fellow.  {23} Do you know Morier, who is in town?  Another
man much objected to, but exceedingly able, resolute, and energetic....

      *      *      *      *      *

I hope you will see Blennerhassett, and think him worthy of his wife,
who is still at Munich.  Thank you for the good news you give from high
places, and for the greasy wheels.  Your sister's ears ought to have
tingled at the good things said of her here last week.


[Sidenote: _Tegernsee July 1, 1880_]

... I hope you have not many correspondents as unmerciful as I am, or
as much inclined to forget that you are living the most interesting of
lives, by the intensest blaze of light in all the world.  Only let me
just thank you for your letter of yesterday and for your kindness in
asking me to future entertainments.  My prospects are too uncertain for
me to accept.  I must come only if I am wanted, and we shall hardly
have any close divisions of importance until the end of July.  Your
invitations have doubled in value since Reay, whose particular group of
friends is so well known as to betray him to the worst of guessers, has
supplied you with a key--a false key--to my Venetian Mystery.

Don't get tired too easily of London and its duties, for they are very
real.  They will not get on without you.  And it is of no use coming
over, if you are away on all kinds of larks.

We must wait till Sunday before the result of this evening's debate
reaches Tegernsee.  There is not any doubt the motion[30] is right; but
I can imagine a much {24} stronger statement of objections than the
righteous indignation of the Tories produced.

Let us hope that John Morley was not discouraged by _encountering Sweet
Cæsar's ghost on Tuesday_.  The _Pall Mall_ is getting a little
personal, and too highly coloured in reports of fact.  Do you know my
intimate friend Lathbury, political editor of the _Economist_?  A
Weekly is easier to conduct than a Daily; but his articles seem to me
excellent in tone, judgment, and impartiality.  He wrote much formerly
in the _Daily News_ and the _Pall Mall_, and I was negotiating with
Delane to put him on the _Times_ when Bagehot's death gave him the
other opening.  His wife was Bonamy Price's daughter.  You never saw a
man more frank, cheery, and well-conditioned.

I suppose Hayward has brought ----.  Let him bring Chenery, that he may
be useful as well as ornamental.  It is not a matter of indifference
that, when other journalists come, he should be left to stay away.
Only don't let his sins be cast in his teeth.

I am afraid you will not take to Morier; but he is the greatest force
in our diplomatic service, in spite of his discomfiture at Lisbon.  He
would be the very man to meet Challemel Lacour, who will be an offence
to so many.

Liddon repeated at Munich the story of Carnarvon.  He also gave the
excuse which I suggested--that Chamberlain, Fawcett, Dilke alarmed him.
But it is not a pretty story as he tells it, considering the way
Carnarvon turned against the new Ministry.


      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _Tegernsee July 10, 1880_]

I am heartily glad to hear what you say of Mr. Gladstone's health and
strength and spirits, and of the {25} nook behind Hampstead,[31] so
much better than the dull air of the Thames Valley.  There must be so
much to harass him besides what appears, and what he can wind up and
swamp in dazzling speech.  Rosebery's anxiety is shared by many
thorough Liberals, and it is not, perhaps, unfortunate that the perils
of the position have made themselves felt at once, that the full
warning comes in time, and the remedy can be taken early.

I wonder whether, for a reason you know as well as I do, a thing we all
perceive remains a mystery to the person most concerned to know it.
The Liberal party is held together, not by forces within, but by a
force above it.  It consists, like the being that declined a chair, of
two wings and a head.  Without Mr. Gladstone's ascendency and the
lustre of his fame, Harcourt, Argyll, and Bright would soon offend
every group into insubordination and incohesion.  The jealousy between
the old Liberals, who are losing ground, and the usurping Radicals, and
all other familiar elements of discontent, cannot be restrained by
Parliamentary management alone.  There remains a great sphere for
direct personal influence.  The men Mr. Gladstone used to look up to,
Peel and Aberdeen, had not much of this, and I fancy he takes from them
the belief that it is unnecessary or undignified.  He has been so long
without holding the threads of party: it is so natural, in one who
writes and speaks so much, to suspect those who misunderstand him doing
it voluntarily: it is so natural to him to underrate the effect of
personal contact, that he may think that the sole legitimate method of
mastering men is Parliamentary speaking, or writings addressed to
mankind.  But it is worth anything that people should know and see more
of him, in society if possible.  {26} First, because people are
flattered.  Next, because they are awed.  Last, because they are
conciliated, and so disciplined.  And this applies to three sorts
especially--members, diplomatists, and journalists.  I am sure all that
public policy can do to strengthen the Government will be done.  But I
note an unhappy impatience of those inferior arts my earthy spirit
relies on.

I see how willing the _Times_ is to be taken in hand, in spite of
Walter.  Sir Henry Maine, like Stephen, used to write in the _Pall
Mall_.  I don't know whether he has joined Morley.  Maine's nature is
to exercise power, and to find good reasons for adopted policy.
Augustus or Napoleon would have made him Prime Minister.  He has no
strong sympathies, and is not at heart a Liberal, for he believes that
Manchesterism will lose India.  He considers also that the party,
especially Lowe, has treated him less well than Salisbury.  He is
intensely nervous and sensitive.  After that, I may say that I esteem
him, with Mr. Gladstone, Newman, and Paget, the finest intellect in
England.  For some reason he is one of the men whom Lord Granville's
arts do not reach.  I wish you would see him....

It would be very kind of you indeed to ask the Lathburys some Tuesday
or Tuesdays.  I say that because he is so much my friend, but he is
also an eminently useful and trustworthy man.  His wife wrote much in
the _Saturday_--I don't remember the article you speak of.  When I am a
little in doubt about anything I consult Lathbury, who steadies and
encourages me.  When I feel very sure of some conclusion I go to Maine,
who always knocks it to pieces.  He is much the more instructive of the
two.  The other is more pleasant.

With Maine, above him indeed at the India Office, {27} is Sir Louis
Mallet, a thoughtful economist, a sincere, almost passionate Liberal,
but under Cobden's influence, one of those sincere Liberals least
attracted by your father.  He is very sound beyond the Indus, and I
wish you sometimes saw him; but I ought not, perhaps, to say it, for I
half suspect the Prime Minister has some ancient reason for objecting
to him.

The breakfast with the archbishop,[32] the philosopher,[33] the
Frenchman,[34] and even with G---- does not suggest hilarity.  What you
will do for sketches of character after the Reays leave England, I
cannot imagine.

      *      *      *      *      *


[Sidenote: _Marienbad August 8, 1880_]

I don't know how to thank you for thinking of me at such a moment.[35]
It was hard to bear being away just then, and you must have gone
through a dreadful time.  Even with the scraps of information that
reach one here, I have been able to realise much of it.  Almost the
first consoling thing was the report of your escapade with Wolverton.

Every line of your letter is a monument of your goodness, even your
disinclination to go into details.  But I am afraid you must have been
terribly knocked up--so soon, too, after your own illness, of which I
will not speak now, but which, indeed, I was very sorry to hear of.
And I do trust that Mrs. Gladstone was enabled to go through it all
without excessive alarm or fatigue.  She will not need words to be
assured of all my sympathy.  I am persuaded that your greatest
pleasure, just now, comes from the expressive conduct of adversaries,
not from the vain words of friends.

{28}

Our defeat in the Lords[36] opens a wide vista of difficulty and
trouble--partly because it injures the Government, but not much, and
will probably increase the ascendency of the P.M.; particularly because
of the H. of Lords itself.  Nobody will ever believe that such a
majority was due to honest and disinterested motives.  People will say,
and will say truly, that an assembly which is moved by selfish and
sordid motives, when there is a question of preventing ruin and
starvation, is not only an injury to the poor, but a disgrace to the
community, and there is no way out of it.  Small majorities may give
way or abstain; but after so determined a demonstration, repentance
will be suicidal.  And the one instance in modern times where the Lords
have proved stronger than the Commons, because postponement here was
prohibition, is a question of helping the poor who suffer, at a slight
sacrifice and slighter danger to people immensely rich.

We are only beginning with questions of this kind.  Did you hear the
speech at the end of May in which Mr. Gladstone spoke of that class
which is so numerous that it is virtually the entire nation?  Graver
words were never spoken in Parliament, for the entire land is virtually
in the hands of another class.  The considerations which this contrast,
this contradiction suggests, have a mighty future before them, a future
damaging to my boy's prospect of ever sitting on a red leather bench.

I am sorry we were not 52.[37]  It would have been impressive, like the
Doctrinaires of whom it was said: "Ils sont quatre; mais quand ils
veulent imposer par {29} le nombre, ils prétendent être cinq."  Indeed,
for all the reasons which Argyll repudiates, justifying my prophecy
about him in the spirit, if not to the letter, there has been no
measure for which I should be so anxious to vote.  I wrote to Lord
G.[38] to send me timely warning, as there was no trouble I would not
take.

Having been to a doctor, without any idea that I was seriously out of
order, I was sent here suddenly, and am forbidden, for reasons I must
acknowledge, to move for some weeks to come.  It could not have
happened at a worse moment for me.

I was sorry for Frere, and should probably have allowed his daughter to
come round me....

It is too kind of you to remember, after all that has passed over you
and the nation, details of former letters.  Unless there has been a
change lately, there are two editors of the _Economist_, one for money
matters and the other for politics.  Maine will be proud and happy, and
ought to be much obliged to me for supplying a topic for so pleasant a
conversation.  I wonder whether he showed you the luminous side of his
mind, whether you saw why he always disagrees with me, and why some
people are more afraid than fond of him.  Whatever passes at the end of
the Session, I do hope that a season of rest is included in our friend
Dr. A. Clark's prescriptions.  It might give me some remote chance of
seeing you again.


That Dutch Interior is charming, and I hope you enjoyed the circle of
widowers as much as I did your graphic account of them.  It is
delightful to think of the repose after the storm has been weathered so
{30} well.  Argyll practising his next speech in the solitude of night,
----'s diplomatic deafness and yet more artful slumber, his brother
with a hook placidly fixed in Bright's aggressive nose, the refined
American[39] offended by the rigidity of the Democrat, the group of
listening Senators, the harmless youth, the envious beauty--and then
the great historic background and the one overshadowing figure--there
is not a page in Mme. de Rémusat approaching it.  Do you write like
this to other people?  Do you write at least six pages of diary every
night?  Please do; and let me read it now and then.  And remember that
one touch of ill-nature makes the whole world kin.  If you are really
going to be left at Hawarden, you ought to shut your door, shut your
eyes, recall all that you have seen and heard during the last six
months, and write it carefully down.  You have such an opportunity and
such a power.  I am not like the Roman:[40] I envy almost as much as I
admire.

You make me happy by allowing me to conclude that I gave no offence by
what I wrote of our exalted House.  I don't mean that your uneasiness
was quite unreasonable.  When a Bill[41] gets knocked about in
Committee, even when an artful Minister means it to be knocked about,
it can never go up to the Lords harmonious, consistent, and the genuine
expression of a policy.  There are not two sides to every question, but
there is always an opening, in such cases, for sincere criticism.  The
way out of that is to pass the second reading, and to correct in
Committee what was done wrong in Committee.  What I mean in this case
is that the Bill involved a principle of infinite force and {31} value,
which the Ministry probably veiled to their own eyes, and which the
Lords were right to resist as a private association, which they are
not; wrong to resist as a disinterested national institution, which is
their claim to exist.

It is impossible to exaggerate the depth of aversion the Bill has
evoked.  You must have heard enough of it.  One man has spent two days
here for the purpose of telling me how wrong it was.  Another writes to
me that he has paired for the session, feeling that Government will be
obliged to those who help them when they are hopelessly wrong, although
the help consists in pairing and going to Vichy.  These are idle men,
representative of thousands.

It reminds me of the great landowner, Bedford, who reminds me of
Arthur,[42] who reminds me of Maine.  I suppose it was a refuge in
Piccadilly that revealed the secret to me.  Arthur's one fault is a
delight in secrets.  Although Maine is unfitted to be P.M. (under any
but a despotic monarch), nobody has so large a conception of all
questions relating to the tenure of land.  I dare say he has been asked
to say what he knows about Ireland.  What pure reason and boundless
knowledge can do, without sympathy or throb, Maine can do better than
any man in England.

I am sorry to think of Lowell's sun sinking behind your horizon.  At
first sight one always fancies that those who question the certainty of
history sap the certainty of religion, or are the victims of those who
do, and I fancy I should have had a word (with corners) to throw at
him.  The Rémusat volumes are one of my landmarks in judging Napoleon.
It is, of all accounts by competent people, the most injurious to his
memory, as {32} Segur's are the most favourable.  Until I read them, I
thought the fixed intention to put Enghien to death, the charge of
murder, not proven.  If the authority of these recollections breaks
down, I must invent for myself a new Napoleon.  After allowing for the
fact that they were written, or re-written, years later, like the Diary
of John Adams, the Memoirs of S. Simon, the History of Burnet, of
Clarendon, the Annals of Tacitus, the Nine Muses of Herodotus, the
Eight Books of Thucydides, which are the most conspicuous sources of
all history, and for the suspicion that there was a great secret she
not only could not tell, but wrote in order to obliterate, and after
giving whatever weight it deserves to the little joke that calls it:
"Souvenir d'une femme de chambre renvoyée," I am so persuaded that the
book is authentic and true, that I should have liked to hear the
argument.  But this is true, history does not stand or fall with
historians.  From the thirteenth century we rely much more on letters
than on histories written for the public.  I need not add that the
history of our Lord which we find in the Epistles is one most valuable
testimony in favour of the Gospels.  So that even if Lowell can damage
the reports in this book, we can restore the certainty of history by
the aid of letters, of documents and of those facts in which
independent witnesses agree.

Is it not heroic of your sister renouncing a life like your own for the
toil of Newnham?  I wish her success and happiness in her pilgrimage
most sincerely.  By-the-bye your other sister is the real pilgrim, and
I wish I had known in time to warn my belongings of her movements.

My time here is up, and I go home to-morrow.  As a proper P.M.'s
daughter you ought to say you hope {33} I was really ill, to justify
fifty-one....  It is absurd to come all the way to England and not to
see you; so I shall come only if I am ideally wanted.  I write at once
to discover whether and when.  Your telegram is a great disappointment.
I wonder where they will go.  Cannes is the place I recommend, but not
till October.  If I am not summoned home from Tegernsee for Hares or
Burials,[43] I look forward to Ammergau, and wish you were coming.

      *      *      *      *      *


[Sidenote: _Tegernsee Sept. 21, 1880_]

I ought to write no more.  I ought to hide my useless hand altogether.
There was a week during which I looked forward to a summons home, a
summons that never came; and after having persistently applied for it,
I thought that it was better not to make the offer of my vote more
urgent than the demand for it.  I know how much I have missed and lost.
Circumstances over which I have no control would probably have arrested
my maritime enterprise at Gravesend.[44]  But how pleasant Holmbury
would have been!  And then there was, and is, so much to talk to you
about, so much that evaporates in writing and will not keep, so much
that will.  As there can hardly be an autumn session after prorogation
in September, I must wait for the end of January.  Meanwhile I hope you
will cultivate the notion of Tegernsee.  Such a break with the great
world would do Mr. Gladstone good, and I fancy we could make you like
the place once more.  Let me have that hope before me.

      *      *      *      *      *

{34}

My children went to Ammergau and came back not deeply moved, but
strongly impressed.  I let them go without me from a sort of dread many
people must have felt, not because of the chief actor, for a pious,
simple-minded peasant's conception of the two natures is probably not
more inadequate than my own, but what we do gradually realise in
meditating the Passion is the character and experience of the
disciples, the effect of that companionship, the utter human weakness
that survived in the midst of the intense feelings it must have
awakened in them.  Those are contrasts that can be expressed, and are
apparently too subtle for the performers at Ammergau.  I am told that,
on the whole, the audience remained cold.

The answer to my telegram was signed in a way that led me to doubt
whether it came from you.  I trust it was sent by your brother, and
that Mr. Gladstone was not molested by my inquiries on the top of so
many more.  It is beginning at the wrong end to read David Copperfield
first, but he is worth anything to busy men, because his fun is so
hearty and so easy, and he rouses the emotions by such direct and
simple methods.  I am ashamed to think how much more often I return to
Dickens than to George Eliot.

Do some of the brothers or secretaries make a point of reading the
_Temps_?  Of all that is written against the Ministry and its general
policy, the _Temps_ articles seem to me the most serious and
suggestive, and at Marienbad I went through a course of Austrian
newspapers, which are very hostile, and better written than our Tory
organs, but not near so good as the _Temps_.  I am afraid it is my
friend Scherer.  Not being a Frenchman, his patriotism is peculiarly
lively.  Don't call Chenery my friend.  I have never seen him, and {35}
only know that he is making a mess of the _Times_.  But my reasons were
those you know well, and they will hold good next year.

You are quite right in all your corrections.  ---- ---- is a very good
fellow.  His only artifice is his discretion.  His mind is accustomed
to travel along roads straight, and wide, and beaten, so that it
accumulates conventional truths and borrowed convictions, but he is as
well meaning and as sincere as a man can well be who is not on the
watch to root up prejudices.  His son is threatened with Toryism as
with the gout.  I don't know which is worse....  I talk nonsense at
times, because sense is monotonous.  It won't do to shrink from hard
speeches and judgments when they are necessary.  But it is horrible to
make them when one is not compelled.  Do believe me when I say that is
what makes you delightful, and a certain generous, unselfish,
courageous credulity is part of it.  Commynes says: "It is no shame to
be suspicious, but only to be deceived."  That is a contemporary of
Machiavelli.  Two centuries later you will find in Télémaque these
words: "Celui qui craint avec excès d'être trompé merite de l'être, et
l'est presque toujours grossièrement."  That is the progress of 200
years.  Don't you think you see the distance between Bismarck and your
father?

You have had an excellent idea about those letters.  If you go on and
arrange them, it will be very precious to him some idle day, if that
should ever come, and to you all.  The inner reality of history is so
unlike the back of the cards, and it takes so long to get at it, which
does not prevent us from disbelieving what is current as history, but
makes us wish to sift it, and dig through mud to solid foundations.  I
conclude that all {36} political correspondence has been set in order
regularly, otherwise that ought to be thought of too.

      *      *      *      *      *

The bit of scandal suspected in the unwritten part of the Rémusat
Memoirs, was supposed to have belonged to the time of the camp at
Boulogne, of which she gives very full accounts.  But it is not
necessary to believe all those things.  There would be no pure
reputations.  I suspend my belief even about Fersen....  They cannot
publish Talleyrand's Memoirs because he tells so many tales of that
kind, and people still living would be surprised to find out who they
are.

I was flattered to know that I had supplied topics of conversation and
even of dispute at Holmbury.  I should like always to be accused by
Lord Granville, defended by your father, and sentenced by you.  But
don't always associate me with bottles of physic, even in dreams.

From something you wrote I gather that Mr. Gladstone did not altogether
disagree with Forster's sentiments; I am sure I did not; yet it seemed
to me very hazardous to make such a speech in Mr. Gladstone's absence,
suggesting wide differences in the Ministry, rousing expectations which
will go on growing through the autumn, making the Lords more angry than
repentant, using terms so vague that they can be almost honestly
misrepresented, and a great deal more.  Home Rule will make great
capital out of the events that happened after your father fell ill.

J. McCarthy's two last volumes[45] are not equal to the first, but you
will be interested in reading them.  But here is post-time, and I
cannot say one-half.

{37}

[Sidenote: _Tegernsee Sept. 27, 1880_]

It is not easy to add to the panegyric pronounced on St. Hilaire by a
too zealous friend in Friday's _Pall Mall_.  That gratifying
description is not quite satisfactory.  The writer affirms that St.
Hilaire is an Orientalist of the first rank, and a Greek scholar
unsurpassed in France.  He knows Greek thoroughly for working purposes,
but not exquisitely as a scholar; and he has done little, on the whole,
for his idol Aristotle in the way of consulting the manuscripts and
improving the unsettled text.  And although he has studied Eastern
religions deeply, I do not believe that he is a master of Eastern
languages.  Nor does he live on a third floor in that good street the
Rue d'Astorg.  He does not live there at all, but three miles away, in
a charming little bachelor's house at Passy.  His rooms, formerly in
the Rue d'Astorg, were "au fond de la cour au premier," and his
maid-servant is not (and was not) elderly, but young, though
ill-favoured.  And it is not fair to say, with obvious purpose, that he
never deserts the Thiers dinner-table except for the Germans.  I made
his acquaintance at a dinner at Lord Lyons's.

From all which I conclude that the letter is a vehement endeavour to
recommend the new Minister abroad.  Last summer St. Hilaire gave me the
three big volumes of his Aristotelian Metaphysics, and, when I
remonstrated, said, "Vous me le rendrez un jour, d'une autre façon."
That is what I am doing at this moment, when I tell you how very highly
I rate the man.

St. Hilaire is quite at the top of scholars and philosophers of the
second class.  Not a discoverer, not an originator, not even clever in
the sense common with Frenchmen, not eloquent at all, not vivid or
pointed in phrase, sufficient in knowledge, but not abounding, sound,
but not supple, accustomed to heavy work in {38} the darkness, unused
to effect, to influence, or to applause, unsympathetic and a little
isolated, but high-minded, devoted to principle, willing, even
enthusiastic, to sacrifice himself, his comfort, his life, his
reputation, to public duty or scientific truth.  He is not vain, so
much as didactic; there is a method about him that is a little severe,
a solidity that wants relief.  His character has been shaped by long
devotion to a cause that was hopeless, by which there was nothing to
gain except the joy of being a pioneer of ideas assured of distant
triumph.  So that he is disinterested, consistent, patient, tolerant,
convinced, and brave.  Indeed, courage, contempt of death, is the one
thing I have heard him speak of with something like display.  The
Republican party, to which he belonged even under Charles X., and of
which he is the patriarch, had a good deal of dirty work to wash off;
and I have observed that he was not communicative when, in an interest
which it were superfluous to mention, I have tried to learn the secret
history of Republicanism under the monarchy.  There are few of them who
never touched pitch.  But he and Littre are distinct from most others
by their hard work and their voluntary poverty.

This makes him peculiarly hateful to opponents.  A legitimate Marquis
said to me: "C'est un honnête homme, qui nous coupera la tête de la
manière la plus honnête du monde."  People who admit that he is
unstained by the gross vices of his party, speak of him as an
enthusiast, and a dupe, and no doubt expect him to acquiesce, like
Pilate, in all manner of wrong that he will not initiate.

I do not feel that there is no truth at all in these imputations.  I
have found that he thinks accurately, that he is even penetrating, but
not impressive.  He {39} told me the speech he had prepared against the
Jesuits, which, I believe, he never delivered.  The argument was: The
conscience of man is his most divine possession.  Jesuits give up
conscience to authority, therefore they forfeit the rights of men,
which are the rights of conscience, and have no claim to toleration.  I
won't undertake to refute this argument; but it is pre-eminently
unparliamentary, and smells of the oil he burns all day.  St. Hilaire
does not believe in the Christian religion, but he has Descartes's
philosophic belief in God, and the elevated morality of the Stoics.
Not the least of his merits is that having spent his life on Aristotle,
he told me that he thought more highly of Plato; and in his
Introduction to the Ethics he shows the weakness of his hero's attack
on Platonism.  In saying this he overcame a strong temptation.
Scientifically his great achievement is the transposition of the
several books of the Politics--which were in hopeless confusion before
him.  All Germany accepts the arrangement he proposed, and as the work
is the ablest production of antiquity, this is no small matter.  As a
moderate, unambitious, totally dispassionate Republican, he belongs to
the Thiers Centre.  He thinks Jules Simon the most eminent public man
in France, so that he is scarcely to the Left of Freycinet.  He
despises and detests Laboulaye, the oracle of the Centre Gauche.  I
often heard, but am not sure, that St. Hilaire turned the scale, and
made Thiers adopt, and enforce, Republicanism.

Forgive me for writing so soon and so confusedly.


[Sidenote: _Tegernsee October 3, 1880_]

Don't think me as prolific as ----, but I must begin again, as I had to
send off my letter with nothing but an answer to your question in it.
Lord Granville's {40} visit must have been more busy than pleasant; and
their dinner topic is provoking because one always hears that the best
men were those one could not have known.  Remembering Macaulay,
Circourt, and Rémusat, I do not care to believe that Cousin or Radowitz
was far superior to them in talk.  But then I, again, look back to the
people I knew with regret, and think my contemporaries less amusing.

If ever I see Hawarden again, I hope it will not be for a night and
half a day, but I do not know when that will be.  Let us fix our
thoughts on Tegernsee, and pave the way to rest and distraction here
next summer.

Without claiming the discernment of Tennyson, I hold fast to what I
said.  There may be people you dislike for one or two reasons.  You
have no tenderness for Dizzy; and I am not sure you cared much for
either of our gondola companions.  There are one or two unpardonable
crimes in your code, and one or two chasms that even Dante's mercy
cannot bridge.  But you never show it, and ill-nature must show itself
in speech.  I have no doubt at all that the relish with which you held
up the mirror of my vices the other day had more of sorrow than of
anger, and only a scrap of malice.  It must have been Cheney,
especially if it was a reminiscence of Holmbury.  Freddy Leveson has a
touching fidelity to monotonous friendships.  This one was laid down, I
think, on Holland House foundations.

If I wrapped my poet in too thick a hide of mystery (observe the
joke--own cousin to the Bite of Ecuador), it was because I fancied you
knew that you have no business to be the P.M.'s daughter, and would
never have been, but that Lady Waldegrave, lured by the sweep of the
Thames at Nuneham, neglected, or failed, to hook that brilliant Young
Englander, Monckton {41} Milnes, poet and statesman.  But I know
several men, some you never heard of, who, looking back along the road
where they took the wrong turning, say to themselves, or at least to
their friends: "Well, well; but for this or that I should be P.M. now!"

I have been prevented from finishing by interruptions, one of which was
the brief appearance of the Freddy Cavendishes, spoiled by their
uncomfortable haste to get away.  I suppose what makes her so nice is,
partly her affection for her relations.  There certainly was no
_arrière pensée_ in her way of speaking of your father.

You cannot too much cultivate his taste for Dickens.  Beware of "Little
Dorrit," "Oliver Twist," and "Dombey."  In "Chuzzlewit" the English
scenes are often amusing, but there is a story about Pecksniff that may
repel him.

      *      *      *      *      *

Please do not destroy the ease and serenity and confidence of my
letters, which are chatted and whispered, more than written, by wanting
to show them--even to Morley, in whom I have great reliance.  I should
write quite differently, as you rightly say, if I was not writing to
the most chosen of correspondents.  To Mr. Gladstone I already wrote
what was due to my friendship with St. Hilaire, especially as I fancied
that Downing Street would be strongly prejudiced against him.  Do not
turn yourself from an end into a means--one does not justify the
other....


[Sidenote: _Cannes Dec. 14, 1880_]

I have been afraid to write.  The delicious and most spiritual gift[46]
was sent to me here, whither we came early, only to find ourselves in
sore trouble, for {42} a child had died of diphtheria in our villa just
before we arrived.  We had to settle in half-furnished apartments,
where Mrs. Flower[47] found us, bringing a flavour of Hawarden.  What
has stood in my way is this: Some time ago, recalling a foolish speech
of mine, a year old, and spoken under the spell of a great charm, you
asked me to repeat it on paper.  I hesitated long, and whilst I
hesitated, the little volume came, and made it churlish to decline any
wish of yours.  I resolved that the best sign of the sincerity of my
gratitude would be to do what you had asked, and to be much more
foolish than ever by putting on impertinent record the evanescent
conversation of Tegernsee.  But I have been so fearful of giving you
more annoyance than pleasure, whether by the seeming of flattery or of
censure, that I have allowed myself to slip into a much more grievous
fault.  Will you understand me and try to forgive me?  I can never
thank you enough for all the friendship of which that beautiful volume
is the treasured symbol.  There is so much of your thought in the
beauty of it, and so much in the choice of it--more than you could
guess.  A dear friend of mine, now dead,[48] devoted himself to the
study of the Sonnets, as the real key to Shakespeare, being the form of
his own ideas, not what he gave to his characters.  We discussed them
much together in long evenings at Aldenham, and he wrote a book about
them, which he followed up with a volume called "The School of
Shakespeare"; and the two together are the best introduction to him
that I know....  Swinburne himself has recognised their merit; so that
a lost part {43} of my life came back to me with your gift.  All which
is to say that, whereas all that comes from you is very precious to me,
if anything could add to its price it was the happy chance that guided
your hand.

Beyond that I must thank you very heartily for the confidence you
showed me in sending me that early letter.[49]  It fills a large blank
in my conception and understanding of his life, for it shows--for the
first time to me--how large a part of what we know and contemplate with
wonder is an original gift, and was born with him, and how little, on
the other hand, has been added by the training of life.  There are
things which experience has restrained, and checked in their
exuberance; but there are almost all the germs of the power that rules
the movements of half a world.  When I read that skit of the revered
philosopher,[50] it almost seemed to me as if I had sometimes doubted
his greatness, and I think you were very good-natured.  He is one of
the few Englishmen of genius; one of the most perfect masters of our
language that ever wrote; and when one has said that, and said it as
forcibly as can be, one comes to a deplorable catalogue of evil
qualities with which I shall not darken my pages.  It was very good of
you to send me that introduction.

I went to the Ghetto, and was amazed at the knowledge and conversation
of a lady who turned out to be Mrs. Mark Pattison....  She seemed to be
much in the secrets of the Chamberlain-Morley-Dilke faction, and
despondent about the _Pall Mall_.  But I like Mrs. Flower exceedingly,
though I had only a glimpse of her.  I thought her intelligent,
sensible, and good--things not to be lightly spoken of anybody--and
especially {44} not to you.  As to Lady Blennerhassett, she is
kind-hearted, knows how to think straight, and is the cleverest woman I
ever met out of St. John's Wood.[51]  If I ever said less than this in
her favour, it would be injustice to do so now.  Sir Rowland
Blennerhassett fell at one time into bad hands--hands of Midhat and of
Newman....  I fancied he was half a jingo, half an Ultramontane; and
his wife seemed to back him, and held much aloof from us.  They have
richly made up for it since, and there is no Irishman whom I should
more wish to see in conference with your father just now.  He told me
so much that was curious and important and concrete, that I begged him
to put our conversation on paper, that I might use it in the proper
quarter.  He has not chosen to do it, I fear from a motive of delicacy.
For we suppose that a set is being made against Forster; and he would
not like, by private letters, to contribute to it, as his statements
certainly would have done.  But all these are words of wisdom: it is
time for foolishness.  I remember the occasion.  You wished that you
could disengage your mind from its surroundings, and learn the judgment
of posterity; and I said that, if you chose, you might hear it at once.
How I retrieved my audacity I cannot tell; and it is an awkward matter
to recall, unless, like the ghosts that looked so foolish in the
vestibule of the "Inferno," I avoid both good and evil.

The generation you consult will be more democratic and better
instructed than our own; for the progress of democracy, though not
constant, is certain, and the progress of knowledge is both constant
and certain.  It will be more severe in literary judgments, and more
{45} generous in political.  With this prospect before me I ought to
have answered that hereafter, when our descendants shall stand before
the slab that is not yet laid among the monuments of famous Englishmen,
they will say that Chatham knew how to inspire a nation with his
energy, but was poorly furnished with knowledge and ideas; that the
capacity of Fox was never proved in office, though he was the first of
debaters; that Pitt, the strongest of ministers, was among the weakest
of legislators; that no Foreign Secretary has equalled Canning, but
that he showed no other administrative ability; that Peel, who excelled
as an administrator, a debater, and a tactician, fell everywhere short
of genius; and that the highest merits of the five without their
drawbacks were united in Mr. Gladstone.  Possibly they may remember
that his only rival in depth, and wealth, and force of mind was neither
admitted to the Cabinet nor buried in the Abbey.  They will not say of
him, as of Burke, that his writing equalled his speaking, or surpassed
it like Macaulay's.  For though his books manifest the range of his
powers, if they do not establish a distinct and substantive reputation,
they will breed regret that he suffered anything to divert him from
that career in which his supremacy was undisputed among the men of his
time.  People who suspect that he sometimes disparaged himself by not
recognising the secret of his own superiority will incline to believe
that he fell into another error of wise and good men, who are not
ashamed to fail in the rigid estimate of characters and talents.  This
will serve them to explain his lofty unfitness to deal with sordid
motives, and to control that undignified but necessary work, his
inability to sway certain kinds of men, and that strange property {46}
of his influence, which is greatest with multitudes, less in
society--and least at home.  And it will help them to understand a
mystery that is becoming very prominent, that he formed no school, and
left no disciples who were to him what Windham, Grenville, Wellesley,
Canning, Castlereagh were to Pitt; that his colleagues followed him
because he had the nation at his back, by force more than by
persuasion, and chafed as he did by the side of Palmerston.

Some keys, I imagine, will be lost, and some finer lines will yield to
the effacing fingers: the impress left by early friendship with men who
died young, like Hallam, or from whom he was parted, like Hope Scott;
the ceremonious deference to authorities that reigned in college days
under a system heavily weighted with tradition; the microscopic
subtlety and care in the choice of words, in guarding against
misinterpretation and in correcting it, which belonged to the Oxford
training, which is a growth of no other school, which even in such
eminent men as Newman and Liddon is nearly a vice, and is a perpetual
stumbling-block and a snare for lesser men--these are points
appreciable by those who know him that must be obscure to those who
come after us.  They will wonder how it was that an intellect
remarkable for originality and independence, matchless in vigour,
fertility, and clearness, continued so long shrouded in convictions
imbibed so early as to be akin to prejudices, and was outstripped in
the process of emancipation by inferior minds.  The pride of democratic
consistency will aim its shafts at those lingering footsteps, as a
scientific age will resent the familiarity and sympathy with Italian
thought to the detriment of more perfect instruments of knowledge and
of power, and that inadequate estimate of the {47} French and German
genius which has been unfortunately reciprocal.

But all the things about which no New Zealander will feel as we do, do
not disturb your appeal to the serene and impartial judgment of
history.  When our problems are solved and our struggles ended, when
distance has restored the proportions of things, and the sun has set
for all but the highest summits, his fame will increase even in things
where it seems impossible to add to it.  Ask all the clever men you
know, who were the greatest British orators, and there are ten or
twelve names that will appear on every list.  There is no such
acknowledged primacy among them as Mirabeau enjoys in France or Webster
in America.  Macaulay told me that Brougham was the best speaker he had
heard; Lord Russell preferred Plunket; and Gaskell, Canning.  I have
heard people who judged by efficacy assign the first place to Peel,
O'Connell, Palmerston, and to an evangelical lecturer, whom I dare say
nobody but Lord Harrowby remembers, of the name of Burnett.  But that
illustrious chain of English eloquence that begins in the Walpolean
battles, ends with Mr. Gladstone.  His rivals divide his gifts like the
generals of Alexander.  One may equal him in beauty of composition,
another in the art of statement, and a third, perhaps, comes near him
in fluency and fire.  But he alone possesses all the qualities of an
orator; and when men come to remember what his speeches accomplished,
how it was the same whether he prepared an oration or hurled a reply,
whether he addressed a British mob or the cream of Italian politicians,
and would still be the same if he spoke in Latin to Convocation, they
will admit no rival.  "C'est la grandeur de Berryer avec la souplesse
de Thiers," was {48} the judgment of the ablest of the Ultramontanes on
his speech on Charities.

There are especially two qualities that will not be found in other men.
First, the vigorous and perpetual progress of his mind.  Later ages
will know what in this critical autumn of a famous year is only
guessed, that even now, at 70, in his second ministry, after half a
century of public life, his thoughts are clearing, moving, changing, on
the two highest of all political questions.[52]

His other pre-eminent characteristic is the union of theory and policy.
Bonaparte must have possessed the same mastery of infinite detail; and
the best democrats, Jefferson, Sieyès, and Mill, were firm and faithful
in their grasp of speculative principle.  But in democracy that
doctrinal fidelity is neither difficult nor very desirable of
attainment.  Its disciples embrace a ready-made system that has been
thought out like the higher mathematics, beyond the need or the chance
of application.  The sums have been worked, the answers are known.
There is no secret about their art.  Their prescriptions are in the
books, tabulated and ready for use.  We always know what is coming.  We
know that the doctrine of equality leads by steps not only logical, but
almost mechanical, to sacrifice the principle of liberty to the
principle of quantity; that, being unable to abdicate responsibility
and power, it attacks genuine representation, and, as there is no limit
where there is no control, invades, sooner or later, both property and
religion.  In a doctrine so simple, consistency is no merit.  But in
Mr. Gladstone there is all the resource and policy of the heroes of
Carlyle's worship, and yet he moves scrupulously along the {49} lines
of the science of statesmanship.  Those who deem that Burke was the
first political genius until now, must at this point admit his
inferiority.  He loved to evade the arbitration of principle.  He was
prolific of arguments that were admirable but not decisive.  He dreaded
two-edged weapons and maxims that faced both ways.  Through his
inconsistencies we can perceive that his mind stood in a brighter light
than his language; but he refused to employ in America reasons which
might be fitted to Ireland, lest he should become odious to the great
families and impossible with the King.[53]  Half of his genius was
spent in masking the secret that hampered it.  Goldsmith's cruel line
is literally true.[54]

Looking abroad, beyond the walls of Westminster, for objects worthy of
comparison, they will say that other men, such as Hamilton and Cavour,
accomplished work as great; that Turgot and Roon were unsurpassed in
administrative craft; that Clay and Thiers were as dexterous in
parliamentary management; that Berryer and Webster resembled him in
gifts of speech, Guizot and Radowitz in fulness of thought; but that in
the three elements of greatness combined, the man, the power, and the
result--character, genius, and success--none reached his level.

The decisive test of his greatness will be the gap he will leave.
Among those who come after him there will be none who understand that
the men who pay wages ought not to be the political masters of those
who earn them, (because laws should be adapted to those who have the
heaviest stake in the country, for {50} whom misgovernment means not
mortified pride or stinted luxury, but want and pain, and degradation
and risk to their own lives and to their children's souls,) and who yet
can understand and feel sympathy for institutions that incorporate
tradition and prolong the reign of the dead.  Fill the blanks, deepen
the contrasts, shut your eyes to my handwriting, and, if you make
believe very much, you shall hear the roll of the ages.


[Sidenote: _Dec. 14, 1880_]

Don't let me be unjust to Lecky.  Dr. Smith asked me to review his
"Eighteenth Century," but added that if I found myself inclining to
severity he would wish to recall the proposal, inasmuch as the
_Quarterly_ had just attacked Tyndall.  For it happens that Smith[55]
and I sometimes dine at a self-satisfied place that calls itself The
Club.  Good men belong to it, but stay away: Lowe, that he may not meet
----, whom he dislikes sober, and detests drunk; the P.M., because he
too much appreciates the sweetness of home; others, for other futile
reasons.  The group that continues faithful and carries on the
tradition of Johnson and Garrick is consequently small, and it is a
delicate matter to meet in such close lists men one is editorially
holding up to ridicule and obloquy.  Indeed, the presence of both
_Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly_ on that narrow stage imparts a taste of
muttered thunder to most of our meetings.  Tyndall and Lecky are
members, and Smith did not like to be on with a new quarrel before he
was off with the old.  He had spoken unfavourably of an early and
unripe book of Lecky's, who was gratified when he heard of the message
I had received, and still more when Hayward reviewed him instead of me.
I {51} declined, because I was already in the clutches of a longer
task, and because I find that people quarrel with me for reviewing
them--not from dislike of the book.  Hayward could find nothing in it
he did not know before.  But I was more fortunate; I learned a great
deal, and should have said that it was solid, original, and just.
Perhaps not deep or strong or lively, or even suggestive, for that is a
refined quality, inconsistent with the habit of telling all one knows
and thinks, and dotting all the _i_'s.  The book is lop-sided, having
grown out of a desire to demolish Froude's Irish volumes.  And it was a
mistake to treat the central, political history as a thing generally
known, that could be taken for granted.  No part of modern history has
been so searched and sifted as to be without urgent need of new and
deeper inquiry, and the touch of a fresh mind.  Here is a new volume of
600 pages on Mary Stuart, by a man I never heard of, in which every
other page tells us something unknown before, and the times of Walpole,
Pelham, Pitt, being stirred by no surviving strife, have been much less
studied than the great dispute whether Protestant or Catholic should
reign in England.  Neglecting the inexhaustible discoveries before him
in the Archives, Lecky has to give sentence when he gives too little
evidence, to describe characters more fully than careers, and to
obtrude his own very good sense where a true scholar and artist would
take care not to be seen.

There is another defect, due to the secular tone of Lecky's mind, but
common to most historians.  The age he writes of was the last in which
permanent political doctrines were formed by ecclesiastical principles.
Men very easily shape their notions of what government ought to be by
their conception of divine right, {52} of that domain in which the
actual legislator is God.  As to one class of minds Church interests
are the supreme law in politics, to others, Church forms are the
supreme example.  Nobody is so fanatical as Nigel Penruddocke; but
through subtle channels the influence works, and it was not merely a
propelling, but a constructive force in politics from the end of the
Middle Ages until the middle of the eighteenth century, when it became
fixed in the theories of men like Atterbury, Toland, Hoadley, Wilson,
Warburton--whose innermost instincts might be better exposed.

As to the novel of the season,[56] it is so dull and so absurd that I
cannot get beyond the first volume.  Except querulousness, it has
nearly all the bad qualities of old age; and if St. Barbe is meant for
Thackeray, it is contemptible even in caricature.  My neighbour
Salisbury must feel that his time is soon coming.

There is a little disappointment for Hayward even in the "Life of Fox."
There is less pioneer's work in it than in Fitzmaurice.  But the
fulness of knowledge, the force and finish of the style (you see by my
three F's that I have been studying the Irish question) have revealed a
new man.  I see him compared to his uncle,[57] and I think it is not an
exaggeration, though Taine says there have been only two men in the
world who had Macaulay's perspicuity.  G.O.[58] is as transparent as
graceful, and more easy.  The only thing that has shocked me yet is his
presumptuous assurance about the authorship of Junius.  It is a Whig
dogma that Francis was Junius; but that is mere Macaulayolatry.  I have
seen half the arguments that convinced me {53} thirty years ago fall to
pieces; and I am provoked that Trevelyan gives me old conclusions
instead of new proofs.  If his speaking has made as much progress as
his writing, the Government has acquired a future Secretary of State.
But I am still unhappy at their meeting Parliament with Courtney out in
the cold.

As I quote Taine, I ought to say that I do not agree with him.  The
problems Macaulay made so clear were not the most difficult.  Fenwick's
attainder, and the theory of standing armies--purple patches in the way
of exposition--are trifles compared with questions which jurists,
divines, economists have to discuss.  The phases of the Pelagian
controversy, or the principles of government about which the Lutheran,
Zwinglian, Calvinist, and Anglican Churches contended, would better
have tested his power of making darkness clear.

I am glad that I wrote to Fagan before reading his book.[59]  For I
wrote about the Italian correspondence, which is curious.  But the
biography does not deserve the praise it gets from partial people in
Downing Street.  Houghton, I hear, has written ill-naturedly about
Panizzi; but the book is as full as an egg of mistakes, and of things
worse than mistakes, so that even remonstrance would be thrown away.
You will read with interest two volumes of Mérimée's letters to
Panizzi, just coming out.  He was a bad man, and generally wrong; but
few men ever wrote so well.

      *      *      *      *      *

I will get the _Church Quarterly_ at Nice, where I go to see my friend
Arnim, who is dying there, and shall {54} be very curious to read the
article.[60]  There is not a more interesting or unexhausted topic in
all history than Julian, but I would have waited for the promised
edition of his work against the Christians, which had not appeared when
I left Germany.

Here is Parker,[61] fresh from Hawarden; and when I think of your long
and obstinate cold, I cannot help regretting that you did not make the
Cardwells bring you to Montfleury, where they are our nearest
neighbours.  He is much better than half a year ago, but very weak.
For three weeks the sun has shone all day.  Greatcoats and umbrellas
are obsolete; and we have the most beautiful walks.

T. B. Potter, also at Montfleury, and a great favourite with my
children, keeps me supplied with Cobdenian literature, and I have read
Brodrick[62] with much pleasure.

Of course we are always thinking of Ireland, wishing for heroic
treatment, such as would have saved Louis XVI. and the old French
Monarchy, despairing of the needful overwhelming majority in the
Commons, of any majority in the Lords, of union and strength in the
Ministry; cheered by several intelligent letters and articles in the
newspapers, sure only of the chief, and more sure of his strong mind
than of his strong hand.  If he has time for anything else, I hope he
has read _La Belgique et le Vatican_, the volume published by
Frere-Orban, the Belgian Minister, a weighty study of Vaticanism.

I am under the shock of the sudden Cabinet and of {55} the Standard
article, and am waiting for an answer to a telegram to know whether I
must come at once.  If not now, then on Monday or Tuesday before the
opening, for I want to get the cue of the situation from the P.M. (an
affair of five minutes), to see you, not quite so rapid a proceeding,
and to hear the first debates.

      *      *      *      *      *


[Sidenote: _Cannes Dec. 27, 1880_]

Your patient and forgiving letter is my best Xmas gift.  It will be a
joy indeed to see you again next week.  I hope not only in the midst of
gilded ceremonial.

It is so like you to take my nonsense kindly and only to dispute the
praise.  But I am not quite so far off as you imagine.  In speaking of
home I must have indicated by a--break, that there was a change of key;
that I could not stay among the lofty entities that surround Tennyson
even when he butters toast, that I was coming down from the silver side
of the clouds and groping for things of earth.  So that my climax is
not quite literally meant.  Having thus paved the way to retreat from
an exposed position, let me take my stand for a moment, and say that I
think it not quite untenable....  You yourself, who have shared so much
of your father's thoughts and confidence, have hardly adapted yourself
to his chosen tastes and special pursuits?  In more than one of the
later phases of his life, I fancy you hardly recognised the secret laws
of the growth of his mind, and join him sometimes by an effort, over a
gap.  There is an ancient scholar at Cannes, who told me that he has
such confidence in the P.M. that he feels sure he will succeed in
defending his policy.  I partly said and partly thought that anybody
can be on {56} Mr. Gladstone's side who waits to be under the thrall of
his speech.  The difficulty is to hear the grass growing, to know the
road by which he travels, the description of engine, the quality of the
stuff he treats with, the stars he steers by.  The scholar is old and
ugly, and, it may be, tiresome.  It is impossible to be less like you.
But is there not one bit of likeness--in the stars?

Really it is time for me to adopt the Carey tactics and run away from
my post of defiance.

You know one of the two subjects.  You will know the other on the last
night of the debate on the address.  I am only listening to the grass.

You will not resist what I said of our five Ministers if you will
consider one word.  I think I spoke of their best qualities, not of all
their qualities.  Pitt's art of making himself necessary to the King
and the constituencies is unapproached.  But then it is a vice, not a
merit, to live for expedients, and not for ideas.  Chatham was very
successful as a War Minister.  Mr. Gladstone has not rivalled him in
that capacity.  I fancy that both Pitt and Peel had a stronger hold
than he has on the City.  Please remember that I am possessed of a Whig
devil, and neither Peel nor Pitt lives in my Walhalla.  The great name
of Mr. Canning and the greater name of Mr. Burke[63] are the only names
that I hold in highest honour since party government was invented.

You can hardly imagine what Burke is for all of us who think about
politics, and are not wrapped in the blaze and the whirlwind of
Rousseau.  Systems of scientific thought have been built up by famous
scholars on the fragments that fell from {57} his table.  Great
literary fortunes have been made by men who traded on the hundredth
part of him.  Brougham and Lowe lived by the vitality of his ideas.
Mackintosh and Macaulay are only Burke trimmed and stripped of all that
touched the skies.  Montalembert, borrowing a hint from Döllinger, says
that Burke and Shakespeare were the two greatest Englishmen.

But when I speak of Shakespeare the news of last Wednesday[64] comes
back to me, and it seems as if the sun had gone out.  You cannot think
how much I owed her.  Of eighteen or twenty writers by whom I am
conscious that my mind has been formed, she was one.  Of course I mean
ways, not conclusions.  In problems of life and thought, which baffled
Shakespeare disgracefully, her touch was unfailing.  No writer ever
lived who had anything like her power of manifold, but disinterested
and impartially observant sympathy.  If Sophocles or Cervantes had
lived in the light of our culture, if Dante had prospered like Manzoni,
George Eliot might have had a rival.

      *      *      *      *      *

I do think that, of the three greatest Liberals, Burke is equally good
in speaking and writing; Macaulay better in writing, and Mr. Gladstone
better in speaking.  I doubt whether he feels it; and if he does not
feel it, then I should say that there is a want of perfect knowledge
and judgment.  That want I see clearly in his views as to other men.
He hardly ever, I think, judges them too severely.  Sometimes I am
persuaded he judges with an exceeding generosity, and I fancy it is
because he will not charge his mind with uncharitableness, because he
{58} does not allow for the wind, that he does not always make bull's
eyes.

      *      *      *      *      *


      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _Athenæum Jan. 14, 1881_]

It is impossible to leave England without emotion, when my last glimpse
of your father was lying in bed and in the great doctor's hands.  It
will indeed be such a charity if you will send a line on a P.C. by
to-morrow, Saturday's post, to me at Goschen's, Seacox Heath,
Hawkhurst, Kent, that we may have Sunday's comfort in good news, and I
say advisedly a P.C. that you may not suspect me of an artifice to
obtain that other delight, of an early letter, such as those you write.
Don't let the lesson of suspicion turn against the teacher.  Don't even
let it damage anybody much.  I will not spoil my own ideal.  That
American book is too wicked![65]

Forgive me if there is one point, if only one, on which I do not agree
with Ruskin, who never writes to any one what might hot be written to
the world, on the fly-leaves of books.

Your mother must think me an ill-mannered wretch, even if she did not
discover it before--for going away without thanking her for that
beautiful photograph.  I did not feel sure, at first, how much she was
weighted with trouble, for I had never witnessed her serene courage.  I
will leave it to you, if you please, mindful of an exquisite proverb
quoted this evening in the House as follows: Speech is silence, but
silver is golden.

      *      *      *      *      *

{59}

      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _La Madeleine Jan. 20, 1881_]

What I said of Ruskin was only to excuse the platitude I wrote in his
book, not to rescue my letters from appropriate destruction.

You evidently think that George Eliot is not the only novelist at whose
feet I have sat, and that I have learned from "Endymion" the delicate
art of flattery.  So that the seed of suspicion has taken root after
all, and I hang by my own rope.

We might perhaps agree about Trevelyan better than you suppose.  I
probably started from a lower estimate of the man, and was astonished
at his fulness of knowledge and the vigour of his pen.  The oblique
style of narrative is said to be an invention of Gibbon, and Trevelyan
is of course full of Gibbon's times and writings.  And I quite agree
with you that the business of historians is to get out of the way, and,
like the man who plays Punch, to concentrate attention on their
personages.  Nobody, however, did this less than his illustrious uncle.

I shall look out with extreme interest for your kinsman's[66] review of
George Eliot.  I heard so many hard things said of her by Arnold and
Palgrave, but Wolseley is one of her admirers.


      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _La Madeleine Jan. 21, 1881_]

My letter was hardly posted when yours arrived.  Besides what you
mention, Arthur Lyttelton would find an important paper in the _Pall
Mall_ of the last week of the year, on the early Warwickshire life of
George Eliot, and a letter of hers on the original of Dinah.  I fancy
it would be worth while to look up {60} some of her Westminster reviews
between 1850 and 1854; and the last word of her philosophy is more
outspoken in Lewes's scientific writings than in her own.

It is hard to say why I rate "Middlemarch" so high.  There was a touch
of failure in the two preceding books, in "Felix Holt," and even in
"Romola."  And it was "Middlemarch" that revealed to me not only her
grand serenity, but her superiority to some of the greatest writers.
My life is spent in endless striving to make out the inner point of
view, the _raison d'être_, the secret of fascination for powerful
minds, of systems of religion and philosophy, and of politics, the
offspring of the others, and one finds that the deepest historians know
how to display their origin and their defects, but do not know how to
think or to feel as men do who live in the grasp of the various
systems.  And if they sometimes do, it is from a sort of sympathy with
the one or the other, which creates partiality and exclusiveness and
antipathies.  Poets are no better.  Hugo, who tries so hard to do
justice to the Bishop and the Conventionnel, to the nuns and the
Jacobinical priest, fails from want of contact with the royalist
nobleman and the revolutionary triumvirate, as Shakespeare fails
ignobly with the Roman Plebs.  George Eliot seemed to me capable not
only of reading the diverse hearts of men, but of creeping into their
skin, watching the world through their eyes, feeling their latent
background of conviction, discerning theory and habit, influences of
thought and knowledge, of life and of descent, and having obtained this
experience, recovering her independence, stripping off the borrowed
shell, and exposing scientifically and indifferently the soul of a
Vestal, a Crusader, an Anabaptist, an Inquisitor, a Dervish, a
Nihilist, or a Cavalier without {61} attraction, preference, or
caricature.  And each of them should say that she displayed him in his
strength, that she gave rational form to motives he had imperfectly
analysed, that she laid bare features in his character he had never
realised.

I heard the close of Friday's debate, and was much distressed at the
hopeless badness of C----'s speech.  But the situation gained by the
result, and still more by what passed on Monday.

The topic of the reason for delay is, as I hinted at my last moment, a
very delicate one, and not to be discussed lightly.  Suppose there is
bloodshed in Ireland before the Protection Bill passes; then a reproach
would lie at their door for thinking more of eventualities that regard
themselves than of the immediate danger to life, and the heavy strain
on families of small means dependent on their own or other people's
rents.  And there will be this argument to meet, that less severity in
October or November would go farther than greater severity in March.

      *      *      *      *      *

The journey across France was really freezing.  So I remained at Paris
for a few hours' rest and no visits.  Bisaccia came south in the same
train, and Goldsmid, who gives me a dinner to-night.  I see by the
papers that it is still too cold for your pony-carriage.

My whole social philosophy consists in the desire not merely to gratify
by civilities, but to bring men into contact with Mr. Gladstone--be it
by breakfast, dinner, or small and early, or even by a formal talking
to like ----'s--and your best art, together with the due discharge of
pasteboard, will be to bring him to bear, directly, on the seventy or
eighty men who want it, and are fit for it, and don't neglect Lady
Spencer's {62} parties, or Lady Granville's less multifarious evenings.
It is the confrontation, not the ceremony, that matters.  False
believer,[67] because impostor, not to say hypocrite.  I mean that,
beyond his charitableness and a written eloquence that always fills me
with an unspeakable admiration and delight, I do not believe in your
artful philosopher; that the differences revealed to us by his
writings, his conversation at Hawarden, the letter you treated so
generously, cut down to the bone, and leave me no space or patience for
anything better than a gracious courtesy.  Therefore, in abetting your
studies in Ruskinese, I am no better than a humbug, which is not a word
to be written in books that will live and will irritate as long as the
language.


[Sidenote: _La Madeleine Jan. 28, 1881_]

My faults are to you an opportunity of displaying those qualities to
which you will not let me allude.

      *      *      *      *      *

Those are not truisms about George Eliot.  The reality of her
characters is generally perfect.  They are not quite always vivid, or
consistent.  They degenerate sometimes into reminiscences.  But they
live a life apart from hers, and do not serve her purposes.  I wonder
whether Arthur Lyttelton knows any good German criticism of her; I
don't think I have seen any.

      *      *      *      *      *

The Tories were sure to cheer as wildly as the Irish hit.  You have, I
fancy, felt the weakness of Forster's great speech,[68] which, to the
eye of a practised revolutionist, slightly disparages the Government.

He makes out an irresistible case against those who {63} think all is
right in Ireland, so far at least as to need nothing exceptional from
Parliament.  He thinks little of the man--the imaginary hearer--who
thinks that the Irish peasants have a case; that the suffering and the
wrong are real, and are partly the work of the law; that the horrors
which fill us with impatience are the direct--though not the
unmixed--consequence thereof; that the first way to remove effects is
to remove the cause; that, whereas all this is certain, it remains to
be proved that the evil is beyond that treatment; and that the movement
which has its root in the soil, cannot be so dissociated from the
movement that has its root in America, that the one may heal and the
other may starve.  Probably he does not wish to speak of remedial
measures beforehand, and in the same comminatory breath, or to dwell
too much on the purely revolutionary peril, which is a delicate topic,
about which people are not agreed, and which it is awkward to prove.
But he is so little occupied with the one real objection, in this
speech charged with the wisdom of many Cabinet discussions, that one
wonders whether that other line of thought, so repugnant to the
Castle,[69] was ever forcibly put forward in the Cabinet.

What you say of great men manifesting only themselves in their
works--the predominance, one should say, of the lyrical mood--is
profoundly true.  Milton and Byron are supreme examples.  It is the
reason why there are so few great epics, and so few great--there are
many good--histories.  It is, in higher literary work, the same
solicitude that makes it almost impossible for men to think of the
right instead of the expedient.  You can hardly imagine how people
wondered what Mr. Gladstone's motives were in the {64} Bulgarian
affair.  Most politicians would be ashamed of having done any
considerable thing because it was right, from no motive more clever
than duty.

Fancy the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ asking me to do their article on
Jesuits!  I answered that I hoped they would have one on Mrs. Lewes.  I
have written my testimony to Mr. Cross,[70] encouraging him about the
intended life....  Thank you a thousand times beforehand for every
chance line you promise me.  You do not know how to say things that are
not interesting.


[Sidenote: _La Madeleine Feb. 2, 1881_]

There is no way of describing the light and the joy which your letters
bring to this place of exile, with all the reality of the old country,
and with the ideal which belongs only to you and yours.  I was hoping
that you had heard the glorious speech.[71]  It must have been a treat
for you; and we saw at once, from our _Pall Mall_ itself, how profound
the impression had been.  My imaginary listener, if he had listened,
might not have remained unconverted.  Certainly, as you say, the
strongest confirmation of both speech and policy is the attitude of
these ill-conditioned Irishmen.  As I have paired with Lord Limerick
(who has married a Miss Colquhoun of Cannes, and prefers bondage at his
father-in-law's villa to the protection of the land-league in his
ancestral domain, and who would support the Bill), I have virtually
paired against it, and am, I dare say, the only peer on that side,
unless Henry Stanley[72] escapes from Clare, where he is detained,
under pretence of Boycotting, by the transparent artifices of
friends....

{65}

I was prepared to believe the _Standard_ account by a visit from
Wolverton, who offered to show me his last letter from Downing Street,
and I told him I thought he could do it.  He was delighted to find the
Hawarden photograph at Cannes.  You will not see him for a fortnight,
unless he lost all his money to-day at Monte Carlo.  He deserves to
lose it.  He wants a strong Coercion Bill and an illusory Land Bill;
but his party and personal loyalty make up for much obdurate deafness
to the Morley predications.

I am very much obliged indeed for your message about Trevelyan.  I
talked about bringing in outsiders, and men not of one's own politics;
and I spoke of Trollope and Morley in the former capacity, and of
Goschen in the latter.  Trollope is condemned as noisy.  There are
obvious objections to a newspaper editor, and the particular Lyttelton
objection was urged, in a letter to me, by Reeve.[73]  Derby and Arthur
Russell put forward G.O.,[74] and I leave Goschen in the lurch until he
answers my letter from Paris pointing out the error of his ways; but I
hope you will be gracious to him before he goes.  Goschen is above
sordid motives.  He dreads the Radicals, detests ----, despises ----,
and, if left to himself and the nearest influences, he will drift away.
His lips have never been touched with the sacred fire of Liberty.  His
international soul has never glowed with the zeal of the good old
cause.  He is moved by the fears to which City men are prone, and there
are people more calculating than he is, who work those fears, partly to
check the Government, partly to provide a new chief for the Opposition.
Nobody can keep him straight but Mr. Gladstone.  There is nothing
present to offer him, as {66} I take it for granted that one Budget
will not satisfy his--the P.M.'s--vast financial designs.  But he can
employ the plan of Napoleon, who said to reluctant tribunes: "Que ne
venez vous discuter avec moi, dans mon Cabinet?  Nous aurions des
conversations de famille."  It is not a profound constitutional view of
the uses of an opposition; but there is a hint in it for Mr. Gladstone,
who underrates his own power over men in private.  The bill as sketched
by the _Standard_ will strengthen his hold on Goschen.

Chamberlain has been often as indiscreet as the theory he expounded to
F. Cavendish implies, but he can hardly have prompted the _Standard_.

I am glad to think of Dizzy dining at No. 18.  I wonder whether it is
because Lord Granville has heard he is Rowchester.[75]  Your choice of
topics shows how you were on your guard with Sir Bartle.  The true
thing about him is the strength, not the softness.  I know that many
have been taken in by that assumed quality, and much resented it.  The
right place for him would be in Asia Minor.

If you were to see those letters you would say that Burne-Jones is not
the only hand at missing a likeness; but in politics you would
recognise exactly what must have been your impression, that I had
strung my expectations a little above practicable height, and came down
with anguish to the baseness of prose--like the heroine of my dreams (I
mean Dorothea, not the lady whose name is in your letter).

I fear there is a perceptible change for the worse in Cardwell.

{67}

[Sidenote: _La Madeleine Feb. 10, 1881_]

You have gone through an anxious time, and I need not say where my
thoughts were fixed during the week of Revolution.[76]  I trust you are
well out of it, and found relief at Lubbock's.  Wolverton is growing
excited and goes back.  I shall miss his good spirits, his keen
pugnacity, his singularly practical and unphilosophical view of
politics, and Godley's[77] letters.  And I don't know whether the
Government will gain an adviser prompt, if they make a mistake, to help
them to find it out.

I have suggested to May[78] a precedent for the action of the Speaker
in stopping the discussion.  It was three days before the Little
Gentleman in Black Velvet[79] at Hampton Court changed the dynasty.
The House was in Committee; the Tories were getting the worst of it and
wished to prevent a division.  The Whigs would not hear of an
adjournment, and were jubilant, when one of their number had a stroke
of apoplexy.  Harley, the Speaker, in concert with the Chairman, seized
the opportunity, took the chair, and closed the debate.  Although the
majority was floored, nobody seems to have remonstrated.  I presume it
is not on the Journals, and does not count.

In the hundreds of reflections suggested by the day of the scene, and
of the superb speech, there is one slightly laced with regret (laced is
a metaphor taken from toddy and negus).  Once in 1816, the extreme
Royalists, taking offence, walked out of the Chamber of Deputies.  The
majority were about to vote when {68} De Serre[80] said: "Personne ne
croira que j'approuve, même indirectement, l'espèce de scission dont
nos yeux sont frappés en ce moment.  Mais je demande s'il ne serait pas
de la sagesse, je dirai même de la générosité de la majorité ici
constatée et qui pourrait delibérer très légalement, de remettre la
séance à demain.  Il importe qu'on ne puisse pas dire que vous avez
refusé d'entendre ceux de vos membres qui pourraient avoir des
observations à faire."  And the debate was adjourned.

I like to quote De Serre, for though a Tory in those days, he would
have developed if he had lived; and there is no statesman in French
parliamentary history who has so much analogy with Mr. Gladstone.

Arrival of your letter from High Elms,[81] with enclosure--I was
surprised at those Irishmen going astray so hopelessly, when they had a
man amongst them who knows so much about parliamentary tactics as
Justin McCarthy.  Their anger at the arrest of Davitt shows that it was
not properly deliberate.  One argument with which you must have grown
familiar in the autumn comes to one's mind again since the Resolution.
Free government is government by consent; and consent is conveyed by
the choice constituencies make of their representatives.  In a local
and circumscribed, not imperial question, legislation must, as a rule,
depend on the consent of those concerned, as represented in Parliament.
This argument is not conclusive against Coercion, because the Land
League has not even an Irish majority on its side.  But it might apply
to the three quarter vote.[82] In a purely Irish question the {69}
whole Irish representation might be swamped and silenced by half the
House.  I think the Irish might make some play here by insisting on the
distinction between wanton obstruction--stoppage of imperial measures
and paralysis of the House--and obstruction on their own exclusive
ground.  Wanton obstruction cannot be tolerated in a Parliament that
legislates for one-fifth of mankind, although it was the method by
which Rome acquired liberty.  But the Resolution makes even local
obstruction impossible to the unanimous people of Ireland.  It
establishes a degree of subjection that did not exist before.  As the
test of liberty is the position and security of minorities, it has to
encounter a very grave objection which is not felt in Mr. Gladstone's
time, but might be, under men like Harcourt, or the late Lord Derby, or
George Grenville.

As the police[83] are responsible, I hope Mr. Gladstone will always be
ready to listen to their advice.  But he knows very well that it is the
function of the police to take fright, and to wish to be very much
indeed on the safe side.

I am glad you saw more of Lubbock, and liked him better.  He has
astonishing attainments, and a power of various work that I always
envy.  And he is gentle to the verge of weakness.  He has something to
learn on the gravest side of human knowledge; apart from that he would
execute his own scheme[84] better than almost anybody.  How I should
like to see my own List of Authorities drawn up by you!  There was a
Pope who said that fifty books would include every good idea in the
world.  Literature has doubled {70} since then, and one would have to
take a hundred.  How interesting it would be to get that question
answered by one's most intelligent acquaintances: Winton,[85]
Dunelm,[86] Church, Stanley, Liddon, Max Müller, Jowett, Lowell,
Freeman, Lecky, Morley, Maine, Argyll, Tennyson, Newman, W. E. G.,
Paget,[87] Sherbrooke, Arnold, Stephen, Goldwin Smith, Hutton,
Pattison, Jebb, Symonds, and very few others.  There would be a
surprising agreement.  One is generally tempted to give a preference to
writers whose influence one has felt.  But that is often accidental.
It is by accident, by the accident that I read Coleridge first, that
Carlyle never did me any good.  If I had spoken of him it would not
have been from the fulness of the heart.  Excepting Froude, I think him
the most detestable of historians.  The doctrine of heroes, the
doctrine that will is above law, comes next in atrocity to the doctrine
that the flag covers the goods, that the cause justifies its agents,
which is what Froude lives for.  Carlyle's robust mental independence
is not the same thing as originality.  The Germans love him because he
is an echo of the voices of their own classic age.  He lived on the
thought of Germany when it was not at its best, between Herder and
Richter, before the age of discipline and science.  Germany since 1840
is very different from that which inspired him; and his conception of
its teaching was a grotesque anachronism.  It gave him his most
valuable faculty, that of standing aside from the current of
contemporary English ideas, and looking at it from an Archimedean
point, but it gave him no rule for judging, no test of truth, no
definite conviction, no certain method and no sure {71} conclusion.
But he had historic grasp--which is a rare quality--some sympathy with
things that are not evident, and a vague, fluctuating notion of the
work of impersonal forces.  There is a flash of genius in "Past and
Present," and in the "French Revolution," though it is a wretched
history.  And he invented Oliver Cromwell.  That is the positive result
of him, that, and his personal influence over many considerable
minds--a stimulating, not a guiding influence; as when Stanley asked
what he ought to do, and Carlyle answered: "Do your best!"  You see
that I agree with the judgment of the _Times_ (outer sheet); and the
_Daily News_, preferring him to Macaulay and G. Eliot, and
constructively to Mill or Newman or Morley, seems to me ridiculous.  I
should speak differently if, reading him earlier, I had learned from
him instead of Coleridge the lesson of intellectual detachment.

      *      *      *      *      *

How could you read Laveleye's foolish letters?  Pray don't believe him.
His speech about Herbert Spencer is an after-thought.  He said he
thought him inferior to Mill; the rest is padding.  As he has emptied
his sack of compliments on me I am sorry to think of the other things
you would have him say, for they must be in the other key.  Have you
read the _Nineteenth Century_ on Liberal Philosophy?[88]  Mr. Gladstone
certainly would not allow the definition of Liberalism attributed to
him to stand alone.  My book begins with 100 definitions,[89] but that
is not to be one of them, and I wish I knew of one fit to stand in your
father's name.

{72}

The royal dinner-party was evidently a high success, and, apart from
royalty, I was glad to think of Derby frequenting Downing Street.  I
hope his time will come soon, although when he and Goschen are in the
Cabinet I am afraid I shall lose my tenant at Prince's Gate....


[Sidenote: _Cannes Feb. 16, 1881_]

Your kindness to B---- is like nothing but yourself--not only for
procuring him his innings so opportunely, but for interpreting so
generously his perplexity and irresolution.  I dare say you are right
to lay the blame on me.  It will be very amusing to get remonstrances
from bewildered friends, and I think I shall have to write to Arthur
Russell, as the most inquisitive and idle of them all, and therefore
the best to trust with a secret that is to be told.  For pray believe
that there is no real truth in the report.

I paired for the Government with Lord Limerick against.[90]  No doubt,
if he was present and voted, he would support the bill.  Therefore, in
balancing or neutralising his vote, I am virtually pairing with a
supporter, not an opponent, and am myself practically opposing.  But
that is only my metaphysical commentary, founded on the fact that an
Irish Conservative is sure to like the bill much better than I do.
There is no understanding of the kind between us, and neither of us
mentioned this particular measure to the other.  I am simply in Cork's
list, paired with a good Tory.  And it all comes to nothing, for none
of us expect a division on the second reading.

The only people with whom I need disclaim the impeachment would be
Morley & Co., as I should only be making Radical capital out of a
little joke.  The {73} joke consisting in your representing me as a
worse enemy to Ministers than all the Tories and half the Irish.

I made out in the autumn that Blennerhassett laid a good deal of blame
on Forster's want of flexibility of mind and of _coup d'oeil_.  I dare
say he is quite right.  There is evident truth in one remark you quote.
The excuse for agitation is by no means always its cause; and I would
not be too hopeful of the effects even of the most perfect or most
popular Land Bill.  Ultramontane priests will never, permanently, be on
the side of the State.  To nurse their own influence and the religious
faith of the people, they always magnify antagonism and persecution,
which implies denunciation of antagonists and persecutors.  And there
are deeper reasons still, why it is useless to apply to Irish measures
the usual test of success.  However, I am more often angry with our
clergy for absolutism than for revolution, so that I will say no
more....

I never knew Amalie v. Lasaulx; but her brother was one of the best
friends I ever had.  For two years I followed his lectures on ancient
literature, philosophy, &c., and he left his library to me when he
died.  His whole mind was occupied with religious ideas and studies;
but it was an intellectual religiousness, without a notion of a church
or any fervour of prayer.  His sister had his independence of mind and
the same generous idealism, and a humble piety which he had not, and
which is remarkably rare among intellectual Germans.

... The Speaker[91] seems to be a physician as well as a statesman.
The victory over the disturbing Irish must bring your father immense
relief.  It is twenty-one years since I met him at Brighton, horribly
jaded, {74} and getting rapid baths of sea-air.  I hope he will benefit
this time.

You will have seen Scherer on Carlyle.  The passage in Monday's _Pall
Mall_, exalting Arnold at his expense, only shows that his[92]
burlesque language provoked the rigid and highly white-chokered critic.
Froude will be a worthy biographer for so unscrupulous a hero.


[Sidenote: _Cannes Feb. 19, 1881_]

What I said of St. Hilaire has become a little obsolete since his
resolute denial that the Greeks have a European decision--or award, as
it stood in the English draft--in their favour.  I cannot remember
whether I indicated the mental peculiarity which has developed into
such impolicy; but whatever I did say is for you to apply and employ
entirely as you please.  The Arthur Russells, moreover, know him enough
to introduce the necessary vinegar.

The little joke about Forster is no deeper than Æsop.  One said: "He
has a woman's heart with a lion's spirit."  Somebody answered: "Rather,
a lion's skin."

It was reported that Ecuador[93] was preparing a Bark in defence of the
Pope.  Your father suggested that it must be a vocal bark.  Others said
it was probably Jesuit's bark (they prevail in Ecuador).  And so it
went on--that it was worse than their bite, &c., &c., &c.

I thought the _World's_ apology to the Irish utterly impudent, but one
of the best strokes of wit I can remember in my time.

I meant it as you say; only the slightest tinge.  One need only look at
them to see that generosity would {75} be as completely wasted on them
as on Salisbury, though there are three or four very much better than
others.  De Serre was, except Chateaubriand, the only man with a streak
of genius among the politicians of Louis XVIII.'s reign; and he had
virtue and governing power, which that brilliant impostor had not.  It
seldom happens that parliamentary debates cut down to the bone, or tap
the bed of principle.  There are about half-a-dozen series of debates
that do, because they constructed a system of government from the
foundations--the French National Assembly, in 1789-1791 and 1848;
Frankfort, in 1848; Belgium, in 1831; the French Parliament, after
1815, are among the rare instances.  And in that latter instance the
most eminent orator, the finest character, was De Serre.  He stood
nearly where Canning stood at that time--between the parties, disliked
by both, persuaded, without the least prejudice or passion, that a
strong monarchy was necessary in the levelled society of France,
willing to make some sacrifice of strict principle in that cause, yet
looking forward to better times, which he did not live to see, for his
health broke down in 1822, and he died in 1824.  One story will explain
the man to you.  In one of his speeches he laid down that the bulk of a
representative assembly is almost always well meaning (an axiom of
constitutional philosophy).  Furious outcries from all the royalist
benches interrupted him; shouts of: "Vous oubliez la Convention!"  He
answered: "Yes, even the Convention! (order! order!) ... and if the
Convention had not voted under the terror of assassins, France would
have been spared the most terrible of crimes!"

Laveleye has great knowledge of Political Economy and of politics, and
his peculiarity is that he does not {76} think of party, or power, or
wealth, but is thoroughly anxious about the condition of society.  That
separates him from orthodox Economists (Lowe, Mallet, Newmarch), who do
not attend to the problem of Distribution, and are not made sleepless
by the suffering and sorrow of the poor.  He is slightly heterodox;
what Germans call Kathedersozialist, and what even Maine would call
downright Socialist.  His chief work is an account of early forms of
property, an indirect and rather confused plea for common property in
land.  Ingram,[94] Cliffe Leslie nearly represent him in England.  He
is a special enemy of the Catholic priesthood, like M. Frère-Orban, the
Belgian minister, and Laurent of Ghent; but differs from them in the
wish to give the people something better than negations.  He has
married a Protestant lady, and attends Protestant service; but whether
from any dogmatic conviction, or as a bulwark against Ultramontanes, I
am not sure.  He is a very estimable man, well informed, earnest,
slightly tiresome, and not at all original.

Don't mind coming to grief over parallels.  A disposition to detect
resemblances is one of the greatest sources of error.  To me parallels
afford a blaze of light, but they are rare, and hard to find.

... What you tell me of Mr. Gladstone's health is good news indeed; and
I hope you will not listen to his regrets about a measure contrary to
the law of freedom.  As much authority as is wanted to protect the few
against the many, or the weak against the strong, is not contrary to
freedom, but the condition of freedom.  The disease lies in society,
not in the state.  The other view, that the only dangerous enemy {77} a
nation has is its government, is pure revolution, and was invented by
St. Just.

      *      *      *      *      *


[Sidenote: _Cannes March 7, 1881_]

When the accident[95] happened, the Cardwells had a favourable telegram
from a friend of yours, and we learned the news and Paget's verdict
together.  You must have passed through terrible moments at first.  But
the best thing about it was your setting off to amuse yourself at
Oxford.  All England has been made to feel the truth of what you say,
and Mr. Gladstone is almost the only man who does not ask the question:
What is to be done if he is disabled?

I must give up my friend Sir Bartle at last.  I thought he had courage
and self-command; but he has been showing the mean spirit of recent
Toryism in a way I did not suspect.

Your father's resolute adherence to principle, and his ascendency over
weaker colleagues will be put to a grievous trial by the folly of the
hapless Jingo[96] Wolseley bequeathed to the new government.

I had a cousin who travelled beyond the Vaal, and at last died there.
He taught me to believe that the Boers were excellent fighting
materials.  But Sir Garnet pretends that they are liars and cowards,
the only white race retrograding.  So that Sir Bartle is not the only
South African authority I must relinquish.

I hope you really like Sir James Paget.  You know that he is one of my
Blue Roses, and makes up for my manifold disbeliefs in great
contemporaries.  The author[97] of the novel just mentioned is here,
and is {78} our amiable and hospitable neighbour.  There has been such
a Whip for Candahar that five people asked to pair with me.  They are
not, on the whole, interesting travellers, except one, with a handsome
and over-married wife.  And we have had Sir Louis Mallet, very
interesting, and very sound about Afghanistan.

I am just off to Rome, to bring my mother-in-law away, who has spent
the winter there, and to see what ten years, and a new pope and new
king have made of it.  I am only allowed a week's holiday, and must
crowd a good deal into it.  The Sermons[98] will be my first resource
when I come back next week.  Thank you, beforehand, so very much for
them.  I did not guess the secret history, and, after your letter, the
Arms Bill was a disappointment.  When in England I convinced myself
that there was, at that time, no threat of invasion or insurrection;
but when I saw the Bill going on, I fancied "Endymion" might be right
about that hidden danger.

      *      *      *      *      *

Your letter came in the middle of this one of mine, and I can hardly
send a word of gratitude for such kindness.  Until George Eliot I
thought G.S.[99] the greatest writer of her sex in all literature.  I
cannot read her now.  But that is individual taste, not deliberate
judgment.  She is as eloquent as one can be in French--the unreal,
unhealthy eloquence that Rousseau brought in, that the Girondins spoke,
that Chateaubriand, Lamennais, Lamartine made so popular, that nobody
but Hugo strives after now, and that was modified in her case by Polish
influences.  Some of these Frenchmen live on nothing else; and if one
plucks {79} them, or puts their thoughts into one's own language,
little remains.  But she had passion, and understood it, and deep
sympathy, and speculative thought, and the power--in less degree--of
creating character.  She could rise very high, for a moment, and her
best prose is like a passage from good poets.  It is a splendid
exhibition, diffuse, ill-regulated, fatiguing, monotonous.  There is
not the mastery, the measure, the repose one learns from Goethe and the
Greeks.  She scatters over twenty volumes the resources her English
rival concentrates into a chapter.  There is beauty, but not wisdom;
emotion, but not instruction; and, except in her wonderful eye for
external nature, very little truth.  I would call her a bad
Second--such as Swinburne is to Shelley, or Heine to
Schiller--comparisons which involve a great deal of disparagement.

The conversation of those three great men[100] is very curious--I
should have liked to see and hear them....  If, by chance, there was a
message or a commission for Rome, I shall be at the H. d'Angleterre
until next Monday.


[Sidenote: _Cannes March 25, 1881_]

Rome is the cause of all my delinquency.  I remained a week, very ill
with sunshine and south wind, but very happy, and supremely grateful
for your letters and Illingworth's Sermons.  Travellers' Rome is what
it was; but in the real city the change is like the work of centuries.
The religious activity and appearance that were of old are gone, and
their place is usurped by things profane.  The State has so thrown the
Church into the background, that the Leonine city sleeps like a faded
and deserted suburb, and one must look behind the scenes for what used
to be {80} the glory and the pride of Rome.  The bewildered
Girondin[101] at the Vatican, who stands so well with the Castle,[102]
I did not see, but heard much of his moderation, patience, and despair.
I think he is the first Pope who has been wise enough to despair, and
has felt that he must begin a new part, and steer by strange stars over
an unknown sea.

I found a British ambassador devoid of political influence and
understanding, but splendidly hospitable, and good-natured even to the
friends of his own government.  Layard, after serving the Court as a
stick to beat Paget with, had left before I came.  Almost all my time
was spent with the two friends[103] whom you remember at a memorable
examination at Venice, and seven days passed like hours.  But why do I
write all this?  Am I not going to see you soon?  I hear of a friendly
yacht in the Mediterranean, and of his family accompanying the P.M.
That can only mean embarkation at Cannes.  It will be a joy for us
indeed, and nothing shall be left undone to make your stay here as
pleasant and as long as possible.  You will not take long to understand
that it is one of the sweetest spots in Europe.  Let this be an assured
element in all your Easter plans, that you will find here a haven of
rest and friends not to be surpassed in affection by any elsewhere.
Tell me what rooms to take at a neighbouring snug hotel.  Or do you
stay at Capodimonte?  Nothing here spoken of must be to the detriment
of six weeks with the Professor[104] at peaceful Tegernsee, between
August and October.

Lecky seems to me to have composed unconscious of another tune running
in his head.  The likeness is {81} greater in the description than in
the reality.  Chatham had public virtue, genius, energy, coupled with
the magic power of transmitting it, the strength that comes with
unselfish passion, and a grand way of spending popularity that others
meanly hoard.  He had few ideas, less instruction than Fox or
Shelburne, too little political knowledge for a clear notion of his own
place, of the stair he stood upon in history, or for any definite view
of the English or European future.  I admit no comparison,[105] except
with the Burke of 1770-80.  That early Burke would have made the peace
with the Africanders, which is the noblest work of the Ministry.

When you seem to doubt what I think of it, you mean that Coercion has
robbed me of my footing in your confidence.  Four weeks ago a very
eminent foreigner wrote to me that the discovery of the Afghan papers
would chill your father's Russian sympathies.  After explaining that
the discovery was not new for Ministers, I begged my friend to dismiss
sympathies for principles, and to understand that there are in the
world men who treat politics as the art of doing, on the largest scale,
what is right; and I informed him that he would presently see peace
made with the Boers on terms of great moderation, after disasters
unavenged, in defiance of military indignation, in spite of lost
prestige.  You see that I knew what I was saying.  Bearing in mind how
strong a weapon of offence is thus given to enemies at home,
considering the strength the offended feelings lately showed, and the
weakness that lies in the attitude of the Government down to the time
of our defeats, I declare that I rejoice in this inward victory with
heartier joy and a purer pride than {82} I have been able to feel at
any public event since I broke my heart over the surrender of Lee.[106]

Carlyle's two volumes are crowded with grotesque eloquence, but they
make him smaller in my eyes (nothing could make him worse).  The
account of Southey seems to me to do him less harm than the rest.
"Common Sense" I read and recognised as Hayward.  It seemed to me
nearly true; but I thought the _Times_ and _Temps_ near the truth.

Your question about my injustice to Germany before 1840 touches a vital
point, and you narrowly escape a very long answer.  Scientific Germany
was hardly born in all those years when Goethe, Schleiermacher,
Schlegel, Richter reigned.  The real, permanent, commanding work of the
nation has been done by a generation of men very many of whom I have
known.  To me it seemed that Carlyle spoke of great men before
Agamemnon, and the bonfires that were good in the dark obscure the
daylight.

And there would be much to say about the appreciation of the French and
German genius, and the unpleasant reciprocity of chilled sympathy.  But
even if I could convince you of the fact, I do not know the reason.
Let me only say, to prove that I am not fearful of giving you pain,
that I think there is some want of method in his[107] pursuit of
foreign literature.  Things come to him by a sort of accident, are
pressed on him by some occasion, and are taken up with absorbing
vigour, not always with a distinct recognition of the book's place in
its series, of the writer's place among other writers.  That sort of
knowledge can only be obtained {83} by close and constant study of
Reviews, by men having more patience than urgent steam pressure, by
much indistinct groping and long suspense.  This seems unreasonably
confused; yet I think you will see what I mean by the time we have
taken a walk over the hill of Californie,[108] from which you gaze on
fifty miles of the Riviera.

To-morrow I must be away from home; so I write in ignorance of your
brother's speech on Candahar.  I am sure, if he spoke on so good a
subject, he justified Challemel.  It will be a real privilege to hear
Lowell discourse on Dante.  I am sorry the _Paradiso_,[109] which is in
the press, has not appeared.  It is a good thing for all parties that
Lowell should be linked by more than political chains.

The Sermons[110] have been unjustly taken by Wickham before I could
read them; but I shall have them soon.  I saw enough to justify all you
said, in former letters.  There is an originality about them which
obliges one to think again before acquiescing in everything.  The next
number of the _Church Quarterly_ will be very interesting to me.  But
there will be a dreadful cold shower-bath when the "Life"[111] appears.

"Consuelo" is a very great novel.  Afterwards she[112] threw herself
away on Monographs.  I know that I don't like her; but I don't think I
could ever have compared Miss Brontë or Miss Austen to her.

      *      *      *      *      *

Do you know an M.P. of the name of Lea?  He is a rich Kidderminster
carpet manufacturer, and is member, now, for Derry.  I have seldom met
a more {84} thoughtful, intelligent, and satisfactory man.  He has been
to Aldenham, and I have stayed with him at Kidderminster, and thought
him so sensible, so full of resource, that I should think him worth
talking to about Ireland....  He was an Independent, and has, I think,
conformed.  Among your friends, apart from Whips, I should expect Bryce
to know all about him.  If he comes to a Tuesday I entreat you to
remember that he has impressed me, and friends who are better judges
than I, in a way not common among the people one meets in small
provincial towns and societies.  I have a good deal more to say, but I
fancy it will lose nothing by waiting for the Paris Express.  Meanwhile
the great veil will be lifted from the Budget and the Sempronian
Law,[113] and I await a rare excitement.  Keep Cannes and Tegernsee
steadily in view.


[Sidenote: _Cannes April 2, 1881_]

It was a short dream, but a pleasant one, not to be quite forgotten
until Tegernsee fairly looms on us.  Herbert's speech seems to me to
deserve all the praise it brought him.  That evening I met Henriquez,
who spoke at Harrow during his canvass, and who says that as a speaker,
apart from political experience and knowledge, he has nothing to learn.
At the beginning the Skobeleff argument struck me as wanting a more
elaborate introduction, but my doubt was soon dispelled.  Please tell
him, with my hearty congratulations, that the Roman empire perished for
want of a good Land Bill.  That criticism[114] which Palgrave has
disinterred makes me think of the judge who was not tied to a stake,
and of Roger Collard's answer when asked whether he had called Guizot
an austere intriguer: {85} "I never said austere."  _It_ is rather a
gift of inventing picturesque, and often grotesque epithets and
nicknames, than general power of expression.  The sentences are seldom
good, and not comparable to those of the faithful Ruskin.  But the man
who called Stanley a body-snatcher deserves a monument in Westminster
Abbey.

You must have snubbed ---- at Lady Reay's.  Or did he think you laughed
at him?  That, you know, is a possible error.  There is no doubt that
the opinion others have of us is one of the very many sources of subtle
error in our judgments which have grown into such a prodigious
catalogue since Bacon feebly began to enumerate them.  People who study
them, and stand on their guard against this particular temptation, fall
easily by identifying themselves with their principles.  It is almost
an axiom in controversy that to attack one's adversary personally is to
confess disbelief in one's cause, where doctrine and not conduct is in
question.  And I do see men who are personally attacked, conclude that
their adversary is dishonest and knows that he is in the wrong.  On the
other hand, there is an institution in London founded on the belief
that private acquaintance and good-fellowship softens the asperity of
public conflicts.  You know about Grillion's, where men dine without
quarrelling, and where, by a pleasant fiction, no bore is supposed to
live.  There the effect is what your father says.  People make
opponents like them, and soften to their opponents, in consequence.

I write under the shadow of Disraeli's illness.  Our last accounts are
very threatening; and I, who think that the worst part of the man was
his cause, and who liked him better than the mass of his party, look
with dismay on the narrowness and the passion of those who {86} will
succeed him.  He, at least, if he had no principles or scruples, had no
prejudices or superstitions or fanaticism.  You have heard it said of
---- that he would have been a good fellow, if he had not been a
drunkard, a liar, and a thief.  With a few allowances ... a good deal
may be said for the Tory leader who made England a Democracy.  One must
make so much allowance for so many public men besides Midhat.[115]

The Pope[116] probably had no clear view about policy.  If he had, he
would hardly be Pope.  But he sees that the old spells have lost their
power over men, and so he gives them up.  It does not yet appear
whether he knows that the power is gone for ever; but visibly, for the
time, he is trying new arts, and endeavours to restore, by conciliation
and management, what Pius ruined by authority.  The attempt to
disengage himself from the crash of the Legitimists is the most
remarkable instance of the change.  He explains that the Church must
not be so committed to any political party as to stand or fall with it.
But that has been, since 1849, the entirely unvarying policy of Rome,
and has forced all the enemies of absolute power to turn their forces
against Catholicism.  If once the two things are separated, there will
be a great change in the position of things in Europe.  If the Pope
does not maintain Legitimacy he gives up the temporal power.  He has no
legal or political claim to Rome that Chambord has not to France, for
arguments derived from Canon Law are without validity in politics.  By
weakening his one resource, he shows that he thinks the game is up.
And then there is no insuperable obstacle to reconciliation with the
Powers.  Solicitude for temporal sovereignty {87} has been the cause of
all the faults and disasters of our Church since the murder of
Rossi.[117]  To surrender it implies such a conversion that I shall not
believe in it till I see clearer signs; for his chief confidant is the
Archbishop of Capua, an old friend of mine, who is what Newman would be
without his genius, his eloquence, and his instruction.

I don't know where to stop.  Capua is a bad stopping place.


[Sidenote: _Cannes Palm Sunday April 10, 1881_]

Don't mind my weak handwriting and brief letter, but I have spent most
of this great parliamentary week in bed, and this is my first attempt
to write.

I so much want to hear from you that your father is well and happy.
The achievement seems incomparable, and the policy wonderful.[118]  But
I am too confused in mind yet to understand the whole thing and the
flight of the Thane.[119]  Probably it has been long foreseen, and is
taken almost as a victory from coming alone.  It portends tremendous
opposition in the Lords, unless Derby has succeeded him,[120] and even
then.  I have seen nothing but the _Times_--stormy weather delaying all
English papers; and I read the peroration to my family as explaining
why the speaker is in my eyes so much the best of statesmen.  I wonder
what an intelligent Socialist would make of the sentence which says
that the Irish landlords would have been guilty of injustice by
appropriating the results of tenant labour in improvement of the soil.
In a rough and ready way {88} they might apply the maxim to
manufactories too.  Then comes an extract from the ninth paragraph of
the Bessbro' Report to the effect that Irish rents are lower than
English, which might, I fancy, serve when they try to stop the way by
getting up an agrarian movement in this country.  I should add, having
been so recalcitrant, that the Court ought to be able to effect what is
substantially just in the Irish claims.  I don't much believe in
peasant proprietorship; but I should like much done for emigration, and
have not been converted from what he said about that in 1845.  The
threatening close of the eleventh[121] Budget speech must not, I hope,
be taken literally--not only because the Budget, laid down on partly
Tory lines, is not a very great one; partly because the speech is full
of promise and suggestion, and even menace; also because the only
successor whose succession would not seriously weaken the Ministry,
Goschen, declared his resolution not to join it when he returns....

You will not have had time to read French newspapers and academic
speeches.  They elected Rousse,[122] a lawyer, not famous, but much
trusted by the expelled monks.  Falloux was not ashamed to say to me:
"au moins, c'est un honnete homme--chose precieuse aujourd'hui."  His
speech was an exquisite composition.  But d'Aumale, in his reply, said
that Cicero was a much better man than Demosthenes--in politics.  I
hope that sentiment would vex your father, the one man who has the
right to pronounce between them.  A good historian says of Demosthenes:
"Er war Idealist und uberschätzte in gefahrvollen Zeiten die Wirkung
sittlicher Kräfte."

I am anxiously watching the change of Ministry in {89} Italy, where I
saw this mischief brewing so lately.  A worse administration than the
present seemed to me almost inconceivable.  They avowed the doctrine
that there is no resisting the priesthood except by definite
Spencerianism; and that whatever is given to God goes to the Pope....


[Sidenote: _La Madeleine April 14, 1881_]

... Your welcome and consoling handwriting quickly followed by the
appearance of Wolverton fresh from home, brought me all I was wishing
for almost as soon as my letter was gone.  Thank you so much for
knowing so well what one is thinking of.

We rather expect Argyll to take refuge here too during these holidays.

The _Pall Mall_ is worth anything for its concentrated essence of
opinion.  Much of this is stupid.  But the accusation begun by
Argyll--that the measure abandons the old lines on which the Liberal
party won its battles, introduces new principles not tested yet by the
experience of nations, and begins, in short, a new departure--is one
that will be urged with great force and some truth, and it will not do
to disguise the magnitude of the change.  The suspicion that the P.M.
was changing on the two[123] greatest of all political questions comes
true after all; and I wonder which of the twenty-two texts was in the
ascendant when I thought myself convicted of false prophecy!

I don't feel to know how much German Herbert reads, for I don't rely on
what he picked up at Tegernsee.  But I want to draw his attention, if
it avails, to one literary matter.

Within the last ten or twelve years there has been a wonderful change
in political economy in the {90} direction of which Laveleye, Ingram,
Cliffe Leslie are popular exponents, and which Sherbrooke and Bonamy
Price anathematise.  The essential point is the history and analysis of
property in land.  It is important that our people should be exactly
acquainted with these views and results before the debate comes on.
Two volumes contain all that it is necessary to read:--Roscher,
_National oekonomik des Ackerbaus_, and Wagner's _Grundlegung der
Volkswirthschaft_.

He that has read these two books knows a good deal about the lines on
which Society is moving that he cannot well discover elsewhere.

      *      *      *      *      *

You will not agree with me in rejoicing that Cairns[124] has done
himself so much credit at the same moment when Salisbury has injured
himself seriously by his offer of Tunisian hush money.  All this is a
misfortune for the Italians, as they cannot have a reasonable Ministry
with the present Parliament, and the circle is closing round them.
Perhaps it will teach them to dismiss ambition.

Punch's Irish landlord spoils a very old Italian story.  The poet
Mortola, out of envy, shot at another poet and missed him.  He had to
get relieved of his excommunication by the Pope, and his confession
was: "E vero, Santo Padre, ho fallito."[125] ...


[Sidenote: _Cannes April 24, 1881_]

I am not sure that there is any quite available and compendious answer
to the two reproaches of setting the poor against the rich, and of
giving power to those least fit for it.  There lurks in each an atom of
inevitable truth; and the sententious arguments which serve to dazzle
people at elections may generally be met by {91} epigrams just as
sparkling and as sound on the other side.  Politics are so complex that
almost every act may be honestly seen in very different lights; and I
can imagine so strong a case against our African policy as to drive
from his moorings any man not well anchored in justice.

Assuming that the first objection culminates in Midlothian: it was
necessary to bring home to the constituencies, to needy and ignorant
men, the fact that Society, the wealthy ruling class, that supported
our late Mazarin[126] in clubs and drawing-rooms, was ready to spend
the treasure and the blood of the people in defence of an infamous
tyranny,[127] to gratify pride, the love of authority, and the lust of
power.  Nearly the same situation arose in Ireland, and in other
questions not so urgent.  Secondly, as to Democracy, it is true that
masses of new electors are utterly ignorant, that they are easily
deceived by appeals to prejudice and passion, and are consequently
unstable, and that the difficulty of explaining economic questions to
them, and of linking their interests with those of the State, may
become a danger to the public credit, if not to the security of private
property.  A true Liberal, as distinguished from a Democrat, keeps this
peril always before him.

The answer is, that you cannot make an omelette without breaking
eggs--that politics are not made up of artifices only, but of truths,
and that truths have to be told.

We are forced, in equity, to share the government with the working
class by considerations which were made supreme by the awakening of
political economy.  Adam Smith set up two propositions--that contracts
{92} ought to be free between capital and labour, and that labour is
the source, he sometimes says the only source, of wealth.  If the last
sentence, in its exclusive form, was true, it was difficult to resist
the conclusion that the class on which national prosperity depends
ought to control the wealth it supplies, that is, ought to govern
instead of the useless unproductive class, and that the class which
earns the increment ought to enjoy it.  That is the foreign effect of
Adam Smith--French Revolution and Socialism.  We, who reject that
extreme proposition, cannot resist the logical pressure of the other.
If there is a free contract, in open market, between capital and
labour, it cannot be right that one of the two contracting parties
should have the making of the laws, the management of the conditions,
the keeping of the peace, the administration of justice, the
distribution of taxes, the control of expenditure, in its own hands
exclusively.  It is unjust that all these securities, all these
advantages, should be on the same side.  It is monstrous that they
should be all on the side that has least urgent need of them, that has
least to lose.  Before this argument, the ancient dogma, that power
attends on property, broke down.  Justice required that property
should--not abdicate, but--share its political supremacy.  Without this
partition, free contract was as illusory as a fair duel in which one
man supplies seconds, arms, and ammunition.

That is the flesh and blood argument.  That is why Reform, full of
questions of expediency and policy in detail, is, in the gross, not a
question of expediency or of policy at all; and why some of us regard
our opponents as men who should imagine sophisms to avoid keeping
promises, paying debts, or speaking truths.

{93}

They will admit much of my theory, but then they will say, like
practical men, that the ignorant classes cannot understand affairs of
state, and are sure to go wrong.  But the odd thing is that the most
prosperous nations in the world are both governed by the masses--France
and America.  So there must be a flaw in the argument somewhere.  The
fact is that education, intelligence, wealth are a security against
certain faults of conduct, not against errors of policy.  There is no
error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest
men.  Imagine a congress of eminent celebrities, such as More, Bacon,
Grotius, Pascal, Cromwell, Bossuet, Montesquieu, Jefferson, Napoleon,
Pitt, &c.  The result would be an Encyclopædia of Error.  They would
assert Slavery, Socialism, Persecution, Divine Right, military
despotism, the reign of force, the supremacy of the executive over
legislation and justice, purchase in the magistracy, the abolition of
credit, the limitation of laws to nineteen years, &c.  If you were to
read Walter Scott's pamphlets, Southey's Colloquies, Ellenborough's
Diary, Wellington's Despatches--distrust of the select few, of the
chosen leaders of the community, would displace the dread of the
masses.  The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern.
Every class is unfit to govern.  The law of liberty tends to abolish
the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class.
It is not the realisation of a political ideal: it is the discharge of
a moral obligation.  However that may be, the transfer of power to the
lower class was not the act of Mr. Gladstone, but of the Conservatives
in 1867.  It still requires to be rectified and regulated; but I am
sure that in his hands, the change would have been less violent.

{94}

Nor do I admit the other accusation, of rousing class animosities.  The
upper class used to enjoy undivided sway, and used it for their own
advantage, protecting their interests against those below them, by laws
which were selfish and often inhuman.  Almost all that has been done
for the good of the people has been done since the rich lost the
monopoly of power, since the rights of property were discovered to be
not quite unlimited.  Think not only of the Corn Laws, but of the fact
that the State did nothing for primary education fifty years ago.  The
beneficent legislation of the last half century has been due to the
infusion of new elements in the electoral body.  Success depended on
preventing the upper class from recovering their lost ground, by
keeping alive in the masses the sense of their responsibility, of their
danger, of the condition from which they had been rescued, of the
objects still before them, and the ancient enemy behind.  Liberal
policy has largely consisted in so promoting this feeling of
self-reliance and self-help, that political antagonism should not
degenerate into social envy, that the forces which rule society should
be separate from the forces which rule the state.  No doubt the line
has not always been broadly marked between Liberalism where it borders
on Radicalism, and Radicalism where it borders on the Charter.  Some
reproach may visit Bright and Mill, but not Mr. Gladstone.  If there
were no Tories, I am afraid he would invent them.  He has professed
himself a decided Inequalitarian.[128]  I cannot discover that he has
ever caressed the notion of progressive taxation.  Until last year I
don't think he ever admitted that we have to legislate not quite
impartially for the whole nation, but for a class so numerous as to be
{95} virtually equal to the whole.  He dispels the conflict of classes
by cherishing the landed aristocracy, and making the most of it in
office.  He has granted the Irish landlords an absolution ampler than
they deserve.  Therefore, though I admit that the condition of English
society tends in some measure to make the poor regard the rich as their
enemies, and that the one inveterate obstacle to the welfare of the
masses is the House of Lords, yet I must add that he whose mission it
is to overcome that interested resistance has been scrupulous not to
excite passionate resentment, and to preserve what he cannot correct.
And I do not say it altogether in his praise.

It is the law of party government that we contend on equal terms, and
claim no privilege.  We assume the honesty of our opponents, whatever
we think or know.  Kenealy and Bradlaugh must be treated with
consideration, like Wilberforce or Macaulay.  We do not use private
letters, reported conversations, newspaper gossip, or scandals revealed
in trials to damage troublesome politicians.  We deal only with
responsibility for public acts.  But with these we must deal freely.
We have to keep the national conscience straight and true, and if we
shrink from doing this because we dare not cast obloquy on class or
party or institution, then we become accomplices in wrong-doing, and
very possibly in crime.

We ought not to employ vulgar imputations, that men cling to office,
that they vote against their convictions, that they are not always
consistent, &c.  All that is unworthy of imperial debate.  But where
there is a question of unjust war, or annexation, of intrigue, of
suppressed information, of mismanagement in matters of life and death,
of disregard for suffering, {96} we are bound to gibbet the offender
before the people of England, and to make the rude workman understand
and share our indignation against the grandee.  Whether he ought, after
that, to be left to Dean Stanley[129] is another question.

But I am not surprised at the complaint you heard.  To many people the
idea is repugnant that there is a moral question at the bottom of
politics.  They think that it is only by great effort and the
employment of every resource that property and religion can be
maintained.  If you embarrass their defence with unnecessary rules and
scruples, you risk defeat, and set up a rather arbitrary and
unsanctioned standard above the interest of their class or of their
church.  Such men are not at their ease with the Prime Minister,
especially if he is against them, and even when they are on his side.
I am thinking of Argyll in Lytton's first debate; of Kimberley always;
of soldiers and diplomatists generally.

Whilst you find Conservatives surprised at the moderation of the Bill,
I have had the pleasure of meeting two members of the Government who
think it goes much too far.  And now the papers announce two more
impending secessions.[130]  I really don't know what is to become of us
in the Lords.

The _Pall Mall_ résumés of Lord Beaconsfield have been intensely
interesting.  None seemed to me too severe, but some were shocking at
the moment.  He was quite remarkable enough to fill a column of Éloge.
Some one wrote to me yesterday that no Jew for 1800 years has played so
great a part in the world.  That would be no Jew since St. Paul; and it
is very startling.  But, putting aside literature, and therefore
Spinoza {97} and Heine, almost simultaneously with Disraeli, a
converted Jew, Stahl, a man without birth or fortune, became the leader
of the Prussian Conservative and aristocratic party.  He led them from
about 1850 to 1860, when he died; and he was intellectually far
superior to Disraeli--I should say, the greatest reasoner that has ever
served the Conservative cause.  But he never obtained power, or
determined any important event.  Lassalle died after two years of
agitation.  Benjamin,[131] the soul of the Confederate ministry, now
rising to the first rank of English lawyers, had too short and too
disastrous a public career.  In short, I have not yet found an answer.

I think, failing sons and secretaries, it is really important that the
P.M. should set somebody in Downing Street to read Wagner's
_Grundlegung_.  It would be a great advantage to an outsider if he were
to get it up, and to know exactly where the agrarian question now
stands in Europe, both as to theory and practice.  It is an exceedingly
able, bold, and original book, and the author occupies, at Berlin, the
first chair of Pol. Economy in Germany.  I would even venture to ask
you to mention it to him, as flotsam from the Riviera.


[Sidenote: _La Madeleine April 30, 1881_]

Like you I am sorry for the omission[132] on Monday, and for the sequel
to it next week.  The homage of the House in which he was so long
distinguished was due to Disraeli, and it would have been a fit
occasion for a panegyric which might have appeared natural and {98}
informal.  The Monument is a homage paid by the nation, demanding more
than parliamentary or other intellectual distinction, and implying
public service of some exceptional merit and amount.  This is wanting
in Disraeli.  And we deem not only that the good was absent, but that
the bad, the injurious, the immoral, the disgraceful was present on a
large scale.  Let us praise his genius, his wit, his courage, his
patience and constancy in adversity, his strength of will, his
originality and independence of mind, the art with which he learned to
be eloquent, his occasional largeness of conception, his frequent good
nature and fidelity to friends, his readiness of resource, his
considerable literary culture, his skill in the management of a divided
and reluctant party, even his superiority to the greed of office; let
us even call him the greatest Jewish minister since Joseph--but if we
say that he deserved the gratitude of the nation, and might claim his
reward from every part of it, I am afraid we condemn ourselves.  This
feeling will certainly be expressed out of doors, if not in the House,
and will not only mar the general effect, but will almost seem to have
been provoked, by the formality and the postponement.  Its existence in
any considerable measure is a reason against doing what offends many
consciences, and is gracious only when all but unanimous.  Personally
it will be a great opportunity for your father.  I am afraid I deplore
it from every other point of view.

      *      *      *      *      *

Here is Lord Morley going home to-morrow, and much to be envied.  If
you see him, he will tell you that Cannes is a very nice place indeed.
I see, by the way things are going, that the Land Bill is pretty safe
in the Commons; but I wonder how {99} much ascendency Northcote has
with his colleagues elsewhere....


[Sidenote: _La Madeleine May 7, 1881_]

The defect of the argument is that it will neither wear nor wash.  It
cannot be employed in public.  Nobody can say:--"I who overthrew Lord
Beaconsfield's ministry, reversed his policy, persuaded the nation to
distrust him, and brought his career to a dishonoured end--I who,
altogether disagreeing with a certain friend of mine, thought his
doctrines false, but the man more false than his doctrine; who believe
that he demoralised public opinion, bargained with diseased appetites,
stimulated passions, prejudices, and selfish desires, that they might
maintain his influence; that he weakened the Crown by approving its
unconstitutional leanings, and the Constitution by offering any price
for democratic popularity,--who, privately, deem him the worst and most
immoral minister since Castlereagh, and have branded him with a stigma
such as no other public man has deserved in my time,--nevertheless
proceed, in my public capacity, to lock my true sentiments in my
breast, and declare him worthy of a reward that was not paid to Fox or
to Canning; worthy not only of the tribute due to talents, efficiency,
and courage, but of enduring gratitude and honour; and I do it because
I am not the leader of the nation, but the appointed minister of its
will; because it is my office to be the mouthpiece of opinions I
disapprove, to obey an impulse I condemn, to execute the popular wishes
when they contradict my own."

That is a position which cannot be held, a motive impossible to avow.
But then there is no answer to Labouchere when he recalls the scathing
denunciations of {100} last year and asks "whether they were seriously
meant, or whether, having served their purpose, they have been
abandoned and committed to oblivion; whether the Prime Minister
declares their injustice and invites the country to join him in making
reparation, whether the responsibilities of power have effected the
usual transformation from the exigencies of electioneering agitation,
and whether we are to understand that the career of Lord Beaconsfield
appears in a different light to those who have inherited his
difficulties and have learned to appreciate his aims, from that which
blazed on so many platforms.  If the Rt. Honble. gentleman maintains
his maledictions, if his soul is still vexed by the memory of
disgraceful peace and disgraceful war, of tyranny protected, of
bloodshed unavenged, then let him not forget the picture which he drew,
which still dwells in the hearts of millions; the praise that comes
from the lips that uttered those burning words must be hollow, for the
soul cannot be there; it would be better that he left the task to more
congenial hands, to some who could speak from the fulness of the heart,
to some less prominent critic of Tory policy, to some less austere
apostle of national duty."

The nation, it is true, supported Lord Beaconsfield, but the same
nation also very decidedly condemned and rejected him.  The author of
the rejection is the worst possible mouthpiece of the former approval.
And in a question which is really one of morals everybody must judge
and act for himself.  If the degradation of public principle spread
from Lord Beaconsfield to his party, and from them to the Liberals, to
whom are we to look for a stricter spirit and a loftier standard?  Is
it for him who, as a volunteer, stemmed the tide of corruption, to ride
on it now that all authority, moral, political, {101} personal, is
concentrated in him?  No doubt, the opposition will be overdone; but
there are materials which a light and skilful hand, P. J. Smyth, for
instance, might use with telling force.

I will propose a double Cartoon: The P.M. proposing the monument,
correct, slightly white-chokered, wearing what Whiteside called his
oratorical face, making the splendour of words do duty for
realities--and the Philippic Demosthenes of Midlothian rousing the
sleepy Lion with tumultuous argument and all the unceremonious energy
of a deep conviction.

As to Lord Granville's motion on the same subject, I am not sorry to be
out of the way of it.

To "sweep away" the House of Lords would be a terrible revolution.  The
more truly the House of Commons comes to represent the real nation, the
more it must fall under the influence of opinion out of doors.  It has
less and less a substantive and independent will of its own, and serves
as a barometer to register the movement going on outside.  Now the
opinion of a whole nation differs from that of any limited or united or
homogeneous class by its inconstancy.  It is not pervaded by one common
interest, trained to the same level, or inspired by one set of ideas.
It is rent by contending motives, and its ideas cannot get a firm grip
because there is nothing solid to lay hold of.  The whole is not more
sure to go wrong than a part, but it is sure not to go long the same
way.  This sort of fluctuation which is unavoidable in the nation has
to be kept out of the state, for it would destroy its credit, its
influence abroad, and its authority at home.  Therefore, the more
perfect the representative system, the more necessary is some other aid
to stability.  Six or {102} seven such aids have been devised, and we
unite three of them in our House of Lords--Primogeniture, Established
Church, and an independent judiciary.  Its note is Constancy--the wish
to carry into the future the things of the past, the capacity to keep
aloof from the strife and aims of the passing hour.  As we have none of
the other resources proper to unmixed governments, a real veto, a
federation of states, or a constitution above the legislature, we must
treasure the one security we possess.  A single assembly has an immense
preponderance of authority and experience against it.  Chamberlain
would soon bring it under the control of instructions, that is, would
convert it into a democratic engine, and the empire, I apprehend, would
go to pieces.

The worst anybody can imagine is a modification of the House of Lords,
such as would make it less independent, less affected by tradition,
less united in one interest, but more intelligent and, probably, more
powerful.  That seems to me possible, though difficult, and uncertain
and hazardous in an infinite degree.  1 do not plead for this, but I
cannot set myself absolutely and irrevocably against it.  The House of
Lords represents one great interest--land.  A body that is held
together by a common character and has common interests is necessarily
disposed to defend them.  Individuals are accessible to motives that do
not reach multitudes, and may be on their guard against themselves.
But a corporation, according to a profound saying, has neither body to
kick nor soul to save.  The principle of self-interest is sure to tell
upon it.  The House of Lords feels a stronger duty towards its eldest
sons than towards the masses of ignorant, vulgar, and greedy people.
Therefore, except {103} under very perceptible pressure, it always
resists measures aimed at doing good to the poor.  It has been almost
always in the wrong--sometimes from prejudice and fear and
miscalculation, still oftener from instinct and self-preservation.
Generally it does only a temporary injury, and that is its plea for
existence.  But the injury may be irreparable.  And if we have manifest
suffering, degradation, and death on one side, and the risk of a
remodelled senate on the other, the certain evil outweighs the
contingent danger.  For the evil that we apprehend cannot be greater
than the evil we know.  I hope the Drawing-room was not very cloudy.
Why did not you sit next Lord Granville?  He would have been less deaf.

      *      *      *      *      *

... The arrest of Dillon will produce its effect in the House and on
the action of his colleagues, and may be a source of new difficulties.
But I cannot find fault with it, not even with the prosecution of
Most,[133] although Harcourt is in disgrace.... ---- takes the line
natural in a newspaper, and does not choose to distinguish murder from
insurrection--a besetting sin of democrats.


[Sidenote: _Tegernsee June 3, 1881_]

...  I thought his[134] speech on the 2nd Reading[135] admirable, but
for the allusion[136] to the larger measure the Tories would have to
bring in, which might put Shaw & Co. into some difficulty.

They say that Lenbach has gone on painting him, and has succeeded
admirably, but that the likeness is severe and depressing.

{104}

Lord Granville told me of his Roman troubles, and I had to give an
opinion, which was not that of the importunate widow.  But a
representative so foolish and so hostile would have been more dangerous
at St. Petersburg than at Rome, where he is only throwing away the
mighty influence of your father's name, but where there is not critical
interest at stake.  Lord G. seems to me to have done well about Tunis;
but I am sorry I wasted my eulogy on B. St. Hilaire.

The _Contemporary_ was very interesting.  There was a saying of Carlyle
that Germany had produced nothing since Goethe, which confirmed what I
said to you about the limit of his information.  I don't know who
Shirley[137] is; but the small divine[138] amused me very much, and his
article would have been just and good if it had not ended by implying
that the judgment of the late elections settles the question of
right--a sentiment fit for Gambetta and the punch-drinking politicians
of Cahors.

You asked me the other day a perplexing question, suggested, less by
the loss in the house of your friend, than by the observation that men
are passionately fond of talking about themselves, and practising
autobiographical arts.  My answer must be what you anticipated.  Being
refused at Cambridge, and driven to foreign universities, I never had
any contemporaries, but spent years in looking for men wise enough to
solve the problems that puzzled me, not in religion or politics so much
as along the wavy line between the two.  So I was always associated
with men a generation older than myself, most of whom died early--for
me--and all of whom impressed me with the same moral, that {105} one
must do one's learning and thinking for oneself, without expecting
short cuts or relying on other men.  And that led to the elaborate
detachment, the unamiable isolation, the dread of personal influences,
which you justly censure.

Please write that censure is not anger, and tell me what you are all
doing, what the prospects are, how much social trouble you take, and
whether you liked Matthew Arnold and his airs....


Your letter has been indeed a joy in the midst of trouble.[139]  You
have understood so much of what it is hard to write....

      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _Munich Oct. 15, 1881_]

She has taken with her one of the strongest links that attached me to
this world, but I do not follow less keenly the movements of the man
who, of all now living, has the greatest power of doing good.  The
Irish speech on Friday, and the economic speech on Saturday, made the
strongest impression on me.

I fancy the man who attacked the calculation of national profit in the
latter, misunderstood his own case, and might have made something of it
if he had spoken of the distribution, not of the increase of wealth.
The treatment of Home Rule as an idea conceivably reasonable, which was
repeated at Guildhall, delighted me.  I felt less sure of the
distinction between that as a colourable scheme, and the Land League,
as now working, as one altogether revolutionary and evil.  At least,
the censure and arrest of Parnell made me regret more than ever the
monument and the eulogy of Disraeli.  But then, you know that that is
my favourite heresy.

{106}

What has most struck me in these speeches of the Recess is that they do
almost more than the parliamentary oratory to make the whole country
familiar with Mr. Gladstone's ways of thought, and to stamp his mind on
the nation.  I fear they must be fatiguing to him, because I have
always thought that he found an intellectual audience most easy to deal
with.  In the Palmerstonian days I remember your brother[140] asking me
at Twickenham what I thought of our prospects; and I answered that the
Chancellor of the Exchequer did not water his wine enough.  And I
believe he thought me a fool.  But it was quite true: he tried to make
us understand his figures, in the House; but he did not much unfold his
thoughts for the public; and I used to be surprised to find that men
who knew him well, Lord Granville, Argyll,[141] S. Wilberforce, saw
neither the connection nor the consequence of his ideas.  This is so
much altered now, that he does not dislike to sit for his mental
portrait, and his philosophy of government is the study of thousands.
So he is moulding the mind of the nation as no man ever did.

I wonder whether you will have patience to talk to me about him at
Cannes?  We are just starting for the Madeleine, through Switzerland....


      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _La Madeleine, Oct. 27, 1881_]

What might, possibly, be done in a moment of triumph,[142] would be
desertion and disaster to the party at any other moment.  Nobody can
hope that next Easter, or for a couple of years, we can be altogether
crowned with laurel.  In the presence of Mr. Gladstone {107} himself
the Tories are recovering spirits.  They would take a leap forward if
Achilles was safe in his tent.

That is so clear to any one looking below the surface that it suggests
another objection--there might be an appearance of retreat at the first
turning of the tide, of an inclination to escape, individually, from a
prospect of losing battles and declining prosperity, and to leave
others to face the renewal of disintegration and reaction, such as we
saw in 1873.  I know that this is not a consideration where duty is
visibly concerned; but it is a valid consideration where policy is
concerned.  And it must be remembered that he may resign office but
cannot abandon power.

Herbert's constituents[144] were probably more deeply impressed than I
was by the repeated, but too suggestive, eulogy on Hartington and Lord
Granville.  Has Mr. Gladstone fairly faced the question, What will the
party do without him?  I may quote my own sentiment, because I grew up
among Russells, Ellices, Byngs; and though I am very suspicious of
early impressions and of doctrines unaccounted for, I know I am much
more favourable to the great Whig connection, to the tradition of Locke
and Somers, Adam Smith and Burke and Macaulay, than Mr. Gladstone would
like.  Yet it would seem dust and ashes, but for him....  The idea that
politics is an affair of principle, that it is an affair of morality,
that it touches eternal interests as much as vices and virtues do in
private life, that idea will not live in the party.  Indeed it is
already overshadowed by the Beaconsfield monument, described by that
prophet, Pope.[145]

Besides, the party would become unable, from internal divisions, to
govern the country.  I take the letter to {108} be a recognition of the
fact that the P.M. ought to be in the House of Commons.  In that case
it is on the cards that Lord Granville would retire at the same time.
Where should we be in the Lords, if neither Argyll, nor Derby, nor Lord
G. sat on the Treasury Bench; if Northbrook, Carlingford, and Kimberley
were left to face Salisbury and Cairns?  And then, if Selborne resigns
the woolsack, and it becomes necessary to choose a Chancellor for his
debating power?  The future is as gloomy in the Commons with Bright and
your father away, Goschen out of office, Hartington liable, any day, to
leave it.  In both cases we come to the level of mediocrity; we depend
on the second rank....

The new constituency gives increased weight to the Democratic leaders,
and it will be impossible for the Whigs to control them or to do
without them.  They will force their programme on the party by keeping
it out of office until they prevail.  This must come sooner or later.
But Mr. Gladstone ought not to retire until he has provided for the
future of the party he has remodelled.  With respect to persons, if he
does not bring Derby and Goschen in, nobody else can.  As to
Goschen--whose position will be a considerable one, as the best
financier of the party, afterwards--it has been unfortunate that the
overtures were not made by the P.M. himself.  They would have been far
more flattering; probably also more clear and definite.  The
measure[146] he objects to is considerably postponed.  The way is
crowded with bills on which he agrees with ministers.

As to Derby, I hope to learn all about your visit,[147] how you get on
with her, and whether you all took {109} care to acknowledge her good
influence and services.  There will never be any great intimacy between
him and your father.  But, in his proper place, he could be made very
useful.

There is something graver than the question of persons.  There is his
own Church policy, the Eastern--especially Egyptian and Armenian
question, the decentralisation of H. of Commons business,
redistribution of seats, and ever so much more.  I should like him to
see more of the Prince of Wales,[148] that something of his influence
should survive in the Royal Family.  And his present power is such that
there will be a real failure in his career if he retires without
employing it to secure the future of the party.  It would be wasting or
burying the fortune of Rothschild, the most enormous capital ever
collected in one hand.

The resistance to G. Eliot, the preference for Scott, the desire to
confide in ----, are all one and the same thing: idealism.  When
Disraeli sat down exclaiming, "The time will come when you will hear
me," his neighbour slapped him on the back and said, "So they will."
That encouraging neighbour was ----.  He can never take to a man of
strong principle and purpose.  He is little better than a vague Jingo:
and he is the most indiscreet, and not the most accurate of men.  To
trust him with such a secret is like rejecting G. Eliot as cynical,
gloomy, and uncharitable in her views of life.  A man can be trusted
only up to low-water mark.  There is just one thing on which the P.M.
is wilfully a little superficial!

Private Secretaries have no time for letters of their own; otherwise I
think with pleasure of your new occupation.  Don't let it tire you.  In
many ways it {110} will interest you; and J. S. Mill would highly have
approved of it, as portending an end to the subjection of women.

Please let me beg that you will not read anonymous communications.  If
you receive any, I think they ought to go to the police.  Not, of
course, to Mr. Gladstone.  What he does not mind himself might worry
him being sent to you.


[Sidenote: _La Madeleine Nov. 9, 1881_]

I am sorry to have lost the Knowsley letters, as I know something of
your accounts of country houses.  The envelope raised expectations
which added to my disappointment; for there was no danger that the
dulness of the company would affect the record.  The newspaper list of
visitors surprised me....

The point, however, is the good impression which Derby made during
their walk, as there was no previous liking.

Your suggestion of a visit to Hawarden is as tempting as it is kind.  I
should like nothing so much if I thought it suited Mr. and Mrs.
Gladstone; but at this moment I am wanted, sadly wanted, here; and the
ingenious indiscretion of somebody has provoked a demonstration more
impressive than any arguments of mine.  It has shown what the triumph
of the Tories, what the helplessness of the Liberals would be.  Mr.
Gladstone must see now that his resolution must depend on facts, and
not on wishes.  What he is to the cause and the party I fear he will
never understand.

Touching the future, I can abate nothing of what I said.  It is odd,
especially for me to say, who often disagree with him in maxims if not
in aims, but you undervalue him in comparison with other men.  Is it
the {111} strife in the Cabinet, the defection of friends, the zeal of
opponents, the slow growth of results, the versatility of popular
feeling, the coldness of Continental opinion, that depresses you? or is
it Morley's book?[149]  T. B. Potter has just arrived, I hope with a
copy for me.  I see from the extracts that it is a piece of very
superior work.  At first I expected an oblique attack on your father,
as a dilatory and inconsistent convert, prompted by Cobden's long
distrust, by Bright's early denunciations, by the aversion of literal
economists, of Equalitarian Democrats, of stubborn unbelievers in those
qualities which raise him above the highest level of Liberalism.  But I
can fancy that you might be impressed by so vigorous, sincere, and
complete a system of politics very distinct from his own.  The
lieutenants of Alexander, Napoleon and his Marshals, are the only fit
comparisons to describe the interval between the P.M. and the best of
those who come next to him.

We lose a weak, an ornamental, an unstable, but patriotic man in ----.
As he has been the guiltiest misleader in ecclesiastical questions, his
retirement is appropriate at the moment when we are trying to get the
ear of the Pope.  There are, of course, better reasons for that just
now than the state of Ireland, and I think he (the Pope) deserves the
kind of help it must give him.  His impulses seem almost always right,
whilst his execution, depending on others, and requiring force of
character as well as good intentions, is generally poor and shabby.  If
the Powers had been quicker to understand how strongly he contrasts
with his predecessor they might have enabled him to prevail against his
court.

John O'Hagan, the chief of the new Land Court, is {112} a man whom I
tried to bring forward, and made much of in the beginning of his
career.  He has the stamp of 1848 upon him as deep as Duffy,[150] and I
found him rather literary than politic, more full of good and gracious
aspiration than practical and solid.  The Court has done two things
which must, I imagine, raise doubts at Hawarden.  They undertake to fix
a rent such as will fairly enable a man to live--that is a rule which
would reduce rent per acre in proportion to the smallness of the
holding, and would extinguish it altogether in the smallest.  And they
judge not by the land and buildings, but by the capacity of the
tenant--that will lead them to do more for the worse farmer and less
for the better.  On the other hand, it is terrible to read that farmers
cultivating 20 or 30 acres never eat butcher's meat.  In France I find
that the families of day labourers have meat for dinner every day.  I
am told that there is scarcely an exception.

Hawarden after Knowsley must have been a relief, especially with
Lightfoot, Goldwin Smith, and may I say Harcourt?  There is no
room--there never is--for what I have to say.


[Sidenote: _Cannes Nov. 25, 1881_]

I have been away from Cannes for a few days, and am ashamed to be again
behindhand.

If I had not known it before, I should discover now what a good fellow
Alfred Lyttelton is.  F. C.'s view does not convince me.  The impeding
facts will be there, but the strong will[151] and the untimely gift of
self-disparagement may be too much for the facts.

I am struck by what you say of the omission in Morley's book, which I
am to receive in a few days.  A person who has had a large and
legitimate share in {113} its preparation spoke to me some time ago in
a manner which led me to expect that the Treaty narrative would be
hostile to Mr. Gladstone, and would reveal soreness against him on the
part of Cobden.  I discussed the thing with him a good deal, but
without materials which would justify me in hoping that I had made an
impression.  Since then, Mr. Gladstone has become P.M. and Morley is
editor of one of the principal organs of a part of the ministry.  That
explains some degree of reticence, if my former impression was correct.
I do not think such reticence quite worthy of the occasion and the men;
and it would be well that the true story should be told, unless it
should be likely in any way to embarrass the new negotiation.  That is
a question that can only be settled at Hawarden.

Knowles proposed that I should review the book, having a Tory review
already undertaken.  He offered to bring the volumes to Cannes before
the end of this month.  That would not give me the needful time.  It
would be necessary, in the dearth of books here, and of all sources of
information besides T. B. Potter, to have some things looked up in
England, by slow process of post.  And it would be quite essential to
ascertain how much of what is omitted may be supplied.  Not feeling
sure of that, and of the time, I was obliged to decline.  If Knowles
comes here, as he portended, I shall have an opportunity of talking it
over with him.

Many, many thanks for the glimpse into that precious Diary.[152]  You
will have observed how he {114} demolishes his own argument.  He
compares what I say now with what people said of Palmerston.  Those
people were wrong because Palmerston left a better man than himself
behind him.  But Mr. Gladstone goes on to say that there is nobody
behind him fit to lead, except ----.  Just work out the sum in
Proportion: as G. to P., so is X. to G.

And it is not only a question of men, but of elements.  There are many
things in the glimpse that are {115} very notable.  I fancy that
Goschen's late speech has done him good; but it still seems clear that
he will not shut the door on the Tories.  I am in communication with
them[153] again, and should perhaps see them on my way back, if I could
come to Hawarden.

I write this off in haste, before I have an opportunity of showing Mrs.
Gladstone's most kind letter to Lady Acton.  I don't like to answer her
until I have done so.

Of course I should like to come beyond anything.  If Parliament does
not meet before the proper time, it might be possible to come early in
January.  The middle of December would not be quite so easy, for
reasons here.  But please tell me if it would be very much better for
reasons paramount.  Two thousand miles would be nothing for a good
hour's talk with him, and several hours with his Secretary.  I hope the
Temple of Peace would not lose that character by my invasion of its
pacific precincts.

Seeley would be hard on Lecky if he applied those words to his
"Eighteenth Century," which is a weighty, thoughtful book.  But the two
former works, by which he became famous, do not really rise much above
the vulgar level.  There is nothing in his writings nearly equal to the
new Bampton Lectures.[154]


      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _Cannes Nov. 29, 1881_]

Hartington's speech has not arrived yet; but the French papers describe
him as differing about Ireland from the P.M. and not repelling the idea
of Compensation.  As this was not urged at the time, it would now be a
reproach to the Act, which might never have {116} passed with such
conditions.  And one neither sees how compensation is to be regulated,
nor by whom; whether by a commission stultifying the present one, or by
the same contradicting itself.  And it is very unlike the economic
policy of the P.M.  But I can conceive a very powerful argument on the
other side, which the Tories are not likely to use.

      *      *      *      *      *


[Sidenote: _Cannes Dec. 2, 1881_]

I have not fired all my shot, and I don't rely on Hartington's
translation.  His last speech does not strike me favourably.

He puts away the compensation argument in a fashion more parliamentary
than statesmanlike.  In debate, where effects are immediate and
momentary, one is glad of anything that tells against opponents, and
gets used to phrases instead of reasons.

Macaulay was indiscreet enough to write to his constituents on Windsor
Castle paper.  It was good material for a laugh, and no more; but Peel
and Graham never let him hear the end of it.  "From the proud Keep of
Windsor you bade the lieges have no fear," and such like seemed
equivalent to argument.  When one addresses the Nation, with a sort of
Manifesto on a difficult, new, and dangerous question, one must go
straight to the point.  We expect of a real statesman that he will take
the case of his adversary not by its weak end, but at its strongest;
that he will see whether he cannot even strengthen it before he
replies.  If he deals with the weak points, like a lawyer, somebody
will follow, and will beat him.  That is part of the integrity of
public men.  And I must say that H.'s idea that he meets the case for
compensation by asking whether rack-renting landlords are to be paid
for their iniquity, {117} exposes him to a rejoinder so crushing as to
damage his position and to strengthen my plea.

There is no constructive power among the Whigs.  There is some among
the Democrats, because their principles have been thought out, and
provide legislation for generations.  But the two men capable of
working out thoughts into system on other than purely democratic lines
are Derby and Goschen.  And they are outside, and do not really
contribute to the force of the party.

      *      *      *      *      *

There was that omission in my former letter--not quite by accident.
Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better
for speech than for stationery.  I have a large store of these.


[Sidenote: _Cannes Dec. 14, 1881_]

---- is so much stronger that I really believe that I shall be able to
run over for a short visit, and the temptation is strong upon me to
take your kind words literally.  May I come--by the morning train from
town--on Monday, the second day of 1882?  It would be the pleasantest
beginning of a New Year that I could possibly imagine, after a
melancholy autumn.

To-morrow I am off to Nice with M., after the Blue Rose, and Christmas
presents for the others.  They tell me that Mr. Cross[155] is here.  If
so, I hope to have a talk with him about the difficult life he is
writing.

I have been looking forward to the books of the Year, which I have not
had courage to send for, especially the life of the most fascinating
writer[156] of the day, and the letters of Bishop Thirlwall.  I am glad
to {118} think that I need not stop in London to read them, and am
extremely interested by what you say of Thirlwall.  I never found him
very attractive or accessible, personally.

The success of Newnham is a thing to congratulate your sister on.  As
to Herbert, the papers enable me to follow his wanderings and
conversations with old Irishwomen.  He must be making himself very
useful to Mr. Gladstone; and I rejoice at symptoms in this day's papers
which tend to weaken my inclination to compensation.

Of course you will tell me if the proposed date had better be exchanged
for another, if there is any incompatible visit just then or for any
other reason.  I should not start until Thursday, the 29th.


[Sidenote: _Cannes Dec. 27, 1881_]

The telegram summoning me for Saturday arrived late last night.  If the
trains keep time, I shall catch the Boulogne tidal from Paris on
Friday, and so obey the summons.  I presume there is a 9 or 10 A.M.
train which will land us at Chester early enough in the afternoon to
reach Hawarden about sunset.  It looks like an early departure for
Downing Street, which will be an affliction.  Or perhaps some visitor
with whom I ought to clash.  But I am quite prepared to find the secret
agent of the Vatican at Hawarden, and to look as if I took him for an
African lion....


[Sidenote: _Athenæum Jan. 7, 1882_]

... I met three Ministers last night at dinner, and the impression is
that Mr. Gladstone is remarkably well.  But the Conservatism of London
is something too excessive.

I met at the Russells', Maine, Monck, F. Leveson, and Reay.  At the
Athenæum, Hayward, {119} H. Spencer, May; and there are much worse
croakers than these.

It will be quite refreshing to spend Monday at Seacox, with a man[157]
who is understood to be travelling towards the Ministry, and no longer
away from them.  It has been impossible to call in Downing Street; and
I dare say your mother was rushing about.  But I am to meet them,
thanks to you as usual, at Lansdowne House this evening.

At the Museum, Poole gave me the papers to read that Mr. Gladstone
spoke of.

      *      *      *      *      *


      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _Cannes Jan. 17, 1882_]

In London I saw everybody I had designed to look for, except John
Morley....  Sir Henry Maine got me to criticise the proof of a lecture
on the King and his Successor, which you will see in the February
_Nineteenth Century_.  I hope he accepted some of my amendments; but he
was obdurate about the most important.  He says that Primogeniture has
been of very great political service.  I admitted this, but objected
that there is another side to the question, that Primogeniture embodies
the confusion between authority and property which constitutes modern
Legitimacy, that Legitimacy has, in this century, acted as an obstacle
to free institutions, and that a one-sided judgment thrown off as that
sentence is, gives a Tory tinge to the entire paper.  He answered: "You
seem to use Tory as a term of reproach."

I was much struck by this answer--much struck to find a philosopher,
entirely outside party politics, who {120} does not think Toryism a
reproach, and still more, to find a friend of mine ignorant of my
sentiments about it.  And I am much tempted to have it out with him,
and discover what he really means.  Besides which, I spent some hours
in Mark Pattison's company; found Reay desponding, but eager to speak;
May,[158] very much depressed; H----, pottering feebly, as I thought,
over Montlosier,[159] whom he does not understand, in the _Quarterly_,
and Junius, whom he does not discover, in the "Encyclopædia";
Monck[160] remarkable as the one happy Irishman.

      *      *      *      *      *

I should like to impress one thought on your mind: Much will depend on
your success in making the work of the Session sit lightly on the P.M.
in getting him to yield to distractions, even to amusements, and no
longer to consider change of work an equivalent to rest.  A house near
town, the play, I had almost said the opera, might be a help.  If he
would be unprincipled enough to refuse tiresome dinners, however far
off, and then to accept pleasant ones, at short notice, it would be
worth a great deal.  In short, a little demoralisation is the best
security I can see for the supreme perfecting of his career.

By-the-bye, you condemn me for my indefinite answers to some very
searching questions; and I find you are right.  At least I have read a
paper on the Revised Version which satisfies me that I ought to have
joined more heartily in Mr. Gladstone's censure of it.  But I have been
reading it to my children, and it had got associated with very sweet
moments.  Once {121} more, I perceive that my letter is full of
everything except yourself....


[Sidenote: _Cannes Jan. 25, 1882_]

I return the letter of my heroine[161] with many thanks.  It reminds me
of what she wrote to me.  If I could find it I would send it to you....
I think there is a piece of truth in Mr. Ottley's remark.  Her
strongest conviction, the keystone of her philosophy, was the idea that
all our actions breed their due reward in this world, and that life is
no reign of reason if we put off the compensation to another world.
That is a moral far more easily worked in cases of outward, transitive
sin than in those which disturb only the direct relations of man with
God.  These indeed are cases which may partly depend on our belief in
God, not only in humanity and human character.  Deny God, and whole
branches of deeper morality lose their sanction.  Here I am preaching
against Bradlaugh, after all!

Her genius would no doubt reveal to her consequences which others
cannot imagine.  But still the inclination of a godless philosophy will
be towards palpable effects and those about which there is no mistake.
Especially in a doctrine with so little room for grace and forgiveness,
where no God ever speaks except by the voice of other men.  Defined and
brought to book, that is a detestable system.  But it is not on the
surface--and many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives
than we can live without policemen.

Still there is a piece of truth in this paganism.  Looking at history,
not at biography, taking societies, and not individuals, we cannot deal
with things seen by God alone; things take other proportions; the scale
of {122} vice and virtue is not that of private life; we judge of it by
its outward action, and hesitate to penetrate the secrets of
conscience.  The law of visible retribution is false even there.  But
it is true that the test and measure of good and evil is not that of
the spiritual biographer.

I shall punish Sir H. Maine with your very striking remark about
Toryism.

      *      *      *      *      *

That is a perilous point, about suspiciousness.  By all means we should
think well until forced to think ill of people.  But we must be
prepared for that compulsion; and the experience of history teaches
that the uncounted majority of those who get a place in its pages are
bad.  We have to deal chiefly, in life, with people who have no place
in history, and escape the temptations that are on the road to it.  But
most assuredly, now as heretofore, the Men of the Time are, in most
cases, unprincipled, and act from motives of interest, of passion, of
prejudice cherished and unchecked, of selfish hope or unworthy fear.


[Sidenote: _Cannes Feb. 20, 1882_]

I spent at Rome a most interesting fortnight, explaining the history of
the Church and of the world to M., listening to a great debate on the
representation of minorities, and hearing a good deal of the M.P.[162]
who neither has nor has not a mission.  We wound up with two days at
Florence, and I accompanied M. to Genoa, along the finest part of the
Riviera, and then went to Bologna, to a dying relation.  All which has
stood in the way of coming home, of writing, and of knowing what is
going on.  I am reading up the debates, and your letters light up the
task.

{123}

      *      *      *      *      *

Bonghi, who has a volume of Roman History ready, spent an afternoon
with me in the Forum; but proved unsound about Ireland.  Minghetti took
us over the palace of the Cæsars, as they call the Palatine.  I took M.
the round of imperial statues and monuments of the Popes, hanging a
tale to each, and I am afraid her impressions of history are gloomy.
We made up for it a little at Santa Croce, with Dante and Fossombroni;
and in Savonarola's cell at S. Marco, I sat in his chair, and told her
of the friar who died for his belief that the way to make men better
was to make them free.

I was not happy about Errington.  Everybody spoke well of him.  But
there was too manifest a desire to amplify the significance of his
position, and to entangle him in Roman schemes and views.

Schlözer's first visit was to me, as we lived in the same house, and
are old friends.  They, at least, have something to offer; but the
mission seems to me very ambiguous.

I have long wished for that declaration about self-government; but I am
persuaded that there has been as much statesmanship in the choice of
the time as of the terms.  There is so much danger of being deserted on
that line, and of one's friends combining to effect a reaction.  It
will not do to make too much of the speech of 1871.  The occasion, last
week, gave extraordinary weight to Mr. Gladstone's words; and he would
not now say that the movement is superfluous, or that Ireland always
got what she wanted.  The risk is that he may seem to underrate the
gravity of a great constitutional change, in the introduction of a
federal element.


{124}

Liberty depends on the division of power.  Democracy tends to unity of
power.  To keep asunder the agents, one must divide the sources; that
is, one must maintain, or create, separate administrative bodies.  In
the view of increasing democracy, a restricted federalism is the one
possible check upon concentration and centralism.

But I am very anxious about one thing.  If Mr. Gladstone thinks that he
cannot carry his colleagues, his party, Parliament, or the nation with
him, and declines to take the lead in this movement, the throwing out
of the idea may become a source of weakness.  They will say that he
waits for the initiative of others, that he is expecting a wind, that
he is ready to be squeezed, if others will do it for him, that he looks
on opinion as a thing to be obeyed, not to be guided--and so will
proceed to put pressure on him and to make demonstrations not at all in
conformity with his spirit and purpose.

      *      *      *      *      *


[Sidenote: _Cannes Feb. 25, 1882_]

Goschen agreed to go with me to Paris, and changed his mind at the last
moment.  The consequence was that I did not stop at Paris, and some
letters which were sent there from Seacox have only just reached me.
And so I have left unanswered your birthday letter, and seemed to
disregard the reproach as well as the kindness it expresses.

I will not say that, in the former, there is not much that I have had
to consider.  Still, in giving up one's home, and country, and friends
and occupations, there is at least a mixture of good motives with
selfish ones, and something sacrificed, if there is also a good deal of
calculated pleasure-seeking and ease.  If I held an appointment abroad,
keeping me permanently away {125} from my--very modest--estate, you
would say that the Government was insane to offer it, but you would
hardly think it wrong of me to accept it.  And the duty I have allowed
to precede all other duties is one that possesses a strong, and
unmistakable, claim on me.  Between my children and my Shropshire
neighbours my choice is indeed decided.  Do not, when I have the
happiness of seeing you again, allow these shortcomings and these
backslidings of mine to interfere with that better topic--which is
yourself, but which gets no chance.

I am seeing a good deal of the Mallets.  He is getting over a very bad
illness, and seems to like Cannes, in spite of Sir E. Colebrooke and
the _Pall Mall_.  I have succeeded in making Sir Louis shake his head
over the secret Jacobinism of his friend Morley.  Yesterday I had the
pleasure of dining with your favourite correspondent.

Your view of the speech introducing the new Procedure is far more just
than R.'s.  It displayed that serene mastery and lightness of touch
which are the latest growth or ripest form of his talent, rather than
the controlling and compelling power which we know so well.  As to the
censure,[163] I hold the necessity of keeping the working of the Act
from interference; but I cannot admit that the case of the
Commissioners is good, at the weakest point.  The defence of their
general action seems to me triumphant; but I don't think the attack has
been met in the particulars; and the common maxim of all constitutional
governments, to stand by one's subordinates in their need, is, I think,
a very dangerous one.

{126}

"John Inglesant" has been begun but not finished, for want of time in
London.  Here is a letter which it can be no indiscretion to show you,
on that interesting subject.  I did not, in reply, quite confirm the
critic's doubts, though I probably could not remove them.  I would
rather regard it as a philosophical than as a historical work.

And I missed the _Athenæum_ Summary.  When one comes to classify all
that appears, the gaps strike one as much as the bulk.  Still, in the
narrow domain of my own book--"The Madonna of the Future"[164]--every
week brings several new publications that are sure to contribute some
light or some difficulty.

      *      *      *      *      *


[Sidenote: _Cannes March 4, 1882_]

We have no particulars yet, and I still hope it was not an
Irishman.[165]  The villa at Mentone stands in the midst of dark olive
woods, scarcely a mile from the frontier, and less than a furlong from
the sea.  It will require to be well guarded.

I have followed the conflict with the keen attention you may imagine,
and rejoice quite as much as anybody in Downing Street at the personal
triumph, and at the accession of strength which is due so entirely to
his own efforts and belongs exclusively to himself.  It is a gain for a
better cause than the Ministry.  We are just in that intermediate state
in which the issue at Northampton[166] is unknown, but seems certain,
which will be a relief.

The correspondence with Gardiner has gone on at {127} some length, and
the problem is very interesting.  He persists in rejecting the story.
I now understand that John Inglesant is willing to be received, but is
told by the Jesuit that he is safe if, with that belief and
disposition, he remains an Anglican.

I imagine that he might have argued in this way: Roman Catholic divines
hold that the 39 Articles may be understood in a favourable sense.
Anglicans hold that they are not literally binding on the clergy.
Still less on the laity.  Therefore his position in the English Church
does not involve this layman in any error.  It may involve him in
certain dangers and difficulties.  But these are not greater than the
dangers and difficulties which would follow his conversion.  For there
are many opinions, not only sanctioned but enforced by the authorities
of the Church of Rome, which none can adhere to without peril to the
soul.  The moral risk on one side is greater than the dogmatic risk on
the other.  He can escape heresy in Anglicanism more easily than he can
escape the ungodly ethics of the papacy, the Inquisition, the Casuists,
in the Roman Communion.  The solicitation, the compulsion, will be more
irresistible in the latter.  A man who thought it wrong to murder a
Protestant King would be left for hell by half the Confessors on the
Continent.  Montagu, Bramhall will not sap this man's Catholic faith so
surely as the Spanish and Italian moralists will corrupt his soul.

There were men, in the XVIIth century, who would have argued in this
way.  I can even conceive a Jesuit doing it, for they were much
divided, and there were men amongst them far more deeply and broadly
divided from the prevailing teaching of their own Church, than from the
Catholic party in Anglicanism.  But I cannot name any Jesuit living
{128} in Charles I.'s time of whom it could be said with any
probability.  So that I am sure not to shake Gardiner's conviction.  He
is not well informed in religious history; but as a friend of Brewer he
must have read the life of Goodman, which, I think, Brewer edited.

Gardiner is Irving's son-in-law.  His position in that Church inclines
him to Conservative views, and it would be hard for him to admit that
illustrious Catholic divines who did so much for Christian revelation
and for spiritual doctrine were in reality so infamous in their moral
teaching as my hypothesis implies.  But I am letting the cat of the
Piazzetta[167] out of the bag.

I do hope that the social duties are not too irksome.


[Sidenote: _Cannes March 9, 1882_]

I was at Mentone yesterday, and as I do not much like the place where
the Queen is to live, I took pains to ascertain what is doing for her
safety.  The Vice-Consul is a singularly intelligent and practical man,
and I saw with satisfaction that the peculiar drawbacks are fully
understood.  Every precaution will be taken, without attracting
attention, or being perceived by the Queen herself.

I shall not get credit for my loyalty, for it caused me to miss a
meeting which was held here, during my absence, to vote an address.
But I was rewarded by finding Green, the historian, at Mentone, in good
spirits--but in bad health--and I spent an interesting hour with him.

Gardiner tells me that I understand nothing about the question, that
the Jesuit was only a conspirator and intriguer, and that "John
Inglesant" is abominably overrated.  So let us wait for Fraser, with
open and {129} unsettled minds.  Brewer published in 1839 "The Court of
James I.," being the Memoirs of Goodman, Bp. of Gloucester, possibly
not the book in question, but one that would make the situation clear
to the intelligent reader.  Green, who does not agree, much, with
Gardiner, tells me that he has made great sacrifices by adhering to
Irvingism, and that he has still to struggle with extreme poverty.
Being one of the two or three most solid historians in England, he has
to teach at an inferior girls' school.  He has had the misfortune to
lose several children, as well as his first wife.  Do you know his
Outline of English History?  I make my children read it, to keep out
----.  I wonder what the numerous Wickhams will learn history in.  I am
so glad that I have a new friend of the same kind as those I like so
much.

As Mr. Gladstone has had various correspondence with Mivart, it may
interest him to know that that very distinguished philosopher, the most
eminent man of science our Church has had in England, was constrained
to decline election at the Athenæum, being certain of blackballs, by
reason of his quarrel with the Darwinians.  In the hope that the
Committee may elect him, he wishes to be put down in the books again;
and he asks me to propose him.  As I have never spoken to him in my
life, it is against the rule; but I have agreed to do it, in
acknowledgment of his unquestioned eminence and because of Mr.
Gladstone's weakness for him, which I, otherwise, do not share.  The
wicked Sclater, vendor of Jumbo, is the Seconder.

Even without knowing the conversation with Gibson, who seems to me a
most able specimen of his kind, the attitude taken up towards the Lords
seems to me {130} in all ways excellent.  As to Bradlaugh, as he is
there, I wish the amendment[168] had succeeded--for I have not read the
_Nineteenth Century_.[169]  But have you seen in the _Century_--once
_Scribner_--Bryce on Disraeli?  It is a good paper.

      *      *      *      *      *


[Sidenote: _Cannes March 21, 1882_]

In the middle of John Inglesant came the enclosed,[170] which I return,
with dismay.  The impression given seems to be that by speaking of
dogmatic danger in England, and of moral danger in Rome, I ingeniously
laid a silent imputation of heterodoxy on Anglicans, whilst implying
that we are free at least from that suspicion; so that I thought of
1882 whilst I spoke of 1640, and meant controversy, though pretending
to write history.

The reward of history is that it releases and relieves us from present
strife.  My only endeavour was to recall what might have occurred two
centuries and a half ago, to a sincere and upright priest, that is, to
one who studied to detach his mind from its habitual surroundings, to
look behind his own scenes, to stand apart with Archimedes, to practise
the _doute méthodique_ of Descartes, to discern prejudice from faith
and sympathy from truth.  There was no such problem, and I know now
that my zeal was wasted on a personage whose notion of religion was not
worth inquiry.  But I was not pleading a cause.  I scarcely venture to
make points against the religion of other people, from a curious
experience that they have more to say than I know, and from a sense
that it is safer to reserve {131} censure for one's own, which one
understands more intimately, having a share of responsibility and
action.

It would have been more accurate to sacrifice my antithesis by
referring to doctrinal trouble as well as moral risk on our side.  If I
did not do so--I have no recollection of my words--the reason may be
that I am too deeply impressed with the moral risk to have the other
very present to my mind.  Encountering an associate of Guy Fawkes and
Ravaillac, I do not stop to ask what he makes of the Apocrypha, or how
far he goes with the Athanasian Creed.  I believe that our internal
conflicts spring from indifference to sin, and not from a religious
idea.  A speculative Ultramontanism separate from theories of tyranny,
mendacity, and murder, keeping honestly clear of the Jesuit with his
lies, of the Dominican with his fagots, of the Popes with their
massacres, has not yet been brought to light.  Döllinger, who thinks of
nothing else, has never been able to define it, and I do not know how
to distinguish a Vaticanist of that sort, a Vaticanist in a state of
grace, from a Catholic.

Let me supply my omission by declaring that my hypothetical divine
would not have found all the moral evil in one quarter, and ambiguous
doctrine only in the other.  I dare say he would think that in England
too little was done for the spiritual life, and, unless he had a taste
for Donne, that devotional literature was backward; and he might even
agree with Thorndike that the neglect of the discipline of penance
threatened the Church with ruin.  In like manner, he would not view
with favour some of the dogmatic theology that flourished amongst his
friends.  He might, for instance, deem that Molinism or Jansenism,
neither of them yet {132} approved or rejected, but severally dominant
in many lands, were false systems, and that, between the two, a
Catholic doctrine of grace was hard to find.  He would be aware that
Rome still cherished the idea that roused Luther, that, by committing a
sin one may save a soul; and he would perhaps conclude, with a famous
Jesuit of his day, that Luther did well to attack it.

Of the instances suggested, one, the Cultus of the Blessed Virgin, was
partly of later growth and would not seriously disturb a contemporary
of Charles the First.  It does not offend in the older, classical
literature of the Church, in the Imitation, the Exposition, the
Pensées, or the Petit Carême.  Sixty years ago, a priest who is still
living was sent as Chaplain to Alton Towers.  At Evening Prayers, when
he began the Litany of Loretto, Lord Shrewsbury rose from his knees and
told him that they never recited it.  He was a man, as the "Life of
Panizzi" shows, without an idea of his own.

Images would probably impress him as a danger to be warded, rather, I
think, than Transubstantiation.  Here the difficulty that strikes a
dialectician hardly reaches the people.  Many Catholics are practically
conscious of no difference from the higher Anglican or Lutheran view of
the Real Presence.  Hegel's argument, that a mouse which had nibbled a
Host would become an object of adoration, would strike nine laymen out
of ten as a poor joke.  I know not whether the confusion of thought was
greater then or less; but he would remember so many cases of
Protestants ready to conform on no harder condition than the concession
of the Cup that his scruples would be likely to melt.  Montagu saying
that he knew no Roman tenet he {133} would not subscribe, unless it
were Transubstantiation, would have made him wonder why a
Catholic-minded prelate should be more stiffnecked than the unbending
Lutherans or fiercer Bohemians.

But whatever the dogmatic perils he might apprehend, he would meet them
in the same spirit of charitable construction he had employed on the
other side.  I will presume that he took the oath of allegiance, for,
in 1635, the Jesuits allowed their penitents to take it.  He would even
admit the Royal Supremacy, like Father Caron, as not exceeding the
prerogative of Kings in France and Spain.  He would drop the imputation
of schism, seeing that Bramhall wrote that there was no formed
difference with the Church of Rome about any point of faith.  Finding
that an Archbishop denied any necessary articles of faith beyond the
Apostles' Creed, he would regard the 39 Articles as Hall,
Chillingworth, Bramhall, Stillingfleet, and, according to Bull, all
that are well advised, considered them--pious opinions which no man was
obliged to believe.  With Bossuet, he would acknowledge the force of
the case in favour of Anglican orders, and with Richard Simon he would
admit that the Caroline divines had not their equals in his own Church,
and would revere them as the strongest enemies of the specific heresies
of Luther and Calvin, as the force that would sap the fabric against
which Rome still contended in vain.  If he heard that there was a
bishop who begged prayers for his soul, another who tolerated the
Invocation of Saints, a third who allowed Seven Sacraments, and so on,
he might be willing to believe, with Davenport, that the chasm was
filled that had separated England from Trent.

To reach that point of conciliation it would be {134} necessary to make
the best of everything, so far as could be without sophistry, violence,
or concealment.  And the same rule of favourable interpretation would
be applied by the same man to his own Theology.  He would be bound by
the limits of Richelieu's proposals, and would keep within the lines of
Bossuet, and those which Spinola afterwards drew, with the assent of
Pope and General.

He would have been confirmed in this method by the response it drew
from such eminent Protestants as Grotius, Bramhall, La Bastide,
Prætorius, Fabricius, and Leibniz.  Their judgment would have
encouraged him to abide in his own communion, and would have taught him
that he was as safe as his friend on the other side.  The same
impartiality would have led to the same result.  There were even
Protestant divines who sanctioned conversions to Rome.

The last time I saw Count Arnim he asked about Newman's Vatican
defence.  I said that he had explained the decrees away by declaring
that he meant no defence of persecution and tyrannicide.  That was a
canon of interpretation strong enough to blow any other ingredient into
gas.  Arnim objected that Newman's manipulations were not accepted at
Rome.  Just then he became a Cardinal, and so they were indirectly
sanctioned.

I endow my seventeenth-century divine with the ingenuity and the
integrity of Newman.  Having given England the benefit of No. 90, he
would gild Rome with the answer to the Expostulation.  Shutting one eye
to the Articles, like Chillingworth, he would, like Spinola, shut the
other to the Council of Trent.  Having expounded Anglo-Catholicism by
the light of Bramhall, he would, in the same spirit, choose {135}
Cassander, Bossuet, Corker as genuine exponents of Roman Catholicism,
and he could do both without insincerity or surrender.

Don't let me make too much of that passage in Newman.  He defended the
Syllabus, and the Syllabus justified all those atrocities.  Pius the
Fifth held that it was sound Catholic doctrine that any man may stab a
heretic condemned by Rome, and that every man is a heretic who attacks
the papal prerogatives.  Borromeo wrote a letter for the purpose of
causing a few Protestants to be murdered.  Newman is an avowed admirer
of Saint Pius and Saint Charles, and of the pontiffs who canonised
them.  This, and the like of this, is the reason of my deep aversion
for him.

There is not time for Shorthouse to-day.  I will tell you about him as
soon as I can.


[Sidenote: _Cannes March 20-22, 1882_]

Wickham lent me John Inglesant yesterday, and I finished it before
bedtime.  I have read nothing more thoughtful and suggestive since
Middlemarch, and I could fill with honest praise the pages I am going
to blacken with complaint.  But if I had access to the author, with
privilege of free and indiscreet speech, it would seem a worthier
tribute to his temper and ability to lay my litany of doubts before
him.  Not having it, I submit my questionings to yourself, as the
warmest admirer of his work.  Probably the difficulties which occur to
me have been raised already in reviews which you have read.  For
instance:--

I. 29.  Inglesant's name does not appear in the trials of the
Protestants.  Did the Marian persecution rage in Wilts?

73, 74.  Here is a Puritan party in Parliament and a {136} scheme to
pervert its leaders, in August 1637.  No Parliament had sat for eight
years.

83.  Juan Valdes was not a papist but a Protestant.

90.  Would Foxe be the favourite and characteristic author of such
Arminians as the Ferrars?

101.  The Mass is the strongest of all the motives that lead men to
Rome.--I really doubt it, for I remember more instances of men
attracted by our orders, by authority, unity, confession.

107.  Hobbes thinks it is the consecrating power by which a priest, in
the hour of death, can save a soul.--He should have said, the power of
absolution.

207.  Something similar to the feeling in England during the Sepoy
rebellion.  Read: Mutiny.  This is an understatement.  The Irish
massacre was more appalling to the imagination because it was nearer
and of vaster reported proportions.  A respectable writer who lived in
Ireland believes that there were 300,000 victims.

272.  Charles contrasted most favourably with his judges, whose sole
motive was self.  Ludlow's Memoirs, and other sources, show that
something was at work besides selfish fears.  The men perhaps were no
better for that.  They may even have been worse, inasmuch as the higher
and better part of them served as the motive of crime.  Carnot may have
been as infamous as Barère; but it is unjust to tar them with the same
brush.

277.  Eustace loses his suppers with the French King--Louis was eleven
years old.

279, 312.  I don't remember the term Quakers in current use as early as
January 1650, but very soon after.

327.  In opposition to this, the Jesuits about the {137} time of the
Reformation came forward with what was called a new doctrine.--The book
in question came out in 1588.

Vol. I. 339.  II. 12.  Legate and nuncio are treated as the same thing.
They are as different as Prætor and Dictator.

II. 3.  The learning of the Fathers was not what it had been a century
ago.--These Fathers must be Italian monks generally, or else the
Jesuits.  It is not true of either.  The Jesuits had no very eminent
scholars in the first generation.  Salmeron, the most noted, lived to
be told by Bellarmin that his books would take a good deal of
retouching before going to press.  The middle of the seventeenth
century, especially the second quarter, was the golden age of Jesuit
learning, when their supremacy was uncontested.  The Benedictines did
not begin to rival them quite so early as Cressy says, I. 334.

4.  Chigi is never di Chigi, and the pope's sister-in-law was called
Olimpia Maidalchini.

106.  An age or two ago the priestly government was better.  Yet
Machiavelli brings much the same accusation against it in his time.

138.  Some confusion as to the name of the English College.

272.  The steps of the Trinità were hardly built then.  There might be
more of these little scruples, and, by themselves, they do not build up
a strong misgiving.  The picture may be true in spite of slips in
accessary detail.  But is the picture true, I will not say
controversially, but historically?  There are glaring faults in it, not
open to dispute or controversy, and I will begin with these.

Inglesant comes to Rome about 1654, where Molinos {138} has already
resided some years; and he then attends to the business of the Duke of
Umbria.  Umbria is Urbino.  The last Duke of Urbino died nearly forty
years before Molinos settled in Rome.  Inglesant is present at the
condemnation of Molinos, and afterwards visits Worcester, in Charles
the Second's reign--II. 369.  Charles the Second had been dead two
years when Molinos was condemned.

In the pontificate of Alexander the Seventh, we hear all at once that
Molinos is arrested, and are told of a meeting, at the Chigi palace, of
persons belonging to the time of Innocent the Eleventh.  II. 333.
Without a single word, we are carried over three pontificates and an
interval of thirty years.

The Jesuit who is so hopeful of Anglican re-union that he will not
allow his favourite pupil to join the Church of Rome is called Sancta
Clara.  There was a Father Sancta Clara in those days, who is
peculiarly well remembered among English Catholics as the greatest
writer we had between Stapleton and Newman, less acute than the one,
less eloquent than the other, more learned than either; remarkable for
opinions so conciliatory as to resemble those of his imaginary
namesake, and to make him the originator and suggester of No. XC.;
remarkable also for the extreme difficulty of getting his books.  But
he was a Franciscan, not a Jesuit, a scholar, not an intriguer; and his
name was not Hall, but Davenport.

This is surely a wilful and wanton confusion of persons, times, and
things.  It destroys confidence in the writer's carefulness or
knowledge, gives a tone of unreality, and makes one feel that the whole
is out of keeping.

The book depicts the religious strivings of the age {139} so far as the
hero would come in contact with them, keeping a sort of syncretism[171]
in view.  Some of the most remarkable currents of thought are left out
of sight, and others, which were not within reach, are introduced by a
tyrannical use of time and space.  The Rosicrucians can hardly have
been talked about in England within twenty years after the Fama
appeared.  The Quietists had not appeared in Rome under Innocent the
Tenth.  The wonderful teaching of Bohme, which did reach us under
Charles the First, is not alluded to; and Inglesant lives in the same
house with Van Helmont, and never discovers that he is more than a
physician.  The most intense religious force of all that which
prevailed during Inglesant's English career, Independency, is nowhere
named, as well as I remember.  The writer does not differentiate
Puritans.  He lumps Arminian with Predestinarian, the man who looks on
Schism with the horror felt by Baxter and the man who made Schism a
principle of organisation.  Monarchy, he tells us, was restored because
the Puritans hated the tyranny of Cromwell.  It was restored, because
Presbyterians would not stand being oppressed by Congregationalists;
and for another reason which was discovered by Harrington,[172] and may
still be discovered in his Works.  We are introduced to Hobbes and to
More--Hobbes much better drawn than More--but we never meet
Chillingworth, and though at one time very near to Hammond we do not
hear him.  Ussher offering terms to Presbyterians, Baxter seeking for
peace with Prelacy, Bramhall holding out a hand to Gallicans, Leighton
consorting with Jansenists--all this good and {140} apt material is
disdained.  Instead of the original thinkers among the English
Catholics--Barnes, Holden, Davenport, White, Caron, Serjeant,
Walshe--we have only Cressy, by way of a foil to the Jesuits, and with
a vague reminiscence of a page in the writings of an Edgbaston
neighbour.  Of the efforts making in France and Holland to mitigate
Calvinism, and in Germany to tone down the dogma of Augsburg, not a
word.  Lutherans only appear in order to be saddled with a doctrine by
which they would be sorry to stand or fall.  Jansenism, odious,
probably, to the author, is not displayed; and the definition of the
Oratorian spirit as contrasted with Benedictine and Jesuit, is quite
inadequate.

Mysticism and High Church Anglicanism are so highly favoured that the
hero, when the Jesuit relaxes his grasp, acquiesces in both.  At Rome
he is a hearty Molinosist.  Driven from Rome he is a hearty Anglican.
Perhaps Malebranche or Fenelon might have facilitated the transition
from Petrucci to Norris and Nelson and Ken.  But there is no
transition.  The passage is made by the help of no subtler agency than
a Newhaven smack.  The thing is unexplained, inartistic, inorganic, but
quite consistent with the drifting nature of Inglesant.  Coming to more
debatable ground I proceed with greater diffidence: Who sat for the
profane and sceptical Cardinal?  There is some likeness to Retz,
without his genius or any premonition of the change which, in
Inglesant's time, came over him.  But it would be an unpardonable error
to paint an Italian prelate with colours owned by a Frenchman.  I
suspect the author of having no authority for this description, both
because his account of the Conclave is so superficial, and for the
following reason.  Rinuccini, {141} alluding to persecution, goes back
a century for an example, to a foreign country and a hostile church.
One later instance occurs to his company, but he rejects it.
Evidently, he thinks that there is nothing of the sort nearer at hand.
If, he says, they once commenced to burn at Rome, they would not know
where to stop.

An account of Catholicism which assumes that, in the middle of the
seventeenth century, Rome had not commenced to burn, is an account
which studiously avoids the real and tragic issues of the time.  The
part of Hamlet is omitted, by desire.  For when Rinuccini spoke, the
fires of the Roman Inquisition were, indeed, extinct, but had been
extinguished in his lifetime, under the preceding pontificate, having
burnt for nearly a century.  Familiar instances must have been
remembered by his hearers; and they had read in the most famous
theological treatise of the last generation, by what gradation of
torments a Protestant ought to die.  They knew that whoever obstructed
the execution of that law forfeited his life, that the murder of a
heretic was not only permitted but rewarded, that it was a virtuous
deed to slaughter Protestant men and women, until they were all
exterminated.

To keep these abominations out of sight is the same offence as to
describe the Revolution without the guillotine.  The reader knows no
more than old Caspar what it was all about.

There was no mystery about these practices, no scruple, and no
concealment.  Although never repudiated, and although retrospectively
sanctioned by the Syllabus, they fell into desuetude, under pressure
from France, and from Protestant Europe.  But they were defended, more
or less boldly, down to the peace of {142} Westphalia.[173]  The most
famous Jesuits countenanced them, and were bound to countenance them,
for the papacy had, by a series of books approved and of acts done,
identified itself with the system, and the Jesuits were identified with
the cause of the papacy.  A Gallican was not quite so deeply
compromised.  He might say that these are the crimes and teaching of
the Court, not of the Church, of Rome; and he was on his guard to
restrict the influence and to disparage the example of the popes.
Nevertheless, to say: If you believe the books which Rome commends; if
you accept the doctrines which Rome imposes under pain of death and
damnation; if you do the deeds she requires, and imitate the lives she
proposes as your patterns, you will be probably hanged in this world,
and assuredly damned in the next--this would have sounded like derision
even in the mouth of Pascal or Bossuet.  To a Jesuit it was impossible.
He existed in order to sustain the credit of the Popes.  He wished the
world to think well of them.  They were a tower of strength, an object
of pride to every member of the Society.  He was obliged to swallow
them whole.  Therefore, though he might wear the mask of Lancelot
Andrews or William Wilberforce, within it was a lining of Saint Just.
It is this combination of an eager sense of duty, zeal for sacrifice,
and love of virtue, with the deadly taint of a conscience perverted by
authority, that makes them so odious to touch and so curious to study.

You will be prepared to hear that I no more recognise the Jesuit than
the Cardinal.  Something indeed may be urged in behalf of the sonorous
wickedness of those instructions in which he betrays his spirit, in the
strongest passage of the book.  It matters not what {143} cause we take
up, provided we defend it well--that is Probabilism.  It matters not
what wrong we do in a good cause--that again is the maxim that the end
justifies the means, which, like Probabilism, was just then in the
ascendant.  It matters not whether the cause for which we sin is
religion or policy--even that is paralleled by the way in which the
French Jesuits, all but one, supported Richelieu in his alliance with
the Protestants, in the Thirty Years' War.  But it is the character of
an exceptional Jesuit, not a type.  It is not indicated that he goes
wrong from the worthiest motive; that the disinterested spirit of
religion, which to other men is a safeguard, is as fatal to him as
vulgar passions to other men.  The true Jesuit falls better than that.
His decay begins at the top.  He does not find his way to
Malebolge[174] until a guide misleads him whom he takes for an angel of
light.  The sordid, lying, selfish, ambitious specimen does not appear
unless grafted on a fanatical stock.  The essence that vitiates so much
discipline and virtue is so subtle that we seldom feel the resemblance
when Jesuits are portrayed from outside.

The author seems hardly to detect his own rogue.  When Hall coolly
announces that a lie must be told which will cause a man's death, and
is therefore equivalent to murder, it is not clear whether this is
infamous or not.  For Charles betrays Glamorgan as his son afterwards
betrayed Montrose, and we are still expected to revere him as something
better than the enemies who, to save their necks, resorted to Pride and
Bradshaw.  So again, speaking of Laud and Strafford, he implies that if
they were unsuccessful tyrants, they were no tyrants at all.  That is,
to be a tyrant, you must {144} succeed, just as, to be a rebel, you
must fail.  The model of tyrants is Cæsar Borgia.  When he was down,
Machiavelli, who had thought him worth attentive study, said to him
that he wondered so good a player should have lost the game.  He
answered that he had foreseen every combination except that of himself
being prostrate with illness when the crash came.  That miscalculation
would become his excuse.

If this propensity to absolve royal and loyal culprits comes from
sympathy with them, it seems to me no better than the crooked canon of
Macaulay, Carlyle, and Froude.  The standard, in another place, is a
low one: The priest who invites Inglesant not to die with a lie in his
mouth reminds him that they subordinated their religion to their
political intrigues.  But what if they subordinated politics to their
religious interest?  To waver about ship money until one knows whether
Charles or Hampden is on the side of one's Church is dishonesty.  To
have no moral test of duty apart from religion is to be a fanatic.
What Inglesant imputes to the Catholics is very near the definition of
an honest man.  For reasons less obvious I am not satisfied with the
character of Inglesant.  We learn in the first volume, p. 34, that he
never formally joined the Church of Rome; and in the second, p. 318,
that he must have been formally received into it.  There is a more
serious contradiction still.  His life is singularly blameless and
heroic, but one does not perceive the safeguard.  Three channels by
which God speaks to the soul are excluded.  Inglesant will do anything
but read the Bible.  He has never studied to distinguish the voice of
the Church, the constancy of her teaching, the line of least
resistance, the law that regulates her movements.  Conscience is a word
that does not occur during the first 200 pages of {145} religious
training.  Then she asks him, what if they ask him to do something that
his conscience cannot approve?  He very truly answers that it is too
late to think of that.  Then the word returns two or three times, but
the idea is gone.  We repeatedly find that he knows not right from
wrong, and is not scared by sin.  When reminded of the horrors of the
Inquisition he calmly observes: Not one of these practices but has some
shadow of truth in it.  A priest, defending imaginary relics, says:
These things are true to each of us according as we see them.
Inglesant is content, and does not ask who invents or promotes the
fable.  Having, with some pains, forced his master to confess the
iniquity of his scheme, he adopts it with alacrity.  There is not a
momentary struggle between self-devotion and the shock of indignation.
The spring is broken.  The sense is dulled.  The voice within is
hushed.  What then kept this man's life so pure in court and camp?  The
book is not written to suggest that honour and chivalry are a genuine
form or a substitute for grace.

One might suspect that it is the idea which Plato transmitted from
Socrates, which Cameron, in 1624, had revived--that the knowledge of
good and evil is virtue.  But Inglesant possesses the virtue without
the knowledge.  He is as destitute of conviction as he is free from
vice.  His one security is Direction.  He passes from hand to hand, and
successive teachers impress him for a time, but impart no principle.
When they fail him, he stands where they found him, a safe and
contented Churchman, not because he has examined all things and chosen
the best, but because the master he preferred happened to be in prison.

A fine opportunity had been wasted.  A clever, refined, high-spirited
youth, who has won, in a religious {146} philosophy, a standing ground
apart from Churches, who yet learns to sympathise with them, and who
sheds his prejudices and illusions as he grows in spiritual experience;
that would be a noble study in the days of Grotius, Descartes, Lord
Herbert, Hammond, Baxter, Roger Williams, Elondel, Raynaud, and Pascal.
None of these appear on the platform with Hobbes and Cressy and
Molinos--as though, two centuries later, a man should seek rest for
conscience without going near Channing, Arnold, Newman, Vinet, Neander,
Rothe, Schelling, or Grundtvig.  Last, the terms Romish, papist,
popery, in so good an artist, make me ask myself whether a papist who
respects himself would talk of heretics, schismatics, apostates, and
infidels?  But I have become confused from my prolixity.

I shall be very glad if there is anything in what I said that Arthur
Lyttelton can turn to account, after careful verification.  If he will
take the trouble to examine for himself, there can be no reason to
allude to anybody else.

He will abstain, I know, from raising those points respecting
persecution which would give just offence, appearing in this indirect
way.  To mark the enormity of supposing that the Cardinal did not know
that people used to be burned in Rome; it would be enough to say that
he cannot have forgotten the reign of Paul V.  Down to that reign, from
1542 to 1608, the thing was common and notorious.  After Paul V. there
is little that anybody would remember who has not made a study of such
things.  This also must be borne in mind, that in Rome, unlike Spain,
the victims were usually strangled, and were not committed to the
flames until they were dead.

The book alluded to, I. 327, is Molina, on grace.  {147} The defence
about the appearance of the name of Quakers would be that it appeared
in that very year 1650.  But they are here talked about as early as
January, as if quite well known.  The answer to my objection about
Sancta Clara would be that the similarity of opinions suggested the use
of the name.  But the man is too well known to be treated in that
unceremonious way.

To say, I. 137, that among Puritans self-restraint and concealment were
sins, is so serious an imputation, especially the first word, that it
should be defined which sect was meant.  Nobody says that Baxter was
rude, not even Howe, in private life.  There is a slovenliness in this
use of a big brush.  Cardinal Howard does not deserve the praise he
gets, II. 333.  He was a very pale figure.

Observe II. 273.  There are no spires in Rome.  I hear that the author
has never been in Italy.  That accounts for many topographical
mistakes, and leaves a margin to his credit.

The date of the steps of the Trinità might perhaps be discovered in the
life of Cardinal Polignac, or in the article on him in Michaud or
Didot.  It matters not; but the correctness of local and chronological
colour turns on such points as these.  I think Cressy could hardly have
justified what he says of the Fathers.

On looking over my lengthy prose I find something that I must
add:--Valdes never renounced Catholicism, but his writings, only lately
made accessible, are the writings of a Protestant.  The numbers
mentioned in the Irish massacre are, of course, monstrously
exaggerated, as were the numbers given by Clarendon, Milton, and
Baxter.  I quote them to show the greatness of the {148} alarm.  The
French Jesuits stood by Richelieu and allowed one of their number to be
exiled for his opposition to the German war when, after the peace of
Prague, it had ceased to be a war in defence of the Protestants, and
was purely aggressive.  This was because, in 1627, he had made them
understand that they must leave France if they resisted his will.  It
was easier to associate resistance to Puritanism with the Catholic
cause than aggression on the Catholic Powers in Germany.  I do not say
that the care taken to prevent conversion is absolutely impossible.
Some Franciscans at that time might have done it; and something like it
is told of a Jesuit a few years later.

There is a very curious passage, II. 385, on persecution: It was these
selfsame ideas of the future and its relation to this life that
actuated their tormentors.  This is an attempt to look beneath the
surface, and a soothing tribute to the feelings of those who admire
Galerius and Calvin and Gregory the Thirteenth.  The Natural History of
Intolerance has not yet been written; but the analysis is not so simple
as these words imply.  Half of the persecution in the Roman Empire, all
the persecution of Huguenots by the Valois, and of Roman Catholics
under Elizabeth, was due to other ideas than those of the future.  And
where religious ideas induced men to side with the tormentors against
Toleration, there is much that is not more sincere or more excusable
than the ideas that have led to political massacres.  The opinion
expressed covers some of the ground, but only a very small part of it.

But I must stop somewhere.


[Sidenote: _Cannes March 29, 1882_]

If there are judges and juries in Britain, Macmillan would expose
himself to fine and imprisonment by {149} printing what I write to you.
You will see in a moment, I am sure, why it could never be.

It would be an offence to the author, because there is no allowance of
the large measure of praise and even of admiration due to him--nothing
but the Catalogue of objections suggested to me by the belief that I
was writing to a too fervent admirer of the book.  Without my signature
it would be a stab in the dark; and with my name it would be
insufferably pretentious, uncalled-for, and unfair.  And I, who make a
profession of knowing about Conclaves and the like, should be bound to
visit more amply, if not more severely, the strangely inadequate and
pointless narrative of the election of Chigi.  Few things are more
curious and dramatic than the Conclaves, and this one is particularly
well known.

Besides, Fraser is sure to be very hostile, both in detail and in
respect of the scope and spirit of the work.  He is sure to quarrel
with Jesuit and Cardinal, and to say much of what I have said in strict
confidence.  Please, dismiss the thought; and if you compliment
anything, let it be the paper and handwriting.

That is a very kind question about Gardiner; and as I have at hand,
here, the means of learning more without risk of indiscretion, I had
better postpone my answer.  If, as a rule, those pensions are granted
to people almost destitute of means, the case could not well be
admitted.  He ought to be at the Record Office instead of the present
Hardy.  It is in Jessel's gift, and he asked my advice, specially
excluding clergymen, and thereby losing the two best men, Brewer and
Stubbs.  I suggested Freeman, Gardiner, and Bond.  Freeman sent me word
that he would not take it.  Jessel told me he would appoint Bond--who
is now the very good {150} and estimable, but gloomy successor of
Panizzi--but that he had been told that Bond was a Catholic.  He said
that a Jew was not strong enough to appoint a Catholic Keeper of the
Archives.  Bond is a Broad Churchman, and the report arose only from my
recommendation.  Gardiner therefore remained; but it was resolved,
under I know not what pressure, to keep the thing in the Hardy family.
Meantime, I think Gardiner succeeded Brewer in his professorship at
King's College--not, I imagine, remunerative, but still an obstacle.

Yes, I agree about Forbes, and rather think he is one of the men Simon
speaks of, and defies the Sorbonne to meet--unless I am mixing up the
two divines of that name.

Spinola wrote no book.  He was a Franciscan bishop, Imperial Confessor
at Vienna, and produced several schemes of union, on the part of Rome,
which differ from other such by being definite and sincere.  Leibniz,
and the Calixtine school of Lutherans, were very near adopting his
plan; but as he was an agent of pope and emperor when Louis XIV. was
the enemy of both, Bossuet contrived to baffle him.  What was known of
these transactions down to our day is in Pichler's work on Leibniz.
Much more has since come out in the "Correspondence of the Electress
Sophia," and there is more to come, whenever the Madonna of the
Future[175] is unveiled.

Of John Inglesant, let me say that it would be a very fair text to work
on--how far the pagan, human virtues, coupled with qualities which are
not, in a spiritual sense, virtues, such as courage, delicacy, good
nature, veracity, pride, can accomplish the outward, visible {151} work
of grace.  But that is clearly not the author's design.

If Gardiner's paper is very hostile, and you then think it worth while
to send my remarks to Mr. Shorthouse,[176] through his publisher or
otherwise, that is a case governed by the saying of the younger
Pompey.[177]

I liked what I saw of the Fox Memorials during a very short inspection;
and yesterday, lunching at the parsonage at Mentone, I found the Life
of Lowder.  The accounts of Prince Leopold were distressing.  Fancy my
finding myself with two excellent clergymen, both ardent Gladstonians,
and both wishing for the admission of Bradlaugh.  Otherwise my journey
was not altogether successful, as I got half a sunstroke, which you
have already seen traces of in my letter.


      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _Cannes April 27, 1882_]

The description you quote of Coleridge is not more inaccurate than
epigram requires.  I have just drawn up a list of recommended authors
for my son, as being the company I should like him to keep, after me;
and after some hesitation I included S. T. C. in the number.  But he
has to be balanced by sounder stuff.

Lecky only arrived two days ago, and is scarcely begun.  But the
beginning, and the account of Junius struck me as very far indeed ahead
of all his former writings.  There is a good deal of slovenly writing,
and it is puerile to write modern history from printed books; but this
is a wonderfully solid performance.  You will not think it as amusing
as Froude's "Carlyle," when you come to it, but much more nutritious.

{152}

You depressed my spirits the other day by showing that the majority of
39 did not amount to quite so much as I, from a distance, had imagined.
And the Budget, though open to very little remark, does not do much to
raise them.  If I was not conscious of being the worst accountant yet
discovered, I should say that there is a slip in one of the
calculations of Savings Bank deposits.

Gardiner for some reason did not publish his article....  If Arthur
Lyttelton, out of pure cussedness, wishes to put in the note you speak
of, I would like to see what it is he says, starting from the materials
buried in my letter.

      *      *      *      *      *


      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _Cannes May 3, 1882_]

Lecky's merits stand undiminished by further acquaintance, but the
deficiencies become more glaring.  The character of Burke, though in my
opinion very defective, seems to me the best I have read in the
language.

      *      *      *      *      *

The May _Fraser_ contains his article,[178] and I greatly fear that his
judgment will be as critical as my own.

I wonder whether you have the _Temps_ or _Débats_ in Downing Street,
and have read the speeches of Pasteur and Renan.  I do not remember so
interesting a reception, and what is serious is that the most powerful
intellectual force in France has declared, virtually, for materialism.


[Sidenote: _Cannes May 5, 1882_]

We have nothing later than Tuesday's speech, so that the lines are not
traceable into the future, and I am still in a very anxious and
doubting stage.

{153}

It is not apparent why Spencer occupies a position between earth and
heaven.  He looks like a warming pan.  Not for a prince, for that is
out of the question.  For Dufferin?[179]  But Dufferin, who is easy,
dexterous, and popular, has not the sterling and transparent quality of
Spencer himself.  It may well be the basis of a vast change in the
machinery for the government of Ireland; but that would require
legislation for which there is no time.  Perplexity No. 1.

Then one must conclude that the change comes from assurances given by
the moderate Irish members, that it would enable them to moderate the
raging ones.  But to ensure that, they must have a finger in the pie,
and Russell or Shaw would have to have the offer of the Irish Office.
It seems clear, from the delay, that that is not to be; and one hears
of Lefevre and Chamberlain....  Perplexity 2.

There is a look of uncertainty and want of clearness about the whole
thing.  Cowper resigns; after an interval, half a successor is
appointed; then the suspects are released; then Forster resigns; and
then, after another interval showing want of preparation, there is a
new Secretary.  This way of doing whatever is to be done suggests that
the Ministry had not the foresight to anticipate opinion, or strength
to lead it.  Dropping one colleague after another in their Irish course
makes that course appear wanting in deliberation and design, and
strengthens the notion that, under heavy pressure, they may be driven
nobody knows where, like men who yield, not like men who lead.  I
presume that there is some evidence of ensured improvement, consequent
upon concession.  But one doubts that again, when {154} Forster
resigns; and it seems that the change is in the ideas more than in the
facts.  As to any gain on Irish opinion from the grace of concession, I
should not expect it, as so many suspects remain in custody.  If so,
then the advantage would be derived from the new position of the Irish
leaders--a very doubtful policy.  Then again, I don't like the moment;
immediately after Cairns's stroke, and the untimely publication of his
draft report.[180]  I don't like anything which looks like
overtrumping, because it is not fit for such a Prime Minister to follow
initiative, whether that of opponents, or of English or Irish opinion.

These misgivings occur to me although you know, if nobody else does,
that I was not convinced by the argument in favour of coercion, and saw
no evidence of greater demoralisation than was the direct effect of
actual suffering.  Since then there has been so much atrocity in
Ireland, so much foreign influence, and so manifest a change for the
worse in the conduct of the clergy, that I have grown reconciled to the
strong hand.  Even if full of sympathy with the spirit of the present
policy, I cannot satisfy myself with the mode of its inception, and I
shall not feel comfortable for some days, until the design grows clear.
To you, they will be intensely interesting, and I shall be very glad
indeed to hear that confidence reigns in Downing Street.


POST OFFICE AND SUBMARINE TELEGRAPHS.

CANNES, 5.14, 8/5, 11.54, on the 8/5, 1882.

Do not let him lose confidence in himself.[181]

ACTON.

{155}

[Sidenote: _Cannes May 9, 1882_]

We have only vague reports in French newspapers, but I cannot wait for
full accounts of the tragedy that touches us all so nearly, to give you
my warm tribute of sympathy and sorrow.  It is shocking to think of
her, so worthy of happiness and so afflicted.  You, I know, have, of
all people, the most soothing hand for the most cruel wounds.

It must have been a dreadful blow in your own home, and at a distance
one grows anxious about many things.  I apprehend a violent burst of
passion in the country, with despair of healing such disease with
lenient arts; and, if the tide turns, the change will be felt in
Parliament, and will be used by men quite capable of seeing that Mr.
Gladstone's statesmanship is confirmed by the very crime which will
condemn it in common minds.  Assuming that some of the Cabinet assent
reluctantly to the heroic policy, and that the last few weeks have not
added to his personal ascendency, I fear that they will either forsake
him or urge him to forsake his own ideal lines.  Thinking of this, of
his strong affections, of the shadow on the hearth, I could not
restrain my wish to send you my small vote of confidence.

For we heard at first that Spencer had instantly resigned.[182]  I was
ashamed to show myself, and whispered to my family how Nicholas, the
bad emperor, faced a rebellious army.  There is very different news
to-day.  I gather that Spencer remains, that Forster redeems many
faults by offering to go back, that Parnell has made his choice between
murder and conciliation, that the Opposition holds its hand, expecting
Mr. Gladstone to turn against himself.

{156}

It seems to me that much ground must inevitably be lost, and that the
true moral of this catastrophe can never be made visible to the average
Englishman.  Still I see great opportunities of recovery, and I know in
what spirit I hope that he has had the strength to receive the blow
aimed through Freddy Cavendish at himself.

I long so much to hear from you.  If you can think, in sad days like
these, of anything but the sorrow that is near you, do give an
affectionate message from me to Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, and send me,
when you have a quiet moment, a line to Munich.  I start almost
immediately.


      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _St. Martin Ried Haute Autriche July 20, 1882_]

Alexandria, Bright, and a vote of censure have been a great distraction
from our Irish troubles.  If Bright, the Minister, agreed to the
orders, and if Bright, the Quaker, woke up at the execution of the
orders, then his conduct is unstatesmanlike and weak.  I conclude,--not
having Monday's debate yet,--that he resigns not because of the
bombardment, but because, having troops on the way, remembering the
example of Paris, warned by the terrified correspondents, we
nevertheless bombarded without taking precautions against consequences
that were not improbable.  If he takes that ground, he will, I suppose,
be angry and mischievous, and his position will encourage the
disaffected Whigs; and it will be awkward even if part of the blame
rests on the Powers; because, when we took things into our own hands,
we were bound to do all that was necessary.

I very much wish for a completer defence than {157} I have seen yet;
and at the same time I think that a good defence, with some measure of
political success in Egypt, will be a source of new strength, and if
there is some blame, I anxiously ask myself whether it lies at the
Foreign Office, at the War Office, or at the Admiralty.

It is provoking not to know most of the names of the people going out
on this difficult errand.  That is one side of the question.  The
other, nearer home, for me, is that you are still going through
terrible worry, and that the wear and tear must be telling on Mr.
Gladstone.  I ask myself one question, which most people would think an
unlikely one, whether he thoroughly controls his colleagues, and
whether the work of the House absorbs him too much....  I hope you sat
next to Bright....


      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _St. Martin July 29, 1882_]

We are living here in my brother-in-law's house; and I will tell him
that he must prepare for better guests, as soon as you tell me that it
is not the baseless fabric of a vision.  He is not married; so that
there is no one to be on ceremony with; and his house is as big as many
Tegernsees.  Alfred[183] will be as welcome here as he is wherever his
bright face is shown.

      *      *      *      *      *

It is impossible not to feel that the Ministry grows weaker by the
associates it has lost as well as by the associates that decline to
join.  There are now the ingredients of an alternative Liberal Cabinet,
consisting of men fairly equal to those now in office--with the
necessary exception--and hostile to them.  The ground is getting narrow
under our feet, and the full {158} force of the party does not support
Ministers.  The want of a successor to Bright indicates too clearly
that Mr. Gladstone, though still master of his majority, is not what he
has been, master of his party.  I hope for new arrangements at the end
of the session, and for a real gain of strength from ultimate success
in Egypt.  But, like Ireland, it is a harvest that will ripen slowly.
I wonder whether things have seemed to you as gloomy as this, or
whether the light before you dispels the darkness.

Mozley's book, and all others published in England since January, I
have not seen.  He interests me more than almost any other of our
divines, and I look forward to a good time with his reminiscences, if,
as I understand, it is the divine, and not the manifold writer.[184]


      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _Tegernsee August 4, 1882_]

With all my heart I adopt your scheme, Reform, Dissolution, and then,
let Politics make way for a still higher and worthier cause.

      *      *      *      *      *


[Sidenote: _Paris, August 12, 1882_]

Salisbury's collapse[185] is less decisive than mine, and although
there is a pleasant corner in the House of Lords, my journey ends in
nothing better than disappointment and in having set you to write notes
all day.  My accounts show that they are not comfortable at home, so
that I have no right to be basking in the ethereal sunshine of Downing
Street.

It was a monstrous thing to do, suggestive of {159} Mrs. Todgers, but I
left the Dante in his[186] room at the H. of Commons.  It was too late
to ring at No. 10,[187] for I kept him talking till near eleven.  But
there was some symbolic propriety about the title[188] of the unbound
volume--unbound because they did not remember the binding of the rest.
Of course the impression of my one well-filled day in town--even with
the part of Cordelia left out--is the very opposite of that under which
I lately wrote.  The session ends with a great blaze of his mastery and
power.  But the best of it all is, that I found him so wonderfully
vigorous and well and even content.  It did indeed impress me most
deeply.

It is remarkable how little he chooses to realise the tremendous loss
of authority and power which the party will incur by his retirement,
and he has no idea how little he would soon be in harmony with them.
However, Ireland is not all right yet; and there are obvious
complications impending in Egypt which he cannot leave unsolved.  With
that, there will still be time for the Reform Bill.

Late at night I found slipped under my door your rejected letter, which
will be cherished with the rest.  If writing made up for sight!

This letter is written by scraps, in various places and countries.  I
crossed with Forster, on his way to Russia, and got him to tell me his
inner history.  I shall be at St. Martin the day after to-morrow....

Shorthouse's[189] letter could not go with Dante, and I will enclose it
in my next.  I have got Democracy.  The Mays, considered an authority
on the subject, do {160} not think much of it.  Forster does, and says
it is not by Mrs. Adams.  He says that Bright has no idea that he left
either too early or too late.  Will you--very earnestly--put my excuses
before Mrs. Gladstone for my way of dealing with her boundless
hospitality?


[Sidenote: _La Madeleine Cannes Feb. 2, 1883_]

I wonder whether you would come to lunch to-morrow, Saturday?  Perhaps
I could inscribe in your most private book the list of the hundred
works that have most influenced human history.

      *      *      *      *      *


[Sidenote: _Feb. 13, 1883_]

... These books are enclosed to show Mr. Gladstone what good German
prose is, in expounding difficult, very difficult, questions.  Also, a
little book, by a very famous Dane who has grown more and more to be a
power since his death....


[Sidenote: _La Madeleine March 3, 1883_]

After seeking a moment's distraction at a chateau near Marseilles I
came home to find your letter, so kindly written in the intervals of
Parisian dissipations.

The failure of Challemel was truly sad, but I hope that Fedora,[190]
following the little dinner on the Boulevard, made up for it.  The
tranquillity and sameness of Cannes will soon be thrust far out of
sight by the centre of European life.  We do our best, in your absence,
to be a little worldly.  Bright, Houghton, and the Mallets lunch
to-day.  I am to meet Colonel Hay at tea, and the little bishop[191] at
dinner this evening.

... It is pleasant to think that Lyons made you enjoy Paris, and
divined the one thing you all have a passion for, and he seems to have
done the political part of his work very well by bringing you into
contact {161} both with the ruling men and with the Left Centre.  That
was just what was wanting to redress the Wolvertonian balance.

I am a little sorry that the visit at the Elysée was not more
interesting.  Grévy's speeches in 1848 were very sensible indeed, but
he seems to be pushing the theory of the _roi fainéant_ much beyond the
American, or even the Merovingian, limit, if he avoids politics with
such a visitor.  Then I rejoice much at the visit to Jules Simon,
though you don't say whether it was spontaneous or a return, and a
curious question is, where was the limit drawn?  Did he and Broglie,
Decazes, Harcourt, avoid each other?  If these former ambassadors did
not call, it is matter for speculation.  At Marseilles, I found myself
in a nest of Legitimists, and learnt that the chief of them, Coriolis,
lately asked the Count of Chambord for leave to raise the white flag.
If there was more of this kind, it is odd that the advocates of
expulsion made so little of it.  If it had been possible to stay longer
at Paris, it would have been a very desirable thing, for they do not
really know or understand him,[192] and the conflict of forces there
would be worth observing otherwise than in Blowitz' or Lyons's
despatches.

It is a pity to have missed Mrs. Craven, who would take to you
intensely if you saw more of each other--a woman of great talent and
elevation of mind, but who has just written on the Salvation Army a
paper that seems to portend the approach of mental decay.  Lady
Blennerhassett is very far her superior.  Tell her all about Cannes if
you see her....  Mrs. Green writes me a touching letter to say that she
has no hope left....

      *      *      *      *      *

{162}

[Sidenote: _La Madeleine, March 7, 1883_]

This is only a hasty line of thanks and congratulation on your
prosperous journey.  I have not yet seen either the Wolvertons or the
Anson family, and to-day there are a couple of inches of snow over
Cannes.  Incorrigible Potter circulates the Financial Reform Almanack
in the name of the Cobden Club, for which Reay, A. Russell, and others
have denounced him.  He asked me to read it through, which has been the
melancholy occupation of a whole day, ending in agreement with the
critics.

I am losing Mallet, who is less well and goes to Mentone.  Also,
Colonel Hay,[193] Lincoln's secretary and biographer, who proved a most
agreeable acquaintance.  Yesterday, there was an expedition to Pégomas
(Houghton, Dempsters, &c.) and I find that the old lady[194] is the
original of St. Monica in Ary Scheffer's picture.  Myers, translator of
Homer, is here, with a nice, newly-married wife, and Cross is in great
force, writing the biography[195] and wanting me to read the papers.

Thanks for the MS., with the answer for which pray express my
acknowledgments.

      *      *      *      *      *

You have heard that the Ashburnham MSS. are offered to the Museum, and
that some of them were stolen from public libraries in France.  We
propose, if we buy at all, to resell to France as many of these as can
be proved to be stolen, and Delisle, the French Panizzi, comes this
week to produce his evidence, amicably, before the Museum experts.

I say nothing about the purchase, and have only insisted that ---- was
a thief, and that we must, as we did before, make terms with Paris.
But I want you to know that Léopold Delisle is one of the most eminent
{163} scholars in France, that he is a most estimable and high-minded
man, tho' not a conspicuous bookmaker or littérateur, that he stands as
high in Germany as any Frenchman living, and that I have long enjoyed
the privilege of his friendly acquaintance.  So that, if it should be
otherwise feasible, any civility shown him by the P.M.[196] on this his
very peculiar international mission, would be taken in France as a
marked sign of courtesy and goodwill, just after the visit to France.

This is quite independent of the decision the Treasury may come to
about the grant.  I may add that Delisle is perfectly trustworthy, and
that we are safe in the hands of the Museum people, to come to right
judgments as to the MSS....

Cross has shown me, with some secrecy, a very curious letter of
Dickens, declaring that only a woman could have written the "Scenes
from Clerical Life."  But he gives no good reason, and I am persuaded
that he had heard the secret from Herbert Spencer, who at once detected
it.  I dare not express my doubt.  John Morley writes pleasantly, but
says he still feels like a fish out of water on the benches.

This is written at your table in considerable solitude and vacancy.

      *      *      *      *      *

I have just heard that Green is dead, and I must go to Mentone....


[Sidenote: _La Madeleine March 21, 1883_]

I hope to see them at the station, and then we can make plans for next
week.  The hotel is very full, but Cross tells me that there is just
room for them.  Ill-timed is really all I say against that passage of
the {164} lecture;[197] and, if other people had gone straight, it
would not even have been ill-timed.  My censure has never gone farther
than that.

Nobody can well be more strongly persuaded than I am of the necessity,
the practical and moral necessity, of governing nations by consent,
national consent being proved both by the vapour of opinion, and by the
definite mechanism of representation.  I am not even surprised that
many Irishmen should be suspicious of the goodwill of a country which
turns as readily to a Tory government as to a Liberal, which is seldom
awake to its sins and the consequences of its sins, unless roused by
terror, and which has made amends only under compulsion, or under the
intense, but not permanent, influence of one resolute mind.  Even that
is not all that I concede to them.  Therefore, in substance, Herbert
has all my sympathy; only, if anything awkward arises, it is his father
who has to find the remedy or bear the burden.  The danger now is that
the great wave, of his own raising, that has sustained his policy of
generosity, and even of eventual confidence, will fall.  People will
lose, not only sympathy, which is not to the point, but hopefulness.  I
cannot even say that they will be wrong to lose hope.  But if men cease
to look forward to success, they cannot be made to go straight by
looking back to their own evil deeds.  Nobody, then, would stand by the
P.M. except pure Democrats, like Chamberlain and Morley.  If I was a
Minister, I would say, not that we shall devise new schemes to disarm
this new evidence, not that we shall relax our efforts in just
indignation and despair, {165} but that we shall go on with our appeal
from the ill-disposed to the well-disposed, pursuing a policy which is
not dictated by momentary hope or momentary fear, but proceeds from the
heart and spirit of the principles which are our _raison d'être_ as a
party and as a government.  But I don't say that I should succeed.

If flurry and apprehension penetrate Downing Street, nothing can
sustain Mr. Gladstone better than your own serenity.  Be true to him
and to his cause even if these odious crimes continue, even when you
feel that the harvest will not be reaped in his time.  The mills of God
grind slowly.

It is very easy to speak words of wisdom from a comfortable distance,
when one sees no reality, no details, none of the effect on men's
minds.  What is glorious is the way in which Mr. Gladstone rides on the
whirlwind.  You need not wonder much what I am thinking of it all.

As long ago as 1870 I ceased to be sanguine that we could govern
Ireland successfully.  The best influence over the Irish people is the
influence of the clergy, and an ultramontane clergy is not proof
against the sophistry by which men justify murder or excuse murderers.
The assassin is only a little more resolutely logical or a little
bolder than the priest.

I hope you will read and like Montégut's articles on George Eliot,
especially the second, in the _Revue_ of March 15.  See pp. 307 and 329
for some very excellent criticism.

Miss B. met Cross here at lunch, was intensely excited, and explained
it by saying that he is Ladislaw.  But I cannot believe it.  They say
that Dorothea is here too.  H---- has been in great force.  He is
unwell now, but looks forward to M----'s arrival to-day, {166}
declaring, with accurate self-knowledge, that he likes nothing so much
as an impostor.

He has given me Bradley's Recollections to read, from which I learned
very little, and Stephen's very curious history of our criminal law.

Oscar Browning is here, divided between the French Revolution and the
Gracchi--the most interesting of all purely secular topics.


[Sidenote: _La Madeleine March 31, 1883_]

The Wickhams are most inaccessible people, only to be seen on the road
to Gourdon or St. Cézaire.  I have had only a glimpse of them; but we
hope to overtake them between Château Scott and S. Paul's on Sunday.
They have some wild scheme of visiting Languedoc.

Cross told me that he had asked for some criticisms of mine which you
told him of.  I answered that I did not believe you would send them,
and he said that if you did, he would forward them unread.  But I am
sure there is nothing of any possible use to him.  He is very
communicative, and I am to see her letters and to advise as to
publication.  What I have seen is of such a kind that merely strung
together with a few short notes, it would make a very interesting book:
"Memorials of George Eliot."

The real answer to your remark[198] about that list[199] is that which
Johnson gave about fetlock.[200]  I have nothing to say about physical
science that is not a reminiscence of conversations with Owen or
Hooker, Paget or Tyndall; and it would be important to put down all the
decisive works in those branches.  I have {167} tried to know the books
on the history and method of discovery, the laws of scientific
progress, and the tests of truth and error; and I find that this is a
matter which very few scientific men take any interest in.

If I must defend my list, this is the sort of sophism I would employ:--

We all know some twenty or thirty predominant currents of thought or
attitudes of mind, or system-bearing principles, which jointly or
severally weave the web of human history and constitute the civilised
opinion of the age.  All these, I imagine, a serious man ought to
understand, in whatever strength or weakness they possess, in their
causes and effects, and in their relations to each other.  The majority
of them are either religious or substitutes for religion.  For
instance, Lutheran, Puritan, Anglican, Ultramontane, Socinian,
Congregational, Mystic, Rationalist, Utilitarian, Pantheist,
Positivist, Pessimist, Materialist, and so on.  All understanding of
history depends on one's understanding the forces that make it, of
which religious forces are the most active, and the most definite.  We
cannot follow all the variations of a human mind, but when we know the
religious motive, that the man was an Anabaptist, an Arminian, a Deist
or a Jansenist, we have the master key, we stand on known ground, we
are working a sum that has been, at least partially, worked out for us,
we follow a computed course, and get rid of guesses and accidents.
Thirdly (I am thinking, let us say, of my own son), we are not
considering what will suit an untutored savage or an illiterate peasant
woman who would never come to an end of the Imitation or the Serious
Call.  Her religion may be enough for heaven, without other study.  Not
so with a man living in the world, in constant friction {168} with
adversaries, in constant contemplation of religious changes, sensible
of the power which is exerted by strange doctrines over minds more
perfect, characters that are stronger, lives that are purer than his
own.  He is bound to know the reason why.  First, because, if he does
not, his faith runs a risk of sudden ruin.  Secondly, for a reason
which I cannot explain without saying what you may think bad psychology
or bad dogma--I think that faith implies sincerity, that it is a gift
that does not dwell in dishonest minds.  To be sincere a man must
battle with the causes of error that beset every mind.  He must pour
constant streams of electric light into the deep recesses where
prejudice dwells, and passion, hasty judgments and wilful blindness
deem themselves unseen.  He must continually grub up the stumps planted
by all manner of unrevised influence.  The subtlest of all such
influences is not family, or college, or country, or class, or party,
but religious antagonism.  There is much more danger for a
high-principled man of doing injustice to the adherent of false
doctrine, of judging with undeserved sympathy the conspicuous adherent
of true doctrine, than of hating a Frenchman or loving a member of
Brooks's.  Many a man who thinks the one disgraceful is ready to think
the other more than blameless.  To develop and perfect and arm
conscience is the great achievement of history, the chief business of
every life, and the first agent therein is religion or what resembles
religion.  That is my sophism, beyond Dr. Johnson.  But I think I
represent Anglicanism by only one book, or two at most.  Others, such
as books on Church and State, cover much secular ground.  Luckily, the
paper limit stops me in the middle of a long prose.

{169}

      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _Hotel Klinger Marienbad Sept. 1, 1883_]


... Here, at last, I am resting from hard times at Marienbad, where the
waters get into one's head, as my letter will probably show.  You
insist on my recording everything on which you will disagree, so I must
say that I should have voted more in royal than episcopal company.[201]
In our Church and in the countries I have lived in much, one is so
accustomed to those marriages that one does not think of a law to
prevent them.  Then as to Egypt, I was not orthodox as to the policy of
the argument in favour of Lesseps, but vehemently comforted by the line
taken, to make no sordid profit out of our military position, and to
resist every entanglement that would indefinitely prolong the
occupation.  When I consider that our presence there should be the
pivot for the settlement of the Eastern question, and the means of
civilising Africa, I can see so much to dazzle ambitious politicians
that I fear no Minister but one will ever be strong enough--in
ascendency as well as in moral power--to evacuate, and I complacently
take note of that additional steam to my propeller, whenever the
question of retirement stirs again; and my third heresy is about the
Pope.  His declaration was concerted, I suppose, to hit some of the
clergy between wind and water, and so had a political, not a moral aim.
We may get embarrassed if we prompt and promote the political influence
of the Pope, whose principles are necessarily, whose interests are
generally, opposed to our own.  It is as dangerous for us that his
political authority should be obeyed in Irish confessionals as that, in
this instance, it should be defied.  Having morally supported the
movement which upset his sovereignty, being prepared to oppose {170}
any movement to restore it, we come with a bad grace to ask him to prop
and protect our authority in our dominions.  Long ago I remember
writing to headquarters that it would become impossible--impossible for
Liberals--to govern Ireland after the Council; and although I am
avowedly the worst of prophets, this prophecy has had a good deal of
confirmation.  It was an interesting question whether the Pope would
definitely and unconditionally condemn murder, whether from religious
or political motives.  It would have borne untold consequences, as a
direct revocation of the Vatican system, which stands or falls with the
doctrine that one may murder a Protestant.  But I don't believe that so
audacious a change of front would have moved a single priest in Ireland.

Of George,[202] in the sixpenny edition, I had a glimpse at Cannes.
The better part of him, with more moderation and philosophy, and a
wider induction, may be found in the writings of the academic
Socialists, who, in the last ten years, have occupied almost all the
Chairs of Germany, and who have been the warmest admirers of the Irish
policy.

One can hardly congratulate you ... about St. Peter's.[203]  At
Montreux I met a newly-married young clergyman whose ugliness almost
made me take him for ----, and who assured me that it was offered to
Holland.  The dean of St. Paul's[204] was at Munich the other day, and
delighted Döllinger, who believes, in consequence, that a more
mischievous fellow than Chamberlain does not eat bread.  He also sent
him, and enabled me to read, Mozley's washy "Recollections."  Liddon, I
see, is busy with Rosmini, in the intervals of {171} Pusey.[205]
Rosmini will interest you if the book ripens.  He had much of Newman,
and nearly reformed the papacy.  But I am troubled with a doubt.  His
book was answered, by Passaglia, Thenier, Curci, and others, and it was
condemned by the Index.  Rosmini wrote a long and curious defence of
it, which he printed, but did not publish, so as not to defy his
censors.  Liddon ought to have this defence before him, to strengthen
his text withal.  Perhaps Lockhart, and the other English Rosminians,
may scruple to give it to him, lest they break the measured silence of
their chief.  It may be worth while to ask the eloquent and impulsive
Canon, whenever you see him, whether he knows of it.  Do let me thank
you warmly for speaking of me to Mrs. Craven.  She was almost my
earliest friend, and I am shocked to think that I seemed unfaithful to
memories forty years old.  She was intimate with my mother before I was
born.  What does it matter that she also bores me a good deal by her
restlessness, her curiosity and indiscretion, her want of serenity,
&c.?  I always liked her in spite of it, and she was always a great,
but uncomfortable, admirer of Mr. Gladstone.  Not so Waddington.  You
must have seen at once that he is a very estimable, solid, deeply
religious man.  There is hardly so great a scholar in France, and I
think he is the only Frenchman before whom Mommsen has retracted a
statement.  That indeed is his proper line.  Like George Lewis, he is
really happiest among his coins and inscriptions, and was never made
for the active life in which his high character, his knowledge, and now
his willingness to serve a party not his own, have carried him so far.
He has more caution than go, and has neither eloquence, nor influence
over men.  {172} Above all things, he is cautious to do nothing that
would enable adversaries to accuse his patriotism.  His language about
Egypt, and the future of France in the East, would seem exaggerated,
but I dare say you have read "Memories of Old Friends," a book meant
for invalids at Bohemian wells, and curiously displaying English minds
as they were about 1840.  In the second edition Mill's letters are
appended, in one of which he describes Tocqueville's opinion that one
must not lower national pride, "almost the only elevated sentiment that
remains in considerable strength."  Waddington might adopt those words
with even greater justice now.  He once befriended me, so that I am
bound to speak up for him.  We had met but once, at the Embassy, when
he asked me to dinner, and arranged that I should meet, besides Lyons,
Wimpfen and Hohenlohe, whom he knew to be old friends of mine, Louis
Arco, and the three most learned men in Paris, and then he gave me his
box at the Français.  But whilst I testify what a good fellow he is, it
is necessary, highly necessary, to add that he is not a friend of Mr.
Gladstone.  That class of scholars to which he belongs, men busy with
inscriptions, ruins, medals, vases, contriving thereby to amend a text
or fix a date, inevitably resent the spirit in which Mr. Gladstone
studies antiquity, carrying with him emotions and ideals derived from
elsewhere, and considerably disturbing accepted habits and conclusions.
Then it is very hard for an extra patriotic Frenchman to see with
patience a powerful government that does not always use its strength,
that accepts rebuke and repulse, and is ready to draw in the outposts
of the empire.  Whatever the true cause, I am pretty sure of the fact
that he will come to Hawarden, like Ruskin, curious to probe the great
Gladstonian {173} mystery, not favourably prepossessed.  I hope you
will have him soon, and deal justly with him.

When you sit down to Macaulay, remember that the Essays are really
flashy and superficial.  He was not above par in literary criticism;
his Indian articles will not hold water; and his two most famous
reviews, on Bacon and Ranke, show his incompetence.  The essays are
only pleasant reading, and a key to half the prejudices of our age.  It
is the History (with one or two speeches) that is wonderful.  He knew
nothing respectably before the seventeenth century, he knew nothing of
foreign history, of religion, philosophy, science, or art.  His account
of debates has been thrown into the shade by Ranke, his account of
diplomatic affairs, by Klopp.  He is, I am persuaded, grossly, basely
unfair.  Read him therefore to find out how it comes that the most
unsympathetic of critics can think him very nearly the greatest of
English writers.

My good friend Bright[206] got me into controversy by sending me
Beard's "Hibbert Lectures," on the Reformation.  There was a great deal
to say, with the usual result; but you would think them interesting as
a stimulant.  Have I ever told you that I have read the Diaries,
letters, &c., of G. Eliot?  Cross wants me to review them in the
_Nineteenth Century_, or at least wanted; but I know not where he is,
or whether he still wishes it.

I always see Miss Helen Gladstone in the papers, and suppose she is
with you.  I don't know whether Miss Renouf is in her house.[207]  She
is a sort of god-child of mine, and her father is, without exception,
the most learned Englishman I know.  The daughter of {174} such a man
should be something unusual; the mother, too, is of a clever family, a
Brentano.

Lady Blennerhassett gave me some accounts of you at Holmbury.
Minghetti, whom I saw lately, tells me that our friend Bonghi has a
Roman History in the press, which the Italians hope to set up against
Mommsen.  I forgot, to complete my confession, that I have never been
happy about our policy with Cetewayo.  But the general result of the
session cannot be lamented, only it is not heroic success, such as Mr.
Gladstone's supremacy and the flatness of the Opposition would demand.
The great thing is his health.  I did not come over, not being once
summoned, so that we shall only meet at Cannes.  Do talk about plans.
Can there be anything before Cannes?  It can never be too soon to meet.


[Sidenote: _La Madeleine Feb. 9, 1884_]

You make writing as difficult as living afar, by your unspeakable
goodness, but also by the infusion of the contrary quality.  If I
promise not to attack the Government, and to believe in Lord Derby,
will you agree not to hit me so hard?  I cannot well help doing what I
do, taking all things into consideration; and as to my tiresome
book,[208] please to remember that I can only say things which people
do not agree with, that I have neither disciple nor sympathiser, that
this is no encouragement to production and confidence, that grizzled
men, except ----, grow appalled at the gaps in their knowledge, and
that I have no other gift but that which you pleasantly describe, of
sticking eternal bits of paper into innumerable books, and putting
larger papers into black boxes.  There is no help for it.  But your
reproaches are much more {175} distressing to read than you suppose,
and make me think them better to read than to hear.  Otherwise, I too
would have a dream, to describe, and wish that yours came true from
January 1 to December 31.

George[209] did not catch me at Marienbad, and came from Munich in a
big box, only the other day.  I had partly read him, but I was in a
difficulty about thanking you for it with full honesty as long as I
only knew it casually, by unhallowed copies.  But I do thank you, if I
may do so even now, most gratefully for the kindness of it altogether,
and particularly for your belief that I should understand it, and care
for it apart from the sender.  Although in this you have flattered me;
for there are points in which I dare say I do not like him as much as
you do.

Do not think ill of the people they call academic Socialists.  It is
only a nickname for the school that is prevailing now in the German
universities, with a branch in France and another in Italy, a school
whose most illustrious representative in England, whose most eminent
practical teacher in the world, is Mr. Gladstone.  In their writings,
inspired by the disinterested study of all classic economists, one
finds most of the ideas and illustrations of Mr. George, though not,
indeed, his argument against Malthus.  This makes him less new to one;
but nobody writes with that plain, vigorous directness, and I do
believe that he has, in a large measure, the ideas of the age that is
to come.

I am glad, too, that you like Seeley's book.  It is excellent food for
thought.  But so is the first article in the January _Quarterly_.[210]
I wrote eight pages of criticism and should have liked to send them to
{176} you instead of Maine, but perhaps you have not read him.

Liddon's objection to saying what may damage a very meritorious body of
surviving friends of Rosmini is practically reasonable; but it is
rather a reason for not writing at all on the subject.  Rosmini made a
vigorous attempt to reform the Church of Rome.  He was vehemently
attacked, repelled, censured; and he defended himself in a work more
important, argumentatively, than the first.  If this dramatic incident
is left untold, if his stronger statements are omitted from his case,
we shall get an imperfect notion of a memorable transaction, and of an
interesting, if not a great, divine.

I am so very glad that Mr. Gladstone is in his best health, and that
the troubled times have put out of sight the notion of retirement.  For
that reason I could almost console myself in looking at the Soudan.
That affair has been in the hands of a colleague without much original
resource, attentive to the wind, and glad to follow the advice of local
agents.  It chances that I have been reading ----'s confidential
letters written to a friend sure not to show them to Ministers; and I
have thought him deficient in imagination--in the discovering
faculty--and also in independence.  There is no denying that there has
been a lack of initiative genius in the last few weeks, and that Mr.
Gladstone would have done more if Bonaparte had been his departmental
colleague.

Of all critics of my list,[211] Lubbock is best informed in a vast
region where I am a stranger.  I by no means disregard his criticisms.
I have not got the list myself, and should like nothing in the world so
much as to sit {177} with you and talk over the objections you have
collected.  But will that, or will anything like it, ever be?  If it
may, do send one line on Tuesday to wait arrival at 18 Carlton House
Terrace.


      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _18 Carlton House Terrace S.W. Feb. 13, 1884_]

Here is a ceremonious invitation to dine to-morrow, which I most gladly
accept.

I gather, from something I have just heard, that Froude will not wish
for the Professorship.  As to Freeman, I am not quite sure.  There can
be no real competitor but Gardiner.

Dinner without any prospect beyond will be mere dust and ashes; but
what awful fun Oxford[212] would be!


[Sidenote: _Feb. 15, 1884_]

... It was such a delight to meet the greatest of all our
historians[213] at this particular moment.  There never was so much
kindness in this world.  I can think of nothing but our journey, and
the wretchedness of having only one day there.  Of course I am going to
live at the Clarendon.  If any doubt arises, do not let it exist for a
moment.  Then I must visit the Bodley for an hour, and Stubbs, Liddon,
M. Müller, Jowett, Brodrick, Bright of University.

But these are my private wanderings.  Do remember that, and let them
not spoil the _cachet_ of their own grouping.  As all passes through
you, do take an opportunity to say how thankfully and joyously I accept
his invitation.

{178}

[Sidenote: _La Madeleine March 17, 1884_]

May I employ the fleeting and disrespectful pencil to express
sentiments of the most opposite kind?  I am still so stupidly weak,
unaccountably pulled by an illness which is an anachronism here, that I
am afraid to wait till I am quite ripe for ink, to speak of the happy
time I owed to your companionship in the two capitals of greater
Britain.  There has never been anything like it, and I wonder when
there will again.  Cambridge is in reserve; but nothing can ever equal
the sensation of festive home among people I had never seen, that you
procured for me at Keble.  The worst recollection is the parting at
Paddington.  I chose my hour next day so badly that, coming at 6, I
found your mother invisible, yourself out, and your sister gone.  I
have said nothing yet to M----; but I do look forward two months to
another meeting.  I am very glad that my last conversation with Mr.
Gladstone left no worse impression, for in the obscurity of St. James I
preached heavily on my favourite text: "après moi le déluge;" and on my
favourite preacher.

Meanwhile the troublesome question of retirement is in a new phase.
The half Reform bill is floated by a half pledge as to redistribution
which is personal to himself.  He cannot leave it to be redeemed by
others, who, he expressly stated, are not parties to it.  He is
virtually pledged to complete the work himself; that is, to meet the
next Parliament.  For they will inevitably force him to dissolve in the
autumn, if they do not succeed in crowding out the Reform question.  If
not carried by an immense majority, it will be carried by Irish votes.
The Lords will be able to say that England ought to be consulted
definitely, that it ought not to be overruled by Ireland, in an old
Parliament, and that such a change in the Constitution {179} is not to
be carried by enemies of the Constitution until the country has
pronounced.

I don't imagine that it is a bad point to dissolve upon--at any rate,
there is no swopping in such a crossing.

But I suppose he has abandoned the hope of himself retiring from Egypt,
and if he does not, nobody else will; and so one must begin to face
what is inevitable, and to acknowledge that the Soudan has altered our
position in Egypt.  A further complication cannot be far off.  The best
time to re-open the Turkish question will be whilst we are a little
damaged as to disinterestedness by Cyprus and Egypt, whilst our
increased security makes us less anxious and less nervous about
Constantinople, and whilst the censor of the Turk resides at No. 10.
The position in the East is so much altered since Berlin[214] that
Russia will not long be bound by that Treaty, having a price by which
Austria can be won.  Every step of that sort will help to fix us in
Egypt.

And as long as we are at Alexandria or even at Souakim, the future of
Central Africa will depend on us, or at least on our people.  I do not
believe that Mr. Gladstone would revive John Company and send him to
the Equatorial lakes; and yet I fancy there is an opening there for
inventive statesmanship.

My eagerness about Liddon's elevation does not mean that my head was
turned by the ambush of that deferential Sacristan at Oxford
Station,[215] or that the Warden[216] talked me over--though he talked
wisely.  For I am not in harmony with Liddon, and scarcely in sympathy.
He has weak places that nobody sees and resents so sharply as I do; and
he has got {180} over, or swallowed, such obstacles on the road to Rome
that none remain which, as it seems to me, he ought logically or
legitimately to strain at.  I will even confess to you alone--that that
affair of Rosmini leaves a bad taste in one's mouth.  But one might
pick holes in any man, even in the new Bishop of Chester.[217]  Nothing
steadies a ship like a mitre--and as to his soundness, his
determination to work in and through the Church, and not on eccentric
courses, I satisfied myself with the supreme authority of Dean Church,
on my last night in town.  One cannot help seeing that Liddon is a
mighty force, not yet on its level.  He knows how to kindle and how to
propel.  Newman and Wilberforce may have had the same power, but one
was almost illiterate; the other knows what he might have learnt in the
time of Waterland or Butler; whereas Liddon is in contact with all that
is doing in the world of thought....

      *      *      *      *      *


      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _La Madeleine March 30, 1884_]

... You ask a question on which I can express unexpected agreement.  As
long as property is the basis of representation, I think it hard to
exclude female owners.  There is an obvious principle in it, of course.
But though obvious it is not stringent; because female influence is not
excluded.  We not only have no Salic Law, but we allow women to vote on
matters not political, and we have attached political influence to
property so closely, that rich old women, like the
Duchess-Countess,[218] or Lady Londonderry, are {181} dreadful powers
in the land.  The argument from consistency does not, therefore, make
for exclusion.

At the same time, I think it an evil in many ways.  Girls and widows
are Tories, and channels of clerical influence, and it is not for them
so much as for married women that your argument tells.  If we ever have
manhood suffrage--dissociating power from property altogether, it will
be difficult to keep out wives.  The objections to voting wives are
overwhelming.

      *      *      *      *      *

You open a delightful vista of Colleges and Chapels at Cambridge.  It
is not so easy to answer quite definitely.  If the Reform Bill, read a
second time before Easter, is sent up by Whitsuntide, the division in
the Lords will be early in June.  My difficulty would then be that,
having to come in June, I could hardly come to England in May.
Supposing my Reform vote to be wanted only after Midsummer, then my
probable plan would be to come to London by the middle of May; and I
should be at your orders for Cambridge any time between 20th and 30th
May....

Subject to these conditions, I shall be only too happy to escort you
down to the Sidgwicks', to whom, please present my best thanks.  If
Maine is there, I dare say we can count on a luncheon there....  I am
talking of myself and own plans; but all the time I am thinking of your
cares and troubles, of which you say so little.  If you can send me a
line of good news to Rome, I shall be so glad.


[Sidenote: _La Madeleine June 19, 1884_]

You will be careful, another time, I hope, as to the enclosures you
forward, seeing how long a reply they involve, and how great a delay.
The difficulty which prolongs and has delayed my letter {182} will be
very apparent to you before you reach the end.

First, as to the personal question:--

It was not my purpose to depreciate Canon Liddon.  I came over with the
highest opinion of him--an opinion higher perhaps than Dr. Döllinger's,
or even than Mr. Gladstone's, whose ostensible preference for divines
of less mark has sometimes set me thinking.  Impressed by his
greatness, not as a scholar to be pitted against Germans, but as a
spiritual force, and also by a certain gracious nobleness of tone which
ought to be congenial, I tried, at Oxford and in London, to ascertain
whether there is some element of weakness that had escaped me.

Evidently, Liddon is in no peril from the movement of modern Science.
He has faced those problems and accounted for them.  If he is out of
the perpendicular, it is because he leans the other way.

The question would rather be whether a man of his sentiments, rather
inclined to rely on others, would be proof against the influence of
Newman, or of foreign theologians like Newman.

On the road Bishops and Parliament were taking a few years since, there
would be rocks ahead, and one might imagine a crisis in which it would
be doubtful who would be for maintaining the National Church and who
would not.  I have chanced to be familiar with converts and with the
raw material of which they are made, and cannot help knowing the
distinct and dissimilar paths followed by men like Newman himself,
Hope, Palmer, R. J. Wilberforce, Ward, Renouf, many of whom resembled
Liddon in talent and fervour, and occupied a position outwardly not far
from his own.

{183}

He once called the late Bishop of Brechin[219] the first divine in the
Church.  I knew the Bishop well, and am persuaded that the bond that
held him in the Anglican Communion might easily have snapped, under
contingencies to which he was not exposed.

Putting these questions not quite so crudely as they are stated here, I
thought that I obtained an answer.  At any rate, I was assured that
Liddon is made of sterner stuff than I fancied, that he knows exactly
where he stands, where others have stood before him, and where and why
he parts with them; that the course of Newman and the rest has no
secrets and no surprises for him; that he looks a long way before him,
and has no disposition to cling to the authority of others.  In short,
it appeared very decidedly that he is--what Bishop Forbes was
not--fixed in his Anglican position.

Under this impression, I could not help wondering why Wilkinson,
Stubbs, and Ridding are judged superior to Liddon.  I could have felt
and have expressed no such wonder if I had not taken pains to discover
that he has tried and has rejected the cause of Rome, and that neither
home difficulties nor external influence are at all likely to shake him.

Far, therefore, from meaning disparagement, I rate him higher than any
member of the English clergy I know; and touching the question of
stability, I have the sufficient testimony of his friends, of men
naturally vigilant on that point, of which I am not competent to judge
or to speak.

So little competent, indeed, that I should be at a loss to define his
system, or to corroborate, of my own knowledge, the confidence which
others have {184} expressed.  It seemed to me necessary to indicate
that, for myself, I could not speak without some qualification or
reserve, such as perhaps would only occur to a close student of Roman
pathology.  To do more, will be giving undue and unfair prominence to a
parenthesis.  It lays stress where there ought to be none, makes the
deduction, the exception, greater than the positive statement, and
gives me the air of a man whose praise is designed to convey a slur of
suspicion.

That is why your letter with its formidable enclosure has afflicted me
with dumbness.  The doubt which I indicated in writing to you has been
suggested chiefly by what passed in reference to Rosmini.

You will remember that you sent Liddon word that Rosmini wrote a very
long defence of the little book which he was translating.  He preferred
not to make use of the information and not to see the book; and he
avoided the subject when we met at Oxford.  The reason is, that the
Rosminians wish the Defence to be ignored, as it qualifies the
submission of the author when the book defended was condemned.

The suppression injures nobody; it only puts the readers of the
translation slightly off the scent, and gives an imperfect article
instead of none.  There is some trace of complicity with those who are
interested in a _suppressio veri_.  But it may have been due, as he was
under obligations to them, and this is only preliminary matter.

My real difficulty is, that he speaks of his author with great respect,
and evidently thinks his doctrine sound and profitable.

{185}

Now Rosmini, allowing for some superficial proposals of reform, was a
thorough believer in the Holy See.  His book itself, by the nature of
the reforms proposed, implies that no other defects of equal magnitude
remain to be remedied.  Apart from the Five points he accepts the
papacy as it stands; and he has no great objection to it, Five points
included.

He was what we vulgarly call an ultramontane--a reluctant ultramontane,
like Lacordaire.  An Anglican who views with satisfaction, with
admiration, the moral character and spiritual condition of an
Ultramontane priest, appears to me to have got over the principal
obstacle on the way to Rome--the moral obstacle.  The moral obstacle,
to put it compendiously, is the Inquisition.

The Inquisition is peculiarly the weapon and peculiarly the work of the
Popes.  It stands out from all those things in which they co-operated,
followed, or assented as the distinctive feature of papal Rome.  It was
set up, renewed, and perfected by a long series of acts emanating from
the supreme authority in the Church.  No other institution, no
doctrine, no ceremony is so distinctly the individual creation of the
papacy, except the Dispensing power.  It is the principal thing with
which the papacy is identified, and by which it must be judged.

The principle of the Inquisition is the Pope's sovereign power over
life and death.  Whosoever disobeys him should be tried and tortured
and burnt.  If that cannot be done, formalities may be dispensed with,
and the culprit may be killed like an outlaw.

That is to say, the principle of the Inquisition is murderous, and a
man's opinion of the papacy {186} is regulated and determined by his
opinion about religious assassination.

If he honestly looks on it as an abomination, he can only accept the
Primacy with a drawback, with precaution, suspicion, and aversion for
its acts.

If he accepts the Primacy with confidence, admiration, unconditional
obedience, he must have made terms with murder.

Therefore, the most awful imputation in the catalogue of crimes rests,
according to the measure of their knowledge and their zeal, upon those
whom we call Ultramontanes.  The controversy, primarily, is not about
problems of theology: it is about the spiritual state of a man's soul,
who is the defender, the promoter, the accomplice of murder.  Every
limitation of papal credit and authority which effectually dissociates
it from that reproach, which breaks off its solidarity with assassins
and washes away the guilt of blood, will solve most other problems.  At
least, it is enough for my present purpose to say, that blot is so
large and foul that it precedes and eclipses the rest, and claims the
first attention.

I will show you what Ultramontanism makes of good men by an example
very near home.  Saint Charles Borromeo, when he was the Pope's nephew
and minister, wrote a letter requiring Protestants to be murdered, and
complaining that no heretical heads were forwarded to Rome, in spite of
the reward that was offered for them.  His editor, with perfect
consistency, publishes the letter with a note of approval.  Cardinal
Manning not only holds up to the general veneration of mankind the
authority that canonised this murderer, but makes him in a special
manner his own patron, joins the Congregation of Oblates of {187} St.
Charles, and devotes himself to the study of his acts and the
propagation of his renown.

Yet I dare say I could find Anglican divines who would speak of the
Cardinal as a good man, unhappily divided from the Church of which he
was an ornament, and living in error, but yet not leading a life of
sin--I should gather from such language that the speaker was not
altogether averse from the distinctive characteristic of
Ultramontanism, and had swallowed far the largest obstacle on the road
to Rome.

The case of Rosmini is not so glaring, but it is substantially the
same.  Language implying that an able and initiated Italian priest
accepting the papacy, with its inventory of systematic crime, incurs no
guilt, that he is an innocent, virtuous, edifying Christian, seems to
me open to grave suspicion.  If it was used by one of whom I knew
nothing else, I should think ill of him.  If I knew him to be an able
and in many ways an admirable man, I should feel much perplexity, and
if I heard on the best authority that he deserved entire confidence, I
should persuade myself that it is true, and should try to quiet my
uneasiness.

That is what I have done in the case of Liddon.  When he speaks of an
eminent and conspicuous Ultramontane divine with the respect he might
show to Andrewes or Leighton, or to Grotius or Baxter, he ignores or is
ignorant of the moral objection, and he surrenders so much that he has
hardly a citadel to shelter him.  I dare say he would give me a very
good answer, and I do not hesitate to utter his praises.  But I have no
idea what the answer would be, and so must leave room for a doubt.

I should hardly have resolved to say all this to anybody but yourself,
relying on you not to {188} misunderstand the exact and restricted
meaning of my letter.  I should like my reason for misgiving to be
understood.  But I care much more to be understood as an admirer, not
an accuser of Canon Liddon.  My explanation is worthless if it fails to
justify me there.


[Sidenote: _St. Martin Haute Autriche June 20, 1884_]

The idleness of Coombe Warren[220] has much to answer for.  I was taken
by surprise when you sent me that letter,[221] and would have given a
great deal to escape the necessity of answering it.  Ever since, it has
stood grievously in the way of writing to you; and I have conquered my
difficulty with extreme reluctance.  Try to forgive my not
writing--try, much harder, to forgive my writing.

      *      *      *      *      *

When I come I shall have to congratulate you on your authorship.  I do
not do so now, because it would be meaningless, the C.R.[222] being due
here to-morrow only.  I do hope you liked doing it, and like having
done it, and like to think of doing it again.

I still think that we ought to evacuate;[223] but I thought there would
be no time for Mr. Gladstone to do it, and no obligation on others.
The convention is a very dexterous way of laying compulsion on the
Ministers, whoever they may be, several years hence.  It meets what I
thought an insurmountable difficulty, if it succeeds, as I hope it
will.  But I cannot look with satisfaction on the principle as
compensation for the risk of failure.  The cause does not seem to me so
sacred or so pure as to offer consolation for the fall of the Ministry.

{189}

It is an indefinite principle, depending for its application on
variable circumstances.  It is not clean cut.  We retain certain
ill-gotten possessions, obtained by treaty or by necessity.  It is not
evident that we should surrender a possession which is not ill-gotten.

Our motives for surrender are mixed.  It is to relieve us from a very
troublesome and very dangerous engagement, to avoid a formidable
expenditure, to disarm the menacing jealousy of other Powers.  The
mixture of motives is obvious, and we are not in a position to claim
the merit which belongs to the purest among them.

The Ministry would not be united for common action on this question, if
the motives of expediency did not come to aid the motive of principle.
The bit of gold has to be beaten very thin to gild the whole of them.
One sees and recognises the surface gilding, but one knows that there
is inferior metal beneath.

The position would be loftier and more correct if we retired from an
enterprise crowned with success, in the fulness of conscious
superiority as well as of conscious rectitude.  But we have not
accomplished triumphantly the work from which we withdraw.  We are not
incurring the sacrifice of stopping short in a career of victory and of
political triumphs, so that the world wonders at our moderation and
self-control.  We are giving up an undertaking in which we have
disappointed the expectation of the world, in which we have shown
infirmity of purpose, want of forethought, a rather spasmodic and
inconclusive energy, occasional weakness and poverty of resource; and
our presence and promise have been mixed blessings for the Egyptian
people.  So that the principle is not {190} large enough as a basis for
such a structure, nor clear enough to yield me comfort for the enforced
close of such a career.

Do not be angry with me for saying all this--you have heard it before.


[Sidenote: _St. Martin Aug. 15, 1884_]

In spite of breakfast, dinner, and tea, of garden parties and evening
parties, of road and rail, I have brought away with me a feeling of
having hardly seen you, and of having had very little talk, so that I
begin at once to look forward to next time and the good opportunities
it may yield.  It will, I hope, be very early in November.  We left you
for a very pleasant day at Seacox with Morier, and an easy journey,
diversified by meeting young Lacaita at Wurzburg, and travelling with
him all night.

      *      *      *      *      *

You never told me what plans there are for the short recess.  I am glad
the Scottish campaign is to be soon, so as to give guidance to the
popular movement.  There is a good deal of nonsense in the air; but I
hope there will be strength.

Salisbury's avowal of numerical principles set me thinking.  I cannot
make out whether it is a surrender or a snare.  It confirms the
expectation that they will put the minority theory forward, which is, I
think, their best card.  Not so much because I agree with them, as
because it divides the Liberal party, and rescues them from the
position of mere resistance.

The objections to Northbrook's mission[224] are obvious; and yet I
should have liked to go out with him, and try to understand the problem
as it now stands; for it is taking a new shape, unwelcome, I fear, to
{191} Mr. Gladstone, and yet not unforeseen, at least since the
appearance of Blignières.  It does not seem impossible to combine rigid
principle with practical necessities.

There is not a brighter spot in my retrospect than our visit to
Cambridge, the execution of it, as well as the delight of it, due to
you.  Looking back I fancy that I can never have said to you nearly how
much I was impressed by Sidgwick's conversation--to say nothing of
their hospitality.  But the fact is we never talked over anything, and
it is all to come.

Alfred's[225] triumphant bowling makes me hold his coat and umbrella
comparatively cheap, yet I suppose we got beaten after all.[226]...

I have been staying at Tegernsee with Döllinger.  The impending vacancy
at Lincoln was announced while I was there, and I am sorry to say that
we did not quite agree in the speculations which it suggested.  I hope
you will see my dear friend at Chester.[227]  There is not a greater
Tory in England, or a greater ornament to that perverse party.


[Sidenote: _St. Martin Aug. 29, 1884_]

There was nothing definite to quote in my conversation with the
Professor[228] about Liddon.  He hardly knows the better side of
Liddon, as a preacher, and as a religious force.  He sees that he is
not a very deep scholar, and thinks his admiration for Pusey a sign of
weakness, I think he once used the term fanatical--meaning a large
allowance of one-sidedness in his way of looking at things.  Indeed,
Döllinger is influenced by nearly the same misgivings that I felt some
months ago; and he has not had the same opportunities for getting rid
of them.  For instance, {192} the Dean of St. Paul's[229] assured me
that Liddon, far from reclining on others, is masterful and fond of his
own opinion.  Moreover, Liddon's attitude in the question of Church and
State, is a matter which the Professor and I judge very differently,
and it is a difference which it is useless to discuss any more.

I am waiting very eagerly for the speeches in Midlothian.  They will be
almost the most important of his whole career.

Forwood's proposal of equal electoral districts is another sign of
dissolution in Toryism.  The principle of setting a limit to inequality
might be defended much more plausibly.  I am glad to figure in your
company in Northumberland as well as at Cambridge.  Your
experiment[230] is perhaps worth trying, and Stuart knows his people
too well to promote it if it is likely to fail.  An outsider has not
any secure means of forecasting; but I shall retain some hesitation.

Your letter was waiting here when I came from Tegernsee, where I have
spent another few days with my Professor.[231]  Knesebeck, the Empress'
secretary, was there; and I was dismayed to learn that Morier has
spoken to him in the most hostile terms of our foreign policy.  I was
sorry, in London, that you did not see more of that strong diplomatist
in Downing Street.

In the doubt as to your movements I direct to Hawarden, where I hope
you will see the excellent, learned, homely, humble Bishop of Chester,
whose virtues ought to disarm even the recalcitrant Dean.[232]  In
about two months I hope we shall meet.

      *      *      *      *      *

{193}

[Sidenote: _St. Martin Sept. 10, 1884_]

I was able to realise your late experience,[233] even to the tones of
voice in certain passages, and I envied you.  It must make one change.
He[234] cannot any longer elaborately and perversely ignore the fact
that he himself is the life and the force of the Liberal party.  His
reception by Midlothian in 1880, when he did not appear as a candidate
for office, constrained him to become Prime Minister; and the more
definite issue laid before Midlothian in 1884, still more emphatically
answered, determines that he must remain P.M.  Just as he accepted the
consequences then, when they involved withdrawal of public
declarations, he must accept them now, when they compel, and are very
definitely designed to compel, the surrender of private aspirations.

The public voice has spoken this time more loudly and more consciously.
It would not be right towards the country, but especially towards his
colleagues, to obey it then and to resist it now.  It would be not only
a breach of the contract now made by something more than implication,
but a yielding up of the party to its enemies in an inextricable
crisis.  I have not the least doubt that the position will be so
understood.

I think less of the gain which the Ministry derives from the policy,
the limitation and the enormous effect of the speeches.  It is
possible, I think, to detect a weak place in them.  When one speaks in
answer to opponents who are present, and who state their own case, the
thing to do is to demolish it.  But when one addresses the public, in
the absence of debate, it is often good policy to state the opposite
case in one's own way, prior to demolition; one's own way is the way
one would state it if it was one's own: and {194} everybody knows that
he would make the Tory position more logical, more plausible, and
stronger than they make it themselves, if he was on their side.  It is
a process one has to go through for oneself, to see what the
adversary's case looks like, stripped of all the passion, ignorance,
and fallacy with which he presents it.  We are not sure we are right
until we have made the best case possible for those who are wrong; and
we are strictly bound not to transform the sophisms of the advocate
into flaws in his case.

An intelligent Tory might say that this figure or precept of rhetoric
was not followed, and that their argument was presented, not unfairly,
but not at its best.

Of course he would see the point of the speeches in the restraint of
agitation, and the offer to make terms.  I hope--against hope--that
this moderation is founded on knowledge of what is going on among the
Tories.  One sees signs of collapse in their policy of reform, but not
in their determination to resist, and my own impression is that even
Wemyss meant to fight it out, only in another way.  But if there is no
collapse, I see no resource except the agitation which Mr. Gladstone
still deprecates.

To my mind the most significant passage was that in which he spoke of
the probable fall of several Ministries.  That means that the Home
Rulers are going to be the arbiters of party government.  That means
ruin to the Liberal party.  Many Liberals see the moment looming when
they will have more sympathy with a party led by moderate Conservatives
than with a party inspired by Radical Democrats.  The looming will be
quickened by the necessity of presenting a front to the Irish.  But
that is only a small part {195} of the argument accumulating against
retirement before the next Parliament, when the new constituencies will
be fixed for generations.

Odo Russell[235] leaves a larger gap than he filled, and he is
difficult to replace at a moment of peculiar soreness and strain.  In
the service, I should prefer Dufferin; out of it--Bedford!  I
understand that he would not accept.  I find Lord Granville quite feels
that our strongest diplomatist, Morier, is out of the question at
Berlin, but it will be ten times worse to send Carlingford, and an
indication of weakness.

Many, very many, thanks for your letter, which did not seem to me to
suffer from the distractions and dissipations of Dalmeny.  The best
part of it is the good report of your father's health and spirits.


[Sidenote: _Cannes Nov. 12, 1884_]

Your delightful letter came from Munich this evening after I had posted
mine.

It is an exquisite pleasure to look forward to meeting in such a short
time.  I should so much wish to have a glimpse of you, and a chat,
before the plot thickens with us, so as to get the bearings.  If all
goes well, I have some chance of arriving pretty early on Monday, and
my first business will be to ask if there is a line from you at the
Athenæum.  There is an uncertainty about the through trains, as there
are no travellers yet, and so I may be disappointed.

It is a very important crisis, as there is a possibility of such
complete and perfect success for Mr. Gladstone's policy of Reform; and
I do so hope he may have it in all fulness.  There never was such
personal ascendency; and I trust nothing will happen in Africa to
disturb it.

{196}

Yes, I would give a trifle to have heard the discussion of our
Revolution by our greatest statesman[236] and our greatest
historian.[237]  The latter betrayed his uncompromising Conservatism by
half a parenthesis at Keble.  It is very superficially disguised in his
book, and he ought to have been more grateful to me than he was for
abusing Macaulay.  Brewer was just like him in judging those events,
and Gardiner contrives only by an effort not to revile the good old
Cause.  We are well out of the monotonous old cry about Hampden and
Russell.

      *      *      *      *      *


[Sidenote: _La Madeleine Nov. 12, 1884_]

We have had a long journey from St. Martin, and are hardly settled down
in the midst of a vast solitude, when the unreasonable success of the
Government compels me to pack my bag once more.

What makes it a pleasure, I need not say.  If all things go as I
expect, I shall be in town on Monday night or early on Tuesday.

If you are so very kind as to send a line to the Athenæum suggesting
the right end and object and reward of travel, please put outside, _to
wait arrival_.

I do not stay with the Granvilles this time, that I may vote against
Ministers at my ease.  And I do not bring M----, which is a grief;
still, I look forward to a deal of riotous living, and to many sources
of public and private satisfaction.


[Sidenote: _La Madeleine Dec. 9, 1884_]

... M-- received an account which pleased her, of my bath of goodness
and spirituality at Oxford; and the writing to her about scenes and
people she knows, {197} and trying to explain thoughts and facts, has
been half the pleasure of my solitary journey.

The meeting at your door[238] of the professors of heterodoxy[239] and
chatterboxy[240] in political economy is delightful, and I hope it will
fructify.  But my friend the "nice little old gentleman"[241] will
always be too strenuous and urgent for the Fra Angelico of Economists;
and besides, we live in the Gladstonian era--and the glory of Europe is
extinguished for ever.  That, however, might be a bond of union between
those Sophisters.

In London I could not escape a luncheon with ----, who threatens me
with a friendly visit next month at Cannes.  Next week I expect Bryce
with Robertson Smith.  Did I tell you of my pleasant dinner with them
on Wednesday, and meeting Creighton?[242]  He is an agreeable and
superior man, whom you would like; and he is full of general knowledge.
But I am afraid you will find his book[243] a severe study.

Thursday--Rather an uninteresting dinner at ----; but one goes there to
eat.  Lord G. not in very good spirits.  I conciliated Enfield, who ...
was a little shocked to find that I agree with Courtney.

There was not a gap of time for a farewell in Downing Street, and I had
to decline dinners with the Granvilles, Mays, and Pagets, and a visit
to Seacox--Hamlet left out.

The journey succeeded beautifully, for it was the roughest passage I
remember, and I was none the {198} worse for it.  At Calais one gets
into a sleeping-car and gets out of it at Cannes, after dining and
sleeping comfortably.  A young Englishman described the Grasse Hotel to
me, where he had lived with Cross, who was writing a book.  He did not
discover that it[244] was the book in my hand.  I have sent it back
with some considerable suggestions.

Mrs. Green writes an amusing account of Dr. Stubbs's violent language
in politics when she approaches him with her history.  I have advised
her to sacrifice everything and everybody to the object of securing his
help.  Leviathan will not aid her.

I have strongly urged May to write a new chapter of Constitutional
History, coming down to this our era of Good Feeling, as Americans call
the last administration of Monroe.[245]  It is the greatest landmark in
English Politics; and it has the merit of all well-defined epochs, that
it is not going to last.

At the British Museum, Gardiner was working, and I wished him joy on
the endowment of Research.

      *      *      *      *      *


[Sidenote: _Cannes Dec. 18, 1884_]

If sleeplessness comes on again do represent the merits of Cannes in
their proper light.  January is often the finest month, and this is the
finest season ever known.  Also it is the emptiest.  I hear that
Thorenc is not to let, in the hope that the Wolvertons may take it.
Such rest and change as he would get here, after so much hard work,
might be quite invaluable, especially if it is in his thoughts that the
Session of 1885 is to be his last in office.  That would be {199} worth
refreshing for; and we shall do our best to occupy and distract him,
and all of you, during your stay.

Croker[246] was so large and promising a morsel that I postponed
temptation and read no part of him carefully; besides it is a question
hot with hidden fire.  Have you not discovered, have I never betrayed,
what a narrow doctrinaire I am, under a thin disguise of levity?  The
Duke of Orleans nearly described my feelings when he spoke,
testamentarily, of his religious _flag_ and his political _faith_.
Politics come nearer religion with me, a party is more like a church,
error more like heresy, prejudice more like sin, than I find it to be
with better men.  And by these canons I am forced to think ill of Peel,
to think, if you won't misunderstand me, that he was not a man of
principle.  The nature of Toryism is to be entangled in interests,
traditions, necessities, difficulties, expedients, to manage as best
one may, without creating artificial obstacles in the shape of dogma,
or superfluous barriers of general principle.  "Périssent les colonies
plutôt que les principes" (which is a made-up sentence, no more
authentic than "Roma locuta est"), expresses the sort of thing
Liberalism means and Toryism rejects.  Government must be carried on,
even if we must tolerate some measure of wrong, use some bad reasons,
trample on some unlucky men.  Other people could recognise the face and
the sanctity of morality where it penetrated politics, taking the shape
of sweeping principle, as in Emancipation, Free Trade, and so many
other doctrinaire questions.  Peel could not until he was compelled by
facts.  Because he was reluctant to admit the sovereignty of
considerations which {200} were not maxims of state policy, which
condemned his own past and the party to which he belonged.

But if party is sacred to me as a body of doctrine, it is not, as an
association of men bound together, not by common convictions but by
mutual obligations and engagements.  In the life of every great man
there is a point where fidelity to ideas, which are the justifying
cause of party, diverges from fidelity to arrangements and
understandings, which are its machinery.  And one expects a great man
to sacrifice his friends--at least his friendship--to the higher cause.

Progress depends not only on the victory, the uncertain and
intermittent victory, of Liberals over Conservatives, but on the
permeation of Conservatism with Liberal ideas, the successive
conversion of Tory leaders, the gradual desertion of the Conservative
masses by their chiefs--Fox, Grenville, Wellesley, Canning, Huskisson,
Peel--Tory ministers passing Emancipation, Free Trade, Reform--are in
the order of historic developments.  Still the complaints of Croker are
natural.  He had been urged along a certain line, and being a coarse,
blatant fellow, he overdid it, and wrote things from which there was no
release.  It was not in his brutal nature to appreciate the other side
of questions.  He did not begin by seeing the strong points of his
enemy's case, and so far he was dishonest.

My impression is that Peel was justified towards his party in 1846 by
what occurred in 1845.  He explained his views; some of his friends
declared against them; and he resigned.  After the exchange of Stanley
for Mr. Gladstone, it was a new Ministry, a new departure on distinct
lines.  Nobody was betrayed.  Peel did not carry his friends with him
{201} because he had not the ascendency which his great lieutenant
possesses.  The Radicals have been made to look as foolish as Croker.
The bread has been taken out of their mouths, as they are not to devour
the Lords.  They have consolations in the future which the
Protectionists have not; but they are in as false a position as the
Protectionists were; and yet they stand fire on the whole well, and
without secession.--But I am conscious of more nearly hating Croker
than anybody, except Lord Clare, in English history.  It was my one
link with a late, highly-lamented statesman and novelist.[247]


      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _La Madeleine Jan. 14, 1885_]

Yes! at last, foreign affairs are in a very wretched way, and are
unjustly and unreasonably injuring Mr.  Gladstone's own position.  If
Morier is still in England, I wish he could see him before Petersburg.
He is our only strong diplomatist; but he is only strong.

I have bored the P.M. to extinction with praise of Liddon, and as all I
could say is obvious to others, I am not tempted to repeat the offence.
But the death of that uninteresting, good Bishop Jackson[248] disturbs
my rest.  It is clear, very clear to me, that it would not be right to
pass Liddon over now that there are two important vacancies to fill;
and one asks oneself why he should not be chosen for the more important
of the two, and who is manifestly worthier to occupy the greatest see
in Christendom?  The real answer, I suppose, is that his appointment
will give great offence, and that he is {202} a decided partisan, and a
partisan of nearly the same opinions as the P.M. himself.

No doubt there would be much irritation on the thorough Protestant
side, and in quarters very near Downing Street, and I feel, myself,
more strongly than many people, that partisanship in Liddon runs to
partiality, to one-sidedness, to something very like prejudice.  And
with all that strong feeling, I cannot help being agitated with the
hope that the great and providential opportunity will not be lost.

Assuredly Liddon is the greatest power in the conflict with sin, and in
turning the souls of men to God, that the nation now possesses.  He is
also, among all the clergy, the man best known to numbers of Londoners.
There must be a very strong reason to justify a Minister in refusing
such a bishop to such a diocese.

The argument of continuity does not convince me, because it was
disregarded when Philpotts died.  Still more, because so eminent a
representative of Church principles had not occupied the see of London
within living memory, and there is a balance to redress.  When I think
of his lofty and gracious spirit, his eloquence, his radiant
spirituality, all the objections which I might feel, vanish entirely.

The time has really come when the P.M. has authority to do what he
likes, and to disregard cavil.  He is lifted above all considerations
which might weaken action at other times and in other men.  No ill
consequences of his use of patronage can reach him.  He can be guided
by the supreme motive, and by the supreme motive only.  It may well be
that these are the last conspicuous ecclesiastical appointments that
{203} will be his to make.  He is able now to bequeath an illustrious
legacy to the people of London.

And, speaking on a lower level, the shock of Liddon's elevation might
be blunted by the contemporaneous choice for Lincoln.

One qualification ought to be remembered.  He is more in contact than
other churchmen with questions of the day.  Not only politics and
criticism, but science.  Paget delights to relate how Owen was
discoursing on the brevity of life in the days of the patriarchs, and
how beautifully Liddon baffled him by asking whether there is any
structural reason for a cockatoo to live ten times as long as a pigeon.
If it was my duty, which it is not, or my habit--which it is still
less--to speak all my mind, I would say that there is, within my range
of observation, some inclination to make too much of distinguished men
in the Church.  I name no names, but if I did, I might name Pusey,
Wilberforce, Mozley, Church, Westcott, as men whom there has been some
tendency to overestimate, at least in comparison with Liddon.  Not that
he is their superior, but that he seems to me to have fallen short of
his due as much as they, in various ways, have been overpaid, in
praise, confidence, and fame.  If there have been reasons explaining
this, I think they ought not to operate now.

Who are conceivable candidates?  Temple, Westcott, Wilkinson, Butler,
Lightfoot?  Two of these are more learned and more indefinite
theologians; but I can see no other point of rivalry.  And I do not
learn that Dunelm possesses unusual light in dealing with men.  Fraser?
Who can say that he has the highest qualities in Liddon's measure?
Temple {204} is vigorous and open; but he is not highly spiritual, or
attractive, or impressive as a speaker; he has an arid mind, and a
provincial note in speech and manner.  But he also understands science.
The Dean assures me that, Pusey being gone, Liddon will be under no
personal influence, that he has more confidence in himself and more
backbone than I was able to discover for myself.


      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _La Madeleine Jan. 22, 1885_]

Of course I know very well that we shall not make our Bishop of London;
and ever since I wrote to you I have been seeking points of
consolation, and magnifying to myself my own sources of misgiving.
Yesterday I chanced to see, at Mentone, the best of the Anglican clergy
that I have ever known, a Mr. Sidebotham.  He told me of a luncheon at
Bishop Hamilton's, where he sat, a young clergyman, between Liddon and
Tait.  Liddon, after a few words, shut up like an oyster; and Tait took
a good deal of pains to please his neighbour and to draw him out.  From
which experience, my friend, himself a truly Catholic Anglican, thinks
that Liddon, whom he deems the greatest preacher living, would not make
a good Bishop of London.  This testimony, from a personal admirer and
theological adherent, was rather welcome to me.  When I asked him
whether there was any dark horse, any candidate not obvious to
outsiders, he said "No"; but seemed to think that _Bedford_[249] would
be the sort of strong-backed prelate you mean.  He fully expected
Temple's appointment.  Thank you so much for speaking of Morier.  You
know that for all people not private friends of his {205} own ---- is
disappointing.  He is a bad listener, easily bored, and distrustful of
energetic men who make work for themselves and for the Foreign Office.
Morier, in particular, has force without tact, and stands ill with a
chief who has tact without force.  He feels that he is unsupported and
not much appreciated.  A few friendly words from above would set him up
wonderfully.

Although Chamberlain is not the only source of weakness in the
Government, he will be the cause of dissolution if your threat is
executed at Easter!  I really must come over and make myself very
disagreeable if that goes on.  It is time to play the last card in
one's hand, for one year more of office and power, for the sake of the
indefinite future.  But perhaps the Vyner Cottage[250] may give me the
desired opportunity.

For this is a very central part of Europe.  I have had Dilke and Ripon;
I saw Salisbury yesterday; and Scherer dines here on Saturday.

Cross is coming with his book[251] next week.

      *      *      *      *      *


[Sidenote: _Athenæum Club Pall Mall Feb. 26, 1885_]

I shall be delighted to dine in bad company on Thursday.  Goschen will
speak against Government to-morrow, but will vote for them.  I dined
there yesterday with Morier, Milner,[252] and Albert Grey;[253] and the
same party dines with Morier this evening as soon as the P.M. sits
down.  Several Ministers (Hartington, Spencer, and others) have said
too much that they wish to be beaten.

A very strong speech to-night would retrieve the {206} position.  If
the enemy came in now, England would soon become no better than the
Continental powers, and our true greatness and prosperity would depart
from us.


[Sidenote: _Athenæum March 3_]

I am so glad to know that he is getting better.

If you will burn my letters there will be less difficulty in voting for
Government.  Certainly a peer cannot vote absolutely only as he
approves or disapproves--or I must have voted on the other side.  I
shall be delighted to call at 12, and also to be your escort.


      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _La Madeleine April 9, 1885_]

The book[254] reveals a mental flaw I had not suspected.  Because
Newman, or some of Newman's set, Faber, Ward, Morris, were narrow and
fanatical, he concludes that their doctrine is that of narrow-minded
fanatics.  This is stumbling at the Ass's bridge.  Scientific thought
begins with the separation between the idea and its exponent, just as
much as religious thought; and our peculiar difficulty in keeping them
apart is notoriously the great elementary defect of the English--not
the Scottish--mind.

Pattison himself suffers from the extreme narrowness of the Oxford
horizon in his time.  He knows nothing about the other side of the
hill; and when he came to know, in later years, his religious spirit
was extinct.  Newman had unfitted him for Rothe.  A strong mind cannot
rest without thinking out its thoughts.  But Pattison rests without
caring to explain which of the several systems which exist outside of
the churches {207} satisfied his conscience.  He grew impatient of
theology.  He does not recognise the great importance of Casaubon in
religious history, or of Milton's theological treatise on the progress
of his mind.  Once, having reviewed Pascal, he said to me that he
thought, after all, the Jesuits were in the right.  I disagreed, but I
remember that I was delighted at the openness of his mind.  But now I
again find him hooded with prejudice.  He rightly discerned that the
French Protestants created independent scientific learning, and
glorifies Scaliger as the type of them: and then he treats Petavius as
an impostor, got up by the Jesuits in defiance of Scaliger.  Whereas
the Jesuit was one of the most deeply learned men that ever lived, by
no means inferior to Grotius or Ussher or Selden.

Every year some zealous Frenchman exposes the iniquities of the Tudors,
hoping to discredit the Church of England; and Taine fancies that to
show the horrors of the Revolution is a good argument against
democracy.  Pattison must have stood, as to his inner man, nearly on
the same level of logic.

      *      *      *      *      *


      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _Cannes April 22, 1885_]

Scherer writes that he is going to publish a new volume, in which his
recent essay on the Life of George Eliot will be included.  You will
read it with interest and surprise at the moral judgment.

He is also the great patron of Amiel, whom I read with delight as
having a savour of Vinet--with more serious culture and curiosity, and
inferior understanding for religion.  There is a plot in Arnold's
circle to make him known and popular in England.  Nobody thought
anything of him in his lifetime, at Geneva.

{208}

A careful study of my _Pall Mall_ has left me quite in the dark as to
Zulfikar, &c.[255]  I thought there was a deliberate intention to force
us into war, and I did not imagine that there was any way out of it.
To my cheap and pacific mind it seemed a disaster not only without
remedy, but without even a remote compensation or consolation, in which
victory could do us no good, and in which the mere conflict would
degrade us to the brutal level of continental powers.

Nothing has so completely puzzled me for the last two years as the
hesitation of Russia to re-open the San Stefano question, while we are
not only at Cyprus, but in Egypt, and without any moral vantage ground
from which we can resist the overthrow of the European Turk.  I would
willingly give up the whole country from Bulgaria to the Ægean for a
few miles of Afghan desert.

But it would be bad policy to give up both and have to fight for
existence in India whenever a capricious bell rings at Petersburgh.

      *      *      *      *      *


      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _Cannes April 27, 1885_]

I cannot imagine Russia drawing back in so supremely favourable a
position.  What is hard to understand is her having gone so far, and
deliberately resolved on war.  But I see that there is something in all
this that has entirely escaped me.  It seems so clear that our policy
is to restore Russia to the position she had attained before the
Congress of Berlin, that, therefore, we are not only her best, but her
only friends--that I am quite bewildered, and half {209} suspect that
there has been some tremendous mistake in our management.  I should
like to have the chance of distracting Mr. Gladstone with various talk,
in all this anxiety.  Probably I shall be at Carlton H. Terrace on
Friday week.  Will you tell me there when we can meet? ... Tennyson's
really profound animosity[256] against the P.M. has long been known to
people in his confidence, and has come out at last.  It was one reason,
but not the only one, of my dislike to his peerage.

      *      *      *      *      *

Maine, whose series of articles form in reality an assault on the
Government, promises to adopt all my remonstrances in the reprinting of
them.  These filled twenty-six of my pages, in all; so I count on a
considerable modification of the text.

I hope there will be a possible play ... when we come to town.

---- is very intelligent, agreeable, amiable, a little complex in
design; accurate calculation sometimes resides in the corner of her
eye, and she knows how to regulate to a hair's breadth, when she
smiles, the thin red line of her lips.


[Sidenote:  _Prince's Gate June 20, 1885_]

No one ever saw Mr. Gladstone in better spirits than he was at dinner
yesterday.  I hope it was the hitch.[257]  It is a bore to be away when
the thing is to be decided.  May agrees with me, and with that other
Radical[258] from Cambridge, that even the ingeniously remodelled
assurances ought not to be given; when we {210} have preserved peace
with so much difficulty, no concession not absolutely required should
be made to these dangerous successors.[259]  But it will need great
fortitude, and I do not seriously hope for success against the strong
wish of so many colleagues.

      *      *      *      *      *


      *      *      *      *      *

[Sidenote: _April, 1885_]

I have said that I am divided from G. Eliot by the widest of all
political and religious differences, and that political differences
essentially depend on disagreement in moral principles.  Therefore I
cannot be suspected of blindness to her faults.  More particularly
because I have insisted on another grave delinquency which has struck
few persons, her tolerance for Mazzini.  That is a criminal matter,
independent of the laws of states and churches, which no variety of
theological opinion can by any means affect.  We must never judge the
quality of a teaching by the quality of the Teacher, or allow the spots
to shut out the sun.  It would be unjust, and it would deprive us of
nearly all that is great and good in this world.  Let me remind you of
Macaulay.  He remains to me one of the greatest of all writers and
masters, although I think him utterly base, contemptible and odious for
certain reasons which you know.  And I might say as much of many other
men.  To be truly impartial, that is, to be truly conscientious and
sincere, we must be open equally to the good and evil of character....

{211}

[Sidenote: _Cannes Nov. 11, 1885_]

I wish I had been with you in Norway or could have seen Hawarden during
this most interesting time.  Other trouble and travel have made havoc
of my correspondence, and when you receive these superfluous lines, the
die will have been cast in Midlothian.  For I fancy that the enemy's
only hope now is that Mr. Gladstone will not be able to address his
audience.

Lord Granville has kept me up to the mark as to important matters, and
announced the manifesto[260] in very warm terms; but his abrupt style
of composition is not favourable to the more delicate shades of party
division.  One makes out, from afar, that Chamberlain is going off from
the X.P.M.[261] while Goschen is elaborately advancing towards him;
also that he, in fact, agrees better with Chamberlain, whilst the
policy of the moment draws him to Goschen.

Our Joe ought to know how to bide his time.  I suppose he thinks that
something must be offered to the new voters that they care for.  I
imagine that the Church question forms a very real cause of division.
Mr. Gladstone's authority will be able to keep it down for the time,
and no more.

Let us hope for an utterly overwhelming victory, in spite of some
perceptible progress on the part of the Tories.  Through a friend I
have explained to Bismarck that he must be prepared for this, if only
the voice holds.  Tories here tell me that they have no real hope.
Selborne's name being on the Grey manifesto, I conclude that he will
not be Chancellor.  It will be possible to strengthen the new
Government immensely with new men, but I am afraid a certain {212}
friend of ours will claim the Woolsack.  The Eastern question makes me
very impatient to see Mr. Gladstone in Downing Street again.

If Morier only came to luncheon, you hardly can have seen the change in
him.  He is a strong man, resolute, ready, well-informed and with some
amount of real resource.  But ambition long deferred, activity long
restrained, a certain coarseness of grain which is coming to the
surface, have turned him into a bully, quarrelsome and dangerous.  A
dexterous Muscovite will always be able to provide an opportunity of
putting him in the wrong and getting up an ugly fracas.  It is
extraordinary what dull men make sufficient diplomatists.  Arnold
Morley is new to me; I gather from what you say that Russell[262] is
sure of his seat.  I was disturbed to find the Duke so hard on him, and
so little support on the more amiable side of the family.

I quite agree with Chamberlain, that there is latent Socialism in the
Gladstonian philosophy.  What makes me uncomfortable is his inattention
to the change which is going on in those things.  I do not mean in
European opinion, but in the strict domain of science.  A certain
conversation that you remember, when Stuart, fresh from the horny hands
of Democracy,[263] produced his heresies, was very memorable to me.
But it is not the popular movement, but the travelling of the minds of
men who sit in the seat of Adam Smith that is really serious and worthy
of all attention.  Maine tells me that his book, a Manual of
unacknowledged Conservatism, is selling well.  It is no doubt meant to
help the {213} enemy's cause, and more hostile to us than the author
cares to appear.  For he requested me not to review it.  You know that
the new Hatzfeldt is the son of the lady who protected Lassalle, and
that it is desirable to speak of his wife as little as of his mother.
He is a Berlin bureaucrat, _pur sang_.  I have something to write
against time, which keeps me at work during the night until the end of
November.  Don't mind it, but please tell me what happens, and whether
I may come and see you re-installed.

Fancy my disappointment: Paget[264] passed under our windows, and
Liddon--as he told the World--was at Tegernsee, and I missed them both.
The Pagets have set up a delightful daughter-in-law, and a near
relation of hers, a Balliol man, son, I believe, of the chief Tory
wire-puller in Shropshire, has just come out here....

      *      *      *      *      *


[Sidenote: _La Madeleine Nov. 28, 1885_]

It was a serious blow to find in your letter that you had no confidence
in the election,[265] but I am glad now to think that you were so much
better prepared to lose than I was, in spite of what I had also heard
about Bright's despondency.  I only hope that it has not been a bad
time, otherwise, at Dalmeny, and that Mr. Gladstone has not suffered
from so much effort.

At this moment I know only the result of the first three days, and have
no Scottish news since Goschen got in.  I conclude that we are beaten
past recovery, and wonder whether the Dark Horse[266] will make the
{214} Government independent of their Irish supporters.  If not, the
rift in the lute will betray itself any time after the first Session.

As I am the only Englishman still so besotted as to feel Salisbury's
presence in Downing Street exactly as I should feel Bradlaugh's at
Lambeth, I will say nothing about my own sensations to a correspondent
necessarily unsympathetic.  What strikes me most strongly is the
probability of Mr. Gladstone thinking that his release has come, and
that he is not bound to embark on a voyage which is very unlikely to
lead back to power until he is in his seventy-eighth year.  For I
suppose that the secret of the situation is that Chamberlain has so far
played false, played, I mean, a private game, that he looked far ahead,
and did not care to come back to office in the old combination,
especially with the prospect of losing Dilke at first.  So that, in
fact, the Gladstonian influence, which would be unshaken in the country
at large, was unable to control his own colleagues, and the old
inferiority in the management of men, compared with the management of
masses, which Goschen exemplified before, has appeared in the direction
of the Radical wing.

As I know his characteristic of caring for measures much more than for
the organisation which is to carry them, I conjecture he will say that
he is not harnessed for ever to the coach, that he will be grievously
tempted to give up leading an active opposition.  Of course I should
deeply deplore such a decision, but my old arguments, which
circumstances did so much to impress, will be weaker now.

Three legitimate causes have told in favour of the Tories.  They have
not done much to make them odious, and the position abroad is easier,
very decidedly, {215} though not very considerably, easier.  Then, the
case against us in the Soudan is a very strong one.  I may say so now
that Mr. Gladstone does not really resist it; and you, at any rate,
know how strongly I thought so before.  That is not a positive
recommendation of the Tories, but it does weaken us, and the reproach
is not met, in the judgment of impartial men, by saying that the Tories
did nothing to restrain or to correct us.  Thirdly, the Church argument
is logically against us.  Mr. Gladstone's attitude gave no security
that the Liberals, if they returned strengthened from the poll, would
not eventually employ their increased strength to pave the way for
disestablishment.

What you say of a flaw in his reckoning is very true indeed.  In his
literary occupations it appears still more strongly.  The grasp is
often more remarkable than the horizon.  I do not think that it has
been much of a drawback in politics, and the minds it would estrange
are very few.

You would have written a capital review of Greville.[267]  It is very
odd that a man should be so shrewd, and so full of experience, and yet
so destitute of positive ideas.  I see that I thought too much of him,
having known him before I knew the difference between common sense and
capacity.  My friend Maine certainly did not fear that I should spoil
his effects, for I should never have found a point of contact with the
views of the general reader.  I don't think he likes to admit that one
can have gone over the same ground, and have come impartially to
opposite conclusions.  His book is a symptom of the change which is so
remarkable in the _Times_.

{216}

[Sidenote: _Cannes Jan. 1, 1886_]

It would have been a very great pleasure to be at Hawarden during these
festive days; and only very strong local ties oblige me to say that it
is impossible.  There has never been a time when I was more anxious to
learn what is really going on, and to see things from the centre, and
it is therefore a disappointment to be away.  But there is nothing that
I could say or do that would contribute an element to the momentous
decisions to be formed.  That Mr. Gladstone will, in this great and
perhaps final crisis, put himself into the position of Irishmen and
view things not only from the point of their present wishes, but with
their historic eyes, and that he will hold that the ends of liberty are
the true ends of politics, that is the one thing certain and known to
all men, and it is the whole of the political baggage with which I set
out on the Irish expedition.

I know neither how to resist the claim of the Irish nation to govern
themselves nor even their claim to possess the land, and nobody really
familiar with the events of this century can say that the one is beyond
the resources of political, or the other, of economic science.  They
are problems which have been solved repeatedly within the experience of
two generations.  Many experiments have been made, and it is not
difficult to determine which solutions have failed, which have
succeeded, and to tell the reason why.

I have thought so for twenty years, and now that the question has
become perforce a practical one, nobody can be more heartily than I am
on the side which I understand to be Mr. Gladstone's, or, to speak
definitely, on the Irish side.  The claim of duty exactly coincides
with the claim of necessity, and {217} that is all about it that one
can say from a distance, without having seen what is on paper, or felt
pulses all round.

Duty and necessity settle the question, but not as to policy in detail,
which I have no right to talk about without hearing more what is said
by people on the spot.  Only let me say that I would not be influenced
by hope of a very brilliant success, even if it is possible to do what
would satisfy the better part of the Irish party.  The people are so
demoralised, both laity and clergy, that we must be prepared to see the
best scheme fail.  No Irish failure is so bad as the breakdown of
parliamentary government, so that even from a sordid point of view that
is not insuperable.  But I would arm myself against disappointment.
There is another point of view from which I see much to apprehend and
prepare for.  The elections send back Mr. Gladstone to Westminster, and
even to Downing Street, with some loss of influence.  I see it not only
in the reduced majority, but still more in the increase of Conservative
minorities at the poll, the infidelity of most important colleagues,
and the reluctance with which he will be followed by members under
pressure from their constituencies.

We saw the centrifugal forces at work last Session in the Ministry
itself.  Mr. Gladstone only retained office after the Egyptian vote by
the neutrality of Rosebery, and in the question of concession to
Parnell he had to yield to the Lords in the Cabinet.

How can they stand by him now, to support measures much more
formidable, probably, than that which they rejected last spring?  And
could not Salisbury dexterously put the question in such a way {218}
that their vote then given should disable them altogether?

One sees the danger that Mr. Gladstone would be almost isolated among
his friends, even if there is a majority in the House, and I can
imagine no way of getting any considerable scheme through the Lords.  I
wish you would tell me that all this has been provided for, and that
very careful negotiations have been carried on.  Taking the question
grossly, in outline, I can only say that I hope fervently that he will
have strength to accomplish the only scheme of policy I can think
worthy of his fame.

It seems obvious that, in the mass of letters that afflict your
postman, there have been plenty of communications from good men of all
sorts in Ireland.  I speak of that from a slight, a remote, fear that
the study of details, of conflicting and undigested suggestions, may
have become distasteful to him.  Writing to Lord Granville the other
day in answer to a question, I proposed that his former private
secretary, Wetherell, should make a tour in Ireland, as he has a very
large acquaintance among people who do not clamour in the street.  He
would bring valuable information to bear.  But I hope that there is no
lack of information or of advisers.

One has to think of people in the background just because they are the
minority.  That may justify me in sending you the enclosed letter from
a man who had, I think, a good deal of Spencer's confidence and
good-will.  I would not send it if I thought it could discourage, but
Mr. Gladstone has faced heavier artillery every day since Christmas.
Happy New Year never meant so much as to-day!...

{219}

P.S.--A frightened and discontented voice says, by this day's post, "If
there is a vote of censure we must join in it and take the consequences
of a majority, for we have no other mandate from our constituents but
to bring back Gladstone, and if we abstained from voting we should lose
our seats."



FOOTNOTES

[1] Jules Ferry, see p. 7.

[2] Duc de Broglie, statesman and historian (1821-1901).

[3] Dr. Döllinger.

[4] Sir Louis.

[5] Minghetti and Bonghi.

[6] On Mr. Gladstone.

[7] Mr. Gladstone was an unsuccessful candidate for South-West
Lancashire in 1868.  He was at the same time elected for Greenwich.

[8] The Reverend Mark Pattison, then Rector of Lincoln.

[9] The book on which Lord Acton was then at work, and for which he
amassed vast hoards of material.

[10] "The Expansion of England."

[11] For the expulsion of the Jesuits and other unauthorised
congregations from French schools.

[12] "History of Liberty."

[13] Thorold Rogers, sometime M.P. for Southwark, and Professor of
Political Economy at Oxford.

[14] Herbert Gladstone.

[15] He stood for Middlesex.

[16] The late Duke of Devonshire, who lived till 1891.

[17] In 1866, Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Lowe took opposite sides on the
question of Parliamentary Reform.

[18] Mr. Lowe, on hearing one of Mr. Herbert Gladstone's speeches
during the Middlesex election, declared that in the pure gift of
eloquence, there was nothing to choose between him and his father.

[19] In Middlesex.

[20] _i.e._, by Lord Granville.

[21] See p. 49, note 54.

[22] The Zulu.


[23] Lord Granville.

[24] An allusion to expeditions at Tegernsee.

[25] Evening parties in Downing Street.

[26] Sir John Strachey had seriously under-estimated the cost of the
Afghan War.

[27] Mr. O'Donnell, an Irish member, moved the adjournment of the House
for the purpose of attacking the new French Ambassador, M. Challemel
Lacour.  Mr. Gladstone moved that he be not heard, and the debate on
this motion occupied the whole sitting.

[28] Then Postmaster-General.

[29] House of Lords, not "History of Liberty."

[30] That any member claiming the right to affirm instead of taking an
oath should be allowed to do so, subject to any liability imposed on
him by statute.  Under this motion Mr. Bradlaugh took his seat
provisionally for Northampton.

[31] Littleberries, rented by Lord Aberdeen.

[32] Trench.

[33] Herbert Spencer.

[34] M. Tachard.

[35] Mr. Gladstone had just then a short, but serious illness.

[36] On the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, intended to protect the
Irish tenants from eviction during the winter.

[37] The majority against the Bill was 230, of whom 51 were Liberals.

[38] Granville.

[39] Lowell.

[40] Non equidem invideo; miror magis.

[41] See p. 28, note 36.

[42] Lord Arthur Russell.

[43] The reference is to the Ground Game Bill, which enabled tenants to
shoot hares and rabbits on their farms; and to the Burials Bill, which
permitted the interment of Dissenters in parish churchyards with their
own religious rites.

[44] Mr. Gladstone's voyage in the _Grantully Castle_.

[45] "History of Our Own Times."

[46] Shakespeare's Sonnets, pocket edition.

[47] Now Lady Battersea.

[48] Richard Simpson (1820-1876), author of an "Introduction to the
Philosophy of Shakespeare's Sonnets" (1868) and "The School of
Shakespeare" (1872).

[49] A letter from Mr. Gladstone on the choice of a profession.

[50] Mr. Ruskin.

[51] George Eliot lived in St. John's Wood.

[52] Agrarian Laws and Ecclesiastical Establishments.

[53] He stood by Ireland to the end, and his last letter to Sir
Hercules Langrishe reaffirms the principles of his youth.

[54] "And to party gave up what was meant for mankind."

[55] The editor of the _Quarterly Review_.

[56] Lord Beaconsfield's "Endymion," in which Nigel Penruddocke is one
of the characters.

[57] Lord Macaulay.

[58] George Otto Trevelyan.

[59] "Life of Panizzi."

[60] "Julian the Apostate."  By the Rev. the Hon. Arthur Lyttelton,
afterwards Bishop of Southampton.

[61] Charles Stewart Parker, then M.P. for Perth.

[62] "English Land and English Landlords."  By the Honble. George
Brodrick, late Warden of Merton.

[63] An allusion to Mr. Gladstone's speech on the Reform Bill of 1866.

[64] George Eliot's death.

[65] "Democracy," a political novel, published anonymously, which made
much noise at the time.

[66] Arthur Lyttelton's.  See his "Modern Poets of Faith, Doubt and
Paganism, and other Essays" (Murray).

[67] This refers to the inscription Lord Acton inserted in Ruskin's
"Arrows of the Chace"--"From a False Believer."

[68] Speech on introducing the Peace Preservation Bill.

[69] Dublin Castle.

[70] George Eliot's husband.

[71] On the introduction of the new rules of Procedure after the
expulsion of the Irish Members.

[72] The late Lord Stanley of Alderley.

[73] The Editor of the _Edinburgh Review_.

[74] Trevelyan.

[75] In "Endymion."

[76] The obstruction of the Peace Preservation Bill, which ended in the
autocratic intervention of the Speaker, and the removal of the Irish
Members from the House.

[77] Sir Arthur Godley, at that time private secretary to Mr. Gladstone.

[78] Sir Erskine May.

[79] The Jacobite description of the mole whose burrowings caused the
death of William the Third by making his horse stumble.

[80] The Comte de Serre was a Minister under Louis XVIII., and a leader
of the Moderate Royalists after the Restoration.

[81] Sir John Lubbock's.

[82] For closing debate.

[83] At this period shadowing Mr. Gladstone's movements.

[84] Sir John Lubbock, in conversation with Miss Gladstone, complained
of the lack of a guide or supreme authority in the choice of books.
She suggested Lord Acton, and mentioned this talk in writing to him.

[85] Harold Browne.

[86] Lightfoot.

[87] Sir James Paget, the great surgeon.

[88] By Robert Wallace, afterwards M.P. for East Edinburgh.  The
definition, "trust in the people, tempered by prudence," was laid down
by Mr. Gladstone himself in a speech at Oxford in 1877.

[89] Of Liberty.

[90] On the Peace Preservation Bill.

[91] Mr. Brand, afterwards Lord Hampden.

[92] Carlyle's.

[93] See page 40.

[94] John K. Ingram, Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, and author of
the article on Political Economy in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_.

[95] Mr. Gladstone fell on the ice as he entered the gardens of Downing
Street, and cut open the back of his head.

[96] Sir Bartle Frere, then Governor of Cape Colony.

[97] Miss Dempster.

[98] "Sermons in a College Chapel," by J. R. Illingworth.

[99] George Sand.

[100] Gladstone, Tennyson, and Paget.

[101] Leo XIII.

[102] Dublin Castle.

[103] Minghetti and Bonghi.

[104] Dr. Döllinger.

[105] _i.e._, of Mr. Gladstone.

[106] Lord Acton said elsewhere of Lee--"The greatest general the world
has ever seen, with the possible exception of Napoleon."

[107] Mr. Gladstone's.

[108] At Cannes.

[109] Scartazzini's.

[110] Illingworth's "In a College Chapel."

[111] Of George Eliot.

[112] George Sand.

[113] Meaning the Irish Land Bill.  The reference is to the agrarian
laws of Tib. and C. Sempronius Gracchus.

[114] On Carlyle.

[115] Midhat Pacha was the head of the reforming party in Turkey at
that time.

[116] Leo XIII.

[117] November 15, 1848.  After the murder of Count Rossi, his Liberal
Minister of the Interior, Pius IX. left Rome, and fled to Gaeta, from
which he only returned under the protection of French bayonets.

[118] The introduction of the Irish Land Bill.

[119] The late Duke of Argyll's resignation.

[120] Lord Carlingford succeeded him.

[121] Mr. Gladstone's eleventh.

[122] To the Academy.

[123] See p. 48.

[124] The first Lord Cairns.

[125] "It is true, Holy Father, I have failed.

[126] Lord Beaconsfield.

[127] The Sultan's.

[128] See Diary in Ruskin's "Letters to M. and H. G." (privately
printed).

[129] For burial in the Abbey.

[130] Lord Lansdowne's and Lord Listowel's.

[131] Judah Philip Benjamin, Q.C., author of "Benjamin on Sales."  He
left America after the defeat of the South, and attained great
distinction at the English Bar.

[132] Mr. Gladstone did not arrive in time after the Easter recess to
give notice of his own motion for a public memorial to Lord
Beaconsfield, who died on the 19th of April 1881.  The notice was given
on Mr. Gladstone's behalf by Lord Richard Grosvenor, now Lord
Stalbridge.

[133] Convicted at the Old Bailey for incitement to the murder of the
German Emperor.

[134] Mr. Gladstone's.

[135] Of the Irish Land Bill.

[136] Mr. Gladstone predicted that, if the Conservatives defeated the
Bill and came into office, they would themselves introduce not a
smaller, but a larger measure.

[137] Sir John Skelton, K.C.B., author of "Thalassa," Scottish disciple
of Disraeli, a brilliant and scholarly writer.

[138] Canon Maccoll.

[139] The death of a little daughter.

[140] W. H. Gladstone, M.P.

[141] The late Duke of Argyll.

[142] Mr. Gladstone's retirement.

[144] At Leeds.

[145] "Like some tall bully, lifts its head and lies."

[146] The County Franchise Bill.

[147] To Knowsley.

[148] The King.

[149] "The Life of Cobden."

[150] The late Sir Charles Gavan Duffy.

[151] Mr Gladstone's.

[152] (HAWARDEN, 15_th Nov._ 1881).--"_Tête-à-tête_ breakfast.  A long
most interesting talk on the great vexed question of his retirement;
started by his saying that he and Lord Granville had discussed it, Lord
G. good-humouredly declaring it out of the question.  I quoted to him
Lord Acton's words, how it would be a serious flaw in his political
career to damage and perhaps ruin the Liberal party, by retiring from
the leadership while in full possession of health and strength.  He
said the same arguments had been used in Lord Palmerston's case--that
it was said the power and cohesion of the party depended on one man's
life; that history had proved in that case that this was not so; that
in his own case he had retired in '74 for good; that his reassumption
of office was accidental, conditional, and temporary; that it was
undertaken for certain purposes foreshadowed in his Midlothian
Speeches; that these purposes were all or nearly all accomplished; that
if he did not retire after Ireland was settled, and House of Commons
procedure readjusted, there was no moment in the future when it would
be possible--that Lord Hartington (now Duke of Devonshire) was a man of
unusual strength and ability, but that before becoming Prime Minister
he required more training as House of Commons leader.  (I objected that
he might at any moment go to the House of Lords, which would immensely
weaken his influence; and besides, who could then lead the House of
Commons?)  The future leader of H. of C. was a great puzzle and
difficulty.  Sir Charles Dilke would probably be the man best fitted
for it, he had shown much capacity for learning and unlearning, but he
would require Cabinet training first; that as time brings nearer Lord
Hartington's move into House of Lords, force was added to the argument
in favour of his own retirement.  That he did not foresee great
difficulties ahead for the Liberal party; that the Conservative ditto
had thrown away what should have been their strength--the return to the
principles and policy of Sir R. Peel; that they were demoralised and
degraded; that they had inherited the vices of Lord Beaconsfield
without his tact and judgment: (Lord B.'s climax was reached in his
attack on Sir Robert Peel.  What a magnificent virulence he had shown;
what a power of cutting and piercing the man through a searching
knowledge of his character); that this jingoism was perpetuated in
them, and must eventually be their ruin.  That of Forster, Harcourt,
and Childers it was hard indeed to say which was best qualified for
leading; that Forster would probably be the best, but that he had shown
occasional incapacity; that Goschen had sadly injured himself by
following up his errors as to franchise with an elaborate eulogium of
weak-kneed Liberalism--(I quoted Lord A. again 'that he might resign
place, but could not resign power').  He demurred to this: for two
years--1874 to 1876--he insisted he had had no influence on the Lib.
party, that he should attend the H. of C. very rarely, and possibly
begin by going abroad before the Session."

[153] The Goschens.

[154] The late Dr. Hatch's Lectures on the "Organisation of the Early
Christian Churches."

[155] The husband of George Eliot.

[156] A short Life of Newman, by Mr. Jennings.

[157] Mr. Goschen.

[158] Sir Erskine May.

[159] The Comte de Montlosier, a French emigrant, Royalist, historian,
antiquary, feudalist, and Liberal Catholic.

[160] Lord Monck, first Governor-General of Federated Canada.

[161] George Eliot.

[162] Sir George Errington.

[163] The vote of censure on the Lords for appointing a Committee to
inquire into the operation of the Irish Land Act.

[164] His correspondent's name for his "History of Liberty."  It was of
course taken from the title of Mr. Henry James's delightful novel.

[165] On the 2nd of March a lunatic named Martin fired at the Queen and
Princess Beatrice at Windsor Station.

[166] Bradlaugh's re-election.

[167] This refers to a conversation at Venice in October 1879.

[168] That Mr. Bradlaugh, having been re-elected for Northampton,
should be allowed to take the oath and his seat.

[169] A protest by Cardinal Manning against the admission of Mr.
Bradlaugh.

[170] A letter from Mr. Gladstone to his daughter.

[171] Union, fusion.

[172] James Harrington, 1611-1677.  Toland edited his work on the
"Theory of the State," which was seized by Cromwell.

[173] 1648.

[174] Situated in the depth of the Inferno.--Canto xviii. line 1.

[175] "The History of Liberty."

[176] The letter in question was sent to Mr. Shorthouse, and was
answered in detail by him.

[177] "Ah, this thou should'st have done and not have spoken on't.
      In me 'tis villainy: in thee it had been good service."

[178] Mr. S. R. Gardiner's review of "John Inglesant."

[179] The late Marquis of Dufferin.

[180] On the working of the Irish Laud Act, 1881.

[181] Sent immediately after the murders in the Ph[oe]nix Park.

[182] It need hardly be said that for this rumour there was no sort of
foundation.

[183] Lyttelton.

[184] It was the "manifold writer."

[185] Lord Salisbury was unsuccessful in persuading his party to throw
out the Irish Arrears Bill in the House of Lords.

[186] Mr. Gladstone's.

[187] Downing Street.

[188] "Paradise."

[189] Letter written by Mr. Shorthouse in answer to Lord Acton's
criticism of "John Inglesant."

[190] Sara Bernhardt.

[191] Of Gibraltar.  The late Dr. Sandford.

[192] Mr. Gladstone.

[193] Mr. Secretary Hay.

[194] Mrs. Hollond.

[195] Of George Eliot.

[196] Prime Minister.

[197] Mr. Herbert Gladstone's Lecture on Ireland, in which he used the
words "Irish Parliament."

[198] The predominance of books on religion and the few on science.

[199] The list of the hundred books given by Lord Acton to his
correspondent.

[200] "Ignorance, madam, sheer ignorance."

[201] On the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill.

[202] Henry George, author of "Progress and Poverty."

[203] Eaton Square.

[204] R. W. Church.

[205] Liddon translated Rosmini's "Five Wounds of the Church."

[206] The Master of University.

[207] At Cambridge.

[208] "History of Liberty."

[209] "Progress and Poverty."

[210] "The American Constitution."

[211] The hundred books.

[212] Lord Acton's first visits to Oxford and Cambridge (to Dr.
Talbot's, Warden of Keble College, and to Professor Sidgwick's) were
arranged by his correspondent.

[213] Stubbs.

[214] Treaty of Berlin, 1878.

[215] Dr. Liddon met Lord A. and Miss G. at the station.

[216] Dr. Talbot.

[217] Dr. Stubbs.

[218] Duchess of Sutherland, Countess of Cromarty in her own right.

[219] Forbes.

[220] Lord Wolverton's residence near London.

[221] A letter from Mr. Gladstone to his daughter.

[222] _Contemporary Review_.

[223] Egypt.

[224] To Egypt.  Its object was financial.

[225] Lyttelton.

[226] England _v._ Australia, Kennington Oval.

[227] Bishop Stubbs.

[228] Döllinger.

[229] Church.

[230] Scholarship (£10) for Northumberland miners, comprising a month's
residence at Cambridge.

[231] Döllinger.

[232] Dr. Howson.

[233] The third Midlothian campaign.

[234] Mr. Gladstone.

[235] The first Lord Ampthill.

[236] Mr. Gladstone.

[237] Bishop Stubbs.

[238] At Oxford.

[239] Ruskin.

[240] Bonamy Price.

[241] Mr. Raskin's playfully affectionate description of Mr. Bonamy
Price, Professor of the science which he most abhorred.

[242] Afterwards Bishop of London.

[243] "The History of the Papacy during the Reformation."

[244] "Life of George Eliot."

[245] President Monroe formulated, at the suggestion of Mr. Canning,
the doctrine that the American continents were not to be colonised in
the future by foreign Powers.

[246] The Croker Papers.

[247] Disraeli.

[248] Bishop of London.

[249] Walsham How, then Suffragan Bishop of Bedford.

[250] At Cannes.

[251] "The Life of George Eliot."

[252] Now Viscount Milner.

[253] The present Earl Grey.

[254] Mark Pattison's Memoirs.

[255] The Afghan frontier.  See Mr. Morley's account of the Penjdeh
incident in his "Life of Gladstone," vol. iii. pp. 183-5.

[256] The reference is to Tennyson's lines on the Franchise Bill,
"Steersman, be not precipitate," &c.

[257] Disagreements in the Cabinet on Ireland had been cut short on
June 8 by the defeat of the Government, through a combination of Tories
and Irish, on the Budget.

[258] Mr. James Stuart.

[259] When Lord Salisbury came into office in June 1885, he required
assurances of support from the Leader of the Opposition, which Mr.
Gladstone refused to give.

[260] Mr. Gladstone's Election Address, partly written in Norway,
containing the Authorised Programme of the Liberal party.

[261] _i.e._, ex-Prime Minister.

[262] Mr. George Russell.  He stood for Fulham, but was not elected.

[263] At his election for Hoxton.

[264] Now Bishop of Oxford.

[265] The General Election of November 1885, consequent on the County
Franchise and Redistribution Acts.

[266] The county voters.

[267] The Greville Memoirs, Part III.



{221}

INDEX


  Aberdeen, Earl of, 25 and _note_
  Acton, Lord--
    _Career_--
      Birth, xv; Oscott, xvi; Munich, xvii; visit to France, xix; to
      United States, xx; Moscow, xx-xxi; Aldenham, xxii; member
      for Carlow, xxii; in Parliament, xxv; stands for Bridgnorth,
      xxvii; editorship of the _Rambler_ (_Home and Foreign Review_),
      xxvii, xxx-xxxiii, xxxv; at Congress of Munich, xxxiii; marriage,
      xxxv; lectures at Bridgnorth, xxxv-xxxix, lvi; again stands for
      Bridgnorth, xxxix; at the [OE]cumenical Council, xlii-xlvii;
      peerage, xlix; honorary Doctorate of Philosophy at Munich, l;
      reply to Gladstone's "Vatican Decrees" pamphlet, lii-liii; death
      of his daughter, lxxv, 105, and _note_; residence in Germany and
      the Riviera, lix; founds _English Historical Review_, lxiv; D.LL.,
      D.C.L., and All Souls Fellowship, lxv; made lord in waiting, lxv;
      appointed Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, lxvi, lxix;
      death, lxxiv
    _Characteristics_--
      Caution in expressing opinions, xii, lx, lxxiv
      Conversational ability, xii-xiv, lxix
      Cosmopolitanism, xiv, xv, xx, lix
      Critical temperament, xiii, lxii
      Foreign languages, facility in, xv, xviii, lxv
      Integrity of mind, lii
      Irony of manner, xiii
      Learning, xi, lxxvii; range of subjects, xv
      Liberalism, xxvi
      Morality, high estimate of, xii
      Personal appearance, xiii
      Prudence, xxxiv
      Reading, fondness for, xi, xiv, xxxv, lxxiii
      Religious views, xv
      Sociability, xii, lix
      Estimates of, xi, lxxi, lxxv
  Affirmation as substitute for oath, 23 and _note_
  Afghanistan, 20 _note_, 78, 81, 208 and _note_
  Africanders, _see_ Boers
  Airlie, Earl of, 17
  Aldenham library, xviii, lv, lxxiii
  Alexander, 47, 111
  Alexandria, 156
  Alison cited, 7
  America, _see_ United States
  Amiel, 207
  Ammergau, 33, 34
  Ampthill, Lord (Odo Russell), xlvii, 195 and _note_
  Anglo-Indians, 17
  Antonelli, Cardinal, xiv, xlvi
  Appearances _v._ realities, 15
  Arco, Louis, Count, 172
  Argyll, Duke of, incompatibility of, with Chamberlain, 13; resignation
      of, 87 and _note_[119]; misunderstandings of Gladstone by, 106;
      otherwise mentioned, lx, 11, 25, 29, 30, 70, 89, 96, 108
  Arnim, Count, 53, 134
  Arnold, Matthew, 59, 70, 105
  ---- Dr., 146
  Ashburnham MSS., 162-163
  Atterbury, 52
  Aumale, Duc d', 88
  Austen, Jane, 83
  Authorities, list of, 69


  Bacon, 93
  Banneville, Marquis de, xlv
  Barère, 136
  Barnes, 140
  Battersea, Lady (Mrs. Flower), 42 and _note_, 43
  Baxter, 146
  Beaconsfleld, Earl of (B. Disraeli)--
    Bryce on, 130
    Croker, views on, 201 and _note_[247]
    "Endymion" criticised, 52
    First speech of, 109
    Gladstone's eulogy on, lx, 99-101
    Granville, Earl, dinner with, 66
    Illness of, 85
    Memorial to, 97 and _note_[132], 98, 107 and _note_[145]
    Peel attacked by, 114 _note_
    Press opinions on, 96
    Supporters of, 91
    Otherwise mentioned, xxiii, lxxvi, 11, 40
  Beard's Hibbert Lectures, 173
  Bedford, Duke of, 195
  "Belgique et le Vatican, La," 54
  Benedictines, 137
  Benjamin, J. P., 97 and _note_[131]
  Berlin, treaty of, 179
  Berryer, xxiv, 47, 49
  Bessborough Report, 88
  Bible, Revised Version of, 120
  Bisaccia, 61
  Bismarck, Prince, Minghetti on, lxiii; Gladstone contrasted with, 35;
      mentioned, 13
  Blachford, Lord, 4
  Blennerhassett, Lady, estimate of, 44; otherwise mentioned, 17, 23,
      161, 174
  ---- Sir Rowland, estimate of, 44; on Forster, 73; mentioned, 23
  Blignieres, 191
  Blondel, 146
  Bluntschli, xix
  Boers--
    Characteristics of, 77
    Peace made by Gladstone with, 81, 91
  Bohme, 139
  Bond, 149-150
  Bonghi--essays of, on Gladstone, 4 and _notes_[5, 6]
    Roman History by, 123, 174; mentioned, 80 and _note_[103]
  Books, list of hundred best, 69; Acton's list of, 166-168, 176
  Borromeo, St. Charles, lxxi, 135, 186-187
  Bossuet, 93, 133, 150
  Boutmy, 3
  Bradlaugh, Charles, re-election of, for Northampton, 126 and _note_[166];
      Manning's protest against admission of, 130 _note_[169]; otherwise
      mentioned, 23 _note_, 95, 121, 151, 214
  Bradley's Recollections, 166
  Bramhall, 127, 133, 134
  Brand, Speaker (Viscount Hampden), 73 and _note_
  Brewer, 128-129, 149, 196
  Bright, Rev. J. F., Master of University, lxiv, 160, 173
      and _note_[206], 177
  ---- Rt. Hon. John, lx, 25, 30, 94, 156, 213
  Brodrick, Hon. George, 54 and _note_[62], 177
  Broglie, Duc de, 2 and _note_[2], 11, 161
  Brontë, Charlotte, 83
  Brougham, Lord, 47, 57
  Browne, Bp., of Shrewsbury, liv
  ---- Bp. Harold, 70 and _note_[85]
  Browning, Oscar, 166
  Bryce, Rt. Hon. James, paper of, on Disraeli, 130; cited, ix, xiv;
      quoted, xviii-xix, lx, lxviii; otherwise mentioned, 84, 197
  Burke, Edmund--
    Electioneering speeches of, 4-5
    Estimate of, 49, 56-57
    Gladstone compared with, 5, 49, 57, 81
    Lecky on, 152
    Party policy of, 14, 49 and _note_[54]
    Otherwise mentioned, xxix, 45
  Burials Bill, 33 and _note_[43]
  Burnett, 47
  Butler, Bp., xxxiv, 203
  Byron, 63


  Cæsar Borgia, 144
  Cairns, first Earl, 90 and _note_[124], 108
  Cambridge, Acton's visit to (1884), 177 _note_, 181, 191
  "Cambridge History," lxx, lxxiii, lxxiv
  Cambridge University--
    Acton refused admission to, as a student, xvii, lxvi, 104; made
        D.LL. at, lxv; appointed Professor of Modern History at, lxvi
    Aldenham library presented to, lxxiv
    Scholarship at, for Northumberland miners, scheme of, 192 and
        _note_[230]
  Cannes, lix, 33, 54, 80, 83, 160, 162, 198, 205
  Canning, estimates of, 45, 47; otherwise mentioned, 46, 56, 99, 200
  Capua, Archbishop of, 87
  Cardwell, Lord, xxii, 11, 54, 66, 77
  Carlingford, Lord, 87 _note_[120], 108, 195
  Carlyle, Thomas--
    Estimate of, 70-71, 82, 85, 104, 144
    Froude's Life of, 151
    Palgrave on, 84
    Scherer on, 74
  Carnarvon, Earl of, 16, 24
  Carnegie, Andrew, lxxiii
  Carnot, President, 136
  Caron, Father, 133, 140
  Casaubon, 207
  Cassander, 134
  Castlereagh, Visct., 46, 99
  Cavendish, Lady F., 41, 155
  ---- Lord F., 66, 154-156
  Cavour, xxv, xxviii-xxix, 49
  Cetewayo, 174
  Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. J., incompatibility of, with Argyll, 13;
      indiscretions of, 66; policy regarding House of Lords, 102;
      Döllinger's view of, 170; defection of, 214; on Gladstone's
      socialism, 212; otherwise mentioned, 24, 43, 153, 164, 205, 211
  Chambord, Count of, 86, 161
  Channing, 146
  Charles I., 136
  Chateaubriand, 78
  Chatham, Lord, 45, 56, 81
  Chenery, 13, 24, 34-35
  Cheney, 40
  Childers, Rt. Hon. H. C. E., 114 _note_
  Chillingworth, 133, 134
  _Chronicle_ (1868), xxxvii
  Church, Dean, at Munich, 170 and _note_[204]; on Liddon, 180, 192, 204;
      over-estimation of, 203; otherwise mentioned, 70
  Churches--
    Anglican--
      Distinguished men in, overmuch made of, 203
      Establishment of, 182
      High Church party, attitude of, towards Gladstone's alliance
          with democratic nonconformity, 16
      Ireland, in, xxxix
      Ritualism in, Gladstone's pamphlet on, li
      Thirty-Nine Articles, 127, 133
    Cavour's ideal, xxix
    Establishments, xxvi, xl; Gladstone's progress of thought
        regarding, 48 and _note_, 89
    Roman Catholic--
      Benedictines, 137
      Burnings of, 141, 146
      "Conflicts with Rome," xxxiii
      Conversions to--
        Obstacles to, 185, 187
        Protestant sanction of, 134
      Identification of, with morality and religion, xxxii
      Infallibility dogma, xli, xliii-xlviii; civil allegiance in
          relation to, xlviii, li
      Inquisition, 141, 146, 185
      Jansenism, 131, 140
      Jesuits (_see that title_)
      Legate and Nuncio, 137
      Legitimacy supported by, 86
      Marriage with Deceased Wife's Sister, attitude towards, 169 and
          _note_
      Mass, the, 136
      Modern thought, Encyclical letter against, xxxiv
      Molinism, 131
      [OE]cumenical Council (1869), xli-xlix
      Papacy (_see also below_ Ultramontanism)
        Creighton's work on, lxiv, 197 and _note_[243]
        Ethics of, 127
        Inquisition the work of, 185
        Temporal power of, xlii, 86-87
      Perilous opinions enforced by, 127
      Persecution in, 148
    Roman Catholic--
      Quietists, 139
      Rosmini's attempted reform of, 171, 176, 185
      Syllabus of Errors (1864), xxxiv, xlii, 135, 141
      Thirty-Nine Articles, views on, 127
      Transubstantiation, 132
      Ultramontanism--
        Acton's attitude towards, xvi
        Immorality of, lv, 131
        Irish clergy, of, 73, 165, 170
        Nature of, 185-187
        Policy of (1869), xliv
      "Vatican Decrees" pamphlet, l et seq.
      Vaticanism, Frère-Orban on, 54
  Cicero, 88
  Circourt, 40
  Clare, Lord, 201
  Clark, Dr. A., 29
  Clay, 49
  Clifford, Bishop, liv
  Club, The, lix, 50
  Cobden, Richard--
    Economy urged by, xxiv
    Life of, 111 and _note_, 112-113
    Otherwise mentioned, 19, 27
  Coercion, xxviii (_see also under_ Ireland)
  Colebrooke, Sir E., 125
  Coleridge, S. T., 71, 151
  Collard, Roger, cited, 84
  Colquhoun, Miss (Lady Limerick), 64
  Commynes, cited, 35
  Conolly, xlix
  Conscience--
    Development of, 168
    Independence of, 15
    Jesuit attitude towards, 39
    "John Inglesant," case of, 145
  Consent, government by, 68
  Conservatism, _see_ Toryism
  "Consuelo," 83
  Contract, freedom of, 92
  Coombe Warren, 188
  Copenhagen, battle of, lxxi
  Copernicus, lxvii
  Coriolis, 161
  Corker, 134
  Coulanges, Fustel de, xix
  County Franchise Bill, 108 _note_[146]
  Courtney, Rt. Hon. Leonard, 53, 197
  Cowper, Earl, 16, 153
  ---- Henry, 1
  Craven, Mrs., 161, 171
  Creighton, Bishop, editor of _English Historical Review_, lxiv;
      estimate of, 197
  Cressy, 140
  Croker Papers, 199-201
  Cromwell, Oliver, 5-6, 71, 93
  Cross, Mr., 64 and _note_[70], 117, 162, 166, 173, 198, 205


  Dante, 40, 57; "Inferno," 44, 143 and _note_; "Paradiso," 83, 159
      and _note_[185]
  Darboy, Archbishop, xlii-xliv, xlix
  Davenport, 140
  "David Copperfield," 34
  Davitt, Michael, 68
  Decazes, 161
  Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, 169 and _note_
  Delane, 13, 24
  Delisle, Leopold, 162-163
  Democracy--
    Danger of, 91
    Disraeli's transformation of England into a, 86
    Doctrines of, distinct from wishes of Democrats, 7
    Government by, success of, 93
    Inconstancy of, 9, 91, 101
    Principles of, 48
    Progress of, a certainty, 44
    Unity of power the tendency of, 124
  "Democracy" (American novel), 58, 159-160
  "Democracy in America," xix
  "Democracy in Europe," lviii
  Democrats--
    Constructive power of, 117
    Murder identified with insurrection by, 103
    Whig dependence on, 108
  Demosthenes, 88
  Dempster, Miss, 77 _note_[97]
  Derby, 14th Earl, xxiii, 65, 69
  ----, 15th Earl, estimate of, 109; otherwise mentioned, 72, 87, 108,
      110, 117, 174
  ----, Lady, 108-109
  Descartes, 130, 146
  De Serre, 68 and _note_[80], 75
  Detachment, 71, 105
  Devonshire, Duke of (_d._ 1891), 10 and _note_[16]
  D'Harcourt, Marquis, 1
  Diary of Miss M. Gladstone, extract from, 113 and _note_
  Diary-keeping, 14, 30
  Diaz, Porfirio, xxxviii
  Dickens, Charles, 34, 41, 163
  Dilke, Sir Charles, Gladstone's estimate of, 114 _note_; at Cannes, 205;
      otherwise mentioned, 24, 43, 214
  Dillon, John, 103
  Disraeli, _see_ Beaconsfield
  Döllinger, Dr.--
    Acton's studies under, xvii, xix; article on, lxxv; estimate of, 2
    Bryce's estimate of, lx
    Chamberlain, views on, 170
    Congress of Munich, plea at, xxxiii
    Excommunication of, xlix
    Gladstone's visit to, li
    Liddon, views on, 182, 191
    Otherwise mentioned, xliii, 57, 80, 192
  Donne, 131
  Drew, Mrs., viii, lxiii
  Dufaure, 2
  Duff, Sir M. Grant, ix, xxxiv, xxxvii _note_; _Spectator_ article by,
      lxxi
  Dufferin, Marquis of, 153 and _note_, 195
  Duffy, Sir C. G., 112 and _note_[150]
  Dupanloup, xliv, xlix
  Durham, Bishop of (Westcott), 70, 203


  Ecclesiastical Titles Act, li
  _Economist_, 24, 29
  Ecuador, 74
  _Edinburgh Review_, 5, 50, 65 _note_[73]
  Egypt--
    Alexandria, bombardment of, and complications, 156-159
    Evacuation of, views on, 169, 179, 188-189
    Northbrook's mission to, 190 and _note_
  Eliot, George--
    Death of, 57
    Dickens on "Scenes from Clerical Life," 163
    Estimate of, 57, 60-61, 62
    Gladstone's attitude towards, lxi, 109
    Letters of, 121, 166
    Life of, 64, 83, 162, 198
    Lyttelton's review of, 59
    Montégut on, 165
    Philosophy of, 121
    Political divergence from, 210
    Scherer on, 207
    Otherwise mentioned, 5, 34, 109
  Ellenborough, Lord, xxiii, 93
  Eloquence, French, 78
  "Endymion," 52 and _note_[1]
  Enfield, 197
  Equality, doctrine of, lix, 8, 48
  Erasmus, lxvii
  Errington, Sir George, 122 and _note_, 123
  "Expansion of England, The," 6 and _note_[10]-8


  Faber, 206
  Fabricius, 134
  Fagan, 53
  Faith--
    Patriotism analagous to, xxix
    Political, 199
    Sincerity implied in, 168
  Falloux, quoted, 88
  Fanaticism, 144
  Fawcett, Rt. Hon. Henry, 24
  Female suffrage, 180-181
  Ferry, Jules, bill of, on unauthorised congregations, 1, 7 and _note_
  Flower, Mrs. (Lady Battersea), 42 and _note_, 43
  Forbes, Bishop of Brechin, 150, 183
  Forster, Rt. Hon. W. E., speeches of, 36, 62; Blennerhassett on, 73;
      Gladstone's estimate of, 114 _note_; resignation of, 153-154; on
      "Democracy," 160; mentioned, 74
  Forwood, 192
  Fox, C. J., estimate of, 45; Trevelyan's Life of, 52-53; Chatham
      compared with, 81; otherwise mentioned, 99, 200
  France--
    Best living writers of, 6
    Commercial treaty with, xxiii, 113
    Debates, famous, in, 75
    Democracy in, 93
    Eloquence of, 78
    Gladstone's attitude towards literature of, 46-47, 82
    Peasants in, condition of, 112
  Fraser, Bishop, 203
  Free government, 68
  Freedom, _see_ Liberty
  Freeman, lxxvi, 70, 149, 177
  Frere, Sir Bartle, estimate of, 17, 66; Toryism and jingoism of,
      77 and _note_[96]; mentioned, 29
  Frère-Orban, 54, 76
  Freycinet, 39
  Froude, J. A., "Life of Carlyle" by, 151; otherwise mentioned, xi,
      70, 74, 144, 177


  Gambetta, 22, 104
  Gardiner, S. R., correspondence with, on "John Inglesant," 126, 128;
      poverty of, 129; recommended for the Record Office, 149; at
      King's College, 150: contemplated paper on "John Inglesant,"
      151; otherwise mentioned, 177, 196, 198
  Gaskell, Milnes, 47
  Gavard, 11
  "Gendre de M. Poirier, Le," 3
  George, Henry, 170 and _note_[202], 175
  Germany--
    Carlyle's view of, 70, 82, 104
    Gladstone's attitude towards literature of, xxii, 46-47, 82
    Socialism in, 170, 175
  Gibbon, 59
  Gibson, Rt. Hon. J. G. (Lord Ashbourne), 129
  Gladstone, Helen, 32, 173
  ---- Herbert, Middlesex candidature of, 9 and _notes_, 11 and _note_;
      eloquence of, 84; eulogy of Hartington and Granville by, 107;
      lecture of, on Ireland, 164 and _note_; mentioned, 118
  ---- W. E.--
    Accident to (1881), 77
    Acton, estimate of, l
    Beaconsfield, eulogy on, lx, 99-101
    Bismarck contrasted with, 35
    Bonghi's essays on, 4 and _note_[3]
    Burke compared with, 5, 49, 57, 81
    Characteristics of--
      Eloquence, xxiii-xxiv, 47
      Financial ability, xxiii-xxiv
      Idealism, 109
      Progress of mind, 48
      Self-depreciation, 66, 112
    Charities, speech on, xxiv, 48
    Church establishments, progress of thought regarding, 48 and
        _note_, 89
    Contact with, desirable for members of the party, 25-26, 61-62
    Control of certain men not possible to, 45, 214
    Criticism, attitude towards, vii
    De Serre compared with, 68
    Döllinger, visit to, li
    Estimate of characters by, defects in, 45, 57, 109
    Estimate of, by posterity foreshadowed, 44-50
    _Grantully Castle_, voyage in, 33 _note_[44]
    Illness of (1880), 27 and _note_[35]
    Inequalitarianism of, 94
    Influence of, on the nation, 106
    Italian independence, attitude towards, xxiv-xxv, lx
    Lancashire speeches of (1868), 4 and _note_[7]
    Land tenure, progress of thought regarding, 48 and _note_, 89
    Letter of, on choice of a profession, 43
    Liberal party--
      Cohesion of, dependent on his ascendency, 25, 110, 193
      Divergence from, 13, 16, 46, 158
      Future of, 107, 109, 113 _note_
    Midlothian campaign (1880), personal victory in, 8, 9-10; campaign
          of 1884, 193 and _note_[233]
    Nonconformist alliance of, 16
    O'Donnell affair, the, 21 and _note_
    Personal ascendency of, 8, 9-10, 195
    Police protection for, 69 and _note_[83]
    Position of (1859), xxii-xxiii
    Principle and policy, grasp of, 18, 48
    Retirement of, objections to, 10, 106-107, 159, 169, 178, 193,
        195, 214; diary extract on, 113 _note_
    Socialism, attitude towards, lxi, 175, 212
    Strachey's observation on, 55
    Tennyson's attitude towards, 209 and _note_[256]
    Vatican decrees, pamphlet on, l
  ---- Mrs., 11, 27, 58, 115, 119, 160
  ---- W. H., 106 and _note_[140]
  Godley, Sir Arthur, 67 and _note_[77]
  Goethe, 79, 82
  Goldsmid, 11, 61
  Goodman, Memoirs of, 129
  Goschen, Rt. Hon. G. J., estimate of, 65; financial ability of, 108;
      otherwise mentioned, 3, 72, 88, 114 _note_, 115, 117, 119, 124,
      205, 211, 213, 214
  Government--
    Consent, by, necessity of, 164
    Constitutional, maxim of, concerning subordinates, 125
    Party, by, law of, 95
    Unfitness for, in every class, 93
  Grace, three channels of, 144
  Granville, Earl, estimate of, xxi; reception of, in Moscow, xx-xxi;
      Disraeli dines with, 66; motion of, on Beaconsfield, 101; suggested
      retirement of, 108; Gladstone discusses retirement with, 113 _note_;
      views on Morier, 195; on Gladstone's election address (1885), 211
      and _note_[260]; otherwise mentioned, 12, 18, 26, 29, 36, 39, 103, 104,
      106, 196
  ---- Lady, 61
  Green, J. E., 128-129, 163
  ---- Mrs. J. R., 161, 198
  ---- T. H., xli
  Greenwood, Frederick, 13
  Grenville, George, 46, 69, 200
  Greville, 215
  Grévy, 161
  Grey, Earl, 205 and _note_[253]
  Grillion's, lix, 85
  Grosvenor, Lord R. (Lord Stalbridge), 97 _note_[132]
  Grotius, 93, 134, 146, 207
  Ground Game Bill, 33 and _note_[43]
  Grundtvig, 146
  Guizot, 84


  Hall, 133
  Hallam, 46
  Hamilton, 49
  Hammond, 146
  Hampden, Viscount (Speaker Brand), 73 and _note_
  Harcourt, Sir William, 25, 69, 103, 112, 114 _note_
  ---- Marquis de, 161
  Hardy, 149
  Harley, Speaker, 67
  Harrington, James, 139 and _note_[172]
  Harrowby, Lord, 47
  Hartington, Lord, attitude of, in elections of 1880, 14, 115-116;
      Gladstone's estimate of, 114 _note_; on compensation in Ireland,
      115-116; otherwise mentioned, xxiii, 15, 108, 205
  Hatch, Dr., 115 _note_[154]
  Hatzfeldt, 213
  Hawarden, Acton's visit to, 117-118
  Hay, Colonel, 160, 162 and _note_[193]
  Hayward, Lecky reviewed by, 50; on Carlyle, 82; otherwise mentioned,
      12, 13, 24, 118
  Hefele, Bishop, xliv, xlix
  Heine, 79, 97
  Henriquez, 84
  Herbert, Lord, 146
  ---- Sidney, xxii
  Heroes, doctrine of, 70
  History--
    Conscience, development of, the aim of, 168
    Ideas the essence of, 6-8
    Inner reality of, 35
    Letters as sources of, 32
    Moral estimates based on, 121-122
    Printed books as sources of, lxxvi, 151
    Religion demonstrated by, lxvii
    Religious forces in the making of, 167
    Scope of, lxxii
  "History of Liberty, A," xviii, lv-lvi, 6 and _note_[9], 8, 174;
      called "The Madonna of the Future," 126 and _note_[164], 150
  "History of Our Own Times," 36
  Hoadley, 52
  Hohenlohe, 172
  Holden, 140
  Hollond, Rev. H. S., 170
  ---- Mrs., 162
  Holmbury, 33, 36, 40
  _Home and Foreign Review_, xxvii, xxx-xxxiii, xxxv
  Home Rule, _see under_ Ireland
  Hooker, 166
  Hope-Scott, 46, 182
  Houghton, Lord, 53, 160
  How, Bishop Walsham, 204
  Howson, Dean, 192
  Hugo, Victor, 3, 60, 78
  Hundred books, Lubbock's scheme regarding, 69; Acton's list of,
      166-168, 176
  Huskisson, 200
  Hutton, R. H., 70


  Ideas--
    Carlyle's notion of, 71
    Expedients as opposed to, 56
    Exponents as distinct from, 206
    History in, 6-8
    Party an embodiment of, 200
  Illingworth, Rev. J. R., Sermons by, 78 and _note_[98], 79, 83
  "Imitation of Christ, The," 5
  Imperialism, lvii
  Ingram, J. K., 76, 90
  Intolerance, 148
  Ireland--
    Acton's representation of, in House of Lords, lxv
    Arms Bill, 78
    Arrears Bill (1882), 158 _note_[185]
    Burke's policy regarding, 49 and _note_[54]
    Church disestablishment in, xxxix
    Clergy in, 73, 165, 170, 217
    Coercion for, 65, 68, 81, 154
    Compensation for Disturbance Bill, 28 and _notes_, 30
    Emigration from, 88
    Gladstone, Herbert, lecture of, on, 164 and _note_
    Heroic treatment for, 54
    Home Rule for--
      Advocates of, 36
      Failure regarding, probable, lxii, lxiv
      Federalism in, 123-124
      Gladstone's references to (Oct. 1881), lxii, 105; (Feb. 1882), 123
      Historic case for, 216
      Liberal party in regard to, 194
      Necessity of, lxi, 164, 165, 216-217
    Land League in, 68, 105
    Land tenure in--
      Bill of 1881, 73, 84 and _note_, 87 and _note_[118]; criticism of,
          89 _seq._; opinions of others on, 96; parliamentary prospects of,
          98-99; Gladstone's speech on second reading, 103 and
          _notes_[134-136]; compensation question not urged in connection
          with, 115-116; Lords' Committee of Inquiry on the Act,
          125 _note_; Cairns' draft Report, 154
      Compensation, idea of, 115-116, 118
      Irish ownership, case for, 216
      Land Court (1881), 111-112
      Landlords, 87
      Peasant proprietorship, 78
      Rent, 88, 112
    Massacre in, 136, 147
    Papal authority in, undesirable, 169
    Peace Preservation Bill (1881), 61, 62 _note_[68], 67 _note_[76], 72
    Ph[oe]nix Park murders, 154 and _note_[181]-156
    Priests in, _see above_, Clergy
    Resignations of officials (1882), 153
    Suspicion of England natural in, 164
    Wetherell's tour in, suggested, 218
    Wolverton's views on, 65
    Wrongs of, 63
  Irish members, _see under_ Parliament
  Italian independence, xxiv-xxv, lx



  Jackson, Bishop, 201
  ---- Dr. Henry, letter from, lxviii-lxxii; cited, lxxiv
  James, Henry, 126 _note_[164]
  Jansenism, 131, 140
  Jebb, Professor, 70
  Jefferson, 48, 93
  Jennings' "Life of Newman," 117
  Jessel, Sir George, 149-150
  Jesuits--
    Clement XIV.'s attitude towards, lii
    Divisions among, 127
    _Encyclopædia Britannica_ article on, 64
    Ferry's bill on expulsion of, 1, 7 and _note_
    Learning among, golden age of, 137
    Luther approved by one of, 132
    Papacy supported by, 142
    Pattison on, 207
    Richelieu supported by, 143, 148
    St. Hilaire's argument regarding, 39
    Spanish, lix
  Jingoism, lxi, 114 _note_
  "John Inglesant," criticism of, 127-128, 130, 135-149, 150-151
  Journalism, power of, 15
  Jowett, Benjamin, 70, 177
  Juarez, Benito, xxxviii
  "Julian the Apostate," 54 and _note_[60]
  Junius, 52, 120, 151


  Kenealy, 95
  Kenrick, xlix
  Kimberley, Earl of, 96, 108
  Knesebeck, 192
  Knowles, Sir James, 113
  Knowsley, 108 _note_[147], 110


  La Bastide, 134
  Labouchere, H. L., 99
  Laboulaye, 2, 39
  Labour, Adam Smith on, 92
  Lacaita, Sir James, 1
  ---- Charles, 190
  Lacordaire, 185
  Lacour, Challemel, O'Donnell's attempted attack on, 21 _note_;
      estimate of, 22; otherwise mentioned, 24, 160
  Lamartine, 78
  Lamennais, 78
  Land tenure--
    Anomalies of, 28
    Brodrick on, 54 and _note_[62]
    Gladstone's progress of thought regarding, 48 and _note_, 89
    Importance of subject, xxvi, xl
    Ireland, in, _see under_ Ireland
    Landed aristocracy, Gladstone's attitude towards, 95
    Lords, House of, as representing, 102
    Maine's knowledge of, 31
    Political economy in regard to, 90
  Lansdowne, Lord, 96 _note_[130]
  Lasaulx, Amelie von, 73
  ---- Ernest von, 73
  Lassalle, 97, 213
  Lathbury, D. C., 24, 26
  Laugel, 11
  Laurent, 76
  Laveleye, 71, 75-76, 90
  Layard, Sir H. A., 80
  Lea, Mr., M.P., 83-84
  Lecky, "Eighteenth Century" by, 50-51, 115; estimate of, 151-152;
      otherwise mentioned, 70, 80
  Lee, General, 82 and _note_[106]
  Lefevre, Rt. Hon. J. G. Shaw, 153
  Legitimacy, 86, 119, 161
  Leibnitz, 134, 150
  Lenbach, 22, 103
  Leo XIII., Pope, 80 and _note_[101], 86, 111
  Leslie, Cliffe, 76, 90
  Lesseps, 169
  Letters--
    History dependent on, 32
    Privacy of, 41
  Leveson-Gower, F., 1, 3, 40, 118
  Lewes, G. H., 60
  ---- Mrs. (George Eliot), 64
  Lewis, George, 171
  Liberal party--
    Achievements of, xl
    Gladstone--
      Dependence on, for cohesion, 25, 107, 110, 193
      Divergence from, 13, 16, 46, 158
      Future without, 107, 109, 113 _note_
    Home Rule in relation to, 194
  Liberalism--
    Aims of, 94
    Definition of, 71 and _note_[88]
    Gladstone, in relation to, 111
    Nature of, lv, 199
    Toryism permeated by, 200
  Liberty--
    American realisation of, lvii
    Ancient, three things lacking in, lvii
    Contract, of, 92
    Definitions of, xxvii-xxviii, 71 and _note_[89]
    Division of power essential to, 124
    End in itself, lvii
    Ends of, 216
    Equality at expense of, lix
    "History of," xviii, lv-lvi, 6 and _note_[9], 8; called "The Madonna of
        the Future," 126 and _note_[164], 150
    Law of, aims of, 93
    Mill on, reviewed by Acton, xxvii-xxviii
    Minorities, security for, the test of, 69, 76
    Savonarola's martyrdom for, 123
    Two worst enemies of, xxx
  Liddon, Canon, first meeting with, 21; on Lord Carnarvon, 24; verbal
      subtlety of, 46; on Rosmini, 170-171 and _note_, 176, 180, 184-185,
      187; Gladstone's attitude towards, 182; suggestion of, for see
      of London, 201-204; anecdote of, 204; at Tegernsee, 213; estimate
      of, 179-180, 182-183, 187, 202-203; Döllinger's estimate of, 182,
      191-192; otherwise mentioned, 16, 70
  Lightfoot, Bp., 70 and _note_[86], 112, 203
  Limerick, Lord, 64, 72
  Listowel, Lord, 96 _note_[130]
  Littleberries, 25 _note_
  Littré, 38
  London, conservatism of, 118
  Londonderry, Lady, 180
  Longfellow, 5
  Lords, House of, _see under_ Parliament
  Lowder, Rev. Charles, Life of, 151
  Lowe, Robert, _see_ Sherbrooke
  Lowell, J. R., reminiscences of, 5-6; otherwise mentioned, 30-32,
      70, 83
  Lubbock, Sir John, estimate of, 69; otherwise mentioned, 67, 68 and
      _note_[81], 176
  Luther, lxvii, 132
  Lyons, Lord, 37, 160
  Lyttelton, Alfred, 112, 157 and _note_, 191
  ---- Rev. the Hon. Arthur, 54 and _note_[60], 59 and _note_, 146, 152
  Lytton, 20


  Macaulay--
    Brougham, on, 47
    Cited, xvii; quoted, lxvii
    Conversational power of, 40
    Estimate of, 59, 210; estimate of _Essays and History_, 173
    Letter of, on Windsor Castle paper, 116
    Taine on, 52-53
    Writing of, 45, 57
    Otherwise mentioned, 57, 95, 144, 196
  MacCarthy, J. H., 68; "History "by, 36
  MacColl, Canon, 13, 104 and _note_[138]
  Machiavelli, lxvii, 144
  Mackintosh, 57
  Maine, Sir Henry, disagreements with, 29; on land tenure, 31; on
      primogeniture, 119; on the government, 209, 212-213; estimate of,
      26, 31; otherwise mentioned, 70, 118, 181
  Maitland, Prof. F. W., cited, ix, lxxiii-lxxiv
  Malebolge, 143
  Malebranche, 140
  Mallett, Sir Louis, on Afghanistan, 78; illness of, 125; moves to
      Mentone, 162; estimate of, 4, 27; otherwise mentioned, 76, 160
  Manning, Cardinal, ultramontanism of, xli, 186-187; on Vatican
      decrees, lii; correspondence of, with Acton, liv; influence lost
      by, lxxvi; protests against admission of Bradlaugh to Parliament,
      130 _note_[169]; views of, on Borromeo, 186-187; Wiseman succeeded
      by, xli
  Marat, 7
  Marriage--
    Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, 169 and _note_
    Female Suffrage in regard to, 181
  Maximilian, Archduke, xxxviii-xxxix and _note_
  May, Sir T. Erskine, "Democracy in Europe" by, reviewed by Acton,
      lviii; otherwise mentioned, 67, 119, 120
  Mazzini, xxix, 210
  Men of the time, estimate of, 122
  Mentone, 151; Queen's villa at, 126, 128
  Mérimée, Prosper, 53
  Mexico, xxx, xxxvii-xxxix
  "Middlemarch," 60, 135
  Midhat Pacha, 44, 86 and _note_
  Midlothian campaign (1880), personal victory in, 8, 9-10; campaign of
      1884, 193 and _note_[233]
  Mignet, 2
  Mill, J. S., on liberty, reviewed by Acton, xxvii-xxviii; otherwise
      mentioned, 48, 71, 94, 110
  Milman, 5
  Milner, Viscount, 205 and _note_[252]
  Milnes, Monckton, 41
  Milton, 63
  Minghetti on Gladstone and Bismarck, lxiii; otherwise mentioned, 4
      and _note_[5], 80 and _note_[103], 123, 174
  Minorities, protection of, a condition of liberty, lvi, 69, 76
  Mirabeau, 7, 47
  Mivart, 129
  Molinism, 131
  Molinos, 137-138
  Mommsen, 171
  Monck, Lord, 118, 120 and _note_[160]
  Monroe, President, 198 and _note_[245]
  Montagu, 127, 132
  Montalembert, xix, 57
  Montégut, 165
  Montesquieu, 6, 93
  Montlosier, Comte de, 120 and _note_[159]
  More, 93
  Morier, at Seacot, 190; criticisms by, on British foreign policy, 192;
      estimate of, 23, 24, 195, 201, 205, 212
  Morley, Lord, 98
  ---- Arnold, 212
  ---- Rt. Hn. John, represented by Acton in House of Lords, lxv;
      Aldenham library presented to Cambridge University by, lxxiv;
      "Life of Burke" by, 5; estimate of, 19; _Pall Mall_ under, 19, 113;
      "Life of Cobden" by, 111 and _note_, 112-113; Jacobinism of, 125;
      in Parliament, 163; quoted, l; cited, lxii, 208 _note_; otherwise
      mentioned, ix, 8, 24, 41, 43, 65, 70, 72, 119, 164
  Morris, 206
  Mortola (the poet), anecdote of, 90
  Most, 103 and _note_[133]
  Mozley, James, 170
  ----, John, 158 and _note_[184], 203
  Müller, Max, 70, 177
  Münster, 13
  Myers, Ernest, 162


  Napoleon I., Mme. de Rémusat on 31-32, 36; Lee compared with,
      82 _note_[106]; otherwise mentioned, lxx, 48, 66, 93, 111
  Napoleon III., xxxvii-xxxviii
  National pride, 172
  Nationality, _Home and Foreign Review_ article on, xxix-xxx
  Neander, 146
  Nelson, lxxi-lxxii
  Newman, Cardinal, retires from editorship of _Rambler_, xxvii; on
      Vatican Decrees, lii, 134; made a cardinal, lxxvi; verbal subtlety
      of, 46; Life of, by Jennings, 117; influence of, 182; narrowness
      of set of, 206; estimate of, lx, 26, 180; otherwise mentioned,
      44, 70, 87, 146, 171
  Newmarch, 76
  Newton, 6
  Nonconformists, Gladstone's alliance with, 16
  _North British Review_, xl
  Northbrook, Lord, 108, 190 and _note_
  Northcote, Sir S., 16, 99


  O'Connell, 47
  O'Donnell, 21 and _note_
  O'Hagan, John, 111
  Opponents' case, statement of, 193-194
  Ottley, Rev. E. B., cited, 121
  Owen, Prof., 166, 203
  Oxford, Acton's visit to, 177 and _note_, 178, 196
  Oxford University--
    Acton made D.C.L. at (1889), and Honorary Fellow of All Souls'
        (1890), lxv
    Verbal refinements a product of, 46


  Paget, Sir Augustus, 80
  ---- Dean, 213 and _note_[264]
  ---- Sir J., estimate of, 26, 77; otherwise mentioned, 70 and
      _note_[87], 79 _note_, 166
  Palgrave, 59, 84
  _Pall Mall Gazette_--
    Estimate of, 19, 24, 89, 113
    Jacobinism of, 125
    Maine a contributor to, 26
    Morley's editorship of, 19, 24, 113
  Palmer, William, 182
  Palmerston, Visct., on Treaty of Paris, xxi; Acton's disagreement
      with, xxii; on French invasion, xxiv; party's relations with,
      114 _note_; otherwise mentioned, 46, 47
  Panizzi, life of, 53 and _note_
  Papacy, _see under_ Churches--Roman Catholic
  Parker, C. S., 54 and _note_[61]
  Parliament--
    Commons, House of--
      Consent of representatives in, a condition of free government, 68
      Irish party in--
        Degrees among, 74-75
        Liberal party dependent on, 214
        Obstruction by, 21, 67; two kinds of, 69
        Tory alliance with, 209 _note_[257]
      Obstruction in, 21; two kinds of, 69
      Outside influence on, 101
      Procedure Rules, Gladstone's speech on, 64 and _note_[71], 125
      Weakness of, when near its end, 19
    Debates in, few famous, 75
    Lords, House of--
      Character of, as an institution, 31, 102
      Compensation for Disturbance Bill thrown out by, 28 and _notes_, 31
      Home Rule Bill in, prospects for, 218
      Injury done by, 103
      Interests of, 102
      Irish Land Act, Committee of inquiry on, appointed by, 125 _note_
      Modification of, 102
      Popular view of, 95
      Radical attitude towards, 201
      Taxation not in jurisdiction of, xxiii
      Use of, 101-102
  Parnell, C. S., 105, 154, 217
  Parties, evening, in Downing Street, 19 and _note_
  Party--
    Burke's policy regarding, 14, 49 and _note_[54]
    Government by, law of, 95
    Ideas the justifying cause of, 200
    Religious view of, 199
  Pascal, 6, 93, 146, 207
  Pasquier, 2
  Pasteur, 152
  Patriotism, xxix
  Pattison, Rev. Mark, Life of Milton by, 5 and _note_; estimate of,
      206-207; otherwise mentioned, 70, 120
  ---- Mrs. Mark, 43
  Paul V., Pope, 146
  Peel, Disraeli's attack on, 114 _note_; personal influence neglected
      by, 25; justification of, 200; estimates of, 45, 47, 56
  Peelites in 1859, xxii
  Penjdeh, 208 and _note_
  Persons _versus_ things, 6-7, 14, 85, 109, 200, 206, 210
  Petavius, 207
  Pitt, 45, 46, 56, 93
  Pius V., Pope, liii, 135
  Pius IX., Pope, Encyclical Letter against modern thought, xxxiv;
      death of, lxxvi; otherwise mentioned, xxxii, xl
  Plunket, 47
  Political economy, changes in, 89-90
  Politics--
    Complexity of, 91
    Differences in, dependent on disagreement in moral principles, 210
    Ecclesiastical principles in, 51-52
    Ends of, 216
    Moral basis of, 96, 107, 210
    Parentage of, 60
    Patriotism in, xxix
    Religion and, borderland of, 104
    Religious view of, 199
  Potter, T. B., 54, 111, 113, 162
  Power, acquisition and maintenance of, 14-15
  Prætorius, 134
  Price, Bonamy, 24, 90, 197 and _note_[241]
  Primogeniture, 102, 119
  Principles, self-identification with, 85
  Probabilism, 143
  Progress, conditions of, 200
  "Progress and Poverty," 170 _note_[202], 175
  Property--
    Limitation to rights of, 94
    Representation based on, 180
  Puritans, 147
  Pusey, Dr., 171, 203


  Quakers, use of term, 136, 147
  _Quarterly Review_, 50
  Quietists, 139


  Radicalism, 94
  Radicals, attitude of, towards House of Lords, 201
  Radowitz, 49
  _Rambler_, xxvii-xxviii
  Rammingen marriage, 22
  Ranke, xix
  Rauscher, xlix
  Raynaud, 146
  Reay, Lady, 85
  ---- Lord, 4, 22, 23, 27, 118, 120, 162
  Reeve, Henry, 65 and _note_[73]
  Reform, nature of, 92
  ---- Bill (1884), 178, 181
  Religion--
    Antagonism founded in, an obstacle to sincerity, 168
    Church, identification of, with, xxxii
    Fanaticism in, 144
    History the true demonstration of, lxvii, 167
    Key to actions provided by, 167; unreliability of key, lii-liii
    Liberalism the beginning of real, lv
    Politics and, borderland of, 104
    Scientific discoveries, attitude towards, xxxii
    Substitutes for, 167, 168
  Rémusat, Mme. de, 30, 31-32, 36
  Renan, Ernest, 6, 152
  Renouf, 182
  Renouf, Miss, 173
  Representation, property the basis of, 180
  Representative systems, 101-102
  Retz, 140
  Reviews, value of, 83
  Richelieu, 134, 143, 148
  Richter, 70, 82
  Ridding, Dr., 183
  Ripon, Marquis of, 205
  Robespierre, 8, 22
  Rogers, Thorold, 8 and _note_[13]
  Rome--
    "John Inglesant" in reference to, 147
    Visit to (1881), 79-80; (1882), 122-123
  Roon, 49
  Roscher, cited, 90
  Rosebery, Earl of, appoints Acton to Cambridge, lxvi; otherwise
      mentioned, 25, 217
  Rosicrucians, 139
  Rosmini, 170-171 and _note_, 176, 180, 184-185, 187
  Rossi, Count, 87 and _note_[117]
  Rothe, xix, 146, 206
  Rousse, 88
  Rousseau, xii, 56, 78
  Ruskin, John, writings of, on fly-leaves, 58; at Hawarden, 172; on
      Bonamy Price, 197 and _note_[241]; estimate of, 42, 62; otherwise
      mentioned, 59, 85
  Russell, Lord Arthur, 31 and _note_, 65, 72, 74, 162
  ---- C. (Lord Russell of Killowen), 153
  ---- George, 212 and _note_[262]
  ---- Lord John, xxiv, 47
  ---- Lord Odo (Lord Ampthill), xlvii, 195 and _note_
  Russia--
    Granville's reception in, xx-xxi
    Policy of, 179, 208


  St. Hilaire, B., estimate of, 2, 37-39; argument of, regarding
      Jesuits, 39; Aristotelian work of, 39; view of, on Greeks, 74;
      otherwise mentioned, 41, 104
  St. Just, 77, 142
  St. Simon, memoirs of, 32
  Salisbury, Marquis of, Irish party compared with, 75; assurances
      required by, from Gladstone, 210, _note_; in Tunis affair, 90; on
      Irish Arrears Bill, 158 and _note_[185]; otherwise mentioned, 108,
      190, 205, 214, 217
  Salmeron, 137
  Sancta Clara, Father, 138, 147
  Sand, George, 78 and _note_[99]; 79, 83
  Sandford, Bp., 160 and _note_[191]
  Savonarola, 123
  Scaliger, 207
  "Scenes from Clerical Life," 163
  Schelling, 146
  Scherer, estimate of, 1-2, 6; patriotism of, 34; on Carlyle, 74; on
      George Eliot, 207; otherwise mentioned, 11, 205
  Schiller, 79
  Schlegel, 82
  Schleiermacher, 82
  Schlözer, 123
  "School of Shakespeare," 42
  Schwartzenberg, xlix
  Sclater, 129
  Scott, Sir Walter, lxi, 93
  Scottish mental characteristic, 206
  Seeley, Sir John, death of, lxvi; Acton contrasted with, lxvii;
      "Expansion of England," by, 6 and _note_[10]-8; otherwise mentioned,
      115, 175
  Selborne, Lord, 108, 211
  Selden, 207
  Serjeant, 140
  "Sermons in a College Chapel," 78 and _note_[98], 79, 83
  Shakespeare--
    Defects of, 57, 60
    Montalembert on, 57
    Sonnets of, 41-42
  Shaw, 103, 153
  ---- Dr., cited, ix, lviii
  Shelburne, Lord, 81
  Shelley, 79
  Sherbrookr, Viscount (Robert Lowe), attitude of, towards H. Gladstone,
      10-11 and _note_; hurt regarding offer of peerage, 12-13;
      Maine's views on, 26; indebtedness of, to Burke, 57; on political
      economy, 90; otherwise mentioned, 8, 17, 50, 70, 76
  Shorthouse, Mr., correspondence with, 151 and _note_[176], 159 and
      _note_[189]
  Shrewsbury, Lord, 132
  Sidebotham, Rev. H., 204
  Sidgwick, Prof., 177 _note_, 191
  Sieyès, 48
  Simon, Jules, 2, 39, 161
  Simon, Richard, 133
  Sincerity, 168
  Skelton, Sir John, 104 _note_[137]
  Slavery, xx, xxxvi
  Smith, Adam, 6, 91-92
  ---- Goldwin, 70, 112
  ---- P. J., 101
  ---- Robertson, 197
  ---- Sir William, lviii, 50
  Socialism, lxi, 170, 175, 212
  Society, State as distinct from, 7, 76, 94, 101
  Soudan, 176, 179, 215
  Southey, 82, 93
  Spain--
    Inquisition in, 146
    Jesuits in, lix
    Mexican expedition of, xxxvii
  Spinola, 134, 150
  Spinoza, xlix, 96
  Spencer, Earl, estimate of, 153; rumoured resignation of, 155 and
      _note_; otherwise mentioned, 16, 205, 218
  ---- Lady, 61
  ---- Herbert, Laveleye on, 71; opinion of, on "Scenes from Clerical Life,"
      163; otherwise mentioned, 27 and _note_[33], 119
  Staeël, Mme. de, 5
  Stahl, lxxvi, 97
  _Standard_, 55, 65, 66
  Stanley, Dean, 70, 85
  ---- of Alderley, Lord, 64 and _note_[72]
  State, society as distinct from, 7, 76, 94, 101
  Stephen, Fitzjames, 26, 70; on Criminal Law, 166
  Stillingfleet, 133
  Strachey, Sir Edward, 55-56
  ---- Sir John, 20 and _note_
  Strossmayer, Bishop, xliv, xlix
  Stuart, James, 192, 209 and _note_[258], 212 and _note_[263]
  Stubbs, Bishop, estimate of, 149, 177, 191, 192, 196; approached by
      Mrs. J. R. Green, 198; otherwise mentioned, 180, 183
  Sumner, Charles, 5
  Suspicion--
    Commynes on, 35
    Desirability of, 12, 15, 122
    Moderation to be observed in, 58, 59
  Sutherland, Duchess of, 180 and _note_[218]
  Swinburne, 21, 42, 79
  Swiss nationality, xxx
  Sybel, von, xix
  Symonds, J. A., 70


  Tachard, M., 27 _note_[34]
  Taine, estimate of, 2; Soberer compared with, 6; Tennyson's attitude
      towards, 20; on Macaulay, 52-53; on the Revolution, 207
  Tait, Bishop, 204
  Talbot, Dr., 177 _note_, 179 and _note_[215]
  "Talleyrand's Memoirs," 36
  Tegernsee, lix, 33, 80, 84
  Temple, Bishop, 203-204
  ---- Cowper (Lord Mount Temple), 3
  Temporal power of Rome.  _See_ under Churches--Roman Catholic--Papacy
  _Temps_, 34, 82
  Tennyson, Alfred, estimate of, 20; attitude towards Gladstone, 209
      and _note_[256]; otherwise mentioned, 40, 55, 70, 79 _note_
  ---- Hallam, 19, 21
  Thiers, xxiv, 39, 47, 49
  Things _versus_ Persons, 6-7, 14, 85, 109, 200, 206, 210
  Thirlwall, Bishop, 117-118
  Thorndike, 131
  Thucydides, 32
  _Times_--
    Carlyle, views on, 71, 82
    Change in, 215
    Chenery's dealings with, 13, 26, 35
  Tocqueville, Alexis de, xix, 172
  Toland, 52, 139 _note_[172]
  Toryism--
    Attitude of, 199
    Female adherents of, 181
    Frere's exemplification of, 77
    Gout, compared with, 35
    Liberal ideas permeating, 200
    Maine on, 119
  Transvaal, 77
  Trench, Archbishop, 27 and _note_[32]
  Trevelyan, G. O., "Life of Fox" by, 52-53; estimate of, 59;
      otherwise mentioned, 17, 65
  Trollope, 65
  Turgot, 49
  Turkey, tyranny of, 91 and _note_[127]
  Tyndall, Prof., 50, 166
  Tyranny--
    Success as essence of, 143-144
    Turkish, 91 and _note_[127]


  Ultramontanism.  _See_ under Churches--Roman Catholic
  United States--
    Abolitionists in, xx
    Civil war in, Acton's lecture on, xxxv-xxxvii
    Constitution of, French critic on, lviii
    Democracy in, 93; Tocqueville's book on, xix
    Dependencies in relation to, xxxix
    Liberty, doctrine of, realised by, lvii
    Monroe doctrine, 198 and _note_[245]
  Ussher, 207


  Valdes, Juan, 136, 147
  Van Helmont, 139
  Vaticanism.  _See_ under Churches--Roman Catholic
  Victoria, Queen, Acton agreeable to, lxv; shot at, by a lunatic, 126
      and _note_[2]; Mentone residence of, 126, 128
  Vielcastel, 2
  Vinet, 146, 207


  Waddington, M., v, 171-172
  ---- Mme., v
  Wagner (pol. economist), cited, 90, 97
  Waldegrave, Lady, 40
  Wales, Prince of, 109
  Wallace, Robert, 71 _note_[88]
  Walshe, 140
  Warburton, 52
  Ward, Wilfrid, Wiseman's "Life" by, xvi; otherwise mentioned, 182, 206
  Waterland, 180
  Wealth, labour the source of, 92
  Webster, 47, 49
  Wellington, Duke of, 46, 93, 200
  Westcott, Dr., Bishop of Durham, 70, 203
  Wetherell, 218
  ---- (editor of _Chronicle_), xl
  Whigs--
    Acton's sympathy with, 56, 107
    Constructive power lacking in, 111
    Democrats, dependence on, 108
    Seeley on, 7
  White, 140
  Wickham, Dr., 129, 135, 166
  Wilberforce, R. J., 180, 182
  ---- Bishop, 95, 106, 203
  Wilkinson, Bishop, 183, 203
  William III, 67, _note_[79]
  Williams, Roger, 146
  Wilson, 52
  Wimpfen, 172
  Winchester, Bishop of (Winton), 70
  Windham, 46
  Wiseman, Dr., xvi, xxx-xxxii
  Wolseley, Lord, 59, 77
  Wolverton, Lord, Irish views of, 65; estimate of, 67; otherwise
      mentioned, 27, 89, 161, 188
  Women's Suffrage, 180-181
  _World_, 74


  Zulfikar, 208
  Zulus, 17; Cetewayo, 174



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