UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 MAY TREAT MORRISON 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 ALEXANDER F MORRISON

 
 MODERN LEADERS: 
 
 BEING A SERIES OF 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 
 
 BY JUSTIN MCCARTHY, 
 
 Author of "Lady Judith : A Tale of Two Continents? etc. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 6 77 BROADWAY and 214 and 216 MERCER STREET. 
 1872.

 
 CT 
 IIS 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 QUEEN VICTORIA AND HER SUBJECTS 7 
 
 THE REAL Louis NAPOLEON 18 
 
 EUGENIE, EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH 25 
 
 THE PRINCE OF WALES 35 
 
 THE KING OF PRUSSIA 45 
 
 VICTOR EMANUEL, KING OF ITALY 55 
 
 Louis ADOLPH THIERS 66 
 
 PRINCE NAPOLEON 77 
 
 S3 THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE 85 
 
 CV BRIGHAM YOUNG 96 
 
 s THE Lir.F.iiAL TRIUMVIRATE OF ENGLAND 106 
 
 ENGLISH POSITIVISTS 116 
 
 2 P^XGLISH TORYISM AND ITS LEADERS 126 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT " AND GEORGE LEWIS 136 
 
 OB 
 
 n 
 
 5 GEORGE SAND 145 
 
 EDWARD BULWER AND LORD LYTTON 156 
 
 Mm 
 
 4 " PAR NOBILE FRATRUM THE Two NEWMANS." 167 
 
 g ARCHBISHOP MANNING 175 
 
 K 
 
 & JOHN RUSKIN 183 
 
 u. 
 
 CHARLES READE 192 
 
 7= EXILE- WORLD OF LONDON 202 
 
 \y 
 
 THE REVEREND CHARLES KINGSLEY 211 
 
 MR. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 223 
 
 SCIENCE AND ORTHODOXY IN ENGLAND. . 234 
 
 432560
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE sketches which make up this volume are neither purely critical nor 
 merely biographical. They endeavor to give the American reader a clear 
 and just idea of each individual in his intellect, his character, his place in poli- 
 tics, letters, and society. In some instances I have written of friends whom I 
 know personally and well ; in others of men with whom I have but slight ac- 
 quaintance ; in others still of persons whom I have only seen. But in every 
 instance those whom I describe are persons whom I have been able to study 
 on the spot, whose character and doings I have heard commonly discussed by 
 those who actually knew them. In no case whatever are the opinions I have 
 given drawn merely from books and newspapers. This value, therefore, these 
 essays may have to an American, that they are not such descriptions as any of 
 us might be enabled to put into print by the mere help of studj 7 and reading; 
 descriptions for example such as one might make of Henry VIII. or Voltaire. 
 They are in every instance, even when intimate and direct personal acquaint- 
 ance least assist them, the result of close observation and that appreciation of 
 the originals which comes from habitual intercourse with those who know 
 them and submit them to constant criticism. 
 
 I have not made any alteration in the essays which were written some 
 years ago. Let them stand as portraits bearing that date. If 1872 has in any 
 instance changed the features and the fortunes of 1869 and 1870, it cannot 
 make untrue what then was true. What I wrote in 1869 of the Prince of 
 Wales, for example, will probably not wholly apply to the Prince of Wales 
 to-day. We all believe that he has lately changed for the better. But what I 
 wrote then I still believe was true then ; and it is a fair contribution to history, 
 which does not consent to rub out yesterday because of to-day. I wrote of a 
 " Liberal Triumvirate " of England when the phrase was an accurate expres- 
 sion. It would hardly be accurate now. To-day Mr. Mill does not appear in 
 political life and Mr. Bright has been an exile, owing to his health, for nearly 
 two years from the scenes of parliamentary debate and triumph. But the 
 portraits of the men do not on that account need any change. Even where 
 some reason has been shown me for a modification of my own judgment I have 
 still preferred to leave the written letter as it is. A distinguished Italian friend 
 has impressed on me that King Victor Emanuel is personally a much more 
 ambitious man than I have painted him. My friend has had far better oppor- 
 tunities of judging than I ever could have had; but I gave the best opinion I 
 could, and still holding to it prefer to let it stand, to be taken for what it is 
 worth. 
 
 I think I may fairly claim to have anticipated in some of the political 
 sketches, that of Louis Napoleon, for instance, the judgment of events and 
 history, and the real strength of certain characters and institutions. 
 
 These sketches had a gratifying welcome from the American public as 
 they appeared in the " Galaxy." I hope they may be thought worth reading 
 over again and keeping in their collected form. 
 
 JUSTIN MCCARTHY. 
 
 48 GOWEB STREET, BEDFORD .SQUARE, LONDON, July 31, 1872.
 
 QUEEN VICTORIA AND. HER, SUBJECTS. 
 
 ** A ND when you hear historians tell of thrones, and those who sat upon 
 _/~\_ them, let it be as men now gaze upon the mammoth's bones, and 
 wonder what old world such things could see." 
 
 So sang Byron half a century ago, and great critics condemned his verse, and 
 called him a " surly Democrat " because he ventured to put such sentiments and 
 hopes into rhyme. The thrones of Europe have not diminished in number since 
 Byron's day, although they have changed and rechanged their occupants ; and the 
 one only grand effort at the establishment of a new Republic that of France in 
 1848 went down into dust and ashes. Naturally, therefore, the tendency in 
 Europe is to regard the monarchical principle as having received a new lease and 
 charter of life, and to talk of the republican principle as an exotic forced for a 
 moment into a premature and morbid blossom upon European soil, but as com- 
 pletely unsuited to the climate and the people as the banyan or the cocoa tree. 
 I do not, for myself, quite agree in this view of the aspect of affairs. Of 
 course, if one were inclined to discuss the question fairly, he must begin by 
 asking what people mean when they talk of the republican principle. What is 
 the republican principle ? When you talk of a Republic, do you mean an ag- 
 gressive, conquering, domineering State, ruled by faction and living on war, like 
 the Commonwealth of Rome ? or a Republic like that planned by Washington, 
 which should repudiate all concern in foreign politics or foreign conquest ? Do 
 you mean a Federal Republic, like that of the United States, or one with a cen- 
 tralized power, like the French Republic of 1848 ? Do you mean a Republic like 
 that of Florence, in which the people were omnipotent, or a Republic like that 
 of Venice, in which the people had no power at all ? Do you mean a Republic 
 like that of Switzerland, in which the President is next to nobody, or a Republic 
 like that of Poland, which was ornamented by a King ? In truth, the phrase " re- 
 publican principle " has no set meaning. It means just what the man who uses 
 it wishes to express. If, however, we understand it to mean, in this instance, 
 the principle of popular self-government, then it is obvious that Europe has 
 made immense progress in that direction since Byron raged against the crimes 
 of Kings. If it means the opposite to the principle of Divine Right or Legiti- 
 macy, or even personal loyalty loyalty of the old-time, chivalric, enthusiastic 
 fashion then it must be owned that it shows all over Europe the mark of 
 equal progress. The ancient, romantic, sentimental loyalty ; the loyalty which 
 reverenced the Sovereign and was proud to abase itself before him ; the loyalty 
 of the Cavaliers ; the loyalty which went wild over " Oh, Richard ! Oh, mon 
 Roi ! " is dead and gone its relics a thing to be stared at, and wondered over, 
 and preserved for a landmark in the progress of the world just like the mam- 
 moth's bones. 
 
 The model Monarchy of Europe is, beyond dispute, that of Great Britain. 
 In England there is an almost absolute self-government ; the English peo- 
 ple can have anything whatever which they may want by insisting on it and agi- 
 tating a little for it. The Sovereign has long ceased to interfcie in the progress 
 of national affairs. I can only recollect one instance, during my observation, in 
 which Queen Victoria put her veto on a bill passed by Parliament, and that was 
 n an occasion when it was discovered, at the last moment, that the Lords and
 
 8 QUEEN VICTORIA AND HER SUBJECTS. 
 
 Commons had passed a bill which had a dreadful technical blunder in it, and 
 the only way out of the difficulty w^s/to be^ of the Queen to refuse it her sanc- 
 tion, which her Majesty did accordingly, and the; blunder was set right in the 
 following session. F- a; JPrsrKe., JVTn.istgr weje to ^announce to the House of 
 Commons, to-morrow, that the Queen ha<f 'boxed'his ears, it would not create a 
 whit more amazement than if he were to say, no matter in what graceful and 
 diplomatic periphrasis, that her Majesty was unwilling to agree to some meas- 
 ure which her faithful Commons desired to see passed into law. 
 
 Nothing did Mr. Disraeli more harm, nothing brought greater contempt on 
 him than his silly attempts last session to induce the Commons to believe, by 
 vague insinuations and covert allusions, that the Queen had a personal leaning 
 toward his policy and himself. So long ago as the time of the free trade strug- 
 gle, the Tories, for all their hereditary loyalty, complained of and protested 
 against the silent presence of Prince Albert in the Peers' gallery of the House 
 of Commons, on the ground that it was an attempt to influence the Parliament 
 improperly, and to interfere with the freedom of debate. No one has anything 
 to say against the Queen which carries any weight or is worth listening to. She 
 is undoubtedly a woman of virtue and good sense. So good a woman, I ven- 
 ture to think, never before reigned over any people, and that she is not a great 
 woman, an Elizabeth, a Catherine of Russia, or even an Isabella of Castile, is 
 surely rather to the advantage than otherwise of the monarchical institution in 
 its present stage of existence. Here, then, one might think, if anywhere and 
 ever, the principle of personal loyalty has a fair chance and a full justification. 
 A man might vindicate his loyalty to Queen Victoria in the name of liberty it- 
 self; nay, he might justify it by an appeal to the very principle of democracy. 
 Yet one must be blind, who, living in England and willing to observe, does not 
 see that the old, devoted spirit of personal loyalty is dead and buried. It is 
 gone ! it is a memory ! You may sing a poetic lament for it if you will, as Schil- 
 ler did for the gods of Hellas ; you may break into passionate rhetoric, if you 
 can, over its extinction, as Burke did for the death of the age of Chivalry. It is 
 gone, and I firmly believe it can never be revived or restored. 
 
 I do not mean to say that there are many persons in England who feel any 
 strong objection to the Monarchy, or warmly desire to see a Republic substituted 
 for it. I know in England several theoretical republicans they are to be met 
 with in almost any company. I have never met with anyone Englishman living 
 in England, who showed any anxious, active interest in the abolition of the 
 Monarchy. I do not know any one who objects to drink the usual loyal toasts 
 at a public dinner, or betrays any conscientious reluctance to listen to the un- 
 meaning eulogy which it is the stereotyped fashion for the chairman of every 
 such banquet to heap on " Her Majesty and the rest of the Royal Family." But 
 this sort of thing, if it ever had any practical meaning, has now none. It has 
 reached that stage at which profession and practice are always understood to be 
 quite different things. Every one says at church that he is a miserable sinner ; 
 no one is supposed really to believe anything of the sort. Every one has some 
 time or other likened women to angels, but we are not therefore supposed se- 
 riously to ignore the fact that women wear flannel petticoats, and have their 
 faults, and are mortal. So of loyal professions in England now. They are un- 
 derstood to be phrases, like " Your obedient servant," at the bottom of a letter. 
 They do not suggest hypocrisy or pretence of any kind. There is apparently no 
 more inconsistency now in a man's loyally drinking the health of the Queen, 
 *nd proceeding immediately after (in private conversation) to abuse or ridicule
 
 QUEEN VICTORIA AND HER SUBJECTS. 9 
 
 . icr and her family, than there would be in the same man beginning with " Dear 
 Sir," a missive to one whom he notoriously dislikes. Every one who has been 
 lately in London must have heard an immense amount of scandal, or at all 
 events of flippant joking at the expense of the Queen herself; and of more se- 
 rious complaint and distrust as regards the Prince of Wales. Yet the virtues 
 of the Queen, and the noble qualities of the Prince of Wales are panegyrized 
 and toasted, and hurrah'd at every public dinner where Englishmen gather to- 
 gether. 
 
 The very virtues of Queen Victoria have contributed materially loward the 
 extinction of the old-fashioned sentiment of living, active loyalty. The English 
 people had from the time at least of Anne to our own day a succession of bad 
 princes. Only a race patient as Issachar could have endured such a line of 
 sovereigns as George II., George III., and George IV. Then came William 
 IV., who being a little less stupidly obstinate than George III., and not so 
 grossly corrupt as George IV., was hailed for a while as the Patriot King by a 
 people who were only too anxious not to lose all their hereditary and traditional 
 veneration. Do what they would, however, the English nation could not get into 
 any sincere transports of admiration about the Patriot King ; and they soon 
 found that any popular reform worth having was to be got rather in spite of the 
 Patriot King, than by virtue of any wisdom or patriotism in the monarch. Great 
 popular demonstrations and tumults, and threats of marching on London ; and 
 O'Connell meetings at Charing Cross, with significant allusion by the great dem- 
 agogue to the King who lost his head at Whitehall hard by ; the hanging out 
 of the black flag at Manchester, and a general movement of brickbats every- 
 where these seem to have been justly regarded as the persuasive influences 
 which converted a Sovereign into the Patriot King and a Reformer. Loyalty 
 did not gain much by the reforms of that reign. Then followed the young Vic- 
 toria ; and enthusiasm for a while wakened up fresh and genuine over the ascen- 
 sion of the comely and simple-hearted girl, who was so frank and winning ; who 
 ran down stairs in her night-dress, rather than keep her venerable councillors 
 waiting when they sought her out at midnight ; who openly acknowledged her 
 true love for her cousin, and offered him her hand ; who was at once queenly 
 and maidenly, innocent and fearless. 
 
 But this sort of thing did not last very long. Prince Albert was never pop- 
 ular. He was cold ; people said he was stingy ; his very virtues, and they 
 were genuine, were not such as anybody, except his wife and family, warmly ad- 
 mires in a man ; he was indeed misunderstood, or at all events misprized in Eng- 
 land, up to the close of his life. Then the gates of the convent, so to speak, closed 
 over the Queen, and royalty ceased to be an animating presence in England. 
 
 The young men and women of to-day persons who have not passed the age 
 of twenty-one can hardly remember to have ever seen the Sovereign. She is 
 to them what the Mikado is to his people. Seven years of absolute seclusion 
 on the part of a monarch must in any case be a sad trial to personal loyalty, at 
 least in the royal capital. A considerable and an influential section of Queen 
 Victoria's subjects in the metropolis have long been very angry with their Sov- 
 ereign. The tailors, the milliners, the dressmakers, the jewellers, the perfum- 
 ers, all the shopkeepers of the West End who make profit out of court dinners 
 and balls and presentations, are furious at the royal seclusion which they be- 
 lieve has injured their business. So, too, are the aristocratic residents of the 
 West End, who do not care much about a court which no longer contributes to 
 their season's gayety. So, too, are all the flunkey class generally. Now, I ain
 
 10 QUEEN VICTORIA AND HER SUBJECTS. 
 
 sure there are no three sections of the population of London more influential in 
 the spreading of scandal and the nursing of this discontent than the shopkeepers, 
 the aristocrats, and the flunkeys of the West End. These are actively and de- 
 monstratively dissatisfied with the Queen. These it is who spread dirty scandals 
 about her, and laugh over vile lampoons and caricatures of which she is the 
 object. 
 
 Every one knows that there is a low, mean scandal afloat about the Queen 
 and it is spread by the clubs, the drawing-rooms, the shops, and the servants'- 
 halls of the West End. I am convinced that not one of those who spread the 
 scandal really believes it ; but they like to spread it because they dislike the 
 Queen. There can be no doubt, however, that much dissatisfaction at the 
 Queen's long seclusion is felt by persons who are incapable of harboring any 
 motives so mean or spreading any calumnies so unworthy. Most of the London 
 papers have always found fault rather sharply and not over decently with the 
 royal retirement. Mr. Ayrton, representative of the Tower Hamlets the largest 
 constituency in England^ openly expressed this sentiment at a public meeting ; 
 .ind though his remarks were at once replied to and condemned by Mr. Bright, 
 they met with a more or less cordial response from most of his audience. 
 
 There is or was in the House of Commons (the general election has got 
 happily rid of him), a foolish person named Reardon, a Piccadilly auctioneer, who 
 became, by what we call in England " a fluke," a member of the House of Com- 
 mons. This person moved last session a resolution, or something of the kind, 
 calling on the Queen to abdicate. The thing was laughed down poor Mr. 
 Reardon's previous career had been so absurd that anything coming from him 
 would have been hooted ; and the House of Commons is fiercely intolerant of 
 "bores" and men with crotchets. But I have reason to believe that Mr. Rear- 
 don's luckless project was concocted by a delegation of London tradesmen, and 
 had the sympathy of the whole class ; and I know that many members of the 
 House which hooted and laughed him down had in private over and over again 
 grumbled at the Queen's retirement, and declared that she ought to abdicate. 
 
 " What on earth does it matter," I asked of a member of Parliament one 
 of the most accomplished scholars and sharp logicians in the House " What 
 on earth does it matter whether or not the Queen gives a few balls to a few 
 thousand West End people in the season ? How can rational people care, one 
 way or the other ? " " My dear fellow," was the answer, " / don't care ; but 
 all that sort of thing is her business, and she is paid to do it, and she ought to 
 do it. If she were a washerwoman with a family, she would have to do her 
 work, no matter what her grief." Now this gentleman who is utterly above 
 any sympathy with scandal or with the lackey-like grumblings of the West End 
 did, undoubtedly, express fairly enough a growing mood of the public dissat- 
 isfaction. 
 
 Beyond all this, however, is the fact that people the working-class espe- 
 cially are beginning to ask whether we really want a Sovereign at all, seeing 
 that we get on just as well during the eclipse of royalty as 'LI its brightest 
 meridian splendor. This question is being very often put ; and it is probably 
 more often thought over than put into words. Now I think nothing worse could 
 possibly happen to royalty in England than that people should begin quietly to 
 ask whether there really is any use in it. If there is a bad King or Queen, peo- 
 ple can get or look for, or hope and pray for a good one ; and the abuse of the 
 throne will not be accounted a sufficient argument against the use of it. Bui 
 bow will it be when the subjects begin to find that during the reign of one of
 
 QUEEN VICTORIA AND HER SUB;ECTS. 11 
 
 the best sovereigns possible to have, they can get on perfectly well although the 
 monarch is in absolute seclusion ? 
 
 George IV. was an argument against bad kings only Queen Victoria may 
 come to be accepted as an illustration of the uselessness of the very best kind 
 of Sovereign. I think King Log was much better calculated to do harm to the 
 institution of royalty than King Stork, although the frogs might have regretted 
 the placid reign of the former when the latter was gobbling up their best and 
 fattest. 
 
 Decidedly the people of England are learning of the Queen how to do with 
 out royalty. A small section of her subjects are angry with her and bitter of 
 heart against her ; a much larger number find they can do perfectly well without 
 her ; a larger numbe'r still have forgotten her. On a memorable occasion Prince 
 Albert declared that constitutional government was on its trial in England. The 
 phrase, like many that came from the same well-meaning lips, was unlucky. 
 Constitutional government was not upon its trial then ; but Monarchy is upon its 
 trial now. 
 
 Do I mean to say that Great Britain is on the verge of a revolution ; that 
 the dynasty is about to be overthrown ; that a new Cromwell is to make his 
 appearance ? By no means. It does not follow that even if the English people 
 wei e to be convinced to-morrow of the absolute uselessness of a throne, and a 
 sovereignty, they would therefore proceed to establish a republic. No people 
 under the sun are more strongly governed by tradition and " the majesty of 
 custom " than the English. Cobden used to say that they had a Chinese ob- 
 jection to change of any kind. The Lord Mayor's show, long threatened, and 
 for a while partially obscured, has come out again in full gingerbread. There is 
 a functionary who appears every night at the door of the House of Commons 
 just at the moment when the sitting is formally declared to be over, and bawls 
 out to the emptying benches the resonant question, " Who's for home ? " I 
 believe the practice originated at a time when Westminster was unpeopled, and 
 midnight roads were dangerous, and members were glad to make up parties 
 to travel home together ; and, so a functionary was appointed to issue stento- 
 rian appeal to all who were thus willing to combine their strength and journey 
 safely in company. The need of such an arrangement has, I need hardly say, 
 passed away these many generations ; but the usage exists. It oppresses no one 
 to have the formal call thundered out ; the thing has got to be a regular per- 
 formance ; it is part of the whole business and system ; nobody wants it, but 
 nobody heeds it or objects to it, and the functionary appears every night of every 
 session and shouts his invitation to companionship as regularly as if the Mo- 
 hocks were in possession of Charing Cross, and Claude Duval were coming full 
 trot along Piccadilly. 
 
 Now, this may be taken as a sort of illustration of the manner in which the 
 English people are naturally inclined to deal with any institutions which are 
 merely useless, and have the recommendation of old age and long descent. The 
 ordinary Englishman to-day would find it hard to bring up before his mind's 
 eye a picture of an England without a Sovereign. If it were made fully plain to 
 him, and thoroughly impressed upon his mind that he could do just as well 
 without a Sovereign as with, and even that Monarchy never could possibly be of 
 use to him any more, I think he would endure it and pay its cost, and drink its 
 health loyally for all time, providing Monarchy did nothing outrageously wrong ; 
 or provided which is more to my present purpose that no other changes of a 
 remarkable nature occurred in the meantime to remove ancient landmarks, tc
 
 12 QUEEN VICTORIA AND HER SUBJECTS. 
 
 disturb the basis of his old institutions and to prepare him for a new order of 
 things. This is indeed the point I wish to discuss just now. I have explained 
 what I believe to be the depth and strength and meaning of the average Eng- 
 lishman's loyal feelings to his Sovereign at the present moment I should like 
 to consider next how that feeling will, in all probability, be affected by the 
 changes in the English political system,- which seem inevitable, and by the ac- 
 cession, or expected accession, of a new Sovereign to the throne. 
 
 England has, just now, something very nearly approaching to manhood suf- 
 frage ; and to manhood suffrage it will probably come before long. The ballot 
 will, doubtless, be introduced. The Irish Church is as good as dead. I cannot 
 doubt that the English State Church will, ultimately, and before very long, suc- 
 cumb to the same fate. Not that this logically or politically follows as a matter 
 of necessity ; and nothing could be more unwise in the interest of their own 
 cause than the persistency with which the Tories keep insisting that the doom 
 of the one is involved in the doom of the other. The Irish Church is the foreign 
 church of a miserably small minority ; the English Establishment is the Church 
 of the majority, and is an institution belonging to the soil. The very principle 
 which maintains the English Church ought of right to condemn the Irish 
 Church. But it is the fact that an agitation more influential than it seemed to 
 the careless spectator, has long been going on in England for the abolition of 
 the State Church system altogether ; and there can be no doubt that the fate of 
 the Irish Establishment will lend immense courage and force to that agitation. 
 Revolutionary movements are always contagious in their nature, and the move- 
 ment against the Irish Church is in the strictest sense revolutionary. The Dutch 
 or the Scotch would have carried such a movement to triumph across rivers of 
 blood if it were needful ; and no man of spirit could say that the end would not 
 be worth the cost. I assume, then, that the overthrow of the Irish Church will 
 inflame to iconoclastic fervor the movement of the English Dissenters against 
 all Church establishments. I do not stop just now to inquire whether the 
 movement is likely to be successful or how long it may take to accomplish the 
 object. To me, it seems beyond doubt that it must succeed ; but I do not care 
 to assume even that for the purpose of my present argument. I only ask my 
 readers to consider the condition of things which will exist in England when a 
 movement resting on a suffrage which is almost universal, a movement which 
 vill have already overthrown one State Church within Great Britain, proceeds 
 openly and e'xultingly to attack the English Church itself, within its own do- 
 minions. I ask whether it is likely that the institution which is supposed to be 
 bound up inseparably with that Church, the Monarchy which is based upon, 
 and exists by virtue of religious ascendency, is likely to escape all question 
 during such a struggle, and after it ? The State Church and the Aristocracy, if 
 they cannot always be called bulwarks of the throne, are yet so completely as- 
 sociated with it in the public mind that it is hard even to think of the one with- 
 out the others, and yet harder to think of the one as existing serene and unin- 
 jured after the decay or demolition of the others. 
 
 Now, the Aristocracy have, as Mr. Bright put it so truly and so effectively 
 the other day, already capitulated. They have given up all notion of any longer 
 making the laws of the country in the interest of their own class. One of the 
 first things the P ^formed Parliament will do, when it has breathing-time to 
 think about such matters, will be to abolish the purchase system in the army, 
 and throw open promotion to merit, without reference to class. The diplomatic 
 service, that other greo Uronghold of the Aristocracy, will be thoroughly reor-
 
 QUEEN VICTORIA AND HER SUBJECTS. 13 
 
 ganized and made a real, useful department, doing solid work, and open to talent 
 of whatever caste ; or it will be abolished altogether. Something will have to 
 be done with the House of Lords. It, too, must be made a reality, or dis- 
 missed into the land of shadows and the past. Efforts at reforming it, while it 
 stands on its present basis, are futile. Its existence is, in its present form, the 
 one great objection to it. 
 
 The good-natured, officious Lord Shaftesbury went to work, a few months 
 ago, to prepare a scheme of reform for the House of Lords, in order to antici- 
 pate and conciliate the popular movement which he expected. He could think 
 of nothing better than a recommendation that the House should meet an hour 
 earlier every evening, in order, by throwing more time on their hands, to induce 
 the younger Peers to get up debates and take part in them. This, however, is 
 not precisely the kind of reform the country will ask for when it has leisure to 
 turn its attention to the subject. It will ask for some reorganization which 
 shall either abolish or reduce to a comparative nothing the hereditary legislating 
 principle on which the House of Lords now rests. A set of law-makers or law- 
 marrers intrusted with power only because they are born to titles, is an absurd 
 anomaly, which never could exist in company with popular suffrage. " Heredi- 
 tary law-makers ! " exclaimed Franklin. "You might as well talk of hereditary 
 mathematicians ! " Franklin expressed exactly what the feeling of the common 
 sense of England is likely to be when the question comes to be raised. I ex- 
 pect then, not that the House of Lords will be abolished, but that the rule of 
 the hereditary principle will be brought to an end that the Aristocracy there, 
 too, will have to capitulate. 
 
 Now, I doubt whether an American reader can have any accurate idea, un- 
 less he has specially studied the matter and watched its practical operation in 
 England, of the manner in which the influence of the Peers makes itself felt 
 through the political life of Great Britain. Americans often have some kind of 
 notion that the Aristocracy govern the country directly and despotically, with 
 the high hand of imperious feudalism. There is nothing of the kind in reality. 
 The House of Lords is, as a piece of political machinery, almost inoperative 
 as nearly as possible harmless. No English Peer, Lord Derby alone excepted, 
 has anything like the political authority and direct influence of Mr. Gladstone, 
 Mr. Disraeli, or Mr. Bright. There are very few Peers, indeed, about whose po- 
 litical utterances anybody in the country cares three straws. But, on the other 
 hand, the traditional prestige of the Peers, the tacit, time-honored, generally- 
 conceded doctrine that a Peer has first right to everything the mediaeval su- 
 perstition tolerated largely in our own time, which allows a sort of divinity to 
 hedge a Peer all this has an indirect, immense, pervading, almost universal 
 influence in the practical working of English politics. The Peers have, in fact, 
 a political droit du seigneur in England. They have first taste of every privi- 
 lege, first choice of every appointment. Political office is their pasture, where 
 they are privileged to feed at will. There does not now exist a man in England 
 likely to receive high office, who would be bold enough to suggest the forming 
 of a Cabinet without Peers in it, even though there were no Peers to be had 
 who possessed the slightest qualification for any ministerial position. The 
 Peers must have a certain number of places, because they are P6ers. The 
 House of Commons swarms with the sons and nephews of Peers. The house- 
 hold appointments, the ministerial offices, the good places in the army ana the 
 church are theirs when they choose and they generally do choose to have them. 
 The son of a Peer, if in the House of Commons, may be raised at one step
 
 14 QUEEN VICTORIA AND HER SUBJECTS. 
 
 from his place in the back benches to a seat in the Cabinet, simply because of 
 his rank. When Earl Russell, two or three years ago, raised Mr. Goschen, one 
 of the represent .lives of the city of London and a partner in a great London 
 banking-house, to a place in the Cabinet, the whole country wondered : a very 
 few, who were not frightened out of their propriety, admired ; some thought the 
 world must be coming to an end. But when the Marquis of Hartin ton wa^ 
 suddenly picked out of West End dissipation and made War Secretary, nobody 
 expressed the least wonder, for he was the heir of the House of Devonshire. 
 Indeed, it was perfectly notorious that the young Marquis was presented to of- 
 fice, in the first instance, because it was hoped by his friends .hat official duties 
 might wean him from the follies and frivolities of a more than ordinarily heed- 
 less youth. Sir Robert Peel the present, the magni nominis itmbra, is not, of 
 course, in the strict sense, an aristocrat ; but he is mixed up with aristocrats, 
 and is the son of a Peer-maker, and may be regarded as claiming and having 
 the privileges of the class. Sir Robert Peel wa-. presented with the First Stc- 
 letaryship as something to play with, because his aristocratic friends, the Lidies 
 esp cially, thought he would be more likely to sow his wild oats if he were be- 
 guiled by the semblance of official business. A commoner must, in fact, be 
 supposed to have some qualification for office before he is invited to fill a min- 
 isterial place. No qualification is believed necessary for the near relative or 
 connection of a Peer. Even in the most favorable examples of Peers who are 
 regular occupants of office, no special fitness is assumed or pretended. No one 
 supposes or says that Lord Clarendon, or Lord Granville, or Lord Malmes- 
 bury has any particular qualification which entitles him, above all other men, to 
 this or that ministerial place. Yet it must be a man of bold imagination in- 
 deed, who could now conceive the possibility of a British Cabinet without one 
 of these noblemen having a place in it. 
 
 All this comes, as I have said, out of a lingering superstition the faith in 
 the divine right of Peers. Now, a reform in the constitution of the Upper 
 House, which should purge it of the hereditary principle, would be - the first great 
 blow to this superstition. Julius Caesar, in one of his voyages of conquest, was 
 much perplexed by the priests, who insisted that he had better go back bccausa 
 the sacred chickens would not eat. At last he thought the time had come to 
 prove his independence of the sacred chickens, "If they will not eat," he said, 
 " then let them drink " and he flung the consecrated fowls int > the sea ; and 
 the expedition went on triumphantly, and the Roman soldiers learn, d that they 
 could do without the sacred chickens. I think a somewhat similar sensation 
 will come over all classes of the English people when they find that the heredi- 
 tary right to make laws is taken from the English Peerage. I c.o not doubt 
 that the whole fabric of superstition wi 1 presently collapse, and that the priv- 
 ilege of the Peer will cease to be anything more than that degree of superior in- 
 fluence which wealth and social rank can generally command, even in the most 
 democratic communities. The law which gives impulse and support to the cus- 
 tom of primogeniture is certain to go, and with it another prop of the mediaeva' 
 superstition. The Peerage capitulates, in fact no n ore expressive word can 
 l.e found to describe the situation. 
 
 Now, in all this, I h ve been foreshadowing no scheme of wild, vague, far- 
 distant reform. I appeal to an. one, Liberal or Tory, who is practically ac- 
 quainted with English politics, to say whether these are not changes he confi- 
 dently or timidly looks to see accomplished before long in England. I have not 
 spoken of any reform which is not part of the actual accepted programme of the
 
 QUEEN VICTORIA AND HER SUBJECTS. 1-3 
 
 Radical party. To the reform of the House of Lords, of the military and diplo- 
 matic service ; to abolition of the law of primogeniture, the whole body of the 
 Liberals stands pledged ; and Mr. Bright very recently renewed the pledges in 
 a manner and with an emphasis which showed that change of circumstances 
 has made no change in his opinions, brought no faltering in his resolution. The 
 abolition of the English Church is not, indeed, thus openly sought by so power- 
 ful a party ; but it is ostentatiously aimed at by that solid, compact, pertinacious 
 body of Dissenters who, after so long a struggle, succeeded at last in getting 
 rid of Church rates ; and the movement will go on with a rush after the fall of 
 the Irish establishment. Here then we have, in the not distant future, a pros- 
 pect of an England without a privileged Aristocracy, and with the State Church 
 principle called into final question. I return to my first consideration the con- 
 sideration which is the subject of this paper how will this affect the great aris- 
 tocratic, feudal and hierarchical institution of England, the Throne of the 
 Monarch ? 
 
 The Throne then will stand naked and alone, stripped of its old-time and 
 traditional surroundings and associations. It cannot be like that of France, the 
 throne of a Caesar, a despotic institution claiming to exercise its despotism over 
 the people by virtue of the will and delegated power of the people. The Eng- 
 lish Crown never can be an active governing power. It will be the last idol in the 
 invaded sanctuary. It will stand alone, among the pedestals from which popu- 
 lar reform has swept the embodied superstitions which were its long compan- 
 ions. It must live, if at all, on the old affection or the toleration which springs 
 out of custom and habit. This affection, or at least this toleration, may always 
 be looked upon as a powerful influence in England. One can hardly imagine, 
 for instance, anything occurring in our day to dethrone the Queen. However 
 one class may grumble and another class may gibe, the force of habit and old 
 affection would, in this instance, prove omnipotent. But, suppose the Prince 
 of Wales should turn out an unpopular and ill-conditioned ruler ? Suppose he 
 should prove to be a man of low tastes, of vulgar and spendthrift habits, a mala- 
 droit and intermeddling king? He is not very popular in England, even now, 
 and he is either one of the most unjustly entreated men living, or he has defects 
 which even the excuse of youth can scarcely gloss over. 
 
 An illustrated weekly paper in London forced itself lately into a sudden 
 notoriety by publishing a finely-drawn cartoon, in which the Prince of Wales, 
 dressed as Hamlet, was represented as breaking away from the restraining arms 
 of John Bull as Horatio, and public opinion as Marcellus, and rushing after a 
 ghost which bore the form and features of George IV., while underneath were 
 inscribed the words, " Lead on ; I'll follow thee ! " This was a bold and bitter 
 lampoon ; I am far from saying that it was not unjust, but I believe it can 
 hardly be doubted that the Prince of Wales has, as yet, shown little inclination 
 to imitate the example or cultivate the tastes of his pure-minded and intellectual 
 father. Now suppose, for the sake of argument, that the Prince of Wales 
 should turn out a George IV., or suppose, and which would be far worse from a 
 national point of view, he or his son should turn out a George III. And sup- 
 pose further that, about the same time any great crisis should arise in England 
 suppose the country entangled in a great foreign war, or disturbed by some 
 momentous domestic agitation can any one doubt that the Crown, in its then 
 isolated condition, would be really in danger? 
 
 We must remember, when the strength of English institutions is boasted, 
 that they have not, since 1815, stood any strain which could fairly be called criti-
 
 16 QUEEN VICTORIA AND HER SUBJECTS. 
 
 cal. England has never had her national strength, her political position, or even 
 h&r prestige seriously imperilled since that time. Even the Indian war could not 
 be called a great supreme trial, such as other nations have lately had to bear. 
 No one, even for a moment, could have doubted how that struggle would end. It 
 was bitter, it was bloody; but the life of the nation was not staked upon it, 
 even had its issue been uncertain ; and its issue never was uncertain. It would 
 lie superfluous to say that England has passed through no ordeal like that to 
 which the United States were lately subjected. She has not even had to con- 
 front anything like the crisis which Prussia voluntarily invited, which Austria 
 had to meet, in 1866. It will be time to consider English feudal institutions, 
 or what may remain of them, safe and firmly-rooted, when they have stood the 
 worst result of such a crisis as that, and not been shaken down. 
 
 What I contend is that there is nothing in the present condition of the Eng- 
 lish public mind, and nothing in the prospect of the immediate future to war- 
 rant the almost universal assumption that the throne of England is founded on 
 a rock. The stupidity of loyalty, the devotion as of the spaniel to his master, 
 of the idolator to his god, is gone. I doubt if there exists one man in England 
 who feels the sentiment of loyalty as his grandfather would have felt it. The 
 mass of the people have learned satisfactorily that a sovereign is not a part of 
 the necessary machinery of the government. The great problem which the 
 Duke of Wellington used to present for solution " How is the Queen's Gov- 
 ernment to be carried on ? " has been solved in one and an unexpected sense. 
 It can be carried on without a queen. Here then we have the institution pro- 
 ving itself superfluous, and falling into public indifference at the very same mo- 
 ment that some other institutions which seemed always involved with it as its 
 natural and necessary companions, are about to be broken to pieces and thrown 
 away. He must, indeed, be full of a verily transcendental faith in the destinies 
 and divinity of royalty who does not admit that at least there is a time of or- 
 deal awaiting it in England, such as it has not encountered before during this 
 century. 
 
 To me it seems that the royal principle in England is threatened, not with 
 sudden and violent extinction, but with death by decay. I do not expect any 
 change of any kind to-morrow or the day after, or even the week after next. I 
 do not care to dogmatize, or predict, or make guesses of any kind. I quite agree 
 with my friend Professor Thorold Rogers, that an uninspired prophet is a fool. 
 But I contend that as the evident signs of the times now show themselves, the 
 monarchical principle in England does seem to be decaying ; that the national 
 faith which bore it up is sorely shaken and almost gone, and that some of the 
 political props which most nearly supported it are already being cut away. 
 There may, indeed, be some hidden virtue in the principle, which shall devel- 
 ope itself unexpectedly in the hour of danger, and give to the institution that 
 seemed moribund a new and splendid vitality. Such a phenomenon has been 
 manifested in the case of more than one institution that seemed on the verge of 
 ruin it may be the fortunate destiny of British royalty. But unless in the sud- 
 den and timely development of some such occult and unlooked-for virtue, I do 
 not see what is to preserve the monarchical principle in England through the 
 trials of the future. 
 
 Let it be remembered, too, that the one great plea hitherto always made in 
 England for monarchy, is that it alone will work on a large scale. " We ad- 
 mit," it was said, " that your republican theory looks better and admits of more 
 logical argument in its favor. But we are practical men, and we find that oui
 
 QUEEN VICTORIA AND HER SUBJECTS. 17 
 
 system, with all its theoretical disadvantages, will work and stand a strain ; and 
 your republican theory, with all its apparent advantages in logic, is not suited 
 for this rough world. Our machinery will stand the hardest trial ; yours never 
 did and never will. Don't tell us about Switzerland. Switzerland is a little 
 country. Kept out of the stress and danger of European commotions, and pro- 
 tected by a guarantee of the great powers, any constitution ought to work under 
 such advantages. But a great independent republic never did last ; never did 
 stand a sudden strain, and never will." So people thought and argued in Eng- 
 land even very intelligent people, until 'at last it became one of the British 
 Philistine's articles of faith, that the republican principle never will work on a 
 large scale. When Sir John Ramsden declared in the House of Commons at 
 the beginning of the American civil war, that the republican bubble had burst, 
 and all Philistinism in Britain applauded the declaration, the plaudits were 
 given not so much because of any settled dislike Philistinism had to the United 
 States, as because Philistinism beheld what it believed to be a providential tes- 
 timony to its own wisdom and foresight. Since then Philistinism has found 
 that after all republicanism is able to bear a strain as great as monarchy has 
 ever yet borne, and can come out of the trial unharmed and victorious. 
 
 The lesson has sunk deeply. The mind of something better than Philistin- 
 ism has learned that republics can be made to work on a large scale. I believe 
 Mr. Gladstone is one of the eminent Englishmen who now openly admit that 
 they have learned from the American war something which they did not know 
 before, of the cohesiveness and durability of the republican system. Up to the 
 time of that war in fact, most Englishmen, when they talked of republican prin- 
 ciples, thought only of French republicanism, and honestly regarded such a sys- 
 tem as a brilliant empty bubble, doomed to soar a little, and float, and dazzle, 
 and then to burst. 
 
 That idea, it is quite safe to say, no longer exists in the English mind. The 
 fundamental, radical objection to republicanism the objection which, partly out 
 of mere reaction and partly for more substantial reasons, followed the brief and 
 romantic enthusiasm of the days of Fox is gone. The practical Englishman 
 admits that a republic is practicable. Only those who know England can know 
 what a change in public opinion this is. It is, in fact, something like a revolu- 
 tion. I think the most devoted monarchist will hardly deny that if some extra- 
 ordinary combination of chances (after all, even the British Throne is but a hu- 
 man institution) were to disturb the succession of the house ot Brunswick, Eng- 
 lishmen would be more likely to try the republican system than to hunt about 
 for a new royal family, or endeavor to invent a new scheme of monarch v. 
 Here, then, I leave the subject. Take all this into account, in considering the 
 probabilities of the future, and then say whether, even in the case of England, 
 it is quite certain that Byron's prediction is only the dream of a cynical poet, 
 destined never to be fulfilled among human realities.
 
 THE REAL LOUIS NAPOLEON. 
 
 T T OW will it be with him," said Richard Cobden to a friend, one night 
 X JL as they spoke of a great and successful adventurer whom the 
 friend was striving to defend "how will it be with him when life becomes all 
 retrospect?" The adventurer they spoke of was not Louis Napoleon; but the 
 inquiry might well apply just now to the Emperor of the French. Life has 
 reached that point with him when little more than retrospect can be left. In the 
 natural course of events, there can be no great triumphs for Louis Napoleon still 
 to achieve. Great blunders are possible, though hardly probable ; but the great- 
 est of blunders would scarcely efface the memory of the substantial triumphs. 
 '' Not heaven itself," exclaimed an ambitious and profane statesman, "can undo 
 the fact that I have been three times Prime Minister." Well, the Fates 
 let them do their best can hardly undo the fact that the despised outcast 
 of Constance, and Augsburg, and London, and New York, whom Lord 
 Palmerston excused himself to Guizot for tolerating, on the ground that 
 really nobody minded the dull, harmless poor fellow ; the Fates cannot undo 
 the fact that this man has elected himself Emperor of the French, has de- 
 feated the Russians and the Austrians, and made a friend and ally of England. 
 
 So much of the past, then, is secure ; but there are hardly any triumphs to 
 be won in the future. If one may venture to predict anything, he may 
 venture to predict that the Emperor of the French will not live to be a very 
 old man. He has already led many lives fast, hard, exhausting lives, "that 
 murder the youth in a man ere ever his heart has its will." Exile, conspiracy, 
 imprisonment, hard thinking, hard working, wild and reckless dissipation, pro- 
 longed to the very outer verge of middle life, the brain, the nerves, the muscles, 
 the whole physical and mental constitution always strained to the utmost these 
 are not the ways that secure a long life. Louis Napoleon is already an " abge- 
 lebter mann " an outworn, used-up, played-out man. The friends and familiars 
 with whom he started in life are nearly all gone. Long since laid in earth is the 
 stout form of the wild Marquis of Waterford, who was a wonder to our fathers 
 (his successor to the title ran away with somebody's wife the other day ; and I 
 thought Time had turned back by thirty years when I read of the escapade, 
 with the name, once so famous, of the principal performer), and who rode by 
 Louis Napoleon's side at the celebrated, forgotten Eglintoun Tournament, and 
 was, like Louis Napoleon, one of the Knights Challengers in that piece of splen- 
 did foolery. Dead, lang syne, is Eglintoun himself, the chivalrous Earl of the 
 generous instincts and the florid, rotund eloquence, reminding one of Bulwer 
 Lytton diluted. I do not know whether the Queen of Beauty of that grand 
 joust is yet living and looking on the earth ; but if she be, she must be an em- 
 bodied sermon on the perishableness of earthly charms. De Morny is dead, 
 the devoted half-brother, son of Louis Napoleon's mother, the chaste Hortense, 
 and the Count de Flahault De Morny, the brilliant, genial, witty, reckless gam- 
 bler in politics and finance, the man than whom nobody ever, perhaps, was more 
 faithful to friendship and false to morality, more good-natured and unprincipled. 
 I have seen tears in men's eyes when De Morny died in the eyes of men who 
 owned all the time, smiling through their tears like Andromache, that the lost 
 patron and friend was the most consummate of roiii's and blacklegs. Walewski 
 is dead Walewski of romantic origin, born of the sudden episode of love
 
 THE REAL LOUIS NAPOLEON. 19 
 
 between the great Napoleon and the Polish lady Walewski, who, like 
 Prince Napoleon-Jerome, carried his pedigree stamped upon his face Wa- 
 lewski, the lover of Rachel, and, to do him justice, the steady friend of Po- 
 land. Old Mocquard is gone, the faithful scribe and confidant : he is dead, and 
 the dramas he would persist in writing are dead with him, nay, died even before 
 him. I do not know whether the faithful, devoted woman who worked for Louis 
 Napoleon, and believed in him when nobody else did ; the woman to whose 5n- 
 spirings, exertions, and ready money he owes, in great measure, the fact that he 
 is now Emperor of the French I do not know whether this woman is alive or 
 dead. I think she is dead. Anyhow, I suppose the dignity of history, as the 
 phrase is, can hardly take account of her. She helped to make an Emperor, and 
 the Emperor, in return, made her a Countess ; but then he had to marry and so 
 we take leave of the woman who made the Emperor, and do our homage to the 
 woman who married him. All those are gone ; and St. Arnaud, of the stormy 
 youth, and Pelissier, the bland, sweet-tempered chevalier, who, getting into a 
 dispute (on his way to be governor of Algeria) with the principal official of a 
 Spanish port, invited that dignitary to- salute a portion of the Pelissier person 
 which assuredly the foes of France were never allowed to see all these are gone, 
 and many more, and only a very few, fast fading, of the old friends and followers 
 remain. Life to Louis Napoleon must now, indeed, be nearly all retrospect. 
 His career, his Imperial reign may be judged even now as fairly and securely as 
 as if his body had just been laid beside that of his uncle, under the dome of the 
 Invalides. 
 
 Recent events seem specially to invite and authorize that judgment. Within 
 the past twelve months, the genuine character of Louis Napoleon has displayed 
 itself, strikingly, nakedly, in his policy. He has tried, in succession, mild lib- 
 eralism, severe despotism, reactionary conservatism, antique Caesarism, and 
 then, in an apologetic, contrite sort of way, a liberalism of a rather pronounced 
 character. Every time that he tried any new policy he was secretly intriguing 
 with some other, and making ready for the possible necessity of having to aban- 
 don the former and take up with the latter. He was like the lady in " Le Diable 
 Boiteux," who, while openly coquetting with the young lover, slily gives her 
 hand behind her back to the old admirer. So far as the public could judge, 
 Louis Napoleon has, for many months back, been absolutely without any settled 
 policy whatever. He has been waiting for a wind. Such a course is probably 
 the safest a man in his position can take ; but one who, at a great crisis, cannot 
 originate and initiate a policy, will not be remembered among the grand rulers 
 of the world. I do not remember any greater evidence given in our time of ab- 
 solute incapacity to seize a plan of action and decide upon it, than was shown by 
 the Emperor of the French during the crisis of June and July. So feeble, so 
 vague, halting, vacillating was the whole course of the government, that many 
 who detest Louis Napoleon, but make it an article of faith that he is a sort of 
 all-seeing, omnipotent spirit of darkness, were forced to adopt a theory that the 
 riots in Paris and the provinces were deliberately got up by the police agents of 
 the Empire, for the purpose of frightening the bourgeois class out of any possi- 
 ble hankering after democracy. No doubt this idea was widely spread and 
 eagerly accepted in Paris ; and there were many circumstances which seemed to 
 justify it. But I do not believe in any such Imperial stage-play. I fancy the 
 riots surprised the Government, first, by their sudden outburst, and next, by their 
 sudden collapse. Probably the Imperial authorities were very glad when the 
 disturbances began. They gave an excuse for harsh conduct, and they seemed,
 
 20 THE REAL LOUIS NAPOLEON. 
 
 for the time, to put the Government in the right. They restored Louis Napoleon 
 at that moment, in the eyes of timid people, to that position, as a supreme main- 
 tainer of order, which for some years he had not had an opportunity effectively 
 to occupy. But the obvious want of stamina in the disturbing force soon took 
 away from the Imperial authorities this opportune prestige, and very little politi- 
 cal capital was secured for Imperialism out of the abortive barricades, and inco- 
 herent brickbats, and effusive chantings of the " Marseillaise." In truth, no one 
 had anything else to offer just then in place of the Empire. The little crisis was 
 no test whatever of the Emperor's hold over his people, or of his power to deal 
 with a popular revolution. To me it seems doubtful whether the elections 
 brought out for certain any fact with which the world might not already have 
 been well acquainted, except the bare fact that Orleanism has hardly any more 
 of vitality in it than Legitimacy. Rochefort, and not Prevost Paradol, is the 
 typical figure of the situation. 
 
 The popularity and the success of Rochefort and his paper are remarkable 
 phenomena, but only remarkable in the old-fashioned manner of the straws which 
 show how the wind blows. Rochefort's success is due to the fact that he had the 
 good-fortune to begin ridiculing the Empire just at the time when a general no- 
 tion was spreading over France that the Empire of late had been making itself 
 ridiculous. Louis Napoleon had reached the turning-point of his career had 
 reached and passed it. The country saw now all that he could do. The bag of 
 tricks was played out. The anticlimax was reached at last. 
 
 The oilmen, the crisis, the turning-point of Louis Napoleon's career seems 
 to me to have been attained when, just before the outbreak of the Schieswig- 
 Holstein war so small a war in itself, so fateful and gigantic in its results he 
 appealed to the Emperors and Kings of Europe, and proposed that the nations 
 should hold a Congress, to settle, once and forever, all pending disputes. I 
 think the attitude of Louis Napoleon at that moment was dignified, command- 
 ing, imperial. His peculiar style, forcible, weighty, measured I have heard it; 
 well described as a "monumental" style came out with great effect in the lan- 
 guage of the appeal. There was dignity, and grace, there was what Edmund 
 Burke so appropriately terms "a proud humility," in Louis Napoleon's allusion 
 to his own personal experience in the school of exile and adversity as an excuse 
 for his presuming to offer advice to the sovereigns of Europe. One was remind- 
 ed of Henry of Navarre's allusion to the wind of adversity which, blowing so 
 long upon his face, had prematurely blanched his hair. I do not wonder that 
 the proposed Congress never met. I do not wonder that the European govern- 
 ments put it aside some with courteous phrase and feigned willingness to ac- 
 cept the scheme, like Russia and Austria ; some with cold and brusque rejec- 
 tion, like England. Nothing worth trying for could have come of the Congress. 
 Events were brooding of which France and England knew nothing, and which 
 could not have been exorcised away by any resolutions of a conclave of diplo- 
 matists. But that was, I think, the last occasion when Louis Napoleon held any- 
 thing like a commanding, overruling position in European affairs, and even then 
 it was but a semblance. After that, came only humiliations and reverses. In a 
 diplomatic sense, nothing could be more complete than the checkmate which the 
 Emperor of the French drew upon himself by the sheer blundering of his conduct 
 with regard to Prussia. He succeeded in placing himself before the world in the 
 distinct attitude of an enemy to Prussia ; and no sooner had he, by assuming this 
 attitude, forced Prussia to take a defiant tone, than he suddenly sank down into 
 quietude. He had bullied to no purpose ; he had to undergo the humiliation of see-
 
 THE REAL LOUIS NAPOLEON. 21 
 
 ing Prussia rise in public estimation, by means of the triumph which his unneces- 
 sary and uncalled-for hostility had enabled her to win. In fact, he was outgen- 
 eralled by his pupil, Bismarck, even more signally than he had previously been 
 outgeneralled by his former pupil, Cavour. More disastrous and ghastly, by far, 
 was the failure of his Mexican policy. That policy began in falsehood and 
 treachery, and ended as it deserved. Poetic and dramatic justice was fearfully 
 rendered. Never did Philip II., of Spain, never did his father, never did Napo- 
 leon I., never did Mendez Pinto, or any other celebrated liar, exceed the deliberate 
 monstrosity of the falsehoods which were told by Louis Napoleon or Louis Napo- 
 leon's Ministers at his order, to conceal, during the earlier stages of the Mexican 
 intervention, the fact that the French Emperor had z. protege in the background, 
 who was to be seated on a Mexican throne. The world is not much affected by 
 perfidy in sovereigns. It laughs at the perjuries of princes as Jove does at those 
 of lovers. But it could not overlook the appalling significance of Louis Napo- 
 leon's defeat in that disastrous chapter of his history. Wisdom after the event 
 is easy work ; but many, many voices had told Louis Napoleon beforehand what 
 would come of his Mexican policy. Not to speak of the hints and advice he 
 received from the United States, he was again and again assured by the late 
 Marshal O'Donnell, then Prime Minister of Spain ; by General Prim, who com- 
 manded the allied forces during the earlier part of the Mexican expedition ; by 
 Prince Napoleon, by many others that neither the character of the Mexican 
 people nor the proximity of the United States would allow a French proconsul- 
 ate to be established in Mexico under the name of an Empire. It is a certain 
 fact that Louis Napoleon frequently declared that the foundation of that Empire 
 would be the great event of his reign. This extraordinary delusion maintained 
 a hold over his mind long after it had become apparent to all the world that the 
 wretched bubble was actually bursting. The catastrophe was very near when 
 Louis Napoleon, in conversation with an English political adventurer, who then 
 was a Member of Parliament, assured him that, however the situation might 
 then look dark, history would yet have to record that he, Louis Napoleon, had 
 established a Mexican Empire. The English member of Parliament, although 
 ordinarily a very shrewd and sceptical sort of person, was actually so impressed 
 with the earnestness of his Imperial interlocutor that he returned to London and 
 wrote a pamphlet, in which, to the utter amazement of his acquaintances, he 
 backed the Empire of Mexico for a secure existence, and said to it esto perpelua. 
 The pamphlet was hardly in circulation when the collapse came. If Louis Na- 
 poleon ever believed in anything, he believed in the Mexican Empire. He be- 
 lieved, too, in the certain success of the Southern Confederation. No Belgra- 
 vian Dundreary, no exaltee Georgian girl, could have been more completely 
 taken by surprise when the collapse of that enterprise came than was the Em- 
 peror Napoleon III., whose boundless foresight and profound sagacity we had 
 all for years been applauding to the echo. "That which is called firmness in a 
 King," said Erskine, "is called obstinacy in a donkey." That which is called 
 foresight and sagacity in an Emperor, is often what we call blindness and blun- 
 dering in a newspaper correspondent. The question is whether we can point to 
 any great event, any political enterprise, subsequent to his successful assumption 
 of the Imperial crown, in regard to which Napoleon III., if called upon to act or 
 to judge, did not show the same aptitude for rash judgments and unwise actions ? 
 Certainly no great thing with which he has had to do came out in the result with 
 anything like the shape he meant it to have. The Italian Confederation, with the 
 Pope at the head of it ; the Germany irrevocably divided by the line of the Main ; 
 the Mexican Empire; the "rectification" of frontier on the Rhine; the acqui-
 
 22 THE REAL LOUIS NAPOLEON. 
 
 sition of Luxembourg ; these are some of the great Napoleonic ideas, by the suc- 
 cess or failure of which we may fairly judge of the wisdom of their author. At 
 home he has simply had a new plan of government every year. How many dif- 
 ferent ways of dealing with the press, how many different schemes for adjusting 
 the powers of the several branches of legislation, have been magniloquently an- 
 nounced and floated during the last few years, each in turn to fail rather more 
 dismally than its predecessor ? Now, it seems, we are to have at last some- 
 thing like that ministerial responsibility which the Imperial lips themselves have 
 so often described as utterly opposed to the genius of France. Assuredly it 
 shows great mental flexibility to be able thus quickly to change one's policy in 
 obedience to a warning from without. It is a far better quality than the persist- 
 ent treachery of a Charles I., or the stupid doggedness of a George III. But 
 unless it be a characteristic of great statesmanship to be almost always out in 
 one's calculations, wrong in one's predictions, and mistaken in one's men, the 
 Emperor has for years been in the habit of doing things which are directly in- 
 compatible with the character of a great statesman. 
 
 Contrasting the Louis Napoleon of action and reality with the Louis Napo- 
 leon of the journals, I am reminded of a declaration once made by a brilliant, au- 
 dacious, eccentric Italian journalist and politician, Petruccelli della Gattina. 
 Petruccelli was, and perhaps stiil is, a member of the Italian Parliament, and he 
 had occasion to find fault with some office or dignity, or something of the kind, 
 conferred by Count Cavour on the Neapolitan, Baron Poerio, whose imprison- 
 ment and chains, during the reign of the beloved Bomba, aroused the eloquent 
 anger of Mr. Gladstone, and through Gladstone's efforts and appeals became the 
 wonder and the horror of the world. Petruccelli insisted that Poerio's unde- 
 served sufferings were his only political claim. " You know perfectly well," he 
 said, in effect, to Cavour, "that there is no such man as the Poerio of the jour- 
 nals. It suited us to invest the poor victim with the attributes of greatness, and 
 therefore, we, the journalists, created a Poerio of our own. This imposed upon 
 the world, but it did not impose upon you, and you have no right to take our 
 Poerio au serieux." I do not know whether the journals created an imag- 
 inary Poerio, but I am convinced that they have created an imaginary Louis Na- 
 poleon. The world in general now so much prefers the imaginary to the real 
 Louis, that it would* for the present be as difficult to dethrone the tnreal and set 
 up the real, as it would be to induce the average reader to accept Lane's genuine 
 translation of the "Arabian Nights" instead of the familiar translation from a 
 sprightly, flippant, flashy French version, which hardly bears the slightest resem- 
 blance to the original. English journalism has certainly created a Disraeli of its 
 own a dark, subtle, impenetrable, sphinx-like being, who never smiles, or betrays 
 outward emotion, or is taken by surprise, or makes a mistake. This Disraeli is an 
 immense success with the public, and is not in the least like the real Disraeli, who is 
 as good-natured and genial in manner as he is bold and blundering in speech and 
 policy. So, on a wider scale, of Louis Napoleon. We are all more or less responsi- 
 ble for the fraud on the public ; and, indeed, are to be excused on the ground that, 
 enamored of our own creation, we have often got the length of believing in it. 
 We have thus created a mysterious being, a sphinx of far greater than even 
 Disraelian proportions, an embodiment of silence and sagacity, a dark creature 
 endowed with super-human self-control and patience and foresight; one who 
 can bend all things, and all men, and destiny itself to his own cajm, inexorable will. 
 
 I do not believe there is anything of the sphinx about Louis Napoleon. I do 
 not believe in his profound sagacity, or his foresight, or his stupendous self-control. 
 I have grown so heretical that 1 do not even believe him to be a particularly taci-
 
 THE REAL LOuIS NAPOLEON. 93 
 
 turn man. I am well satisfied that Louis Napoleon is personally a good-natured, 
 good-tempered, undignified, awkward sort of man, ungainly of gesture, not impres- 
 sive in speech, a man quite as remarkable for occasional outbursts of unexpected 
 and misplaced confidence as for a silence that often is, if I may use such an expres- 
 sion, purely mechanical and unmeaning. I calmly ask my confreres of the press, 
 is it not a fact that Louis Napoleon is commonly made the dupe of shallow char- 
 latans, that he has several times received and admitted to confidential counsel 
 and conference, and treated as influential statesmen and unaccredited ambassa- 
 dors, utterly obscure American or English busybodies who could hardly get to 
 speech of the Mayor of a town at home ; that he has entered into signed and 
 sealed engagements with impudent adventurers from divers countries, under the 
 impression that they could render him vast political service ; that he has paiu 
 down considerable sums of money to subsidize the most obscure and contempt- 
 ible foreign journals, and never seemed able for a moment to comprehend that in 
 England and the United States no journal that can be bought for any price, 
 however high, is worth buying at any price, however low ; that his personal in- 
 clinations are much more toward quacks and pretenders than toward men of 
 real genius and influence ; that Cobden was one of the very few great men Louis 
 Napoleon ever appreciated, while impostors, and knaves, and blockheads, of all 
 kinds, could readily find access to his confidence ? Of course, a man might pos- 
 sibly be a great sovereign although he had these weaknesses ; but the Louis Na- 
 poleon of journalism is not endowed with these, or indeed with any other weaic- 
 nesses. 
 
 Those who know Paris well, know that there is yet another Louis Napoleon 
 there, equally I trust a fiction with him of the journals. I speak of the Louis 
 Napoleon of private gossip, the hero of unnumbered amours such as De Gram- 
 mont or Casanova might wonder at. I have heard stories poured into my patient 
 but sceptical ears which ascribed to Louis Napoleon of to-day, adventures illus- 
 trating a happy and brilliant combination of Haroun Al Raschid and Lauzun 
 the disguises of the Caliph employed for the purposes of Don Juan. Now, Louis 
 Napoleon certainly had, and perhaps even still has, his frailties of this class, but I 
 reject the Lauzun or Don Juan theory quite as resolutely as the sphinx theory. 
 
 What we all do really know of Louis Napoleon is, that having the advan- 
 tage of a name of surpassing prestige, and at a moment of unexampled chances not 
 created by him, he succeeded in raising himself to the throne made by his uncle ; 
 that when there, he held his place firmly, and by maintaining severe order in a 
 country already weary of disturbance and barren revolution, he favored and stim- 
 ulated the development of the material resources of France ; that he entered on 
 several enterprises in foreign politics, not one of which brought about the end 
 for which it was undertaken, and some of which were ludicrous, disastrous fail- 
 ures ; that he strove to compensate France for the loss of her civil liberty, by 
 audaciously attempting to make her the dictator of Europe, and that he utterly 
 failed in both objects ; for here toward the close of his rule, France seems far 
 more eager for domestic freedom than ever she was since the coup d'etat, while 
 her influence over the nations of Europe is considerably less than it was at any 
 period since the fall of Sebastopol. Now, if this be success, I want to know 
 what is failure? If these results argue the existence of profound sagacity, I 
 want to know what would show a lack of sagacity ? Was Louis Napoleon sa- 
 gacious when he entered Lombardy, to set Italy free from the Alps to the sea, 
 and sagacious also when, after a campaign of a few weeks, he suddenly abandoned 
 the enterprise never to resume it ? Was he wise when he told Cavour he would 
 never permit the annexation of Naples, and wise also when, immediately after,
 
 24 THE REAL LOUIS NAPOLEON. 
 
 he permitted it ? Was he a great statesman when he entered on the Mexican 
 expedition, and also a great statesman when he abandoned it and his unfortunate 
 pupil, puppet, and victim together? Did it show a statesmanlike judgment 
 to bully Prussia until he had gone near to making her an irreconcilable ene- 
 my, and also a statesmanlike judgment then to "cave in," and declare that 
 he never meant anything offensive? Was it judicious to demand a rec- 
 tification of frontier on the Rhine, and judicious also to abandon the demand 
 in a hurry, when it was received as anybody might have known that a 
 proud, brave nation, flushed with a splendid success, would surely have re- 
 ceived it? Did it display great foresight to count with certainty that the 
 Southern Confederation would succeed, and that Austria would win an easy vic- 
 tory over Prussia ? Was it judicious to instruct an official spokesman to declare 
 that France had taken steps to assure herself against any spread of Prussian in- 
 fluence beyond the Main, and to have to stand next day, amazed and confounded, 
 before an amazed and amused Europe, when Bismarck made practical answer by 
 contemptuously unrolling the treaties of alliance actually concluded between 
 Erance and the principal States of South Germany ? Was it a proof of a great 
 ruling mind to declare that France could never endure a system of ministerial 
 responsibility, and also a proof of a great ruling mind to declare that this is the 
 one thing needful to her contentment ? ' All this bundle of paradoxes one will 
 have to sustain, if he is content to accept as a genuine being that monstrous par- 
 adox, the Louis Napoleon of the press. Of course, I do not deny to Louis Na- 
 poleon certain qualities of greatness. But I believe the public was not a whit 
 more gravely mistaken when it regarded the King street exile as a dreamy dunce, 
 than it is now, when it regards Napoleon III. as a ruler of consummate wisdom. 
 There was much of sound sense as well as wit in the saying ascribed to 
 Thiers, that the second Empire had developed two great statesmen Cavour 
 and Bismarck. I do not know of any one great idea, worthy of being called a 
 contribution to the science of government, which Louis Napoleon has yet embod- 
 ied, either in words or actions. The recent elections, and the events succeeding 
 them, only demonstrate the failure of Imperialism or Caesarism, after a trial and 
 after opportunities such as it probably will never have again in Europe. I cer- 
 tainly do not expect any complete collapse during the present reign. Doubtless 
 the machine will outlast the third Emperor's time. He has sense and dexter- 
 ity enough to trim his sails to each breeze that passes, and he will, probably, 
 hold the helm till his right hand loses its cunning with its vital power. But I see 
 no evidence whatever which induces me to believe that he has founded a dynasty 
 or created an enduring system of any kind. Some day France will shake off 
 the whole thing like a nightmare. Meantime, however, I am anxious to help in 
 dethroning the Louis Napoleon of the journals rather than him of the Tuileries. 
 The latter has many good qualities which the former is never allowed to exhibit. 
 1 believe the true Louis Napoleon has a remarkably kind and generous heart ; 
 that he is very liberal and charitable ; that he has much affection in him, and is 
 very faithful to his old friends and old servants ; that people who come near 
 him love him much ; that he is free and kindly of speech ; that his personal de- 
 fects are rather those of a warm and rash, than of a cold and stern nature. But 
 I think it is high time that we were done with the melodramatic, dime-romance, 
 darkly mysterious Louis Napoleon of the journals. He belongs to the race of 
 William Tell, of the Wandering Jew, the Flying Dutchman, the Sphinx to 
 whom he is so often compared, the mermaid, the sea-serpent, Byron's Corsair, 
 and Thaddeus of Warsaw.
 
 EUGENIE, EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH. 
 
 THERE are certain men and women in history who seem to have a pecu- 
 liarity, independent of their merits or demerits, greatness or littleness, 
 virtues or crimes a peculiarity which distinguishes them from others as great 
 or as little, as virtuous or as criminal. They are, first and above all things, in- 
 teresting. It is not easy to describe what the elements are which make up this 
 attribute. Certainly genius or goodness, wit or wisdom, splendid public services, 
 great beauty, or even great suffering, will not always be enough to create it. The 
 greatest English king since the First Edward was assuredly William the Third ; 
 the greatest military commanders England has ever had were Marlborough and 
 Wellington ; but these three will hardly be called by any one interesting per- 
 sonages in the sense in which I now use the word. Why Nelson should be in- 
 teresting and Wellington not so, Byron interesting and Wordsworth not so, is 
 perhaps easy enough to explain ; but it is not quite easy to see why Rousseau 
 should be so much more interesting than Voltaire, Goethe than Schiller, Mozart 
 than Handel, and so on through a number of illustrations, the accuracy of 
 which nearly all persons would probably acknowledge. Where history and pub- 
 lic opinion and sentiment have to deal with the lives and characters of women, the 
 peculiarity becomes still more deeply emphasized. What gifts, what graces, 
 what rank, what misfortunes have ever surrounded any queens or princesses 
 known to history with the interest which attaches to Mary Stuart and Marie 
 Antoinette ? Lady Jane Grey was an incomparably nobler woman than either, 
 and suffered to the full as deeply as either ; yet what place has she in men's feel- 
 ings and interest -compared with theirs ? Who cares about Anna Boleyn, though 
 she too shared a throne and mounted a scaffold ? 
 
 Absit omen ! I am about to speak cf an illustrious living lady, who has in 
 common with Mary Stuart and Marie Antoinette two things at least : she has 
 a French sovereign for a husband, and she has the fame of beauty. But she has 
 likewise that other peculiarity of which I spoke : she is interesting. It is only 
 speaking by the card to say that by far the most interesting of all the imperial 
 and royal ladies now living is Eugenie, Empress of the French. I think there 
 are princesses in Europe more beautiful and even more graceful than she is, or 
 than she ever could have been ; I fancy there are some much more highly gifted 
 with intellect ; but there is no woman living in any European palace in whom 
 the general world feels half so much interest. There is not the slightest reason 
 to believe that she is a woman of really penetrating or commanding intellect, 
 and should she be happy enough to live out her life in the Tuileries and die 
 peacefully in her bed, history will find but little to say about her, g~>od or bad. 
 Yet so long as her memory remains in men's minds, it will be as that of a princess 
 who had above ail things the gift of being interesting the power of attracting 
 toward herself the eyes, the admiration, the curiosity, the wonder of all the civil- 
 ized world 
 
 "We count time by heart-throbs, not by figures on a dial," says a poet who 
 once nearly secured immortality, Philip James Bailey. There certainly are 
 people whose age seems to defy counting by figures on a dial. Ask anybody 
 what two pictures are called up in his mind when he hears the names of Queen 
 Victoria and the Empress of the French, no matter whether he has ever seen 
 the two illustrious ladies or not. In the case of the former I may safely ven-
 
 26 EUGENIE, EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH. 
 
 ture to answer for him that he sees the face and figure of a motherly, homely 
 body ; a woman who has got quite beyond the age when people observe how she 
 dresses ; to whom personal appearance is no longer of any importance or inter- 
 est. In the case of the latter he sees a dazzling couit beauty ; a woman who, 
 though not indeed in her youth, is still in a glorious prime ; a woman to capti- 
 vate hearts, and inspire poets, and set scandal going, and adorn a ball-room or a 
 throne. The first instinctive idea would be, I think, that the Empress of the 
 French belonged positively to a later generation than the good, unattractive, 
 dowdyish Queen of England. Yet I believe the difference in actual years is 
 very slight. To be sure, you will find in any almanac that Queen Victoria was 
 born on the 24th of May, 1819, and is consequently very near to fifty-one years 
 of age ; while the fair Euge'nie is set down as having been born on May 5th, 1826, 
 and consequently would now appear to be only in her forty-fourth year. But 
 then Queen Victoria was born in the purple, and cannot, poor thing, make any 
 attempt at reducing by one single year the full figure of her age. History has 
 taken an inexorable, ineffaceable note of the day and hour of her birth ; and even 
 court flattery cannot affect to ignore the record. Now Eugenie was born in 
 happy obscurity ; even the place of her birth is not known by the public with that 
 certainty which alone satisfies sceptics ; and I have heard that the date recorded as 
 that of her natal hour is only a graceful fiction, a pretty bit of polite biography. 
 Certainly I have heard it stoutly maintained that if any historian or critic were 
 now to be as ungallant in his researches as John Wilson Croker was in the case 
 of Lady Morgan (was it not Lady Morgan ?), he would find that the birth of the 
 brilliant Empress of the French would have to be dated back a few years, and 
 that after all the difference between her and the elderly Queen Victoria is less 
 an affair of time than of looks and of heart-throbs. 
 
 About a dozen years, I suppose, have passed away since I saw the Empress 
 Eugenie and Queen Victoria sitting side by side. Assuredly the difference even 
 then might well have been called a contrast, although the Queen was in her happi- 
 est time, and has worn out terribly fast since that period. But the quality which 
 above all others Queen Victoria wanted was just that in which the Empress of 
 the French is supreme the quality of imperial, womanly grace. I have never 
 been a rapturous admirer of the beauty of the Empress ; a certain narrowness 
 of contour in the face, the eyes too closely set together, and an appearance of ar- 
 tificiality in every movement of the features, seem to me to detract very much 
 from the charms of her countenance. But her queenly grace of gesture, of atti- 
 tude, of form, of motion, must be admitted to be beyond cavil, and superb. She 
 looks just the woman on whom any sort of garment would hang with grace and 
 attractiveness ; a blanket would become like a regal mantle if it fell round her 
 shoulders ; I verily believe she would actually look graceful in Mary Walker's 
 costume, which I consider decidedly the most detestable, in an artistic sense, 
 ever yet indued by mortal woman. Poor Queen Victoria looked awkward and 
 homely indeed by the side of this graceful, noble form ; this figure that ex- 
 pressed so well the combination of suppleness and affluence, of imperial dignity 
 and charming womanhood. Time has not of late spared the face of the Empress 
 of the French. Lines and hollows are growing fast there ; the bright eyes are 
 sinking deeper into their places ; the complexion is fading and clouding ; mali- 
 cious people now say that, like that of the lady in the " School for Scandal," it 
 comes in the morning and goes in the night ; and the hair is apparently fast 
 growing thin. But the grace of form and movement is still there, unimpaired 
 and unsurpassed. The whitest and finest shoulders still surmount a noble bust, 
 which, but that its amplitude somewhat exceeds the severe proportions of antique
 
 EUGENIE, EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH. 27 
 
 Grecian beauty, might be reproduced in marble to illustrate the contour of a 
 Venus or a Juno. I have seldom looked at the Empress of the French or at any 
 picture or bust of her without thinking how Mary Wo.tley Montagu would have 
 gone into bold and eloquent raptures over the superb womanhood of that splen- 
 did form. 
 
 Well, the face always disappointed me at least. It seems to me cold, artifi- 
 cial, narrow, insincere. It wants nobleness. It does not impress me as being 
 the face of a frivolous woman, a coquette, a court butterfly ; but rather that of 
 one who is always playing a part which sometimes wearies. If I were to form 
 my own impressions of the Empress of the French merely from her face, I 
 should set her down as a keen, politic woman, with brains enough to be crafty, 
 not enough to be great. I should set her down as a'woman who needs and 
 loves the stimulus of incessant excitement, just as much as a certain class of ac- 
 tress does. Indeed, I think I have seen in the face of more than one actress just 
 such an habitual expression, off the stage, as one may see in the countenance of 
 the French Empress. I fear that sweet and gracious smile, which is said to be 
 so captivating to those for whose immediate and special homage it is put on, 
 changes into sudden blankness or weariness when its momentary business has 
 been done. Sam Slick tells us of a lady whose smile dropped from her face the 
 moment the gazer's eyes were withdrawn "like a petticoat when the strings 
 break ; " and if I might apply this irreverent comparison to the smile of an Em- 
 press, I would say that I think I have noted just such a change in the expres- 
 sion of the brilliant Eugdnie. Indeed, it must be a tiresome part, that which 
 she has had to play through all these resplendent years ; a part thrilling with 
 danger, made thorny by many sharp vexations. Were the Empress of the 
 French the mere belle of a court, she might doubtless have joyfully swallowed 
 all the bitternesses for the sake of the brightness and splendor of her lot ; were 
 she a woman of high, imperial genius, a Maria Theresa, an Anne of Austria, 
 she might have found in the mere enjoyment of power, or in the nobler aspirings 
 of patriotism, abundant compensation for her individual vexations. But being 
 neither a mere coquette nor a woman of genius, being neither great enough to 
 rise wholly above her personal troubles, nor small enough to creep under them 
 untouched, she must have suffered enough to render her life very often a weary 
 trial ; and the traces of that weariness can be seen on her face when the court 
 look is dropped for a moment. 
 
 The Empress seems to have passed through three phases of character, or at 
 least to have made on the public opinion of France three successive and differ- 
 ent impressions. For a long time she was set down as a mere coquette, a crea- 
 ture whose soul soared no higher than the aspiration after a bonnet or a bracelet, 
 whose utmost genius exhausted itself in the invention of a crinoline. Indeed, it 
 may be questioned whether any invention known to modern Europe had so sud- 
 den and wonderful a success or made the inventor so talked about as Eugenie's 
 famous jupon d'acier. A sour and cynical Republican of my acquaintance 
 once declared that anybody might have known the Empress to be a parvemie 
 by the mere fact that she could and did invent a petticoat ; for he maintained 
 that no born emperor or empress ever was known to have done even so much in 
 the way of invention. Decidedly, the Empress did a great deal of harm in those 
 her earlier and more brilliant dnys. To her influence and example may be as- 
 cribed the passion for mere extravagance and variety of dress which has spread 
 of late years among all the fashionable and would-be fashionable women of Eu 
 rope and America. It is not too much to say that the Empress of the French 
 demoralized, in this sense, the womanhood of two generations. How literally
 
 23 EUGENIE, EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH. 
 
 debauching her influence was to the women immediately under its control, the 
 women of the fashionable world of Paris, 1 need not stop to tell. Graceful, gra- 
 cious, and elegant as she is, she did undoubtedly succeed in branding with a 
 stamp of vulgarity the brilliant court of the Second Empire. It is not wonder- 
 ful if scandal said coarse and bitter things about the goddess of prodigality who 
 presided over the revels of the Tuileries. The most absurd stories used to be 
 told of the amusements which went on in the private gardens of the palace and 
 in ics inner circles ; and the levity and occasional flightiness of a vivacious young 
 woman thirsting for fresh gayeties and new excitements were perverted and mag- 
 nified into reckless and wanton extravagances. Of course it was inevitable that 
 there should be scandal over the birth of the Prince Imperial. Were the Em- 
 press Euge'nie chaste as ice, pure as unsunned snow, she could not, under the 
 circumstances, escape that calumny. 
 
 About the time of her sudden and mysterious escapade to London, the Em- 
 press began to emerge a little from the character of a mere woman of fashion, 
 and to become known and felt as a politician. People say that some at least of 
 the influence and control which she began to obtain over her husband was owing 
 to her knowledge of his many infidelities and his reluctance to provoke her into 
 open quarrel. Unless Euge'nie was wholly free from the jealousy which is sup- 
 posed to lie in the heart of every other woman, she must have suffered cruelly 
 in this way for many years. In her own court circles, at her own side, were 
 ladies whom universal report designated as successive mattresses en titre of the 
 Emperor Napoleon. Stories, too, of his indulgence in low and gross amours 
 were told everywhere, and, true or false (charity itself could not well doubt that 
 some of them were true), must have reached the Empress's ears. She suffered 
 severely, and she took to politics perhaps as a harassed man sometimes takes 
 to drinking. Her political influence was, in its day, simply disastrous. She was 
 always on the wrong side, and she was always impetuous, unreasoning, and per- 
 tinacious, as cynical people say is the way of women. She became a devotee of 
 the narrowest kind ; and just as Madame de Maintenon's religious bigotry did 
 infinitely more harm to France than the vilest profligacy of a Pompadour or a 
 Dubarry could have done, so the religious fervor of the Empress Euge'nie 
 threatened at one time to prove a worse thing for the State and for Europe than 
 if she had really carried on during all her lifetime the palace orgies which her 
 enemies ascribed to her. Reaction, Ultramontanism, illiberalism, superstition, 
 found a patroness and leader in her. She fought for the continued occupation 
 of Rome; she battled against the unity of Italy; she recommended and urged 
 the Mexican expedition. Louis Napoleon is personally a good-natured, easy- 
 going sort of man, averse to domestic disputes, fully conscious, no doubt, of his 
 frequent liability to domestic censure. What wonder if European politics some- 
 times had to suffer heavily for the tolerated presence of this or that too notori- 
 ous lady in the inner circles of the French court ? " Who is the Countess de 
 
 ?" I once asked of a Parisian friend who was attached to the Imperial 
 
 household I was speaking of a lady whose beauty and whose audacities of dress 
 were then much talked of in the French capital. "The latest favorite," was the 
 reply. " I shouldn't wonder if her presence at court cost another ten years of 
 the occupation of Rome." 
 
 With the Empress's introduction to politics and political intrigue, the era of 
 scandal seems to have closed for her. She dressed as brilliantly and extrava- 
 gantly as ever, and she would take as much pains about her toilet for the benefit 
 of Persigny and Baroche and Billault at a Council of State as for a ball in the 
 Tuileries. She received the same sort of company, was surrounded by the
 
 EUGENIE, EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH. 29 
 
 same ladies and the same cavaliers as ever. But she ceased to be herself a sub- 
 ject of scandal a fact which is not a little remarkable when one remembers 
 how many bitter enemies she made for herself at this period of her career. She 
 seems to have seriously contemplated the assumption of a great political and 
 religious part the part of the patroness and protectress of the Papacy. I be- 
 lieve she studied hard to educate herself for this part, and indeed for the work 
 in politics generally which devolved upon her. The position of Vicegerent, 
 assigned to her by the Emperor during his absence in the Lombardy campaign, 
 stirred up political ambition within her, and she seems to have shown a remark- 
 able aptitude for political work. She certainly sustained the opinion expressed 
 by John Stuart Mill in his "Subjection of Women," that the business of politics, 
 from which laws in general shut women out, is just the one intellectual occupa- 
 tion in which, whenever they have had a chance, they have proved themselves 
 the equals of men. When Eugenie was raised to the Imperial throne, she ap- 
 pears to have had no better education than any young Spanish woman of her 
 class, and that certainly is not much. A lady once assured me that she was 
 one of a group who were presented to the Empress at the Tuileries, and that 
 there being in the group two beautiful girls from America, to whom Eugdnie de- 
 sired to be particularly gracious, her Imperial Majesty began to ask them several 
 questions about their native land, and astonished them almost beyond the ca- 
 pacity to reply by kindly inquiring whether they had come from New York 
 "over the sea, or over the land." But the Empress has read up a good deal, 
 and mastered much other knowledge besides that of geography, since those salad 
 days. Meanwhile, she became more and more the divinity of the Ultramon- 
 tanes ; and the French court presented the interesting spectacle of having two 
 rival and extreme parties, one led by the Emperor's wife, and the other by his 
 cousin, Prince Napoleon, between whom the Emperor himself maintained an 
 attitude something like that of the central figure in a game of seesaw. I pre- 
 sume there can be little doubt that the Empress regarded her husband's portly 
 cousin with a cordial detestation. She is not a woman endowed with a keen 
 sense of humor, nor in any case would she be quite likely to enjoy anything 
 which was humorous at her own expense ; and Prince Napoleon is credited 
 broadly with having said things concerning her which doubtless made his friends 
 and followers and boon companions laugh, but which, reported to her, as they 
 assuredly would be, must have made her cheek flame and her lips quiver. More- 
 over, the Red Prince was notoriously in the habit of turning into jest some things 
 more sacred in the eyes of the Imperial devotee than even her own reputation- 
 She feared his tongue, his reckless wit, his smouldering ambition. She feared 
 him for her boy, whose rival and enemy he might come to be ; and Prince Na- 
 poleon had more sons than one. Therefore the rivalry was keen and bitter. 
 She was for the Pope ; he was for Italy and the Revolution. She sympathized 
 with the South in the American civil war ; Prince Napoleon was true to his 
 principles and stood by the North. She favored the Mexican enterprise ; he 
 opposed it. She was for all manner of repressive action as regarded political 
 speaking and writing ; he was for a free platform and free press. Her triumph 
 came when, during the Emperor's visit to Algeria, Prince Napoleon delivered 
 his famous Ajaccio speech a speech terribl) true and shockingly indiscreet 
 and was punished by an Imperial rebuke, whicn led him to resign all his politi- 
 cal offices and withdraw absolutely from public life for several successive years. 
 But just when the Empress seemed to have the field all to herself, her po- 
 litical influence began somehow to wane. Perhaps she grew a little weary of the 
 work of statecraft ; perhaps she had not been so successful in some of her
 
 30 EUGENIE, EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH. 
 
 favorite projects as she bad expected to be. The Mexican expedition turned out 
 a dismal, ghastly failure, and that enterprise had always been regarded as the 
 joint work of the two influences which cynical people say have usually been most 
 disastrous in politics the priest and the petticoat. Then the idea of working 
 out the scheme of European politics from the central point of the Tuileries 
 was suddenly exploded by the unexpected intrusion of Prussia, and the dazzling 
 victory in which the Bonaparte as well as the Hapsburg was overthrown and 
 humbled. The old framework of things was disjointed by this surprising event. 
 A new political centre of gravity had to be sought for Europe. France was 
 rudely pushed aside. The fair Empress, who had been training herself for quite 
 a different condition of things, found herself now confronted by new, strange, 
 and bewildering combinations. One thing is highly to her credit. I have been 
 assured by people who claim to know something of the matter, that her earnest 
 influence was used to induce the French Government to accept, without remon- 
 strance, the new situation. While Louis Napoleon was committing the inexcusa- 
 ble blunder of feeling his way towards a war with Prussia, and thereby subject- 
 ing himself to the ignominy of having to draw hastily back, the voice of the 
 Empress, I am assured, was always raised for peace. But I think the new situ- 
 ation was too much for her. She had made up for a game of politics between 
 the Pope and Italy; when other players and other stakes appeared, the Empress 
 was disinclined to undertake a new course of education. She thereupon passed 
 into the third phase that of philanthropic devotee, Lady Bountiful, and mother 
 of her people ; and since then, if she cannot be said to have grown universally 
 popular, she may fairly be described as having got rid of nearly all her former 
 unpopularity. Her good deeds began to be magnified everywhere, and even an- 
 cient enemies were content to sing her praises, or, at least, to hear them sung. 
 
 Undoubtedly she has a kindly, charitable heart, and can do heroic as well as 
 graceful things. Her famous visitation of the cholera hospitals may doubtless 
 have been clone partly for effect, but even in this sense it showed a lofty apprecia- 
 tion of the duties of an Fmpress, and could not have been conceived or carried 
 out by an ignoble nature. When the cholera appeared in Madrid, the fat, li- 
 centious woman who then cumbered and disgraced the throne of Spain, fled in 
 dismay from her capital ; and this act of peculiarly unwomanlike cowardice told 
 heavily against her and hurried her deeply down into that public contempt which 
 is so fatal to sovereigns. The Empress Euge'nie. on the other hand, dignified 
 and served herself and her husband by her fearless exposure of her own life in 
 the cause of humanity and charity. Kindly and generous deeds of hers are 
 constantly reported in Paris, and these things go far in keeping up the super- 
 stition of loyalty. Every one knows how gracious and winning the Empress can 
 be in her personal relations with those who approach her. Sometimes her de- 
 meanor and. actions come into sharp contrast with those of other sovereigns in 
 matters less momentous than the visiting of death-charged hospital wards. I 
 have heard of an American lady who once made some rich and complete col- 
 lections of specimens of American foliage, collected them at immense labor, 
 arranged them with exquisite taste in two large and beautiful volumes, and sent 
 one as an offering to Queen Victoria, the other to the Empress of the French. 
 From the British court came back the volume itself, with a formal reply from an 
 official intimating that Her Majesty the Queen made it a rule not to accept such 
 gifts. From Paris came a letter of genial, graceful acceptance, written by the 
 Empress Euge'nie herself, full of good taste, good feeling, and courteous, lady- 
 like expression. These are small things, but womanly tact and grace seldom 
 have much opportunity of expressing themselves save in just such small things.
 
 EUGENIE, EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH. 31 
 
 The Empress then has of late years faded a little out of political life. I 
 think it may be taken for granted that although she is a quick, clever woman, 
 with talents far beyond the mere inventing of bonnets and petticoats, she is 
 not gifted with any political genius, not qualified to see quickly into the heart of 
 a difficult question, not endowed with the capacity to surmount a great crisis. I 
 have never heard anything which induces me to think that Eugenie's intellect 
 and power would count for much in the chances of the dynasty should Louis 
 Napoleon die while his son is yet a boy. Like Louis Napoleon himself, she was 
 twice misjudged : first when people set her down as an empty-headed coquette, 
 and next when they cried her up as a woman with a genius for government. So 
 far as one may venture to predict, I think she would not prove strong enough 
 for the place, if evil fortune should throw upon her the task of preserving the 
 throne for her boy. 
 
 Recent events seem to me to prove that the imperial system is less strong 
 and more shaky than most of us would have supposed six months ago. I for 
 one do fully believe that the recent disturbances are the genuine indications of 
 a profound and bitter popular discontent. 1 beg the readers of THE GALAXY 
 to be very cautious how they form an estimate of the situation from the corre- 
 spondence and editorial articles of the London press. If the "Times" believes 
 Bonapartism safe and strong in Paris, I have only to remark that the "Times " 
 believed the same, almost up to the bitter end. of Bonapartism in Mexico. 
 There a/e very few London journals which can be trusted where the politics of 
 France are concerned. Not that the journals are bribed ; everybody knowing 
 anything of the London press knows how absurd the idea of such bribery is ; 
 but that all London Philistinism (and Philistinism does a good deal of the 
 writing for the London papers) considers it genteel and respectable, and the 
 right sort of thing generally, to go in for the Empire and sneer at revolution. 
 I have read with no little wonder many of the comments of the London, and 
 indeed some of the New York journals, on Henri Rochefort and his colleagues. 
 One would think that in order to prove a certain revolutionary movement 
 powerless and contemptible, you had only to show that its leaders were them- 
 selves contemptible and disreputable persons. Some of the journals here and 
 in London write as if the Empire must be safe because the satire of the " Lan- 
 terne" and the " Marseillaise" seems to them coarse and witless, and because 
 they have heard that Henri Rochefort is an insincere man, of doubtful courage 
 and tainted moral character. One longs to ask whether the " Pere Duchesne" 
 and the "Vieux Cordelier" were publications fit to be read in the drawing-rooms 
 of virtuous families ; whether Mirabeau's private character was quite blameless ; 
 whether Marat and Hebert had led reputable lives ; whether Camille Desmou- 
 lins was habitually received into the highest circles ; whether Theroigne de 
 Meiicourt was the sort of young woman one's wife would like to invite to tea. 
 The imbecility with which certain journalists go on day after day trying to as- 
 sure themselves and the world that imperialism has nothing to fear at the hands 
 of a movement led by scurrilous and disreputable men, has something in it at 
 once amusing and provoking. The strength of a revolutionary movement is not 
 exactly to be estimated by the claims of its leaders to carry off the prix Mon- 
 thyon or the Holy Grail. Perhaps if it were to be so estimated, it would be hard 
 to say where the victory should go in the present instance. For the worst of 
 Rochefort's colleagues have never been accused of any profligacies and base- 
 nesses so bad as those which universal public opinion ascribes to the leading 
 Bonapartes and some of their most influential supporters. Undoubtedly there is a
 
 32 EUGENIE, EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH. 
 
 great deal of scurrility and even worse in the papers conducted by Roclrefort. 
 It is not in good taste to go on asking who was the mother of De Morny, who 
 was the father of Walewski ; how the present Walewski, Walewski Jlls, comes 
 to be called a count, and who was his mother, and so on ; and the direct and 
 libellous attacks on the Empress are utterly indefensible. If one were making 
 up a memoir of Henri Rochefort, or engaged in a debating society's controversy 
 on his character, one would have to a'lmit that he is by no means a model dema- 
 gogue, a pattern patriot. But one might at the same time hint that, judging by 
 historical precedent, he is probably all the more formidable as a revolutionary 
 leader for that very reason. His literary attacks on the Government are by no 
 means all vulgar, or scurrilous, or contemptible. There was fresh and genuine 
 humor as well as telling satire in the " Lanterne's " early declaration of allegi- 
 ance to the Napoleons, the purport of which was that, feeling bound to express 
 his devotion to a Napoleon. Rochefort had selected as the object of his loyal 
 homage Napoleon the Second, the sovereign who never coerced the press, or 
 corrupted the Senate, or robbed the nation of its liberty, or exiled its patriots, 
 or carried on a Mexican expedition, or impoverished the country to maintain a 
 gigantic army. But there is one thing certain thnt whether Rochefort is witty 
 or not, wise or not, he has waked an ecjio throughout France and Europe in 
 general which even very wise and undeniably witty enemies of the Empire did 
 not succeed in creating. Nothing he has written will compare in artistic strength 
 of satire or invective with Victor Hugo's "Chatimens " or " Napole'on le Petit." 
 Eugene Pelletan's " Nouvelle Babylone " was a prolonged outpouring of indig- 
 nant eloquence by a gentleman, a scholar, and a thinker. Rogeard's " Prcpos 
 de Labienus" was a piece of really fine sarcasm. But not the most celebrated 
 of these attacks on the Empire created anything like the sensation which Roche- 
 fort has succeeded in creating by the constant "pegging away "of his bitter, 
 envenomed, and unscrupulous pen. Indeed, the reason is obvious at least to 
 those who, like me, believe that the great mass of the Parisian population (the 
 army, the officials, and the priests not counted) are heartily sick of Bonapartism, 
 and would get rid of it if they could. Rochefort assails the Empire and tht 
 Emperor in a style which they can understand. He is a master of a certain 
 kind of coarse, rasping ridicule, which delights the disaffected oiivrier; and he 
 has no scruple about assailing any weak place he can find in his enemy, even 
 though in doing so the heart of a woman has likewise to be wounded. An an- 
 gry and disaffected populace delights in this kind of thing. The fact that Roche- 
 fort has created such a sensation is the best proof in the world that the Parisian 
 populace is angry and disaffected. Rochefort has a happy gift of epithets, which 
 goes a long way with admirers and followers such as his. I doubt whether a 
 whole chapter could have described more accurately and vividly the person, 
 character, and career of Prince Pierre Bonaparte than Rochefort did when he 
 branded him as "a social bandit." Personally, Rochefort is not qualified to be 
 a demagogue in the sense that Danton was a demagogue, and he can make no 
 pretension to be a revolutionary leader of a high class. But he can incite a 
 populace, madden the hearts of disaffected crowds, as the bitter tongue of a 
 shrill woman might do, and as the tongue of a great orator might perhaps fail to 
 do. Doubtless Rochefort and his literary sword-and-buckler men are not strong 
 enough to create a serious disturbance of themselves alone. But if a moment 
 of general uncertainty and unsettlement came, they might prove a dangerous 
 disturbing force. If, for example, there should come a crisis which of itself 
 rendered change of some kind necessary, when all the chances of the future
 
 EUGENIE, EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH. 33 
 
 might depend upon a single hour or perhaps a single decisive command, and 
 when it was not certain who had the right, who would assume the responsibility 
 to give the command, then indeed the bitter screams, and jeers, and invectives 
 of these reckless literary bravos might have much to do with the ordering of 
 the situation. If, for example, the Emperor were to die just now, who shall 
 venture to say how much the chances of the Empress and her son might not be 
 affected at that moment of terrible crisis by the pens and the tongues of Rodie- 
 fort and his followers ? 
 
 Some time, in the natural course of things, the Empress may expect to have 
 to face such a crisis. It is highly probable that the time will come while yet her 
 boy is young and dependent upon her guardianship and care. Has she won 
 for herself the affection, confidence, and loyalty of France, to such an extent that 
 she could count upon national support ? I am convinced that she has not. She 
 is much liked and even loved by those who know her. They have countless 
 anecdotes to tell of her affectionate ways as a mother, of her generosity and kind- 
 ness as a woman. But although she has outlived many of the early prejudices 
 against her, she is still regarded with distrust and dislike by the older families 
 of France ; and I am confident that a large proportion of the working classes in 
 Paris and the large towns delight to believe the worst things that malice and 
 slander can say to her detriment. The priests and the shopkeepers are probably 
 her best friends ; but I am not aware that priests and shopkeepers have ever 
 proved themselves very powerful bulwarks against sudden popular revolution-" 
 The generals and the army might of course remain perfectly loyal to her ; prob- 
 ably would if they had no time to consider the situation, and there were no fa- 
 vorite rival in the way (if Prince Napoleon, for example, were a brilliant soldier, 
 she would not have a ghost of a chance against him) ; but it must be remembered 
 that the loyalty of an army is something like the epigrammatic description of the 
 honor of a woman : when there is any deliberation, it is likely to be lost ; and the 
 claims of the Empress are certainly not such as absolutely to forbid deliberation 
 and render it impossible. Much of course would depend on the woman herself. 
 There was a moment when Catharine of Russia's unfortunate husband might 
 have carried all before him if he had only seized the chance ; and he did not 
 seize it, and so lost all. There was a moment when Catharine might have utterly 
 failed if she had not risen to the height of the crisis, and seized the opportunity 
 with both hands ; and she did rise to the height of the crisis, did seize the op- 
 portunity, and so won all. Place Eugdnie in such a position, and is she a 
 woman to win ? Is she in fact a woman of genius? I think not. Nothing that 
 I have ever heard of her and I have known many who were her intimate friends 
 has led me to believe her endowed with a quick, strong, commanding intellect. 
 Mentally she seems to be narrow and shallow ; in temper she is quick, capri- 
 cious, full of warm personal affections and almost groundless personal dislikes. 
 I have a strong idea that no matter what the urgency of the crisis, she would stay 
 to make herself picturesque before taking any public action; and I venture to 
 think she would be guided by counsel only where she happened to have a per- 
 sonal liking for the counsellor. She cannot, I fancy, be trusted at a great crisis 
 to make the fortune of her son. Enough if she do not mar it at such a time. 
 
 Political considerations apart, one can only wish her well. Her face is one 
 which ought to smile sweetly and gracefully through history. If fate and France 
 will endure the Bonapartes for another generation or so, there will be some con- 
 solation to gallant and romantic souls in the thought that thereby this gracious, 
 queenly woman will be allowed to make a happy end of her brilliant, not un- 
 troubled life. Thus far we may, in summing up her career, describe her, first, as
 
 54: EUGENIE, EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH. 
 
 a bright, vivacious young coquette, with a dash of the adventuress about her, rang- 
 ing the world in search of a husband ; then a woman suddenly and surprisingly 
 nised to the dazzling rank of an Empress, and a little bewildered by the change ; 
 Uien a splendid leader of the world's fashion, magnificently frivolous and heed- 
 less ; then a political intrigante, the supreme patroness of Ultramontanism ; and 
 now a quiet, queenly mother, verging toward that kind of devoteeism in which 
 some satirical person declares that coquetry in France is sure to end. She is 
 not a woman to make any deep impression on history. She has neither gifts enough 
 nor faults enough. As a politician she has been a failure, and perhaps worse 
 than a failure ; but she has been fortunate enough to escape from all public respon- 
 sibility for her mistakes, and may get quietly into history as merely an intelli- 
 gent, good-natured, and beautiful woman. Posterity will probably see her and 
 appreciate her sufficiently in her portrait by Winterhalter : a name, a vague 
 memory, and a smooth fair picture with bright complexion, shining hair, and no- 
 ble shoulders, alone carrying down to other times the history of the Third 
 Napoleon's wife. Only great misfortunes could redeem her from this destiny of 
 h.ilf oblivion ; and history has names enough that are burnt by misfortune into 
 eternal memory, and may well spare hers. One great claim she has to a liberal 
 construction of her character: her personal enemies are those who do not know 
 her well ; her intimates seem to be always her friends. She has one good 
 quality, which her husband with all his faults likewise possesses: she has never 
 "*tn her imperial splendor forgotten or neglected or been ashamed of old ac- 
 quaintances and friends, I have heard scores of anecdotes from people who 
 know her well I have heard one such anecdote since I began writing this arti- 
 cle which prove her to be entirely above the mean and vulgar weakness of the 
 parvenu, who shrinks in her magnificence from any acquaintanceship or asso- 
 ciation likely to remind her of less brilliant days. Taken on the whole, the Em- 
 press Euge'nie is better than her fortunes and her surroundings might have made 
 her. She is, I think, a woman much more deserving of respect than Josephine 
 Beauharnais, whose misfortunes, joined with the quiet pathetic dignity of her re- 
 lirement and her later years, have made the world forget the levities, frivolities, 
 and follies of her earlier life. She has shown a quicker and better appreciation 
 of the duties and difficulties of her station, and the temper of the people among 
 whom she had to live, than was at any time shown by Marie Antoinette. Whether 
 she could ever under the most favorable conditions prove an Anne of Austria 
 may well be doubted ; and we must all hope for her own sake that she may never 
 be put to the proof. She has at least made it clear that she is no mere Reine 
 Crinoline ; she has shown that she possesses some heart, some courage, and 
 some brains ; she has had sense enough to retrieve blunders, and merit enough 
 to live down calumny. The best thing one can hope for her is that she may 
 never again be placed in a position which would tempt and allow her to make 
 political influence the instrument of religious bigotry. The greatest woman her 
 native country ever produced, 'Isabella of Castile, became with all her virtues 
 and genius a curse to Spain, because of her bigotry and her power ; and there 
 was a time when it seemed as if the Empress Eugenie was likely to make for 
 herself an odious fame as the chief patroness of a conspiracy against the reli- 
 gious and political liberties of the south of Europe. Let us hope that in her future 
 career she may be saved from any such temptation, and that she may be kept as 
 much as possible out of all political complications where religion interferes ; and 
 if she be thus graced by fortune, it is all but certain that whate'ver her future 
 years may bring, she will deserve and receive a genial record in the history of 
 France.
 
 THE PRINCE OF WALES. 
 
 * T T is now sixteen or seventeen years," says Edmund Burke, in that famous 
 passage to which one is almost ashamed to allude any more, so hack- 
 neyed has it been, "since first I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, 
 at Versailles ; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to 
 touch, a more delightful vision." That glowing, impassioned apostrophe did 
 more to make partisans and admirers for poor Marie Antoinette among all Eng- 
 lish-speaking peoples, probably for all time, than any charms, or virtues, or mis- 
 fortunes of the Queen and the woman could have done. I can never of late read 
 or recall to mind the burning words of Burke, without thinking of a certain day 
 in March some seven years ago, when I stood on a platform in Trafalgar Square. 
 London, and saw a bright, beautiful young face smiling and bending to a vast 
 enthusiastic crowd on either side, and I, like everybody else, was literally strick- 
 en with admiration of the beauty, the sweetness, and the grace of the Princess 
 Alexandra of Denmark. In truth, I am not in general an enthusiast about prin- 
 ces or princesses ; I do not believe that the king's face usually gives grace. In 
 this instance the beauty of the Princess Alexandra had been so noisily trumpeted 
 by literary lacqueys already, that one's natural instinct was to feel disappointed, 
 and to say so, when the Princess herself came in sight. But it was impossible 
 to feel disappointment, or anything but admiration, at the sight of that bright, fair 
 face, so transparent in the clearness of its complexion, so delicate and refined in 
 its outlines, so sweet and gracious in its expression. I think something like 
 the old-fashioned, chivalric, chimerical feeling of personal loyalty must have 
 flamed up for the moment that day in the hearts of many men, who perhaps 
 would have been ashamed to confess that their first experience of such an emo- 
 tion was due to a passing glimpse of the face of a pretty, tremulous girl. 
 
 If ours were days of augury, men might have shuddered at the omens' which 
 accompanied the wedding ceremonies of the Prince and Princess of Wales. 
 When Goethe, then a youth, surveyed the preparations for the reception of 
 Marie Antoinette at Strasbourg, on her way to Paris, he observed significantly on 
 the inauspicious fact that in the grand chamber adorned for her coming, the 
 tapestry represented the wedding of Jason and Medea. The civil authorities 
 nf London certainly did not greet the fair stranger with any such grisly and 
 ghastly emblazonings ; but there were other and even more inauspicious omens 
 offered by chance and the hour. The sky darkened, a dreary wind whistled ; 
 presently the rain came down in drenching streams that would not abate. There 
 was a mourning-garb at the wedding the black dress of the Queen, who would 
 not lay aside her widow's-weeds even for that hour ; and the night of the weoi- 
 (iing, when the streets of London were illuminated, the crowd was so great that, 
 as on a memorable occasion in the early married life of Marie Antoinette, peo- 
 ple were crushed and trampled to death amid the universal jubilation. 
 
 Well, we defy augury, with Hamlet. But I think some at least in the crowd 
 who welcomed Alexandra felt a kind of doubt and pity as to her future, which 
 needed no inspiration from omens and superstition. No foreign princess has 
 ever been so popular in England as Alexandra ; and assuredly some at least of 
 the affection felt for her springs from a pity which, whether called for or not, is 
 genuine and universal. The last time 1 saw the Princess of Wales was within
 
 36 THE PRINCE OF WALES. 
 
 a very few days of my leaving England to visit the United States. It w^s in 
 Drury Lane Theatre, then fitted up as an opera house in consequence of the re- 
 cent burning of Her Majesty's Theatre. The Prince of Wales, his wife, and one 
 of his sisters were in their box. I had not seen the Princess for some time, and 
 I was painfully impressed with the change which had come over her. Remem- 
 bering, as it was easy to do, the brightness of her beauty during the early days 
 of her marriage, there was something almost shocking in the altered appearance 
 of her face. It looked wasted and haggard ; the complexion, which used to be 
 so dazzlingly fair, had grown dull, and, if I may say so, discolored ; and I must 
 be ungracious enough to declare bluntly that, to my eyes at least, there seemed 
 little trace indeed of the beauty of a few years before left in that dimmed and 
 worn countenance. " Only the eyes remained they would not go." Of course, 
 it must be remembered that the Princess was then only just recovering from a 
 long, painful, and exhausting illness ; and she may have I truly hope she 
 has since then regained all her brightness and beauty. In any case, it 
 would be unjust indeed to assume that the wasted look of the Princess was to 
 be attributed to domestic unhappiness. But even a very matter-of-fact and un- 
 sentimental person, looking at her then, and remembering what she so lately was, 
 might be excused if he fancied that some of the unpropitious omens which sur- 
 rounded the Princess's marriage had already begun to justify themselves in prac- 
 tical fulfilment. 
 
 For even at the time of the marriage of the Prince and Princess there were 
 not wanting prophets of evil who predicted that this royal union would not prove 
 much happier than state-made marriages commonly are. Even then there were 
 stories and reports afloat which ascribed to the Prince habits and tendencies not 
 likely to promote the domestic happiness of a delicate and refined young wife, 
 hardly more than a mere child in years. Indeed, there was already considerable 
 doubt in the public mind as to the personal character of the Prince of Wales. 
 He certainly did not look a very intellectual or refined sort of person even then, 
 and some at least were inclined to think him, as Steerforth says of little Em'ly's 
 lover, "rather a chuckle-headed kind of fellow," to get such a girl. There was, 
 certainly, a breath of serious distrust abroad. On the Prince's coming of age, 
 and again. I think, on the announcement of his approaching marriage, the Lon- 
 don daily papers had set themselves to preaching sermons at him ; and a very 
 foolish chorus of sermons that was which broke out from all those tongues to- 
 gether. The only marked effect of this outburst of lay-preaching was, I fancy, 
 to impress the public mind with the idea that the Prince was really a very much 
 more dreadful young man than there was any good reason to believe him. 
 People naturally imagined that the writers who poured forth such eloquent, wise, 
 and suggestive admonitions must know a great deal more than they felt disposed 
 to hint at ; whereas, I venture to think that, in truth, the majority of the writers 
 were disposed to hint at a great deal more than they knew. For, indeed, almost 
 all that is generally and substantially known of the Prince of Wales has been 
 learned and observed since his marriage. 
 
 Still, even before, and long before the marriage, there were ominous rumors. 
 Those that I mention I give simply as rumors not, indeed, the mere babble of the 
 streets, but as the kind of thing which people told you who professed to know 
 the talk of the House of Commons, and the clubs, and the fashionable drawing- 
 rooms and smoking-rooms. People told you that the Prince and his father had 
 had many quarrels arising out of the extravagance, dissipation, and wrong-head- 
 edness of the former ; and there was even a painful and cruel report thus
 
 THE PRINCE OF WALES 87 
 
 whispered about that the death of Prince Albert was the result of a cold he had 
 taken from walking incautiously in a heavy rain during excitement caused by a 
 quarrel with his son. Stories were told of this and that amour and liaison in 
 Ireland when the Prince of Wales was with the camp on the Curragh of Kil- 
 dare ; of his excesses when he was a student at the University; of his escapades 
 at many other times and places. Certain actresses of a low class, and other 
 women of a still lower class, were pointed out in London as special favorites of 
 the Pi in<^ of Wales. Of course every man of sense knew, first, that stories of 
 this kind must be taken with a large amount of allowance for exaggeration*; and, 
 next, that the public must not expect all the virtues of a saint to belong to the 
 early years of a prince of the family of Guelph. In England public opinion, 
 although it has grown much more exacting of late years on the score of decorum 
 than it used to be, is still disposed to look over without censure a good deal of 
 extravagance and dissipation in young and unmarried men, especially if they be 
 men of rank. Therefore, if the rumors which attended the early career of the 
 Prince of Wales had not followed him into his married years, the world would 
 soon ha"e forgotten all about his youthful indiscretions. But it became a serious 
 question lor the whole nation when it began to be whispered everywhere that 
 the Prince was growing worse instead of better during his married life, and 
 when to the suspicion that he was wasting his own youth and his own credit 
 came to be added the belief that he was neglecting and injuring the young and 
 beautiful woman whom state reasons had assigned to him as a wife. In good 
 truth, it is really a question of public and historical interest whether the Queen 
 of England is likely to be succeeded by an Albert the Good or another George 
 the Fourth ; and I am not therefore inviting the readers of THE GALAXY to de- 
 scend to the useless discussion of a mere piece of idle court scandal when I ask 
 them to consider with me the probabilities of the future from such survey as we 
 can take of the aspects of the present. 
 
 Those who saw the Prince of Wales when he visited this country, would 
 surely fail to recognize the slender, fair-haired, rather graceful youth of that day 
 in the heavy, fat, stolid, prematurely bald, elderly-young-man of this. It would 
 not be easy to see in any assembly a more stupid-looking man than the Prince 
 of Wales is now. On horseback he shows to best advantage. He rides well, 
 and the pleasure he takes in riding lends something of animation to his usually 
 inexpressis-e face. But when his eyes and features lapse into their habitual con- 
 dition of indolent, good-natured, stolid repose, all light of intellect seems to have 
 been banished. The outline of the head and face, and the general expression, 
 seemed to me of late to be growing every day more and more like the head and 
 f.ice of George the Third. Anybody who may happen to have a shilling or half- 
 crown of George the Third's time, can see on the coin a very fair presentment 
 of the countenance of the present heir-apparent of the English throne. 
 Whether the Prince of Wales resembles George the Fourth in character and 
 tastes or not, he certainly does not resemble him in face. Even a court syco- 
 phant could not pretend to see beauty or grace in our present Prince. 
 
 I think that to the eye of the cynic or the satirist the Prince of Wales shows 
 to greatest advantage when he sits in his box at an advanced hour of some 
 rather heavy classic opera, or has to endure a long succession of speeches at a 
 formal public dinner. The heavy head droops, the heavy jaws hang, the languid 
 eyes close, the heir-apparent sinks into a doze. Loyalty itself can see nothing 
 dignified or kingly in him then. I have watched him thus as he sat in his box 
 during some high-class, and to him, doubtless, very heavy performance at the 
 
 432560
 
 88 THE PRINCE OF WALES. 
 
 Italian opera, and have thought that at times he might remind irreverent and 
 disloyal observers of Pickwick's immortal fat boy. I have sometimes observed 
 that his little dozes appeared to afford innocent amusement to his sisters, if any 
 of them happened to be in the box; and occasionally one of the Princesses 
 would playfully poke her slumbering brother in the princely ribs, and the Heir 
 of all the Ages would open his eyes and smile languidly, and try to look at the 
 stage and listen to the music ; and then, after a while, the heavy head would sink 
 once more on the vast expanse of shirt-front in which the Prince seeuis to de- 
 light, and the fat boy would go to sleep again. But this would only happen at cer- 
 tain performances. There were times when the Prince had eyes and ears open 
 and attentive, even in the opera house. His tastes in general, however, are not for 
 high art in music or the drama. He is very fond of the little theatres where the 
 vivacious blondes display their unconcealed attractions. There are, as every- 
 body knows, several minor theatres in London where the audience, or, I should 
 say more properly, the spectators, will be found to consist chiefly of men, while, 
 on the other hand, the performers are chiefly women. These are the temples of 
 the leg drama. " Piece aux jambes ? Ptice aux cuisses ! " indignantly exclaims 
 Eugene Pelletan, denouncing such performances in his "Nouvelle Babylone " ; 
 and he goes on to add some cumulative illustrations which I omit. Well, the 
 Prince of Wales loves the pttce aux jambes, and the theatres where it flourishes. 
 He constantly visits theatres at which his wife and sisters are never seen, and in 
 which it would be idle to deny that there are actresses who have made them- 
 selves conspicuous objects of popular scandal. 
 
 Now, I am far from saying that this necessarily implies anything worse than 
 a low taste on the part of the Prince of Wales. But there are stations in life 
 which render private bad taste a public sin. In London, of late, there has been 
 a just outcry against a certain kind of theatrical performance. It is held to be 
 demoralizing and degrading that the stage should be made simply a show-place 
 for the exhibition of half-naked women, for the audacious display of legs and 
 bosoms. Now, I beg to say for myself that I have entire faith in the dramatic 
 as in every other art ; that I believe it always when truthfully pursued vindicates 
 itself, and that I think any costume which the true and legitimate needs of the 
 drama require is fitting, proper, and modest. I regard the ballet, in its place, as 
 a graceful and delightful entertainment ; and I do not believe that any healthy 
 and pure mind ought to be offended by the kind of costume which the dance re- 
 quires. But artists and moralists in London alike objected, and justly objected, 
 to performances the whole purpose, and business, and attraction of which was 
 the exhibition of a crowd of girls as nearly naked as they could venture to show 
 themselves in public. 
 
 Now this was undoubtedly the kind of exhibition which the Prince of Wales 
 especially favored and patronized. Night after night, even during the long and 
 lamentable illness of his young wife, he visited such theatres, and gazed upon 
 "those prodigies of myriad nakednesses." Likewise did he much delight in the 
 performances of Schneider that high priestess of the obscene, rich with the 
 spoils of princes. I say emphatically that there were actions, gestures, bouffon- 
 neries performed amid peals of laughter and thunders of applause by this fat 
 Faustina in the St. James's Theatre, London, which were only fit to have glad- 
 dened the revels of Sodom and Gomorrah. And this woman was, artistically at 
 .east, the prime favorite of the Prince of Wales ; and when his brother, the Duke 
 of Edinburgh, reached England for the first time after his escape from the Fe- 
 nian bullet in Sydney, the par nobile fratrum celebrated the auspicious event by
 
 THE PRINCE OF WALES. 39 
 
 hastening to the theatre where Schneider kicked and wriggled and helped out 
 the point of lascivious songs by a running accompaniment of obscene gestures. 
 
 So much at least has to be said against the Prince of Wales, and cannot be 
 gainsaid. All that he could do by countenance and patronage to encourage a 
 debauching and degrading style of theatric entertainment, he has done. He is 
 said to be fond of the singing of the vulgar and low buffoons of the music-halls, 
 and to have had such persons brought specially to his residence, MarlborougU 
 House, to sing for him. I have been assured of this often by persons who pro- 
 fessed to know ; but I do not know anything of it myself, nor is it indeed a mat- 
 ter of any importance. The other facts are known to everybody who reads the 
 London papers. The manager or manageress of a theatre takes good care to an- 
 nounce in the journals when a visit from the Prince of Wales has taken place, 
 and we all thus come to know how many times a week the little theatric temples 
 of nakedness have been honored by his presence. 
 
 Am I attaching too much importance to such matters as this ? I think not. 
 The social influence and moral example of a royal personage in England are now 
 almost the only agencies by which the royal personage can affect us for good or 
 evil. I hold that no man thoughtful or prudent enough, no matter what his 
 morals, to be fit to occupy the position assigned to the Prince of Wales, would 
 be guilty of lending his public and constant patronage to such exhibitions and 
 amusements as those which he especially patronizes. Moreover, the Prince h.is 
 often shown a disregard, either cynical or stupid probably the latter for public 
 opinion, a heedlessness of public scandal, in other matters as well. He has made 
 (Companionship for himself among young noblemen conspicuous for their debauch- 
 ery. At a time, not very long ago, when the Divorce Court was occupied with 
 the hearing of a scandalous cause, in which a certain young duke figured most 
 prominently and disgracefully, this young duke was daily and nightly to be seen 
 the close companion of the Prince of Wales. 
 
 Let me touch upon another subject, of a somewhat delicate nature. I have 
 said that there were times when our Prince was always wide awake at the opera 
 house. There is a certain brilliant and capricious little singer whom all England 
 and Germany much admire, and who in certain operatic parts has, I think, no 
 rival. Now, public scandal said that the Prince of Wales greatly admired this 
 lady, and paid her the most marked attentions. Public scandal, indeed, said a 
 great deal more. I hasten to record my conviction that, so far as the fair artiste 
 was concerned, the scandal was wholly unfounded, and that she is a woman of pure 
 character and honor. But the Prince was credited with a special admiration for 
 her; and I am sure the Prince's father under such circumstances would ha\e 
 taken good care to lend no foundation, afford no excuse, for scandal to rest upon. 
 Now, I speak of what I have myself observed when I say that the Prince of 
 Wales, whenever he had an opportunity, always demeaned himself as if he really 
 desired to give the public good reason for believing the scandal, or as if he was 
 too far gone in infatuation to be able to govern his actions. For he was always 
 at the opera when this lady sang ; and he always conducted himself as if he 
 wished to blazon to the world his ostentatious and demonstrative admiration. 
 When the prima donna went off the stage, the Prince disappeared from his box; 
 when she came on the stage again, he returned to his seat ; he lingered behind 
 all his party at the end, that he might give the last note of applause to the dis- 
 appearing singer; he made a more pertinacious show of his enthusiasm than 
 even the military admirer of Miss Snevellicci was accustomed to do. Now, all 
 this may have been only stolidity or silliness, and may not have denoted any-
 
 40 THE PRINCE OF WALES. 
 
 thing like cynicism or coarse disdain of public opinion ; but whatever it indicated, 
 it certainly did not, I think, testify to the existence of qualities likely to be found 
 admirable or desirable in the heir to a throne. 
 
 Of the truth or falsehood of the private scandals in general circulation con- 
 cerning the Prince of Wales I know nothing whatever. But everybody in Eng- 
 land is aware that such stories are told, and can name and point out this or that 
 titled lady as the heroine of each particular story. It need hardly be said that 
 when a man acquires the sort of reputation which attaches to the Prince of 
 \Vales, nothing could be more unjust or unreasonable than to accept, without 
 some very strong ground of belief, any story which couples his name with that 
 of any woman belonging to the society in which he moves. Obviously, it would 
 be enough, in the eyes of an English crowd, that the Prince should now pay any 
 friendly attention to any handsome duchess or countess in order to convert her 
 into an object of scandal. I am myself morally convinced that some of the titled 
 Luiies who are broadly and persistently set down by British gossip as mistresses 
 of the Prince of Wales are as innocent of such a charge as if they had never 
 been within a thousand miles of a court. But the Prince is a little unlucky wher- 
 ever he goes, for scandal appears to pursue him as Horace's black care follows 
 the horseman. When the Prince of Wales happens to be in Paris, he seems to 
 be surrounded at once by the same atmosphere of suspicion and evil report. 
 Some two years ago I chanced to be in Paris at the time the Prince was there, 
 and I can answer for it that observers who had never heard or read of the com- 
 mon gossip of London formed the same impression of his general character that 
 the public of London had already adopted. The Prince was then paying special 
 attention to a brilliant and beautiful lady moving in the court circles of the French 
 capital, a lady who had but very recently distinguished herself by appearing at one 
 of the fancy balls of the Tuileries in the character of the Archangel Michael or 
 Raphael it does not much matter which and attired in a costume which left 
 the company no possibility of doubting the symmetry of her limbs and the gen- 
 eral shapeliness of her person. Malicious satirists circulated thereupon an an- 
 nouncement that the lady was to appear at the next fancy ball as "La Source," 
 the beautiful naked nymph so exquisitely painted by Ingres. This lady rece'ved 
 the special attentions of the Prince of Wales. He followed her, people said, 
 like her shadow; and a smart pun was soon in circulation, which I refrain from 
 giving because it contrives ingeniously to blend with his name the name of the 
 lady in question, and I am not writing a scandalous chronicle. This was the 
 tiiYie when the Prince made his royal mother so very angry by attending the 
 Chantilly races on a Sunday. When he came back to London he had to take 
 part in some public ceremonial I forget now what it was at which the Queen 
 had consented to be present. Her Majesty was present, and I have been assured 
 by a friend who stood quite near that a sort of little scene was enacted which 
 much embarrassed those who had to take part in the official pageantry of the 
 occasion. Up came the Prince, who had travelled in hot haste from Paris, and 
 with a somewhat abashed and sheepish air approached his royal mother. She 
 looked at him angrily, and turned away. The Duke of Cambridge, her cousin, 
 made an awkward effort to mend matters by bringing up the Prince again, and 
 with the action of a friendly and deprecating intercessor presenting the delin- 
 quent. This time, I am assured, the Queen, with determined and angry gestures, 
 and some words spoken in a low tone, repelled intercessor and offender at once ; 
 and the Prince of Wales retired before the threatened storm. The Duke of 
 Edinburgh, who had been lingering a little in the background he, too, had just
 
 THE PRINCE OF WALES. 41 
 
 come from Paris, and he had been to Chantilly anxious to see what kind of re- 
 ception would be accorded to his brother, thought, apparently, that he had seen 
 enough to warrant him in keeping himself at a modest distance on that occasion, 
 and not encountering the terrors of what Thackeray, in "The Rose and the 
 Ring," describes as ''the royal eye." 
 
 I have little doubt that Queen Victoria is a somewhat rigorous and exacting 
 mother, and I should be far from accepting her frown as decisive with regard to 
 the delinquencies of one of her sons. Cigar-smoking alone would probably be 
 accounted by the Queen a sin hardly allowing of pardon. Her husband, Prince 
 Albert, was a man so pure of life, so free from nearly all the positive errors of 
 manhood, so remarkably endowed with at least all the negative virtues, that his 
 companionship might easily have spoiled her for the toleration of natures less 
 calm and orderly. I suspect that the Queen is one of that class of thoroughly 
 good women who, from mere lack of wide sympathies and genial toleration, are 
 not qualified to deal to the best advantage with children who show a little incli- 
 nation for irregularity and self-indulgence. Nor do I believe that the Prince of 
 Wales is the wicked and brutal profligate that common libel makes him out. 
 The shocking story which one sees so often alluded to in the London corre- 
 spondence of certain American papers, and which attributes the long illness of 
 the Princess of Wales to the misconduct of her husband, I believe to be utterly 
 unfounded and unjustifiable. One of the London medical journals, the " Lancet " 
 I think it was, had the courage to refer directly to this monstrous statement, and 
 to give it an emphatic and authoritative refutation. If the worst things said of 
 the Prince of Wales with any appearance of foundation were true, it is certain 
 that he would still not be any worse than many other European princes and 
 sovereigns. I have never heard anything said of the Prince of Wales half so 
 bad as the stones which are believed everywhere in Paris of the enormous profli- 
 gacies of Prince Napoleon ; and it would be hardly possible for charity itself to 
 doubt that up to a very recent period the private life of the Emperor of the 
 French himself was stained with frequent and reckless dissipation. Those who 
 were in Vienna anywhere about the autumn of 1866, will remember the stories 
 which were told about the fatal results of the exalted military command given by 
 the imperial will to certain favored generals, and the kind of influence by which 
 those generals had acquired imperial favor. Common report certainly describes 
 the Empress of Austria as being no happier in her domestic relations than the 
 Princess of Wales. Everybody knows what Victor EmanuePs private char- 
 acter is, and what sort of hopeful youth is his eldest son, L^mberto. Therefore, 
 the Prince of Wales could doubtless plead that he is no worse than his neigh- 
 bors ; and even in his own family he might point to other members no better 
 than himself. The Duke of Cambridge, for instance, has often been accused of 
 profligacy and profligate favoritism. I wish I could venture to repeat here, for 
 the sake of the genuine wit and keen satire of it, a certain epigram in Latin, 
 composed by an English military officer, to describe the influence which brought 
 about the sudden and remarkable promotion of another officer who was not be- 
 lieved to be personally quite deserving of the rank conferred on him by the 
 Duke of Cambridge, commander-in-chief of the British army. But the position 
 cf the Prince of Wales is very different from that of the Duke of Cambridge, 
 and he has to face a public opinion quite unlike that which surrounds Prince Na- 
 poleon or the Emperor of the French. People in France are not inclined to 
 make any very serious complaint about the amours of a prince, or even of an 
 emjieror. I do not venture to say that there is much more of actual immorality
 
 42 THE PRINCE OF WALES. 
 
 in Paris than in London ; but, assuredly, a man may, without harm to his pub- 
 lic and political influence, acknowledge an amount of immorality in Paris which 
 would be utterly fatal to his credit and reputation in London. Moreover, some 
 of the illustrious profligates I have mentioned are distinguished by other quali- 
 ties as well as profligacy; but I cannot say that I have ever heard any positively 
 good quality, either of heart or intellect, ascribed to the Prince of Wales. 
 
 Unless his face, his head, his manners in public, and the tastes he so con- 
 spicuously manifests wholly belie him, the heir to the British throne is a remark- 
 ably dull young man. He cannot even deliver with any decent imitation of 
 intelligence the little speeches which Arthur Helps or somebody else usually gels 
 up for him when the exigencies of the situation compel the Prince to make a 
 speech in public. He is reputed to be parsimonious even in his pleasures, and 
 has managed to get himself deeply into debt without being supposed to have 
 wasted any of his substance in obedience to a generous impulse. The Prince 
 inherited a splendid property. His prudent father had looked well after the rev- 
 enues of the duchy of Cornwall, which is the appanage of the Prince of Wales 
 (even in some very dingy parts of London you may if you hire a house find that 
 )'ou have the Prince of Wales for a landlord), and the property of the heir must 
 have been raised to its very highest value. Yet it is notorious that a very few 
 years after he had attained his majority, Albert Edward had contrived to get 
 deeply immersed in debt. There was for some time a scheme in contemplation 
 to apply to Parliament for an addition to the huge allowance made to the Prince 
 of Wales ; and the "Times " and other newspapers were always urging the fact 
 that the Queen left the Prince to perform nearly all her social duties for her, as 
 a reason why the nation ought to award him an augmented income. It puzzles 
 people in London, who read the papers and who study, as most Britons do, the 
 occupations and pastimes of royalty, to know where the lavish and regal hospi- 
 talities take place which the Prince of Wales is supposed to dispense on behalf 
 of his mother. However, the project for appealing to the generosity of Parlia- 
 ment seems to have been put aside or to have fallen through I have read some- 
 where that the Queen herself has agreed to increase her son's allowance out of 
 her own ample and well-hoarded purse and the English public are not like.'y to 
 be treated to any Parliamentary debate on the subject just yet. But this mucli 
 is certain, that the same almost universal rumor which attributes coarse and dis- 
 sipated habits to the Prince of Wales attributes to him likewise a mean and 
 stingy parsimony where aught save his own pleasure is concerned ; and even 
 there, if by any possibility the pleasure can be obtained without superfluous cost. 
 This then is the character which the son of the Queen of England bears, in 
 the estimation of the vast majority of his mother's subjects. Almost any and 
 every one you meet in London will tell you, as something beyond doubt, that the 
 Prince of Wales is dull, stingy, coarse, and profligate. As for the anecdotes 
 which are told of his habits and tastes by the artists and officials of the theatres 
 which he frequents, I might fairly leave them out of the question, because most 
 of them that I have heard seem to me obvious improbabilities and exaggerations. 
 They have nevertheless a certain value in helping us to a sort of historical esti- 
 mate of the Prince's character. Half the stories told of the humors and de- 
 baucheries of Sheridan and Fox are doubtless inventions or exaggerations ; bu' 
 we are quite safe in assuming that the persons of whom such stories abounu 
 were not frugal, temperate, and orderly men. If the Prince of Wales is not a 
 young man of dissipated habits, then a phenomenon is exhibited in his case 
 which is, I fancy, without any parallel in history the phenomenon of a whole
 
 THE PRINCE OF WALES. 43 
 
 watchful nation, studying the character and habits of one whose position com- 
 pels him to live as in a house of glass, and coming, after years of observation, to 
 a conclusion at once unanimous and erroneous. But were it proved beyond the 
 remotest possibility of doubt that the Prince is personally chaste as a Joseph, 
 temperate as Father Mathew, tender to his wife as the elder Hamlet, attached to 
 his mother as Hamlet the younger, it would still remain a fact indisputable to all 
 of us in London, who have eyes to see and ears to hear, that the Prince is addicted 
 to vulgar amusements ; that he patronizes indecent exhibitions ; that he is given 
 to the companionship of profligate men, and lends his helping hand to the suc- 
 cess and the popularity of immoral and lascivious women. 
 
 What is to be the effect upon England of the reign of the Prince of Wales ? 
 Will England and her statesmen endure the rule of a profligate sovereign ? No 
 country can have undergone in equal time a greater revolution in public taste 
 and sentiment at least, if not in morals, than England has since the time of 
 George the Fourth. No genius, no eloquence, no political wisdom or merits 
 could now induce the English people to put up with the open and undisguised 
 excesses of a Fox ; nor could any English statesman of the rank of Fox be 
 found now who would condescend to pander to the vices of a George the Fourth. 
 Thirty years of decorum in the Court, the Parliament, and the press have created 
 a public feeling in England which will not long bear to be too openly offended 
 by any one. But, although I may seem at first to be enunciating a paradox, I 
 must say that all this is rather in favor of the chances of the Prince of Wales 
 than against them. It will take so small a sacrifice on his part to satisfy every- 
 body, that only the very extravagance of folly could lead him long astray on any 
 unsatisfactory course, when once he has become directly responsible to the na- 
 tion. We are not exacting in England as regards the private conduct of our 
 great people. We only ask them to be publicly decorous. Everywhere in Eng- 
 lish society there is a quite unconscious, naive sort of Pharisaism, the unayowed 
 but actual principle of which is that it matters very little if a man does the 
 wrong thing, provided he publicly acts and says the right thing. I am per- 
 fectly satisfied that the great bu'.k of respectable and Philistine society in Eng- 
 land would regard Robert Dale Owen, with his pure life and his views on the 
 question of divorce, as a far more objectionable person than the veriest profligate 
 who did evil stealthily, and professed to maintain the theory of a rigid marriage 
 bond. The Prince of Wales will therefore need very little actual improvement 
 in his way of life, in order to be all that his future subjects will expect, or care 
 to ask. No one wants the Prince to be a man of ability ; no one wishes him to 
 be a good speaker. If Albert Edward were to rise in the House of Lords some 
 night, and deliver a powerful and eloquent speech, as Prince Napoleon has often 
 done in the French Senate, the English public would be not only surprised but 
 shocked. Such a feat performed by a Prince would seem almost as much out 
 of place, as if he were to follow the example of Caligula or Nero and exhibit 
 himself in the arena as a gladiator. Of course the idea of the Prince of Wales 
 fulminating against the policy of the Crown and the Government, after the fash- 
 ion of Prince Napoleon, would be simply intolerable to the British mind of to- 
 day a thing so outrageous as indeed to be practically inconceivable. The 
 Prince of Wales's part during the coming years, whether as first subject or as 
 ruler, is as easy as could well be assigned to man. It is the very reverse of 
 Bottom's ; it is to avoid all roaring. He must be decorous, and we will put up 
 with any degree of dulness ; he must be decent, and we will all agree to know 
 nothing of any private compensations wherewith he may repay himself for public
 
 44 THE PRINCE OF WALES. 
 
 propriety. All the influences of English statesmanship, rank, religion, jour- 
 nalism, patriotism, Philistinism, and flunkeyism, will instinctively combine to 
 screen the throne against scandal, if only the throne will consent to allow of the 
 possibility of such a protection. I have hardly ever known an Englishman 
 whose hostility to monarchical institutions went so far that he would not be 
 ready to say, " We have got a monarchy ; let us try to make the best we can 
 of it." Therefore the Prince of Wales must be the very Marplot or L'Etourdi 
 of princes, if he cannot contrive to make himse'f endurable to a people who will 
 bear so much rather than be at the trouble of a Change. Of course it is possible 
 that his faults may become grosser and more unmanageable with years (indeed, 
 he is quite old enough already to have sown his wild oats long since); and it 
 would b2 a hard trial upon decorous English statesmen and the English public 
 to endure an openly profligate King. Yet even that nuisance I think would be 
 endured for one lifetime at all events, rather than encounter the danger and 
 trouble of any organic change. 
 
 So long as the Prince of Wales keeps out of politics, he may hold his place 
 well enough ; the England of to-day could far better endure even a George the 
 Fourth than a George the Third. I have little doubt that the Prince of Wales, 
 when he comes to be King, will be discreet in this matter at least. He has never 
 indeed shown any particular interest in political affairs, so far as I have heard. 
 He seems to care little or nothing about the contests of parties. Some three or 
 four years ago, at the time of the celebrated Adullamite secession from the Lib- 
 eral party, there was some grumbling among Radicals because it was reported 
 that the Prince of Wales had expressed a wish to make the acquaintance of 
 Robert Lowe, the brilliant, eccentric chief of the secession, and had had Lowe 
 brought to him and spent a long time talking with him ; and it was urged that 
 this was done by the Prince to mark his approval of the Adullamites and his 
 dislike of radicalism. But just about the very same time the Prince took some 
 trouble to make the acquaintance of John Bright, and paid what might have 
 been considered very flattering attentions to the great popular tribune. The 
 Prince has more than once visited the Pope, and he has likewise more than once 
 visited Garibaldi. Indeed, he seems to have a harmless liking for knowing per- 
 sonally all people who are talked about ; and I fancy he hunted up the Pope, 
 and Garibaldi, and John Bright, and Robert Lowe, just as he sends for Mr. 
 Toole the comic actor, or Blondin, or Chang the giant. Nothing can be safer 
 and better for the Prince in the future than to keep to this wholesome indiffer- 
 ence to politics. In England we could stand Any length of the reign of King 
 Log. I shall not venture to conjecture what might happen if the Prince of 
 Wales were to develop a perverse inclination to "meddle and muddle" in pol- 
 itics, because I think such a thing highly improbable. Mv impression is, on the 
 whole, that things will go on under the reign of the next sovereign in England 
 very much as they have been going on under the present; that the Prince of 
 Wales will be induced to pay a little more attention to decorum and public pro- 
 priety than he has hitherto done ; and that the people of England will laugh at 
 him and cheer for him, talk scandal about him and sing God save him, and 
 finally endure him, on somewhat the same principle as that which induces the 
 New York public to endure overcrowded street-cars and miserable postal ar- 
 rangements just because it is less trouble to each individual to put up with his 
 share of a defective institution, than to go out of his way for the purpose of en- 
 deavoring to organize any combination to get rid of it.
 
 THE KING OF PRUSSIA. 
 
 RONSARD, in one of his songs addressed to his mistress, tells her that 
 in her declining years she will be able to boast that " When I was young 
 a poet sang of me." In a less romantic spirit the writer of this article may 
 boast in old age, should he attain to such blest condition, that "When I was 
 young a king spoke to me." That was the only king or sovereign of any kind 
 with whom I ever exchanged a word, and therefore I may perhaps be allowed 
 to be proud of the occasion and reluctant to let it sleep in oblivion. The king 
 was William, King of Prussia, and the occasion of my being spoken to by a sov- 
 ereign was when I, with some other journalists, was formally presented to King 
 William after his coronation, and listened to a word or two of commonplace, 
 good-humored courtesy. 
 
 The coronation of King William took place, as many readers of THE GAL- 
 AXY are probably aware, in the old historic town of Konigsberg, on the extreme 
 northeastern frontier of Prussia, a town standing on one of the inlets of the Bal- 
 tic Sea, where once the Teutonic Knights, mentioned by Chaucer, were power- 
 ful. Carlyle's " Frederick the Great " had brought Konigsberg prominently before 
 the eyes and minds of English-speaking readers, just previously to the ceremony 
 in which King William was the most conspicuous performer. It is the city 
 where Immanuel Kant passed his long and fruitful life, and which he never 
 quitted. It is a picturesque city in its way, although not to be compared with 
 its neighbor Dantzic. It is a city of canals and streams, and many bridges, and 
 quaint, narrow, crooked streets, wherein are frequent long-bearded and gabar- 
 dined Jews, and where Hebrew inscriptions are seen over many shop-windows 
 and on various door-plates. In its centre the city is domineered over by a 
 Schloss, or castle-palace, and it was in the chapel of this palace that the cere- 
 mony of coronation took place, which provoked at the time so many sharp criti- 
 cisms and so much of popular ridicule. 
 
 The first time I saw the King was when he rode in procession through the 
 indent city, some two or three days before the performance of the coronation. 
 He seemed a fine, dignified, handsome, somewhat bluff old man he was then 
 sixty-four or sixty-five years of age with gray hair and gray moustache, and an 
 expression which, if it did not denote intellectual power, had much of cheerful 
 strength and the charm of a certain kind of frank manhood about it. He rode 
 well riding is one of the accomplishments in which kings almost always excel 
 and his military costume became him. Certainly no one was just then dis- 
 posed to be very enthusiastic about him, but every one was inclined to make the 
 best of the sovereign and the situation ; to forget the past and look hopefully 
 into the future. The manner in which the coronation ceremony was conducted, 
 and the speech which the King delivered soon after it, produced a terrible shock 
 of disappointment ; for in each the King manifested that he understood the crown 
 to be a gift not from his people, but from heaven. To me the ceremonies in the 
 chapel, splendid and picturesque as was the mise en scene, appeared absurd and 
 even ridiculous. The King, bedizened in a regal costume which suggested 
 Drury Lane or Niblo's Garden, lifting a crown from off the altar (was it, by the 
 way, an altar ?) and, without intervention of human aid other than his own hands, 
 placing it upon his head, to signify that he had his crown from heaven, not from
 
 40 THE KING OF PRUSSIA 
 
 man ; then putting another crown upon the head of his wife, to show that she 
 derived her dignities from him ; and then turning round and brandishing a gi 
 gantic sword, as symbolical of his readiness to defend his State and people all 
 this seemed to me too suggestive of the opera comique to suit the simple dignity 
 of the handsome old soldier. Far better and nobler did he look in his military 
 uniform and with his spiked helmet, as he sat on his horse in the streets, than 
 when, arrayed in crimson velvet cloak and other such stage paraphernalia of con- 
 ventional royalty, he stood in the castle chapel, the central figure in a ceremo- 
 nial of mediaeval splendor and worse than mediaeval tediousness. 
 
 But the King's face, bearing, and manner, as I saw him in Konigsberg, and 
 immediately afterwards in Berlin, agreeably disappointed me. It was one of the 
 best faces to be seen among all the throng at banquet and ball and pageant 
 during those days of gorgeous and heavy ceremonial. At the coronation per- 
 formances there were two other personages who may be said to have divided 
 public curiosity and interest with the King. One was the illustrious Meyerbeer, 
 who composed and conducted the coronation ode, which thus became almost his 
 swan-song, his latest notes before death. The other was a man whose name has 
 lately again divided attention with that of the King of Prussia Marshal Mac- 
 M.ihon, Duke of Magenta. MacMahon was sent to represent the Emperor of 
 the French at the coronation, and he was then almost fresh from the glory of 
 his Lombardy battles. There was great curiosity among the Konigsberg pub- 
 lic to get a glimpse of this military hero; and although even Prussians could 
 hardly be supposed to take delight in a fame acquired at the expense of other 
 Germans, I remember being much struck by the quiet, candid good-humor 
 with which people acknowledged that he had beaten their countrymen. There 
 w is, indeed, a little vexation and anger felt when some of the representatives of 
 Posen, the Prussian Poland, cheered somewhat too significantly for MacMahon 
 as he drove in his carriage from the palace. The Prussians generally felt an- 
 noyed that the Poles should have thus publicly and ostentatiously demonstrated 
 their sympathy with France and their admiration of the French general who had 
 defeated a German army. But except for this little ebullition of feeling, natural 
 enough on both sides, MacMahon was a popular figure at the King's corona- 
 tion ; and before the ceremonies were over, the King himself had become any- 
 thing but popular. The foreigners liked him for the most part because his man- 
 ners were plain, frank, hearty, and agreeable, and to the foreigners it was a mat- 
 ter of little consequence what he said or did in the accepting of his crown. But 
 the Germans winced under his blunt repudiation of the principle of popular sov- 
 ereignty, and in the minds of some alarmists painful and odious memories began 
 to revive and to transform themselves into terrible omens for the future. 
 
 For this pleasant, genial, gray-haired man, whose smile had so much of honest 
 frankness and even a certain simple sweetness about it, had a grim and blood- 
 stained history behind him. Not Napoleon the Third himself bore a more omi- 
 nous record when he ascended the throne. The blood of the Berliners was pur- 
 ple on those hands which now gave so kindly and cheery a welcome to all 
 comers. The revolutionists of Baden held in bitter hate the stern prince who 
 was so unscrupulous in his mode of crushing out popular agitation. From 
 Cologne to Konigsberg, from Hamburg to Trieste, all Germans had for years had 
 reason only too strong to regard William Prince of Prussia as the most resolute 
 and relentless enemy of popular liberty. When the Pope was inspiring the 
 hearts of freemen and patriots everywhere in Europe with sudden and splendid 
 hopes doomed to speedy disappointment, the Prince of Prussia, was execrated
 
 THE KING OF PRUSSIA. 47 
 
 with the Hapsburgs, the Bourbons, and the Romanoffs. The one on.y thing 
 commonly said in his favor was that he was honest and would keep his word. 
 The late Earl of Clarendon, one of the most incautious and blundering of di 
 plomatists (whom after his death the English newspapers have been eulogizing as 
 a very sage and prince of statesmen), embodied this opinion sharply in a few 
 words which he spoke to a friend of mine in Konigsberg. Clarendon represented 
 Uueen Victoria at the coronation ceremonies, and my friend happened in conver- 
 sation with him to be expressing a highly disparaging opinion of the King of 
 Prussia. "There is just this to be said of him," the British Envoy remarked 
 aloud in the centre of a somewhat miscellaneous group of listeners "he is an 
 honest man and a man of his word ; he is not a Corsican conspirator." 
 
 Yes, this was and is the character of the King of Prussia. In good and evil 
 he kept his word. You might trust him to do as he had said. During the 
 greater part of his life the things he promised to do and did were not such as 
 free men could approve. He set out in life with a genuine detestation of liberal 
 principles and of anything that suggested popular revolution. William of Prus- 
 sia is certainly not a man of intellect or broad intelligence or flexibility of mind. 
 He would be in private life a respectable, steady, rather dull sort of man, honest 
 as the sun, just as likely to go wrong as right in his opinions, perhaps indeed a 
 shade more likely to go wrong than right, and sure to be doggedly obstinate in any 
 opinion which he conceived to be founded on a principle. Horror of revolution was 
 naturally his earliest public sentiment. He was one of the princes who entered 
 P iris in 1815 with the allied sovereigns when they came to stamp out Bonapart- 
 ism ; and he seemed to have gone on to late manhood with the conviction that 
 the mission of honest kings was to prevent popular agitation from threatening 
 the divine right of the throne. Naturally enough, a man of such a character, 
 whose chief merits were steadfastness and honesty, was much disgusted by the 
 vacillation, the weakness, the half-unconscious deceitfulness of his brother, the lale 
 Frederick William. Poor Frederick William ! well-meaning, ill-doing dreamer, 
 "wind-changing" as Warwick, a sort of Rene of Anjou placed in a responsi- 
 ble position and cast into a stormy age. What blighted hopes and bloody streets 
 were justly laid to his charge to the charge of him who asked nothing better 
 th ;n to be able to oblige everybody and make all his people happy ! Frederick 
 William loved poetry and poets in a feeble, dilettante sort of way. He liked, 
 one might say, to be thought to like the Muses and the Graces. He used to in- 
 sist upon Tieck the poet reading aloud his new compositions to the royal circle 
 of evenings ; and when the bard began to read the King would immediately fall 
 asleep, and nod until he nodded himself into wakefulness again ; and then he 
 would start up and say, " Bravo, Tieck ! Delightful, Tieck ! Go on reading, 
 Tieck!" and then to sleep again. He liked in this sort of fashion the poetic 
 and sentimental aspects of revolution, and he dandled popular movements on his 
 royal knee until they became too demonstrative and frightened him, and then he 
 shook them off and shrieked for the aid of his strong-nerved brother. One day 
 Frederick William would be all for popular government and representative 
 monarchy, and what not ; the next day he became alarmed and receded, and was 
 e->,i;er to crush the hopes he had himself awakened. He was always breaking 
 his word to his people and his country, and yet he was not personally an un- 
 truthful man like English Charles the First. In private life he would have been 
 amiable, respectable, gently aesthetical and sentimental ; placed in a position of 
 responsibility amid the seething passions and conflicting political currents of 
 1848, he proved himself a very dastard and caitill. Germ my could hardly have
 
 48 THE KING OF PRUSSIA. 
 
 had upon the throne of Prussia a worse man for such a crisis. He was unlucky 
 in every way; for his vacillation drew on him the repute of hypocrisy, and his 
 whimsical excitable manners procured for him the reproach of intemperance. A 
 sincerely pious man in his way, he was almost universally set down as a hypo- 
 crite ; a sober man who only drank wine medicinally on the order of his physi- 
 cians, he was favored throughout Europe with the nickname of " King Clic- 
 quot." His utter imbecility before and after the massacre of those whom he 
 called his "beloved Berliners," made him more detestable to Berlin than was his 
 blunt and stern brother, the present King, who gave with his own lips the orders 
 which opened fire on the population. A more unkingly figure than that of poor, 
 weak, well-intentioned, sentimental, lachrymose Frederick William, never in our 
 days at least has been seen under a royal canopy. 
 
 It was but natural that such a character or no-character as this should disgust 
 his brother and successor, the present King. Frederick William, as everybody 
 knows, had no son to succeed him. The stout-hearted William would have 
 liked his brother and sovereign to be one thing or the other ; a despot of course 
 he would have preferred, but he desired consistency and steadfastness on what- 
 ever side. William, it must be owned, was for many years a downright stupid, 
 despotic old feudalist. At one of his brother's councils he flung his sword upon 
 the table and vowed that he would rather appeal to that weapon than consent to 
 rule over a people who dared to claim the right of voting their own taxes. He 
 appears to have had the sincere stupid faith that Heaven directly tells or teaches 
 kings how to rule, and that a king fails in his religious duty who takes counsel 
 of aught save his own convictions. Perhaps a good many people in lowlier life 
 are like William of Prussia in this respect. He certainly was not the only per- 
 son in our time who habitually accepted his own likings and dislikings as the 
 appointed ordinances of Heaven. In my own circle of acquaintance I think I 
 have known such individuals. 
 
 Thus William of Prussia strode through life sword in hand menacing and, 
 where he could, suppressing popular movement. Yet he was saved from utter 
 detestation by the admitted integrity of his character a virtue so dear to Ger- 
 mans, that for its sake they will pardon harshness and sometimes even stupidity. 
 People disliked or dreaded him, but they despised his brother. There was a 
 certain simplicity, too, always seen in William's mode of living which pleased the 
 country. There was no affectation about him ; he was almost as much of a 
 plain, unpretending soldier as General Grant himself. Since he became King, 
 anybody passing along the famous Unterden Linden might see the white-haired, 
 simple old man writing or reading at the window of his palace. He was in this 
 respect a sort of military Louis Philippe ; a Louis Philippe with a strong pur- 
 pose and without any craft. Therefore, when the death of his brother in 1861 
 called him to the throne, he found a people anxious to give him credit for every 
 good quality and good purpose, willing to forget the past and look hopefully into 
 the coming time. They only smiled at his renewal of the coronation ceremonies 
 at Konigsberg, believing that the old soldier thought there was something of a 
 religious principle somehow mixed up in them, and that it was the imaginary 
 piety, not the substantial pomp, which commended to his mind so gorgeous and 
 costly an anachronism. After the coronation ceremonies, however, came back 
 the old unpopularity. The King, people said, has learned nothing and forgotten 
 nothing since he was Prince of Prussia. Every act he did after his accession 
 to the crown seemed only more and more to confirm this impression. It was. 
 1 think, about this time that the celebrated " Diary " of Varnhagen von Ense was
 
 THE KING OF PRUSSIA.' 49 
 
 published by the niece of the deceased diplomatist; a diary full in itself of the 
 most piquant interest, but made yet more piquant and interesting by the bitter 
 and foolish persecution with which the King's officials endeavored to suppress 
 the work and punish its publishers. I have not read or even seen the book for 
 years, but the impression it made on me is almost as distinct just now as it was 
 when I laid down the last of its many and vivacious volumes. 
 
 Varnhagen von Ense was a bitter creature, and the pen with which he wrote his 
 diary seems to have been dipped in gall of special acridity. The diary goes over 
 many years of Berlin court life, and the present King of Prussia is one of its cen- 
 tral figures. The author does not seem to have had much respect for anybody ; 
 and King William was evidently an object of his particular detestation. All the 
 doings of the days of 1848 are recorded or commented on, and the pages are inter- 
 spersed with notices of the sharp ungenial things said by one royal personage of 
 another. If the late Frederick William chose to say an ill-natured thing of Queen 
 Victoria of England, down goes the remark in Varnhagen's pages, and it is chroni- 
 cled for the perusal of all the world. We learn from the book that the present 
 King of Prussia does not live on the most genial terms with his wife Augusta ; 
 that Augusta has rather a marked inclination towards Liberalism, and would find 
 nothing more pleasant than a little coquetry with Revolution. Varnhagen inti- 
 mates that the illustrious lady loved lions and novelties of any kind, and that at 
 the time he writes she would have been particularly glad to make the acquaint- 
 ance of Louis Blanc; and he more than hints at a decided inclination on her 
 part to porter le pantalon an inclination which her husband was not at all likely 
 to gratify, consciously at least. Of the progressive wife Varnhagen speaks with 
 no whit more respect than of the reactionary husband ; and indeed he seems to 
 look with irreverent and cynical eyes on everything royal that comes under 
 his observation. Throughout the whole of the diary, the figure of the present 
 King comes out consistently and distinctly. William is always the blunt, dull, 
 wrong-headed, I might almost say pig-headed soldier-fanatic, who will do and 
 suffer and make others do and suffer anything, in a cause which he believes to 
 be right. With all Varnhagen von Ense's bitterness and scorn, he gives us no 
 worse idea of King William than just this. But judging from the expression of the 
 King's face, from his manner, and from what I have heard of him in Berlin and 
 elsewhere, I should say there was a good deal of individual kindness and bon- 
 homie in him for which the critic did not give him credit. I think he is, on the 
 whole, better than Varnhagen von Ense chose to paint him or see him. 
 
 From Alexander Humboldt, as well as from Varnhagen von Ense, we learn a 
 good deal of the inner life of kings and queens and princes in Berlin. There is 
 something almost painful in reflecting on the kind of life which Humboldt must 
 have led among these people, whom he so cordially despised, and whom ifl. his. 
 private chroniclings he so held up to scorn. The great philosopher assuredly 
 had a huge treasure of hatred locked up in his heart. He detested and scorned 
 these royal personages, \\lio so blandly patronized him. or were sometimes so. 
 rough in their condescending familiarity. Nothing takes the. gilt off the. life of 
 courts so much as a perusal of what Humboldt has written about it. Ooe hardly 
 cares to think of so great, and on the whole so noble a man, living a life of what 
 seems so like perpetual dissimulation ; of his. enduring these royal dullards, ami 
 pert princesses, and doubtless seeming profoundly reverential, and then going, 
 home of nights to put down on paper his record of their vulgaritv, and selfish- 
 ness, and impertinence. Sometimes rlumboldt was not able to contain himself 
 within the limits of court politeness. The late King of Hapove.r (father, of til) ft
 
 CO THE KING OF PRUSSIA. 
 
 now dethroned King George) was a rough brutal trooper, who had made himself 
 odious in England as the Duke of Cumberland, and was accused by popular 
 rumors of the darkest crimes unjustly accused certainly, in the case where he 
 was charged with the murder of his valet. The Duke did not make a very 
 bad sort of King, as kings then went ; but he retained all his roughness and 
 coarseness of manner. He once accosted Humboldt in the palace of the late 
 King of Prussia, and in his pleasant graceful way asked why it was that the 
 Prussian court was always full of philosophers and loose women describing 
 the latter class of visitors by a very direct and expressive word. "Perhaps," 
 replied Humboldt blandly, " the King invites the philosophers to meet me, and 
 the other persons to please your Majesty ! " Humboldt seems to have had lit- 
 tle liking for any of the illustrious personages he met under the roof of the King 
 of Prussia. A brief record he made of a conversation with the late Prince Al- 
 bert (for whom he expressed a great contempt) went far when it was published 
 to render the husband of Queen Victoria more unpopular and even detested in 
 Ireland than another Geor,- the Fourth would have been. The Irish people 
 will probably never forget that, accordiug to the statement of Humboldt, the 
 Prince spoke contemptuously of Irish national aspirations, declared he had no 
 sympathy with the Irish, and that they were as restless, idle, and unmanageable 
 as the Poles a pretty speech, the philosopher remarks, to be made by the hus- 
 band of the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Some attempt was made when 
 this record of Humboldt's came to light to dispute the truth of it; but Humboldt 
 was certainly not a liar and anyhow the Irish people believed the story and it 
 did no little mischief; and Humboldt in his grave might have had the consola- 
 tion of knowing that he had injured one prince at least. 
 
 What we learn of the King of Prussia through Humboldt is to the same ef- 
 fect as the teaching of Varnhagen's cynical spirit ; and I think, if these keen ir- 
 reverent critics did not do him wrong, his Majesty must have softened and im- 
 proved with the responsibilities of royalty. In many respects one might be in- 
 clined to compare him with the English George the Third. Both were indeed 
 dull, decent, and fanatical. But there are some wide differences. George the 
 Third was obstinate in the worst sense ; his was the obstinacy of a stupid, self- 
 conceited man who believes himself wise and right in everything. Now, I fancy 
 the King of Prussia is only obstinate in what he conceives, rightly or wrongly, to 
 be questions of duty and of principle ; and that there are many subjects, politi- 
 cal and otherwise, of which he does not believe himself to be the mcst com- 
 petent judge, and which therefore he is quite willing to leave to the considera- 
 tion and decision of others. For instance, it was made evident that in the be- 
 ginning of the transactions which were followed by (although they cannot be 
 said to have caused) the present war, the King more than once expressed him- 
 self willing to do certain things, of which, however, Count von Bismarck subse- 
 .quently disapproved ; and the King quietly gave way. "You know better than 
 ! do ; act as you think best," is, I believe, a quite common sentence on the lips 
 of King William, when he is talking with this or that trusted minister. Then 
 again it has been placed beyond all doubt that George the Third could be, when 
 he thought fit, the most unabashed and unscrupulous of liars ; and not even 
 hatred itself will charge King William with any act or word of falsehood or 
 duplicity. 
 
 Steadily did the King grow more and more unpopular after his coronation. 
 All the old work of prosecuting newspapers and snubbing, or if possible punish- 
 ing, free-spoken politicians, came into play again. The King quarrelled fiercel}
 
 THE KING OF PRUSSIA. 51 
 
 with his Parliament about the scheme of army reorganization. I think he was 
 right as to the scheme, although terribly wrong-headed and high-handed in his 
 way of forcing it down the throats of the people, and, aided by his House of 
 Peers, he waged a sort of war upon the nation's representatives. Then first came 
 to the front that extraordinary political figure, which before very long had cast 
 into the shade every other in Europe, even including that of the Emperor Na- 
 poleon ; that marvellous compound of audacity and craft, candor and cunning, 
 the profound sagacity of a Richelieu, the levity of a Palmerston ; imperturbably 
 good-humored, inimitably unscrupulous ; a patriot without lofty emotion of any 
 kind, a statesman who could sometimes condescend to be a juggler ; part bully, 
 part buffoon, but always a man of supreme courage, inexhaustible resources ot 
 brain and tongue always in short a man of genius. I need hardly add that I am 
 speaking of the Count von Bismarck. 
 
 At the time of the Schleswig-Holstein campaign, there was probably no public 
 man in Europe so generally unpopular as the King of Prussia, except perhaps 
 his Minister, the Count von Bismarck. In England it was something like an 
 article of faith to believe that the King was a bloodthirsty old tyrant, his Prime 
 Minister a combination of Strafford and Sejanus, and his subjects generally a set 
 of beer-bemuddled and servile blockheads. The dislike felt toward the King 
 was extended to the members of his family, and the popular conviction in Eng- 
 land was that the Princess Victoria, wife of the King's son, had a dull coarse 
 drunkard for a husband. It is perfectly wonderful how soon an absurdly errone- 
 ous idea, if there is anything about it which jumps with the popular humor, 
 takes hold of the public mind of England. The English people regarded the 
 Prussians with utter detestation and contempt. Not only that, but they regarded 
 it as quite a possible and even likely thing that poor brave little Denmark, with 
 a population hardly larger than that of the city of New York, could hold her 
 own, alone, against the combined forces of Austria and Prussia. One might 
 have thought that there never was a Frederick the Great or an Archduke 
 Charles ; that the only part ever played in history by Germans was that of im- 
 potent braggarts and stupid cowards. When there seemed some prospect of 
 England's drawing the sword for Denmark, " Punch " published a cartoon which 
 was very popular and successful. It represented an English sailor and soldier 
 of the conventional dramatic style, looking with utter contempt at two awkward 
 shambling boobies with long hair and huge meerschaums one booby supposed 
 to represent Prussia, the other Austria ; and Jack Tar says to his friend the red- 
 coat : " They can't expect us to fight fellows like those, but we'll kick them, of 
 course, with pleasure." This so fairly represented the average public opinion of 
 England that there was positively some surprise felt in London when it was 
 found that the Prussians really could fight at all. Towards the Austrians there 
 was nothing like the same ill-feeling ; and when Bismarck's war against Austria 
 (I cannot better describe it) broke out shortly after, the sympathy of England 
 went almost unanimously with the enemy of Prussia. Ninety-nine men out of 
 every hundred firmly believed that Austria would clutch Italy with one hand and 
 Prussia with the other, and easily choke the life out of both. About the merits 
 of the quarrel nobody in England outside the range of a very few politicians and 
 journalists troubled himself at all. It was settled that Austria had somehow 
 come to represent the cause of human freedom and progress ; that the King of 
 Prussia was a stupid and brutal old trooper, hurried to his ruin by the evil coun- 
 sels of a drunken Mephistopheles ; and that the Austrian forces would simply 
 walk over the Prussians into Berlin. There was but one newspaper in London
 
 52 THE KING OF PRUSSIA. 
 
 (and it has since died) which ventured to suggest, first, that perhaps the Prus- 
 sians had the right side of the quarrel, and next, that perhaps they would have 
 the better in the fight. 
 
 With the success of Prussia at Sadowa ended King William's personal un- 
 popularity in Europe. Those who were prepared to take anything like a rational 
 view of the situation began to see that there must be some manner of great 
 cause behind such risks, sacrifices, and success. Those who disliked Prussia 
 more than ever, as many in France did, were disposed to put the King out of 
 their consideration altogether, and to turn their detestation wholly on the King's 
 Minister. In fact, Bismarck so entirely eclipsed or occulted the King, that the 
 latter may be said to have disappeared from the horizon of European politics. 
 His good qualities or bad qualities no longer counted for aught in the estimation 
 of foreigners. Bismarck was everything, the King was nothing. Now I wish 
 the readers of THE GALAXY not to take this view of the matter. In everything 
 which has been done by Prussia since his accession to the throne, King William 
 has counted for something. His stern uncompromising truthfulness, seen as 
 clearly in the despatches he sent from recent battle-fields as in any other deeds 
 of his life, has always counted for much. So too has his narrow-minded 
 dread of anything which he believes to savor of the revolution. So has 
 his thorough and devoted Germanism. I am convinced that it would have 
 been far more easy of late to induce Bismarck to make compromises with 
 seemingly powerful enemies at the expense of German soil, than it would 
 have been to persuade Bismarck's master to consent to such proposals. 
 The King's is far more ot a typical German character (except for its 
 lack of intellect) than that of Bismarck, ,n whom there is so much of French 
 audacity as well as of French humor. On the other hand, I would ask my 
 readers not to rush into wild admiration ot the King of Prussia, or to suppose 
 that liberty owes him personally any direct thanks. King William's subjects 
 know too well that they have little to thank him for on that score. Strange as 
 the comparison may seem at first, it is not less true that the enthusiasm now felt 
 by Germans for the King is derived from just the same source as the early 
 enthusiasm of Frenchmen for the first Napoleon. In each man his people 
 see the champion who has repelled the aggression of the insolent foreigner, and 
 has been strong enough to pursue the foreigner into his own home and there 
 chastise him for his aggression. The blind stupidity of Austria and the crimes 
 of Bonapartism have made King William a patriot King. When Thiers wittily 
 and bitterly said that the Second Empire had made two great statesmen. Cavour 
 and Bismarck, he might have said with still closer accuracy that it had made one 
 great sovereign, William of Prussia. Never man attained such a position as 
 that lately won by King William with less of original "outfit" to qualify him for 
 the place. Five or six years ago the King of Prussia was as much disliked and 
 distrusted by his own subjects as ever the Emperor of the French was by the 
 followers of the Left. Look back to the famous days when " Bockum-DolfFs 
 hat" seemed likely to become a symbol of civil revolution in Germany. Look 
 back to the time when the King's own son and heir apparent, the wnrrior Crown 
 Prince who since has flamed across so many a field of blood, felt called upon 
 to make formal protest in a public speech against the illiberal, repressive, 
 and despotic policy of his father ! Think of these things, and say whether any 
 change could be more surprising than that which has converted King William 
 into the typical champion and patriot of Germany; and when you seek the ex- 
 planation of the change, you will simply find that the worst enemies of Prussia
 
 THE KING OF PRUSSIA. 53 
 
 have been unwittingly the kindest friends and the best patrons of Prussia's 
 honest and despotic old sovereign. 
 
 I think the King of Prussia's subjects were not wrong when they disliked 
 and dreaded him, and I also think they are now not wrong when they trust and 
 applaud him. It has been his great good fortune to reign during a period when 
 the foreign policy of the State was of infinitely greater importance than its do- 
 mestic management. It became the business of the King of Prussia to help his 
 country to assert and to maintain a national existence. Nothing better was 
 needed in the sovereign for this purpose than the qualities of a military dictator, 
 and the King, in this case, was saved all trouble of thinking and planning. 
 He had but to accept and agree to a certain line of policy a certain set of na- 
 tional principles and to put his foot down on these and see that they were car- 
 ried through. For this object the really manly and sturdy nature of the King 
 proved admirably adapted. He upheld manfully and firmly the standard of the 
 nation. His defective qualities were rendered inactive, and had indeed no occa- 
 sion or chance to display themselves, while all that was good of him came into 
 full activity and bold relief. But I do not believe that the character of the King 
 in any wise changed. He was a dull, honest, fanatical martinet when he turned 
 his cannon against German liberals in 1848; he was a dull, honest, fanatical 
 martinet when he unfurled the flag of Prussia against the Austrians in 1866 
 and against the French in 1870. The brave old man is only happy when doing 
 what he thinks right ; but he wants alike the intellect and the susceptibilities 
 which enable people to distinguish right from wrong, despotism from justice, 
 necessary firmness from stolid obstinacy. But for the wars and the great nation- 
 al issues which rose to claim instant decision. King William would have gone on 
 dissolving Parliaments and punishing newspapers, levying taxes without the con- 
 sent of representatives, and making the police-officer the master of Berlin. The 
 vigor which was so popular when employed in resisting the French, would as- 
 suredly otherwise have found occupation in repressing the Prussians. I see 
 nothing to admire in King William but his courage and his honesty. People 
 who know him personally speak delightedly of his sweet and genial manners in 
 private life ; and I have observed that, like many another old moustache, he has 
 the art of making himself highly popular with the ladies. There is a celebrated 
 little prima donna as well known in London as in Berlin, who can only speak of 
 the bluff monarch as der siisse Konig "the sweet King." Indeed, there are 
 not wanting people who hint that Queen Augusta is not always quite pleased at 
 the manner in which the venerable soldier makes himself agreeable to dames 
 and demoiselles. Certainly the ladies seem to be generally very enthusiastic 
 about his Majesty when they come into acquaintanceship with him, and to the 
 Prima donna I have mentioned his kindness and courtesy have been only such 
 as are well worthy of a gentleman and of a king. Still we all know that it does 
 not take a great effort on the part of a sovereign to make people, especially 
 women, think him very delightful. I do not, therefore, make much account of 
 King William's courtesy and bonhomie in estimating his character. For all the 
 service he has done to Germany let him have full thanks ; but I cannot bring 
 myself to any warmth of personal admiration for him. It is indeed hard to look 
 at him without feeling for the moment some sentiment of genuine respect. The 
 fine head and face, with its noble outlines and its frank pleasant smile, the state- 
 ly, dignified form, which some seventy-five years have neither bowed nor enfee- 
 bled, make the King look like some splendid old paladin of the court of Charle- 
 magne. He is, indeed, despite his years, the finest physical specimen of a sov-
 
 S4 THE KING OF PRUSSIA. 
 
 ereign Europe just now can show. Compare him with the Emperor Napoleon, 
 so many years his junior compare his soldierly presence, his manly bearing, his 
 clear frank eyes, his simple and sincere expression, with the prematurely wasted 
 and crippled frame, the face blotched and haggard, the lack-lustre eyes which 
 seem always striving to avoid direct encounter with any other glance, the sham- 
 bling gait, the sinister look of the nephew of the great Bonaparte, and you will 
 say that the Prussians have at least had from the beginning of their antagonism 
 an immense advantage over their rivals in the figurehead which their State was 
 enabled to exhibit. But I cannot make a hero out of stout King William, al- 
 though he has bravery enough of the common, military kind, to suit any of the 
 heroes of the " Nibelungen Lied." He never would, if he could, render any ser- 
 vice to liberty ; he cannot understand the elements and first principles of popular 
 freedom ; to him the people is always, as a child, to be kept in leading string s 
 and guided, and, if at all boisterous or naughty, smartly birched and put in a 
 dark corner. There is nothing cruel about King William ; that is to say, he 
 would not willingly hurt any human creature, and is, indeed, rather kind-hearted 
 and humane than otherwise. He is as utterly incapable of the mean spites and 
 shabby cruelties of the great Frederick, whose statue stands so near his palace, 
 as he is incapable of the savage brutalities and indecencies of Frederick's 
 father. He is, in fact, simply a dull old disciplinarian, saturated through and 
 through with the traditions of the feudal party of Germany, his highest merit 
 being the fact that he keeps his word that he is "a still strong man" who 
 "cannot lie ;" his noblest fortune being the happy chance which called on him to 
 lead his country's battles, instead of leaving him free to contend against, and per- 
 haps for the time to crush, his country's aspirations after domestic freedom. 
 Kind Heaven has allowed him to become the champion and the representative 
 of German unity that unity which is Germany's immediate and supreme need, 
 calling for the postponement of every other claim and desire ; and this part he 
 has played like a man, a soldier, and a king. But one can hardly be expected to 
 forget all the past, to forget what Humboldt and Varnhagen von Ense wrote, 
 what Jacobi and Waldeck spoke, what King William did in 1848, and what he said 
 in 1861 ; and unless we forget all this and a great deal more to the same effect, we 
 can hardly help acknowledging that but for the fortunate conditions which al- 
 lowed him to prove himself the best friend of German unity, he would probably 
 have proved himself the worst enemy of German liberty. 
 
 '
 
 VICTOR EMANUEL, KING OF ITALY. 
 
 I HAVE before me just now a little silver coin picked up in Savoy very 
 soon after Italy had become a kingdom, and Savoy had ceased to be part 
 of it. That was in truth the only thing that made the coin in any way specially 
 interesting the fact that it happened to be in chance circulation through Savoy 
 when Savoy had no longer any claim to it. So, for that little scrap of melan- 
 choly interest I have since kept the coin in my purse, and it has made many 
 journeys with me in Europe and America ; and I suppose I can never be utterly 
 destitute while it remains in my possession. Now, the head which is displayed 
 upon that coin is not of kingly mould. The mint has flattered its royal master 
 much less than is usual with such portrait painters. An English silver or gold 
 coin of this year's mintage will still represent Her Majesty Queen Victoria as 
 a beautiful young woman of twenty, with features worthy of a Greek statue and 
 a bust shapely enough for Dryden's Iphigenia. But the coin of King Victor 
 Emanuel has little flattery in it. There is the coarse, bulldog cast of face ; 
 there are the heavy eye-brows, the unshapely nose, the hideous moustache, the 
 receding forehead, and all the other beauties and graces of the " bloat King's " 
 countenance. Certainly the face on the coin is not bloated enough, and there 
 is too little animalism displayed in the back of the head, to do justice to the first 
 King of Italy. Moreover, the coin gives somehow the idea of a small man, and 
 the King of Italy finds it not easy to get a horse strong enough to bear the load 
 of Antony. But for a coin it is a wonderfully honest and truthful piece of work, 
 quite a model to other mints, and it gave when it was issued as fair an idea as 
 a little piece of silver could well give of the head and face of Europe's most ill- 
 favored sovereign. 
 
 What a chance Victor Emanuel had of being a hero of romance ! No king 
 perhaps ever had such a chance before, and missed it so persistently. Europe 
 seemed at one time determined, whether he would or no, to make a hero, a 
 knight, a preux chevalier, out of the SOH of Charles Albert. Not Charles Ed- 
 ward, the brilliant, unfortunate Stuart himself, not Gustavus Adolphus eveu 
 seemed to have been surrounded by such a romantic rainbow of romance and 
 of hope. When, after the crowning disaster of Novara, Victor Emanuel's weak, 
 vacillating, unlucky, and not very trustworthy father abdicated the crown of 
 Sardinia in favor of his son, the latter seemed in the eyes of liberal Europe to 
 represent not merely the hopes of all true Italians, but the best hopes of liberty 
 and progress all over the world. There was even then a vague idea afloat 
 through Europe although Europe did not know how Cavour had already ac- 
 cepted the idea as a principle of action that with her tremendous defeats Pied- 
 mont had won the right to hoist the standard of one Italy. This then was the 
 cause which the young King was taken to represent. He had been baptized in 
 blood to that cause. He represented Italy united and free free from Austrian 
 and Pope, from political and religious despotism. He was at all events no car- 
 pet knight. He had fought bravely on more than one fearful field of battle ; he 
 had looked on death closely and undismayed ; he had been wounded in fighting 
 for Italy against the Austrian. It was said of the young sovereign who was 
 only Duke of Savoy then that on the night of Novara, when all was over save 
 retreat and humiliation, he shook his dripping sword at the ranks of the con- 
 quering Austrians and exclaimed, "Italy shall make herself for all that!"
 
 56 VICTOR EMANUEL, KING OF ITALY. 
 
 Probably the story is substantially true, although Victor Emanuel may perhaps 
 have used stronger expressions if he spoke at all ; for no one ever doubted his 
 courage and coolness in the hour of danger. But true or not, the anecdote ex- 
 actly illustrated the light in which the world was prepared to regard the young 
 sovereign of Sardinia as the hope of Italy and of freedom, the representative 
 of a defeat which he was determined and destined to convert into a victory. 
 
 Not many years after this, and while the lustre of his misfortunes and the 
 brilliancy of his hopes still surrounded him, King Victor Emanuel visited Eng- 
 land. He was welcomed everywhere with a cordiality of personal interest and 
 admiration not often accorded by any people to a foreign king. Decidedly it 
 was a hard thing to look at him and yet retain the thought of a hero of romance. 
 He was not then nearly so bloated and burly as he is now ; and he was at least 
 some dozen or fourteen years younger. But even then how marvellously ill- 
 favored he was ; how rough and coarse-looking; how unattractive in manner; 
 how brusque and uncouth in gesture and bearing ; how liable to fits of an ap- 
 parently stolid silence ; how utterly devoid of grace and dignity ! His huge 
 straw-colored moustache, projecting about half a foot on each side of his face, 
 was as unsightly a piece of manly decoration as ever royal countenance dis- 
 played. Yet the public tried to forget all those external defects and still regard 
 him as a hero of romance somehow, anyhow. So fully was he believed to be a 
 representative of civil and religious freedom in Italy, that one English religious 
 society of some kind I forget which it was actually went the length of pre- 
 senting an address to him, in which they flourished about the errors of Popery 
 as freely as if they were appealing to an Oliver Cromwell or Frederick the Great. 
 Cavour gave them very neatly and tersely the snub that their ignorance and 
 presumption so well deserved ; and their address did not obtain an honored 
 place among Victor Emanuel's memorials of his visit to England. 
 
 He was very hospitably entertained by Queen Victoria, who is said to have 
 suffered agonies of martrydom from her guest's everlasting cigar the good soul 
 detests tobacco as much as King James himself did and even more from his 
 occasional outbursts of roystering compliment and canteen love-making toward 
 the ladies of her staid and modest court. One of the household edicts, I think, 
 of Queen Elizabeth's court was that no gallant must "toy with the maids, under 
 pain of fourpence." Poor Victor Emanuel's slender purse would have had to 
 bear a good many deductions of fourpence, people used to hint, if this penal de- 
 cree had prevailed in his time at Windsor or Osborne. But Queen Victoria was 
 very patient and friendly. Cavour has left some pleasant descriptions of her 
 easy, unaffected friendliness toward himself. Guizot, it will be remembered, has 
 described her as the stiffest of the stiff, freezing into petrifaction a whole silent 
 circle by her invincible coldness and formality. I cannot pretend to reconcile 
 the conflicting accounts of these two eminent visitors, but certainly Cavour has 
 drawn some animated and very attractive pictures of Queen Victoria's almost 
 girlish good-humor and winning familiarity. However that may be, the whole 
 heart of free England warmed to Victor Emanuel, and was ready to dub him in 
 advance the chosen knight of liberty, the St. George of Italy, before whose resist- 
 less sword every dragon of despotism and superstition was to grovel in the dust. 
 
 So the King went his way, and the next thing the world heard of him was 
 that he was in league with Louis Napoleon against the Austrian, and that the 
 child his daughter was to be married to the obese and elderly Prince Napoleon, 
 whose eccentric genius, varied accomplishments, and thrilling eloquence were 
 then unrecognized and unknown. Then came the triumphs of Magenta and Sol-
 
 VICTOR EMANUEL, KING OF ITALY. 57 
 
 ferino, and it was made plain once more to the world that Victor Emanael had 
 the courage of a true soldier. He actually took a personal share of the fighting 
 when the Italians were in action. He did not sit on his horse, far away from the 
 bullets, like his imperial ally, and direct the movements of the army by muttering 
 " C'est bien" when an aide-de-camp galloped up to announce to him as a piece 
 of solemn farce that this or that general had already accomplished this or that 
 operation. No ; Victor Emanuel took his share of the fighting like a king. In 
 the affair of San Martino he led an attack himself, and encouraged his soldiers 
 by bellowing in stentorian voice quite a clever joke for a king, just as he was 
 about to charge. A crack regiment of French Zouaves (the French Zouaves were 
 soldiers in those days) was so delighted with the Sardinian King that it elected 
 him a corporal of the regiment on the field of battle a quite wonderful piece of 
 compliment from a Zouave regiment to a foreign sovereign. Not so long before 
 had Lamoriciere declared that "Italians don't fight," and here was a crack 
 Zouave regiment enthusiastic about the fighting capacity of an Italian King. 
 The irony of fate, it will be remembered, decreed soon after that Lamoriciere 
 should himself lay down his arms before an Italian general and Italian soldiers. 
 
 Out of that war, then, Victor Emanuel emerged still a hero. But the world 
 soon began to think that he was only a hero in the field. The sale of Savoy and 
 Nice much shocked the public sentiment of Europe. The house of Savoy, as 
 an English orator observed, had sprung from the womb of the mountains which 
 the unworthy heir of Savoy sold to a stranger. As the world had given to Vic- 
 tor Emanuel the credit of virtues which he never possessed, it was now ready to 
 lay on him all the burden of deeds which were not his. Whether the cession of 
 Savoy was right or wrong, Victor Emanuel was not to blame, under the hard cir- 
 cumstances, for withdrawing, according to the first Napoleon's phrase, " sous 
 les draps dun rot constitutionnel" and allowing his ministers to do the best they 
 could. In fact, the thing was a necessity of the situation. Napoleon the Third 
 had to make the demand to satisfy his own people, who never quite "seemed to 
 see" the war for Italy. The Sardinian ministers had to yield to the demand to 
 satisfy Napoleon the Third. Had Prussia been a raw, weak power in Septem- 
 ber, 1866, she must have ceded some territory to France. Sardinia or Italy 
 was raw and weak in 1860, and had no choice but to submit. There were two 
 things to be said for the bargain. First, Italy got good value for it. Next, the 
 Savoyards and Nizzards never were good Italians. They rather piqued them- 
 selves on not being Italians. The Savoy delegates would not speak Italian in 
 the old Turin Parliament. The ministers had to answer their French " interpel- 
 lations " in French. 
 
 Still all this business did an immense harm to the reputation of King Victor 
 Emanuel. He had acted like a quiet, sensible man not in any way like a hero 
 of romance, and Europe desired to see in him a hero of romance. Then he did 
 not show himself, people said, very grateful to Garibaldi when the latter opened 
 the way for the expulsion of the Bourbons from Naples, and did so much to 
 crown Victor Emanuel King of Italy. Now I am a warm admirer of Garibaldi. 
 I think his very weaknesses are noble and heroic. There is carefully preserved 
 among the best household treasures of my family a vine leaf which Garibaldi 
 once plucked and gave me as a souvenir for my wife. But I confess I should 
 not like to be king of a new monarchy partly made by Garibaldi and with Gari- 
 baldi for a subject. The whole policy of Garibaldi proceeded on the gallant and 
 generous assumption that Italy alone ought to be able to conquer all her ene- 
 mies. We have since seen how little Italy availed against a mere fragment of
 
 58 VICTOR EMANUEL, KING OF ITALY. 
 
 the military power of Austria that power which Prussia crushed like a nutshell. 
 Events, I think, have vindicated the slower and less assuming policy of Victor 
 Emanuel, or, I should say, the policy which Victor Emanuel consented to adopt 
 at the bidding of Cavour. 
 
 But all the same the prestige of Victor Emanuel was gone. Then Europe 
 began to look at the man coolly, and estimate him without glamour and with- 
 out romance. Then it began to listen to the very many stories against him 
 which his enemies could tell. Alas ! these stories were not all untrue. Of 
 course there were grotesque and hideous exaggerations. There are in Europe 
 some three or four personages of the highest rank whom scandal delights to as- 
 sail, and of whom it tells stories which common sense and common feeling alike 
 compel us to reject. It would be wholly impossible even to hint at some of the 
 charges which scandal in Europe persistently heaped on Victor Emanuel, the 
 Emperor Napoleon III., Prince Napoleon, and the reigning King of the Neth- 
 erlands. If one-half the stones told of these four men were true, then Europe 
 would hold at present four personages of the highest rank who might have tu- 
 tored Caligula in the arts of recondite debauchery, and have looked down on 
 Alexander the Sixth as a prudish milksop. But I think no reasonable person 
 will have much difficulty in sifting the probable truth out of the monstrous exag- 
 gerations. No one can doubt that Victor Emanuel is a man of gross habits 
 and tastes, and is, or was, addicted to coarse and ignoble immoralities. " The 
 manners of a mosstrooper and the morality of a he goat," was the description 
 which my friend John Francis Maguire, the distinguished Roman Catholic mem- 
 ber of the House of Commons, gave, in one of his Parliamentary speeches, of 
 King Victor Emanuel. This was strong language, and it was the language 
 of a prejudiced though honest political and religious partisan ; but it was not, all 
 things considered, a very bad description. Moreover, it was mildness, it was 
 compliment nay, it was base flattery when compared with the hideous accusa- 
 tions publicly and distinctly made against Victor Emanuel by one of Garibaldi's 
 sons, not to speak of other accusers, and privately whispered by slanderous gos- 
 sip all over Europe. One peculiarity about Victor Emanuel worthy of notice is 
 that he has no luxury in his tastes. He is, I believe, abstemious in eating and 
 drinking, caring only for the homeliest fare. He has sat many times at the head of 
 a grand state banquet, where the rarest viands, the most superb wines were abun- 
 dant, and never removed the napkin from his plate, never tasted a morsel or 
 emptied a glass. He had had his plain fare at an earlier hour, and cared noth- 
 ing for the triumphs of cookery or the choicest products of the vine. He has 
 thus sat, in good-humored silence, his hand leaning on the hilt of his sword, 
 through a long, long banquet of seemingly endless courses, which to him was a 
 pageant, a ceremonial duty, and nothing more. He delights in chamois-hunt- 
 ing in hunting of almost any kind in horses, in dogs, and in women of a cer- 
 tain coarse and gross description. There is nothing of the Richelieu or Lauzun, 
 or even the Francis the First, about the dull, I had almost said harmless, im- 
 moralities of the King of Italy. Men in private and public station have done 
 far greater harm, caused far more misery than ever he did, and yet escaped 
 almost unwhipt of justice. The man has (or had, for people say he is reformed 
 now) the coarse, easily-gratified tastes of a sailor turned ashore after a long 
 cruise and such tastes are not kingly ; and that is about all that one feels fairly 
 warranted in saying either to condemn or to palliate the vices of Victor Emanuel. 
 He absolutely wants all element of greatness. He is not even a great soldier. 
 He has boisterous animal courage, and finds the same excitement in leading a
 
 VICTOR EMANUEL, KING OF ITALY. 59 
 
 charge <t in hunting the chamois. But he has nothing even of the very moderate 
 degree of military capacity possessed by a dashing sabreur like Murat. It 
 seems beyond doubt that it was the infatuation he displayed in attempting the 
 personal direction of affairs which led to the breakdown at Custozza. The man 
 is, in fact, like one of the rough jagers described in Schiller's " Wallenstein's 
 Camp " just this, and nothing more. When Garibaldi was in the zenith of his 
 fortunes and fame in 1860, Victor Emanuel declared privately to a friend that 
 the height of his ambition would be to follow the gallant guerilla leader as a 
 mere soldier in the field. Certainly, when the two men entered Naples 
 together, every one must have felt that their places ought to have been reversed. 
 How like a king, an ideal king a king of poetry and painting and romance 
 looked Garibaldi in the superb serenity of his untaught grace and sweetness and 
 majesty. How rude, uncouth, clownish, even vulgar, looked the big, brawny, un- 
 gainly trooper whom people had to salute as King. When Garibaldi went to 
 visit the hospitals where the wounded of the short struggle were lying, how 
 womanlike he was in his sympathetic tenderness ; how light and noiseless was 
 his step ; how gentle his every gesture ; what a sweet word of genial compas- 
 sion or encouragement he had for every sufferer. The burly King strode and 
 clattered along like a dragoon swaggering through the crowd at a country fair. 
 Not that Victor Emanuel wanted good nature, but that his rude pliysique had 
 so little in it of the sympathetic or the tender. 
 
 Was there ever known such a whimsical, harmless, odd saturnalia as Naples 
 presented during those extraordinary days ? I am thinking novr chiefly of the 
 men who, mostly uncalled-for, " rallied round " the Revolution, and came from 
 all manner of holes and corners to offer their services to Garibaldi, and to ex- 
 hibit themselves in the capacity of freedom's friends, soldiers, and scholars. 
 Hardly a hero, or crackbrain, or rantipole in Europe, one would think, but must 
 have been then on exhibition somewhere in Naples. Father Gavazzi harangued 
 from one position ; Alexandre Dumas, accompanied by his faithful " Admiral 
 Emile," directed affairs from another. Edwin James, then a British criminal 
 lawyer and popular member of Parliament, was to be seen tearing round in a 
 sort of semi-mUitary costume, with pistols stuck in his belt. The worn, thought- 
 ful, melancholy face of Mazzini was, for a short time at least, to be seen in 
 juxtaposition with the cockney visage of an ambitious and restless common 
 councilman from the city of London, who has lived all his life since on the 
 glorious memories and honors of that good time. The House of Lords, the 
 House of Commons, and the Guildhall of London were lavishly represented 
 there. Men like Tiirr, the dashing Hungarian and Mieroslawski, the " Red " 
 leader of Polish revolution men to whom battle and danger were as the breath 
 of their nostrils were buttonholed and advised by heavy British vestrymen 
 and pert Parisian journalists. Hardly any man or woman entered Naples from 
 a foreign country at that astonishing time who did not believe that he or she 
 had some special counsel to give, which Victor Emanuel or Garibaldi or some 
 one of their immediate staff was bound to listen to and accept. Woman's 
 Rights were pretty well represented in that pellmell. There was a Countess 
 something or other French, they said who wore short petticoats and trousers, 
 had silver-mounted pistols in her belt and silver spurs on her heels, and was 
 generally believed to have done wonders in "the field" what field no one 
 would stop to ask. There was Jessie Mario White, modest, pleasant, fair- 
 haired woman, wife of a gallant gentleman and soldier Jessie White, who made 
 no exhibition of herself, but did then and since faithful and valuable work for
 
 CO VICTOR EMANUEL, KING OF ITALY. 
 
 Italian wounded, such as Italy ought not soon to forget. There was Mrs. 
 Chambers Mrs. Colonel Chambers the Mrs. "Putney Giles" of DisraelPs 
 ''Lothair" very prominent everywhere, sounding the special eulogies of Gari- 
 balda with tireless tongue, and utterly overshadowing her quiet husband, who (the 
 husband I mean) afterwards stood by Garibaldi's side at Aspromonte. Exeter 
 Hall had sent out powerful delegations, in the firm faith apparently that Gari- 
 baldi would at their request order Naples forthwith to break up its shrines and 
 images of saints and become Protestant ; and that Naples would at once obey. 
 Never was sucli a time of dreams and madness and fussiness, of splendid aspira- 
 tions and silly self-seeking vanity, of chivalry and daring, and true wisdom and 
 nonsense. It was a time naturally of many disappointments ; and one disap- 
 pointment to almost everybody was His Majesty King Victor Emanuel. His 
 Majesty seemed at least not much to care about the whole affair from the begin- 
 ning. He went through it as if he didn't quite understand what it was all about, 
 and didn't think it worth the trouble of trying. People who saw him at that 
 splendid moment when, the forces of Garibaldi joining with the regular Sardinian 
 troops after all had been won, Garibaldi and the King met for the first time in 
 that crisis, and the soldier hailed the sovereign as "King of Italy!" people 
 who saw and studied that picturesque historic meeting have told me that there 
 was no more emotion of any kind on Victor Emanuel's face than if he were re- 
 ceiving a formal address from the mayor of a country town. " I thank you," 
 were his only words of reply ; and I am assured that it was not " I thank you" 
 with emphasis on the last word to indicate that the King acknowledged how 
 much he owed to his great soldier ; but simply "I thank you," as he might have 
 thanked a groom who opened a stable door for him. Perhaps the very depth 
 and grandeur of the King's emotions rendered him incapable of finding any ex- 
 pression for them. Let us hope so. But I have had the positive assurances of 
 some who saw the scene, that if any such emotions were felt the royal counte- 
 nance concealed them as completely as though they never had been. 
 
 In truth, I presume that the whole thing really was a terrible bore to the 
 royal Rawdon Crawley, who found himself compelled by cursed spite to play the 
 part of a patriot king. The Pope, the ultramontane bishops, and the ultramon- 
 tane press have always been ringing fierce changes on the inordinate and wicked 
 ambition of Victor Emanuel. I am convinced the poor man has no more ambi- 
 tion than his horse. If he could have chalked out his own career for himself, he 
 would probably have asked nothing better than to be allowed to devote his life 
 to chamois-hunting, with a hunter's homely fare, and the companionship of a few 
 friends (some fat ladies among the number) with whom he could talk and make 
 jokes in the patois of Piedmont. This, and perhaps a battle-field and a dashing 
 charge every now and then, would probably have realized his dreams of the 
 summum bonum. But some implacable destiny, embodied in the form of a Ca- 
 vour or a Garibaldi, was always driving on the stout King and bidding him get 
 up and attempt great things be a patriot and a hero. Fancy Rawdon Crawley 
 impelled, or rather compelled by the inexorable command of Becky his wife, to 
 go forth in quest of the Holy Grail, and one may perhaps be able to guess what 
 Victor Emanuel's perplexity and reluctance were when he was bidden to set out 
 for the accomplishment of the regeneration of Italy. " Honor to those to whom 
 honor is due ; honor to old Mother Baubo," says some one in " Faust." Honor 
 on that principle, then, to King Victor Emanuel. He did get up and go forth 
 and undertake to bear his part in the adventure. And here seriously let me 
 speak of the one high merit of Victor Emanuel's career. He is not a hero ; he
 
 VICTOR EMANUEL, KING OF ITALY. 61 
 
 is not a statesman or even a politician ; he is not a patriot in any grand, exalted 
 sense. He would Tike to be idle, and perhaps to be despotic. But he has 
 proved that he understands the true responsibilities and duties of a constitu- 
 tional King better than many sovereigns of higher intellect and belter character. 
 He always did go, or at least endeavor to go, where the promptings of his min- 
 isters, the commands of his one imperious minister, or the voice of the country 
 directed. There must be a great struggle in the mind of Victor Emanuel be- 
 tween his duty as a king and his duty as a Roman Catholic, when he enters into 
 antagonism with the Pope. Beyond doubt Victor Emanuel is a superstitious 
 Catholic. Of late years his constitution has once or twice threatened to give 
 way, and he is probably all the more anxious to be reconciled with the Church. 
 Perhaps he would be glad enough to lay down the load of royalty altogether and 
 become again an accepted and devoted Catholic, and hunt his chamois with a 
 quieted conscience. But still, impelled by what must be some sort of patriotism 
 and sense of duty, he accepts his uncongenial part of constitutional King, and 
 strives to do all that the voice of his people demands. It is probable that 'at no 
 time was the King personally much attached to his illustrious minister Cavour. 
 The genius and soul of Cavour were too oppressively imperial, high-reaching, 
 and energetic for the homely, plodding King. With all his external levity Count 
 Cavour was terribly in earnest, and he must often have seemed a dreadful bore 
 to his sovereign. Cavour knew himself the master, and did not always take 
 pains to conceal his knowledge. He would sometimes adopt the most direct 
 and vigorous language in remonstrating with the King if the latter did not act on 
 valuable advice at the right moment. Sometimes, when things went decidedly 
 against Cavour's wishes, the minister would take the monarch to task more 
 roundly than even the most good-natured monarchs are likely to approve. 
 When Napoleon the Third disappointed Cavour and all Italy by the sudden 
 peace of Villafranca, I have heard that Cavour literally denounced Victor Eman- 
 uel for consenting to the arrangement. Count Arrivabene, an able writer, has 
 given a very vivid and interesting description of Cavour's demeanor when he 
 reached the Sardinian headquarters on his way to an interview with the King 
 and learned what had been done. He was literally in a "tearing rage." He 
 tore off his hat and dashed it down, he clenched his hands, he stamped wildly, 
 gesticulated furiously, became red and purple, foamed at the mouth, and grew 
 inarticulate for very passion. He believed that he and Italy were sold as in- 
 deed they were ; and it was while this temper was yet on him that he went to 
 see the King, and denounced him, as I have said. Now this sort of thing cer- 
 tainly could not have been agreeable to Victor Emanuel ; and yet he patiently 
 accepted Cavour as a kind of glorious necessity. He never sought, as many 
 another king in such duresse would have done, to weaken his minister's influ- 
 ence and authority by showing open sullenness and dissatisfaction. Ratazzi, 
 with his pliable ways and his entire freedom from any wearisome earnest- 
 ness or devotion to any particular cause, was naturally a far more companiona- 
 ble and agreeable minister for the King than the untiring and imperious Cavour. 
 Accordingly, it was well known that Ratazzi was more of a personal favorite ; but 
 the King never seems to have acted otherwise than loyally and honestly to- 
 ward Cavour. Ricasoli was all but intolerable to the King. Ricasoli was 
 proud and stern ; and he was, moreover, a somewhat rigid moralist, which Ca- 
 vour hardly professed to be. The King writhed under the government of Ri- 
 casoli, and yet, despite all that was at the time whispered, he cannot, I think, be 
 fairly accused of having done anything personally to rid himself of an obnoxious
 
 62 VICTOR EMANUEL, KING OF ITALY. 
 
 minister. Indeed, the single merit of Victor Emanuel's character, if we put aside 
 the element of personal courage, is its rough integrity. He is a galantuomo, an 
 honest man in that sense, a man of his word. He gave his word to constitu- 
 tional government and to Italy, and he appears to have kept the word in each 
 case according to his lights. 
 
 But his popularity among his subjects, the interest felt in him by the world, 
 have long been steadily on the wane. Years and years ago he ceased to retain 
 the faintest gleam of the halo of romance that once was, despite of himself, 
 thrown around him. His people care little or nothing for him. Why, indeed, 
 should they care anything? The military prestige which he had won, such as it 
 was, vanished at Custozza, and it was his evil destiny, hardly his fault, to be al- 
 most always placed in a position of antagonism to the one only Italian who since 
 Cavour's death had an enthusiastic following in Italy. Aspromonte was a ca- 
 lamity for Victor Emanuel. One can hardlv blame him ; one can hardly see 
 how he could have done otherwise. The greatest citizen or soldier in America 
 or England, if he attempted to levy an army of his own, and make war from 
 American or English territory upon a neighboring State, would surely have seen 
 his bands dispersed and found himself arrested by order of his government ; and 
 it would never have occurred to any one to think that the government was 
 doing a harsh, ungrateful, or improper thing. It would be the necessary, right- 
 ful execution of a disagreeable duty, and that is all. But the conditions of Gari- 
 baldi's case, like the one splendid service he had rendered, were so entirely ab- 
 normal and without precedent, the whole thing was from first to last so much 
 more a matter of national sentiment than of political law, that national senti- 
 ment insisted on judging Garibaldi and the King in this case too, and at least 
 a powerful, passionate minority declared Victor Emanuel an ingrate and a trai- 
 tor. Mentana was almost as bad for the King as Custozza. The voice of the 
 country, so far as one could understand its import, seemed to declare that when 
 the King had once ordered the Italian troops to cross the frontier, he should 
 have ordered them to go on ; that if they had actually occupied Rome, France 
 would have recognized accomplished facts ; that as it was, Italy offended France 
 and the Pope by stepping over the barrier of the convention of September, only 
 to humiliate herself by stepping back again without having accomplished any- 
 thing. Certainly the policy of the Italian Government at such a crisis was weak, 
 miserable, even contemptible. Then indeed Italy might well have exclaimed, 
 ' Oh for one hour of Cavour ! " One hour of the man of genius and courage, 
 who, if he had moved forward, would not have darted back again ! Perhaps it 
 was unfair to hold the King responsible for the mistakes of his ministers. But 
 when a once popular King has to be pleaded for on that sole ground, it is pretty 
 clear that there is an end to his popularity. So with Victor Emanuel. The 
 world began to forget him ; his subjects began to despise him. Even the thrill- 
 ing events that have lately taken place in Italy, the sudden crowning of the na- 
 tional edifice the realization of that hope which so long appeared but a dream 
 which Cavour himself declared would be the most slow and difficult to realize of 
 all Italy's hopes even the possession of Rome hardly seems to have brought 
 back one ray of the old popularity on the heavy head of King Victor Emanuel. 
 Again the wonderful combination of good luck and bad the good fortune which 
 brought to the very door of the house of Savoy the sudden realization of its 
 highest dreams the misfortune which allowed that house no share in the true 
 credit of having accomplished its destiny. What had Victor Emanuel to do 
 with the sudden juncture of events which enabled Italy to take possession of her
 
 VICTOR EMANUZL, KING OF ITALY. 63 
 
 capital ? Nothing whatever. His peopl-e have no more reason to thank him fer 
 Rome than they have to thank him for the rain or the sunshine, the olive and 
 the vine. The King seems to have felt all this. His short visit to Rome, and 
 the formal act of taking possession, may perhaps have been made so short be- 
 cause Victor Emanuel knew that he had little right to claim any honors or ex- 
 pect any popular enthusiasm. He entered Rome one day and went away The 
 next. I confess, however, that I should not wonder if the visit was made so 
 short merely because the whole thing was a bore to the honest King, and he 
 could only make up his mind to endure a very few hours of it. 
 
 Victor Emanuel, King of United Italy, and welcomed by popular acclama- 
 tion in Rome his second son almost at the same moment proclaimed King of 
 the Spaniards his second daughter Queen of Portugal. How fortune seems to 
 have delighted in honoring this house of Savoy. I only say " seems to have." 
 1 do not venture yet to regard the accession of King Amadeus to the crown of 
 Spain as necessarily an honorable or a fortunate thing. Every one must wish 
 tiie poor young prince well in such a situation ; perhaps we should rather wish 
 him well out of it. Never king assumed a crown with such ghastly omens to 
 welcome him. Here is the King putting on his diadem ; and yonder, lying dead 
 by the hand of an assassin, is the man who gave him the diadem and made him 
 King ! But for Juan Prim there would be no Amadeus, King of the Spaniards ; 
 and for that reason Juan Prim lies dead. The young King must have needed all 
 his hereditary courage to enable him to face calmly and bravely, as he seems to 
 have done, so terrible a situation. Macaulay justly says that no danger is so 
 trying to the nerves of a brave man as the danger of assassination. Men utterly 
 reckless in battle like " bonny Dundee " for example have owned that the 
 knowledge of the assassin's purpose and haunting presence was more than they 
 could endure. The young Italian prince seems to have shown no sign of flinch- 
 ing. So far as anything indeed is known of him, he is favorably known to 
 the world. He bore himself like a brave soldier at Custozza, and obtained the 
 special commendation of the Austrian victor, the gallant old Archduke Albrecht. 
 He married for love a lady of station decidedly inferior to that of aroyai prince ; 
 the lady had the honor of being sneered at even in her honeymoon for the 
 modest, inexpensive simplicity of her toilet, as she appeared with her young 
 husband at one of the watering-places ; he had not made himself before mar- 
 riage the subject of as much scandal as used to follow and float around the 
 bachelor reputation of his elder brother Humbert. He is believed to be honestly 
 and manfully liberal in his views. He ought to make a good King as kings go 
 it" the murderers of General Prim only give him the chance. 
 
 As I have mentioned the name of the man whose varied, brilliant, daring, and 
 turbulent career has been so suddenly cut short, I may perhaps be excused for 
 wandering a little out of the path of my subject to say that I think many of the 
 A nerican newspapers have hardly done justice to Prim. Some of them have 
 written of him, even in announcing his death, as if it were not possible for a 
 man to be honest and yet not to be a republican. In more than one instance 
 the murder of Prim was treated as a sort of thing which, however painful to 
 read of, was yet quite natural and even excusable in the case of a man who en- 
 deavored to give his country a King. There was a good deal too much of the 
 " Sic semper tyrannis " tone and temper about some of the journals. Now, I 
 do not believe that Prim was a patriot of that unselfish and lofty group to which 
 William the Silent, and George Washington, and Daniel Manin belong. His 
 xas a very mixed character, and ambition had a. large pUce in it. But I be-
 
 64 VICTOR EMANUEL, KING OF ITALY. 
 
 lieve that he sincerely loved and tried to serve Spain ; and I believe that in giv- 
 ing her a King he honestly thought he was doing for her the thing most suited 
 to her tendencies and her interests. If Prim could have made Spain a republic, 
 he could have made himself her President, even perhaps for life ; while he could 
 not venture, she being a kingdom, to constitute himself her King. Many times 
 did Prim himself say to me, before the outbreak of his successful revolt, that 
 he believed the republican to be the ultimate form of gove r nment everywhere, 
 and that he would gladly see it in Spain ; but that he did not believe Spain was 
 yet suited for it, or numbered republicans enough. "To have a republic you 
 must first have republicans," was a common saying of his. New England is a 
 very different sort of place from Old Castrle. At all events, Prim is not to 
 be condemned as a traitor to his country and to liberty, even if it were true that 
 he could have created a Spanish republic. We have to show first that he knew 
 the thing was possible and refused to do it, for selfish or ignoble motives. This 
 I am satisfied is not true. I think Prim believed a republic impossible in the 
 Spain of to-day, and simply acted in accordance with his convictions. He came 
 very near to being a great man ; he wanted not much of being a great patriot. 
 He was, I think, better than his fame. As Spain has decreed, he "deserved 
 well of his country.'' It seems hardly reasonable or just to decry him or con- 
 demn him because he did not deserve better. Such as he was, he proved him- 
 self original. " He walked," as Carlyle says, "his own wild road, whither that 
 led him." In an age very prolific of great political men, he made a distinct 
 name and place for himself. "Name thou the best of German singers," ex- 
 claims Heine with pardonable pride, "and my name must be spoken among 
 them." Name the half-dozen really great, originating characters in European 
 politics during our time, and the name of Prim must come in among them. 
 
 But I was speaking of Victor Emanuel and his children. All I have heard 
 then of the Duke of Aosta leads me to believe that he is qualified to make a re- 
 spectable and loyal constitutional sovereign. High intellectual capacity no one 
 expects from the house of Savoy, but there will probably be good sense, manly 
 feeling, and no small share of political discretion. In the Duke of Aosta, too, 
 Spain will have a King who can have no possible sympathy with slave systems 
 and their products of whatever kind, and who can hardly have much inclination 
 for the coercing and dragooning of reluctant populations. If Spain in his day 
 and through his influence can get decently and honorably rid of Cuba, she will 
 have entered upon a new chapter of her national existence, as important for her 
 as that grand new volume which opens upon France when defeat has purged her 
 of her thrice-accursed " militaryism." The dependencies have been a miserable 
 misfortune to Spain. They have entangled her in all manner of complications ; 
 they have filled her with false principles ; they have created whole corrupt 
 classes among her soldiers and politicians. General Prim himself once assured 
 me that the real revenues of Spain were in no wise the richer for her colonial 
 possessions. Proconsuls made fortunes and spread corruption round them, and 
 that was all. If her new King could only contrive to relieve Spain of this source 
 of corruption and danger, he would be worth all the cost and labor of the revolu- 
 tion which gives him now a Spanish throne. 
 
 Why did fate decree that the very best of all the children of Victor Emanuel 
 should have apparently the worst fortune? The Princess Clotilde is an exile 
 from the country and the palace of her husband ; and if the sweetness and virtue 
 of one woman might have saved a court, the court of the Tuileries might have 
 been saved by Victor Emanuel's eldest daughter. I have heard the Princess
 
 VICTOR EMANUEL, KING OF ITALY. 65 
 
 Clotilde talked of by Ultramontanes, Legitimists, Orleanists, Republicans, Red 
 Republicans (by some among the latter who firmly believed that the poor Em- 
 press Euge'nie was wickeder than Messalina), and I never heard a word spoken 
 of her that was not in her praise. Every one admitted that she was a pure and 
 noble woman, a patient wife, a devoted mother ; full of that unpretending sim- 
 plicity which, let us own it frankly, is one of the graces which very high birth 
 and old blood do sometimes bring. The Princess must in her secret soul have 
 looked down on some of the odd coteries who were brought around her at the 
 court of the Tuileries. She comes of a house in whose genealogy, to quote Dis- 
 raeli's humorous words, " Chaos was a novel," and she found herself forced into 
 companionship with ladies and gentlemen whose fathers and mothers, good lack ! 
 sometimes seemed to have omitted any baptismal registration whatever. I 
 presume she was not ignorant of the parentage of De Morny, or Walewski, or 
 Walewski's son, or the Jerome David class of people. I presume she heard 
 what every one said of the Countess this and the Marchioness that, and so on. 
 Of course the Princess Clotilde did not like these people how could any decent 
 woman like them ? but she accepted the necessities of her position with a self- 
 possession and dignity which, offending no one, marked the line distinctly and 
 honorably between her and them. Her joy was in her children. She loved to 
 show them to friends, and to visitors even whom she felt that she could treat as 
 friends. Perhaps she is not less happy now that the ill-omened, fateful splen- 
 dors of the Palais Royal no longer help to make a gilded cage for the darlings 
 of her nursery. Of the whole family, hers may be called the only career which 
 has been doomed to what the world describes and pities as failure. It may well 
 be that she is now happiest of all the children of the house of Savoy. 
 
 Meanwhile, Victor Emanuel has been welcomed at the Quirinal, and is in- 
 deed, at last, King of Italy. We may well say to him, as Banquo says of Mac- 
 oeth, "Thou Wxst it all!" Lombardy, Tuscany, Parma, Modena, the Two 
 Sicilies, Venetia, and Rome what gathering within less than a fifth of an 
 ordinary lifetime ! And on the Quirinal Victor Emanuel may be said to have 
 stood alone. Of all the men who mainly wrought to bring about that grand 
 consummation, not one stood by his side. Daniel Manin, the pure, patient, fear- 
 less, patriot hero ; Cavour, the consummate statesman ; Massimo d'Azeglio, the 
 Bayard or Lafayette of Italy's later days, the soldier, scholar, and lover of his 
 country these are dead, and rest with Dante. Mazzini is still a sort of exile 
 homeless, unshaken, seeing his prophecies fulfil themselves and his ideas come 
 to light, while he abides in the gloom and shadow, and the world calls him a 
 dreamer. Garibaldi is lending the aid of his restless sword to a cause which he 
 cannot serve, and a people who never understood him ; and he is getting sadly 
 mixed up somehow in ordinary minds with General Cluseret and George Francis 
 Train. Louis Napoleon, who, whatever his crimes, did something for the unity 
 of Italy, is a broken man in captivity. Only Victor Emanuel, least gifted of all, 
 utterly unworthy almost to be named in the same breath with any of them 
 (save Louis Napoleon alone) only he comes forward to receive the glories and 
 stand up as the representative of one Italy ! Let us do him the justice to ac- 
 knowledge that he never sought the position or the glory. He accepted both as 
 a necessity of his birth and his place, a formal duty and a bore. His was not 
 the character which goes in quest of greatness. As Falstaff says of rebellion 
 and the revolted English lord, greatness "lay in his way, and he found it,"
 
 LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 GUIZO f quietly at work in the preparation of a history of France for the 
 T instruction of children Thiers taking his place in a balloon to fly from 
 one seat of government in France to another ! Such were the occupations, at a 
 given time in last Novembei, of the two distinguished men whose rivalries and 
 contentions disturbed the politics of France for so many years. 
 
 An ill-natured person might feel inclined to say that the adventures in the bal- 
 loon were a proper crowning of the edifice of M. Thiers's fitful career. Was 
 not his whole political life (non meus hie sermo, please to understand it is the 
 ill-natured person who says this) an enterprise in a balloon, high out of all the 
 regions where common sense, consistency, and statesmanship are ruling elements ? 
 Did he not overleap with aeronautic flight when it so suited him, from liberalism 
 to conservatism, from advocating freedom of thought to enforcing the harshest 
 repression ? Was not his literary reputation floated into high air by that most 
 inflated and gaseous of all balloons, the " History of the Consulate and the Em- 
 pire " ? Thiers in a balloon is just where he ought to be, and where he ever has 
 been. Condense into one meagre little person all the egotism, all the self-con- 
 ceit, all the vainglory, all the incapacity for looking at anything whatever from 
 the right point of view, which belong to the typical Frenchman of fiction and 
 satire, and you have a pretty portrait of M. Thiers. 
 
 Doubtless, the ill-natured person who should say all this would be able to 
 urge a good many plausible reasons in justification of his assertions. Still, one 
 may be allowed to admire one cannot help admiring the astonishing energy 
 and buoyancy which made M. Thiers, despite his seventy-three years, the most 
 active emissary of the French Republic during the past autumn, the aeronautic 
 rival of the vigorous young Corsican Gambetta, who was probably hardly grown 
 enough for a merry-go-round in the Champs Elyse'es when Thiers was begin- 
 ning to be regarded as an old fogy by the ardent revolutionists of 1848. 
 About the middle of last September, a few days after the sudden creation of the 
 French Republic, M. Thiers precipitated himself on London. An account in 
 the newspapers described him as "accompanied by five ladies." Thus grace- 
 fully escorted, he marched on the English capital. He had interviews with Mr. 
 Gladstone, Lord Granville, the French Ambassador, and divers other great per- 
 sonages. He was always rushing from diplomatic ofHce to office. He " inter- 
 viewed " everybody in London who could by any possibility be supposed capa- 
 ble of influencing in the slightest degree the fortunes of France. He never for 
 a moment stopped talking. Great men excel each other in various qualities ; 
 but there never was a great man who could talk against M. Thiers. He could 
 have shut up the late Lord Macaulay in no time ; and I doubt whether Mr. 
 Seward could have contrived to edge in a word while Thiers was in the same 
 room. M. Thiers stayed in London little more than two days. He arrived, I 
 think, on a Wednesday night, and left on the following Saturday. During that 
 time he managed to do all the interviewing, and was likewise able to take his 
 family to see the paintings in the National Gallery, where he was to be observed 
 keenly eyeing the pictures, and eloquently laying down critical law and gospel 
 on their merits, as if he had come over on a little autumnal holiday from a set- 
 tled and peaceful country, which no longer needed looking after. Then he 
 started from London in a steam-yacht, cruised about the North Sea and the
 
 LOUIS ADOLPHE TRIERS. 67 
 
 Baltic, dropped in apon the King of Denmark, sounded the views of Sweden, 
 collected the general opinion of Finland, visited the Emperor of Russia and 
 talked him into semi-bewilderment, and then travelled down by land to Vienna, 
 where he used all his powers of persuasion on the Emperor Francis Joseph, and 
 to Florence, where by the sheer force of argument and fluency he drove Victor 
 Emanuel nearly out of his senses. Since that time, he all but concluded an 
 armistice with Bismarck, and when last I heard of him (previous to this writing) 
 he was, as I have said, going on a mission somewhere in a balloon. 
 
 During his recent diplomatic flights, M. Thiers constantly offered to en- 
 counter much greater fatigues and responsibilities if needful. He was ready to 
 go anywhere and talk to anybody. He would have hunted up the Emperor of 
 China or the Mikado of Japan, if either sovereign seemed in the remotest degree 
 likely to intervene on the side of France. I believe I can say with confidence, 
 that at the outset of his expedition he had no official authority or mission what- 
 ever from the Provisional Government. He told Jules Favre and the rest that 
 he was about to start on a tour of inspection round the European cabinets, and 
 that they had better let him try what he could do ; and they did not refuse to 
 let him try, and it would not have mattered in the least whether they refused or 
 not. He came, in the first instance, altogether " on his own hook." Perhaps, 
 at first, the Republican Government was not very anxious to accept the services 
 of M. Thiers as a messenger of peace. No living Frenchman had done half so 
 much to bring about the state of national feeling which enabled Louis Napoleon 
 to precipitate the nation into a war against Prussia. Perhaps they thought the 
 man whose bitterest complaint against the Emperor was that he failed to take 
 advantage of the chance of crushing Prussia in 1866, was not the most likely 
 emissary to conciliate victorious Prussia in 1870. But Thiers was determined 
 to make himself useful, and the Republican Government had to give in at last, 
 and concede some sort of official authority to him. Like the young lady who 
 said she married the importunate suitor to get rid of him, Jules Favre and his 
 colleagues probably accepted M. Thiers for their spokesman as the only way of 
 escaping from his eloquence. His mission was heroic and patriotic, or egotistical 
 and fussy, just as you are pleased to regard it. In certain lights Cardinal Richelieu 
 .ooks wonderfully like Bottom the weaver. But it is impossible not to admire 
 the energy and courage of the irrepressible, inexhaustible, fragile-looking, shabby 
 old Orleanist. Thiers does not seem a personage capable of enduring fatigue. 
 He appears a sapless, withered, wasted old creature. But the restless, fiery, 
 exuberant, egotistical energy which carried him along so far and so fast in life, 
 has apparently gained rather than lost in strength and resource during the forty 
 years which have elapsed since the subject of this sketch, then editor of the 
 ' National," drew up in Paris the famous protest against the five infamous 
 ordonnances of Charles the Tenth, and thus sounded the prelude to the Revolu- 
 tion of July. 
 
 It must have been no common stock of self-possession and self-complacency 
 which enabled M. Thiers to present himself before the great Prussian Chancellor 
 as a messenger of peace. Bismarck, who has a happy knack of apt Shakespearian 
 quotation, might have accosted him in the words of Beatrice and said, " This is a 
 man's office, but not yours." For M Thiers, throughout his whole career, de- 
 voted his brilliant gifts to the promotion of that spirit of narrow national vainglory 
 which of late years has made France dreaded and detested in Germany. M. 
 Thiers is like ^sop's trumpeter guilty not of making war himself, but of blow- 
 ing the blasts which set other men fighting. The very speech in which he pro-
 
 68 LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 tested last summer against the war initiated by the Imperial Government, was 
 inspired by a principle more immoral, and more calculated to inflame Germany 
 with resentment, than the very declaration of war itself. For Thiers only con- 
 demned the war on the ground that France was not properly prepared to crush 
 Germany; that she had lost her opportunity by not falling on Prussia while the 
 latter was in the death-grapple with Austria in 1866; and that as France had 
 not done the thing at the right time, she had better not run the risk of doing it 
 incompletely, by making the effort at an inopportune moment. 
 
 These considerations, however, did not trouble M. Thiers. He advanced to 
 meet Count von Bismarck with the easy confidence of one who feels that he has 
 a right to be treated as the best of friends and most appropriate of envoys. If, 
 immediately after the conclusion of the American war, John Bright had been 
 sent to Washington by England to endeavor to settle the Alabama dispute, he 
 probably would not have approached the President with anything like the confi- 
 dent assurance of a genial welcome which inspired M. Thiers when he offered 
 himself as a messenger to the Prussian statesman. This very sublimity of 
 egotism is, and always was, one of the sources of the success of M. Thiers. 
 No man could with more perfect composure and self-satisfaction dare to be in- 
 consistent. His was the. very audacity and Quixotism of inconsistency. In 
 office to-day, he could advocate and enforce the very measures of repression 
 which yesterday, out of office, he was the foremost to denounce nay, which he 
 obtained office by opposing and denouncing. He whose energetic action in pro- 
 testing against the celebrated five ordonnances of Charles the Tenth did so 
 much to bring about the Revolution of July, was himself the chief official autho' 
 of the equally celebrated "laws of September," introduced in Louis Philippe's 
 reign, which might have suited the administration ot a Peter the Great, or any 
 other uncompromising despot. In practical politics, of course, almost every 
 minister is occasionally compelled by the force of circumstances to do things 
 which bear a considerable resemblance to acts warmly condemned by him while 
 he sat in opposition. But M. Thiers invariably, when in power, exhibited him- 
 self as the author and champion of principles and policy which he had de- 
 nounced with all the force of his eloquent tongue when he was the opponent of 
 the Government. He seemed in fact to be two men rather than one, so entirely 
 did Thiers in office contrast with Thiers in opposition. But Thiers himself 
 never appeared conscious of inconsistency. Indeed, he was always consistent 
 with his one grand essential principle and creed faith in the inspiration and the 
 destiny of M. Thiers. 
 
 To one other principle too let it be said in justice that this brilliant politi- 
 cian has always been faithful the principle which maintains the right of France 
 to throw her sword into the scale where every or any foreign question is to be 
 weighed. When, after a long absence from the parliamentary arena, he entered 
 the Imperial Corps L6gislatif as one of the deputies for Paris, he soon proved 
 himself to be "old Cassius still." Age, study, experience, retirement, reflection, 
 had in no wise dimmed the fire of his ardent nationalism. Eagerly as ever he 
 contended for the sacred right of France to dragoon all Europe into obedience, 
 to chop up the Continent into such symmetrical sections as might seem suitable 
 to the taste and the convenience of French statesmen. Undoubtedly he was a 
 sharp, tormenting thorn in the side of the Imperial Government when he re- 
 turned to active political life. Louis Napoleon had no minister who could pre- 
 tend to compare with Thiers in debate. He was an aggravating and exasperat- 
 ,ng enemy, against whom fluent and shallow men like Billault and Baroche. or
 
 LOUIS ADOLPHE TRIERS. 69 
 
 even speakers of heavier calibre like Rouher, had no chance whatever. But 
 there \rere times when to any impartial mind the invectives of Thiers made the 
 Imperial policy look noble and enlightened in comparison with the canons of 
 detestable egotism which he propounded as the true principles of government. 
 I remember thinking more than once that if Louis Napoleon's Ministers could 
 only have risen to the real height of the situation and appealed to whatever there 
 was of lofty unselfish feeling in France, they might have overwhelmed their re- 
 morseless and envenomed critic. In 1866 and 1867, for example, Thiers made it 
 a cardinal point of complaint and invective against the French Government that 
 it had not prevented by force of arms the progress of Germany's unity. Noth- 
 ing could be more pungent, brilliant, bitter, than the eloquence with which he 
 proclaimed and advocated his doctrines of ignoble and unscrupulous selfishness. 
 Why did not the Imperial spokesmen assume a virtue if they had it not, and 
 boldly declare that the Government of France scorned the shallow and envious 
 policy which sees calamity and danger in the union and growing strength of a 
 neighboring people ? Such a chord bravely struck would have awakened an 
 echo in every true and generous heart. But the Imperial Ministers feebly tried 
 to fight M. Thiers upon his own ground, to accept his principles as the condi- 
 tions of contest. They endeavored in a paltering and limping way to show that 
 the French Government had been selfish and only selfish, and had taken every 
 care to keep Germany properly weak and divided. It was during one of these 
 debates, thus provoked by M. Thiers, that occasion was given to Count von Bis- 
 marck for one of his most striking coups de theatre. The French Minister (if I 
 remember rightly, it was M. Rouher), tortured and baited by M. Thiers, stood at 
 bay at last, and boldly declared that the Government of France had taken meas- 
 ures to render impossible any political cohesion of North and South Germany. 
 A day or two after, Count von Bismarck effectively and contemptuously replied 
 to this declaration by unfolding in the Prussian Chamber the treaties of alliance 
 already concluded between his Government and the South German States. 
 
 It has always been a matter of surprise to me that Thiers did not prove a 
 success at the bar, to which at first he applied his abilities. He seems to have 
 the very gifts which would naturally have made a great pleader. All through his 
 political career he displayed a wonderful capacity for making the worse appear 
 the better cause. The adroitness which contends skilfully that black is white 
 to-day, having argued with equal force and fluency that white was green yester- 
 day, would have been highly appropriate and respectable in a legal advocate. 
 But M. Thiers did not somehow get on at the bar, and having no influential 
 friends (he was, I think, the son of a locksmith), but plenty of ambition, courage, 
 and confidence, he strove to enter political life by the avenue of journalism. 
 Much of Thiers's subsequent success as a debater was probably due to that skill 
 which a practised journalist naturally acquires the dexterity of arraying facts 
 and arguments so as not to bear too long on any one part of the subject, and not 
 to offer to the mind of the reader more than his patience and interest are willing 
 to accept. Most of the events of his political career, up to his reappearance in 
 public life in 1863, belong wholly to history and the past. His long rivalry with 
 Guizot, his intrigues out of office, and his conduct as a Minister of Louis 
 Philippe, have hardly a more direct and vital connection with the affairs of to- 
 day than the statecraft of Mazarin or the political vicissitudes of Bolingbroke. 
 One indeed of the projects of M. Thiers has now come rather unexpectedly into 
 active operation. The fortifications of Paris were the offspring of the apprehen- 
 sion M. Thiers entertained, thirty years ago, that the Eastern question of that
 
 70 LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 day might provoke another great European war. Since that time many critics 
 sneered and laughed a good deal at M. Thiers's system of fortifications ; but the 
 whirligig of time has brought the statesman his revenge. No one could mis- 
 take the meaning of the smile of self-satisfaction which used last autumn to light 
 up the unattractive features of the veteran Orleanist, as he made tour after tour 
 of inspection around the defences of Paris. This chain of fortifications alone, one 
 might almost say, connects the Thiers of the present generation with the Thiers 
 of the past. There were malignant persons who did not scruple to say that the 
 author of the scheme of defences was not altogether sorry for the national ca- 
 lamity which had brought them into use, and apparently justified their construc- 
 tion. It is very hard to be altogether sorry for even a domestic misfortune 
 which gives one who is especially proud of his foresight and sagacity an oppor- 
 tunity of pointing out that the precautions which he recommended, and other 
 members of the family scorned, are now eagerly adopted by unanimous concur- 
 rence. There certainly was something of the pardonable pride of the author of 
 a long misprized invention visible in the face of M. Thiers as he used to gaze 
 upon his beloved system of fortifications any time in last September. Little did 
 even he himself think when, after Sadowa, he accused the Emperor's Government 
 of having left itself no blunder more to commit, that it had yet to perpetrate one 
 crowning and gigantic mistake, and that one effect at least of this stupendous 
 error would be to compel Paris to treat au sMeux, and as a supreme necessity, 
 that system of defences so long regarded as good for little else than to remind the 
 present generation that Louis Adolphe Thiers was once Prime Minister of France. 
 Thiers was not far short of seventy years old when, in 1863, he entered upon 
 a new chapter of his public life as one of the deputies for Paris in the Imperial 
 Corps Ldgislatif. A new generation had meantime arisen. Men were growing 
 into fame as orators and politicians who were boys when Thiers was last heard 
 as a parliamentary debater. He returned to political life at an eventful time and 
 accompanied by some notable compeers. The elections which sent Thiers to 
 represent the department of the Seine made the venerable and illustrious Berry e.r 
 one of the delegates from Marseilles. I doubt whether the political life of any 
 country has ever produced a purer, grander figure than that of Berryer ; I am 
 sure that an obsolete and hopeless cause never had a nobler advocate. The ge- 
 nius and the virtues of Berryer are indeed the loftiest claims modern French 
 legitimacy can offer to the respect of posterity. I look back with a feeling of 
 something like veneration to that grand and kingly form, to the sweet, serene, 
 unaffected dignity of that august nature. Berryer belonged to a totally different 
 political order from that of Thiers. As John Bright is to Disraeli, as John 
 Henry Newman is to Monsignore Capel, as Montalembert was to Louis Veuil- 
 lot, as Charles Sumner is to Seward, so was Berryer to Thiers. Of the oratori- 
 cal merits of the two men I shall speak hereafter; now I refer to the relative 
 value of their political characters. With Thiers and Berryer there came back to 
 political life some men of mark and worth. Garnier-Pages was one, the impul- 
 sive, true-hearted, not very strong-headed Republican ; a man who might be a 
 great leader if fine phrases and good intentions could rule the world. Carnot 
 was another, not much perhaps in himself, but great as the son of the illustrious 
 organizer of victory (oh, if France had lately had one hour of Carnot !), and per- 
 sonally very popular just then because of his scornful rejection of Louis Napo- 
 leon's offer to bring back the ashes of his father from Magdeburg in Prussia to 
 France. Eugene Pelletan, who had been suffering savage persecution because 
 of his fierce attack on the Empire in his book, "The New Babylon " ; Jules Si- 
 mon, a superior sort of French Tom Hughes Tom Hughes with icpublican
 
 LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS. 71 
 
 convictions and strong backbone and several other men of name and fibre, were 
 now companions in the Corps Le"gislatif. All these, differing widely in personal 
 opinions, and indeed representing every kind of political view, from the chival- 
 rous and romantic legitimacy of Berryer to the republican religion or fetichism 
 of Gamier-Pages, combined to make up an opposition to the Imperial Govern- 
 ment. Up to that time the opposition had consisted simply of five men. For 
 years those five had fought a persevering and apparently hopeless fight against 
 the strength of Imperial arms, Imperial gold, and the lungs of Imperial hire- 
 lings. Of the five the leader was Jules Favre. The second in command was 
 Emile Ollivier, whose treason to liberty, truth, and peace has since been so sternly 
 avenged by destiny. The other three were Picard, a member of the Republican 
 Government of September, and MM. Darimon and Henon. Numerically the 
 opposition, now strengthened by the new accessions, became quite respectable ; 
 morally and politically it wholly changed the situation. It was no longer a Le- 
 onidas or Horatius Codes desperately holding a pass ; it was an army encoun- 
 tering an army. The Imperialists of course still far outnumbered their oppo- 
 nents ; but there were no men among the devotees of Imperialism who could 
 even pretend to compare as orators with Berryer, Thiers, or Favre. Of these 
 three men, it seems to me that Berryer was by far the greatest orator, but Thiers 
 left him nowhere as a partisan leader. Thiers undoubtedly pushed Jules Favre 
 aside and made him quite a secondary figure. Thiers delighted in worrying a 
 ministry. He never needed, as Berryer did, the impulse of a great principle and 
 a great purpose. He felt all the joy of the strife which distinguishes the born 
 gladiator. He soon proved that his years had in no degree impaired his orator- 
 ical capacity. It became one of the grand events of Paris when Thiers was to 
 speak. Owing to the peculiar regulations of the French Chamber, which re- 
 quired that those who meant to take part in a debate should inscribe their 
 names beforehand in the book, and speak according to their turn an odious 
 usage, fatal to all genuine debate it was always known in advance through 
 Paris that to-morrow or the day after Thiers was to speak. Then came a strug- 
 gle for places in what an Englishman would call the strangers' gallery. The 
 Palais Bourbon, where the Corps Le'g'islatif held its sittings, opposite the Place 
 de la Concorde, has the noble distinction of providing the least and worst accom- 
 modation for the public of any House of Assembly in the civilized world. The 
 English House of Commons is miserably defective and niggardly in this respect, 
 but it is liberal and lavish when compared with the French Corps Le'gislatif. 
 Therefore, when M. Thiers was about to speak, there was as much intriguing, 
 clamoring, beseeching, wrangling, storming for seats in the public tribunes as 
 would have sufficed to carry an English county election. The trouble had its 
 reward. Nobody could be disappointed in M. Thiers who merely desired an in- 
 tellectual exercise and treat. Thiers never was heavy or dull. He is, I think, 
 the most interesting of all the great European debaters. I do not know whether 
 I convey exactly the meaning I wish to express when I used the word "inter- 
 esting." What I mean is that there is in M. Thiers an inexhaustible vivacity, 
 freshness, and variety which never allows the attention to wander or flag. He 
 never dwells too long on any one part of bis subject ; or if he has to dwell long 
 anywhere, he enlivens the theme by a lavish copiousness of novel argument, ap- 
 plication, and illustration, which is irresistibly piquant and fascinating. Reenter- 
 ing public life in his old age, M. Thiers had physically something like the advan- 
 tage which I have known to be possessed by certain mature actresses, who, never 
 having had any claim to personal beauty in their youth, were visited with hardly 
 any penalty of time when they began to descend into age. Thiers always had
 
 72 LOUIS ADOLPHE TRIERS 
 
 an insignificant presence, a dreadfully bad voice, and an unpleasant delivery. 
 Time added nothing, and probably could add nothing, to these disadvantages. 
 Already John Bright has lost, already Gladstone is losing, those magnificent 
 qualities of voice ana intonation which till lately distinguished both from all 
 other living English orators. One of the only fine passages in Disraeli's "Life 
 of Lord George Bentinck " is that in which he describes the melancholy sensation 
 created in the House of Commons when Daniel O'Connell, feeble and broken 
 down, tried vainly to raise above a mumbling murmur those accents which once 
 could thrill and vibrate to the furthest corner of the most capacious hall. But 
 the voice and delivery of Thiers at seventy were no whit worse than those of 
 Thiers at forty ; and in energy, vivacity, and variety, I think the opposition 
 leader of 1866 had rather gained upon the Minister of 1836. In everything that 
 makes a great orator he was far beneath Berryer. The latter had as command- 
 ing a presence as he had a superb voice, and a manner at once graceful and dig- 
 nified. Berryer, too, had the sustaining strength of a profound conviction, pure 
 and lofty as a faith. If Berryer was a political Don Quixote, Thiers was a polit- 
 ical Gil Bias. Thiers was all sparkle, antithesis, audacity, sophistry. His tours 
 de force were perfect masterpieces of fearless adroitness. He darted from point 
 to point, from paradox to paradox, with the bewildering agility of a squirrel. He 
 flashed through the heavy atmosphere of a dull debate with the scintillating ra- 
 diancy of a firefly. He propounded sentiments of freedom which would posi- 
 tively have captivated you if you had not known a little of the antecedents of the 
 orator. He threw off concise and luminous maxims of government which would 
 have been precious guides if human politics could only be ruled by epigram. 
 His long experience as a partisan leader, in and out of office, had made him mas- 
 ter of a vast array of facts and dates, which he was expert to marshal in such a 
 manner as often to bewilder his opponents. His knowledge of the mechanism 
 and regulations of diplomatic and parliamentary practice was consummate. He 
 was singularly clear and attractive in statement; his mode of putting a case had 
 something in it that was positively fascinating. He was sharp and severe in re- 
 tort, and there was a cold, self-complacent hauteur in his way of putting down 
 an adversary, which occasionally reminded one of a peculiarity of Earl Russell's 
 style when the latter was still a good parliamentary debater. M. Thiers had the 
 great merit of never talking over the heads, above the understandings of his au- 
 dience. His style of language was of the same character perhaps as that of Mr. 
 Wendell Phillips. Of course no two men could possibly be more unlike in the 
 manner of speaking, but the rhetorical vernacular of both has a considerable re- 
 semblance. The diction in each case is clear, incisive, penetrating never, or 
 hardly ever, rising to anything of exalted oratorical grandeur, never involved in 
 mist or haze of any kind, and with the same habitual acidity and sharpness in 
 it. I presume M. Thiers wrote the greater part of his speeches beforehand, but 
 he evidently had the happy faculty, rare even among accomplished orators, 
 which enables a speaker to blend the elaborately prepared portions of his dis- 
 course with the extemporaneous passages originated by the impulses and the in- 
 cidents of the debate. Some of the cleverest arguments, and especially some of 
 the cleverest sarcastic hits in M. Thiers's recent speeches, were provoked by 
 questions and interruptions which must have been quite unexpected. Eut a 
 strange peculiarity about the whole body of the speeches, the written parts as 
 well as the extemporaneous, was that they bore no resemblance whatever to the 
 glittering and gorgeous style which is so common and so objectionable in the 
 pages of the author's history of the French Revolution, and of the Consul- 
 ate and the Empire. I must say that I think M. Thiers's historical works
 
 LOUIS ADOLPHE TRIERS. 73 
 
 are decidedly heavy reading. I think his speeches are more interesting and at- 
 tractive to read than those of any political speaker of our day. As an orator I set 
 him below Berryer, below Gladstone and Bright, below Wendell Phillips, and not 
 above Disraeli. But as an interesting speaker I can think of no better qualifica- 
 tion for him I place M. Thiers above any of those masters of the art of eloquence. 
 
 I have not compared M. Thiers with Jules Favre. Any juxtaposition of the 
 two ought rather perhaps to be in the way of contrast than of comparison. Jules 
 Favre is probably the most exquisite and perfect rhetorician practising in the 
 public debates of our time. No one else can lend so brilliant an effect, so de- 
 lightful an emphasis to words and phrases by the mere modulations of his tone. 
 I once heard a French workingman say that Jules Favre parlait commc un ange. 
 talked like an angel ; and there was a simple appropriateness in the expression. 
 An angel, if he had to address so unsympathetic and uncongenial an audience as 
 the Imperial Corps Ldgislatif, could hardly lend more musical effect to the mean- 
 ing of his words than was given by Jules Favre's consummate rhetorical skill. 
 But I must acknowledge that to me at least there never seemed to be much in 
 what Jules Favre said. It seemed to me too often to want marrow and backbone. 
 It was an eloquence of fine phrases and splendid vague generalities. " Flow on, 
 thou shining river," one felt sometimes inclined to say as the bright, broad, shal- 
 low stream glided away. If Thiers spoke for half a day, and the discourse cov- 
 ered a dozen columns of the closely-printed " Moniteur," yet the listener or 
 reader came away with the impression that the orator had crammed quite a sur 
 prising quantity of matter into his speech, and could have found ever so much 
 more to say on the same subject. The impression produced on me at least by 
 the speeches of Jules Favre was always of the very opposite character. They 
 seemed to be all rhetoric and modulation ; they were without depth and with- 
 out fibre. The essentially declamatory character of Jules Favre's eloquence 
 received its most complete illustration in that remarkable document so painful 
 and pathetic because of its obvious earnestness, so ludicrous and almost con- 
 temptible because of its turgid and extravagant outbursts the report of his 
 recent interviews with Count von Bismarck at the Prussian headquarters near 
 Versailles. One must keep constantly in mind the awful seriousness of the sit- 
 uation, and the genuine suffering which it must have imposed upon Jules Favre, 
 not to laugh outright or feel disgusted at the inflated, hyperbolical, and melo- 
 dramatic style in which the Republican Minister describes his interview with the 
 Prussian Chancellor. Now, whatever faults of style M. Thiers might commit, 
 he never could thus make himself ridiculous. He never allows himself to be 
 out of tune with the occasion and the audience. You may differ utterly from 
 him, you may distrust and dislike him ; but Thiers, the parliamentary orator, will 
 not permit you to laugh at him. 
 
 Thiers was always very happy in his replies and retorts, and he never allowed 
 if he could an interruption to one of his speeches in the Corps Legislatif to pass 
 without seizing its meaning and at once dissecting and demolishing it. He 
 rejoiced in the light sword-play of such exercises. He would never have been 
 contented with the superb quietness of contempt by which Berryer in one of his 
 latest speeches crushed Granier de Cassagnac, the abject serf and hireling of 
 Imperialism. While Berryer was speaking, Granier de Cassagnac suddenly 
 expressed his coarse dissent from one of the orator's statements by crying out, 
 " That is not true." Berryer was not certain as to the source of this insolent 
 interruption. He gazed all round the assembly, and demanded in accents of 
 subdued and noble indignation who had dared thus to challenge the truth of his 
 statement. There was a dead pause. Even enemies looked up with reverence
 
 74 LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS. 
 
 to the grand old orator, and were ashamed of the rude insult flung at him. De 
 Cassagnac quailed, but every eye was on him, and he was compelled to declare 
 himself. " It was I who spoke," said the Imperial servant. Berryer looked at him 
 for a moment, and then said, "Oh, it was you/ then it is of no consequence," 
 and calmly resumed the thread of his discourse. Nothing could have been 
 finer, nothing more demolishing than the cold, grand contempt which branded 
 De Cassagnac as a creature incapable of meriting, even by insult, the notice of a 
 man of honor. But Thiers would never have been satisfied with such a mode 
 of crushing an adversary ; and indeed it needed all the majesty of Berryer's pres- 
 ence and the moral grandeur of his character to give it full force and emphasis. 
 Thiers would have showered upon the head of the Imperial lacquey a whole 
 fiery cornucopia of sarcasm and sharp invective, and De Cassagnac would have 
 gone home rather proud of having drawn down upon his head the angry elo- 
 quence of the great Orleanist orator. 
 
 Thiers threw his whole soul into his speeches not merely as to their prepa- 
 ration, but as to their revision and publication. According to the Imperial sys- 
 tem, no independent reports of speeches in the Chambers were allowed to ap- 
 pear in print. The official stenographers noted down in full each day's debate, 
 and the whole was published next day in the " Moniteur Universel." These re- 
 ports professed to give every word and syllable of the speeches every whisper 
 of interruption. Sometimes, therefore, the "Moniteur" came out with twenty 
 of its columns filled up with the dull maunderings of some provincial blockhead, 
 for whom servility and money had secured an official candidature. Besides these 
 stupendous reports, the Government furnished a somewhat condensed version, in 
 which the twenty-column speech was reduced say to a dozen columns. Either 
 of these reports the public journals might take, but none other ; and no journal 
 must alter or condense by the omission of a line or the substitution of a word 
 the text thus officially furnished. When Thiers had spent the whole day in de- 
 livering a speech, he was accustomed to spend the whole night in reading over 
 and correcting the proof-sheets of the official report. The venerable orator 
 would hurry home when the sitting was over, change his clothes, get into his 
 arm-chair before his desk, and set to work at the proof-sheets according as they 
 came. Over these he would toil with the minute and patient inspection of a 
 watchmaker or a lapidary, reading this or that passage many times, until he had 
 satisfied himself that no error remained and that no turn of expression could 
 well be improved. Before this task was done, the night had probably long faded 
 and the early sun was already lighting Paris; but when the Corps Ldgislatif 
 came to assemble at noon, the inexhaustible septuagenarian was at his post 
 again. That evening he would be found, the central figure of a group, in some 
 salon, scattering his brilliant sayings and acrid sarcasms around him, and in all 
 probability exercising his humor at the expense of the Imperial Ministers, the 
 Empire, and even the Emperor himself. After 1866 he was exuberant in his 
 bons mots about the humiliation of the Imperial Cabinet by Prussia. "Bis- 
 marck," he once declared, "is the best supporter of the French Government. 
 He keeps it always in its place by first boxing it on one ear and then maintain- 
 ing the equilibrium by boxing it on the other." 
 
 If one could have been present at the recent interviews between Count Bis- 
 marck and M. Thiers, he would doubtless have enjoyed a curious and edifying 
 intellectual treat. Bismarck is a man of imperturbable good humor ; Thiers a 
 man of imperturbable self-conceit. Thiers has a tongue which never lacks a 
 word, and that the most expressive word. Bismarck has a rare gift of shrewd 
 satirical humor, and of phrases that stick to public memory. Each man would
 
 LOUIS ADOLPHE THIERS. 75 
 
 have regarded the other as a worthy antagonist in a duel of words. Neither 
 would care to waste much time in lofty sentiment and grandiose appeals. Each 
 would thoroughly understand that his best motto would be, "A corsaire, corsaire 
 et demi." Bismarck would find in Thiers no feather-headed Benedetti ; assured- 
 ly, Thiers would favor Bismarck with none of Jules Favre's sighs and tears, and 
 bravado and choking emotions. Thiers would have the greater part of the talk, 
 that is certain ; but Bismarck would probably contrive to compress a good deal 
 of meaning and significance into his curt interjected sentences. Thiers as- 
 suredly must have long since worn out any freshness of surprise or thrilling emo- 
 tion of any kind at the political convulsions of France. To him even the spec- 
 tacle of the standard of Prussia hoisted on the pinnacles of Versailles could 
 hardly have been an overpowering wonder. He had seen the soldiers of Prussia 
 picketed in Paris ; he could remember when a fickle Parisian populace, weary of 
 war, had thronged into the streets to applaud the entrance of the conquering 
 Czar of Russia. He had seen the Bourbon restored, and had helped to over- 
 throw him. He had been twice the chief Minister of that Louis Philippe of 
 Orleans, who in his youth had had to save the Princess his sister by carrying 
 her off in her night-gown, without time to throw a shawl around her, and whose 
 long years of exile had led him, in fulfilment of the prophecy of Danton, to 
 the throne of France at last. He had helped towards the downfall of that same 
 King his master, and had striven vainly at the end to stand between him and 
 his fate. He had seen a second Republic rise and sink ; he had now become 
 the envoy of a third Republic. He had refused to serve an Imperial Napoleon, 
 although his own teaching and preaching had been among the most effective 
 agencies in debauching the mind and heart of the nation, and thus rendering a 
 second Empire possible. People say M. Thiers has no feelings, and I shall 
 not venture to contradict them I have often heard the statement from those 
 who know better than I ca pretend to do. It would have been personally un- 
 fortunate for him in his interview with Count von Bismarck if he had been 
 burthened with feelings. For he must surely in such a case have felt bitterly the 
 consciousness that the misfortunes which had fallen on his country were in 
 great measure the fruit of his own doctrines and his own labors. If the public 
 conscience of France had not been seared and hardened against all sentiment 
 of obligation to international principle, where French glory and French aggran- 
 dizement were concerned ; if France had not learned to believe that no foreign 
 nation had any rights which she was bound to respect ; if she had not been sat- 
 urated with the conviction that every benefit to a neighbor was an injury to her- 
 self; if she had not accepted these views as articles of national faith, and fol- 
 lowed them out wherever she could to their uttermost consequences, then M. 
 Thiers might be said to have written and spoken and lived in vain. 
 
 It is probable that a new career presents itself as a possibility to the indom- 
 itable energy, and, as many would say, the insatiable ambition of M. Thiers. 
 Certainly, there seems not the faintest indication that the veteran believes him- 
 self to lag superfluous on the stage. It is likely that he rushed into the recent 
 peace negotiations with the hope of playing over again the part so skilfully 
 played by Talleyrand at the time of the Congress of Vienna, by virtue of which 
 France obtained so much advantage which might hardly have been expected, 
 and Germany got so little of what she might naturally have looked for. I cer- 
 tainly shall riot venture to say whether M. Thiers may not even yet have an 
 important official career before him. His recent enterprises and expeditions 
 give evidence enough that he has nerve and physique for any undertaking likely 
 to attract him, and I see no reason to doubt that his intellect is as fresh and
 
 76 LOUIS ADOLPHE THIKRS. 
 
 active as it was thirty years ago. Thiers deserves nothing but honor for the un- 
 conquerable energy and courage which refuse to yield to years, and will not ac- 
 knowledge the triumph of time. He would deserve far greater honor still if 
 we could regard him as a disinterested patriot ; highest honor of all if his prin- 
 ciples were as wise and just as his ambition was unselfish. But charity itself 
 could hardly hope to reconcile the facts of M. Thiers's long and varied career 
 with any theory ascribing to the man himself a pure and disinterested purpose. 
 That a statesman has changed his opinions is often his highest glory, if, as in the 
 case of Mr. Gladstone, he has thereby grown into the light and the right. Not 
 is a change of views necessarily a reproach to a politician, even though he may have 
 retrograded or gone wrong. But the man who is invariably a passionate liberal 
 when out of office, and a severe conservative when in power; who makes it a 
 regular practice to have one set of opinions while he leads the opposition, and 
 another when he has succeeded in mounting to the lead of a ministry ; such a man 
 cannot possibly hope to obtain for such systematic alternations the credit of even 
 a capricious and fantastic sincerity. No one who knows anything of M. Thiers 
 would consent thus to exalt his heart at the expense of his head. When the late 
 Lord Cardigan was, rightly or wrongly, accused of having returned rather too 
 quickly from the famous charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, his lordship, 
 among other things, alleged that his horse had run away with him. A bitter critic 
 thereupon declared that Lord Cardigan could not be allowed thus unfairly to de- 
 preciate his consummate horsemanship, I am afraid we cannot allow M. Thiers's 
 intelligence and shrewdness to be unjustly depreciated by the assumption that 
 his political tergiversations were the result of meaningless caprice. 
 
 M. Thiers is one of the most gifted men of his day. But he is not, in my 
 judgment, a great man. He wants altogether the grand and stable qualities of 
 principle and judgment which are needed to constitute political greatness. 
 His statesmanship is a sort of policy belonging apparently to the school of the 
 Lower Empire ; a Byzantine blending of intrigue and impudence. He has 
 never had the faculty of reading the signs of the times, or of understanding that 
 to-day is not necessarily like yesterday. But for the wonderful gifts of the 
 man, there would seem to be something positively childish in the egotism which 
 could believe that it lay in the power of Franco to maintain, despite of destiny, 
 the petty princes of Germany and Italy, to arrange the political conditions of 
 England, and prescribe to the United States how far their principle of internal 
 coheson should reach. Victor Hugo is undoubtedly an egotistic Frenchman. 
 Some of his recent utterances have been foolish and ridiculous. But the folly 
 has been that of a great soul ; the folly has consisted in appealing, out of all 
 time and place, to sublime and impracticable sentiments of human brotherhood 
 and love which ought to influence all human souls, but do not and probably 
 never will. Far different is the egotism of Thiers. It is the egotism of selfish- 
 ness, arrogance, and craft. In a sublime world, Victor Hugo's appeals would 
 cease to be ridiculous ; but the nobler the world, the more ignoble would seem 
 the doctrines and the policy of Thiers. My own admiration of Thiers extends 
 only to his skill as a debater and his marvellous intellectual vitality. The man 
 who, despite the most disheartening disadvantages of presence, voice, and man- 
 ner, is yet the most fascinating political debater of his time, the man who at 
 seventy-three years of age can go up in a balloon in quest of a new career, must 
 surely command some interest and admiration, let critical wisdom preach to us 
 never so wisely. But the best days will have arisen for France when such a 
 political character and such a literary career as those of M. Thiers shall have 
 become an anachronism and an impossibility.
 
 PRINCE NAPOLEON. 
 
 SOME few years ago, seven or eight perhaps, a certain sensation was created 
 among artists, and journalists, and literary men, and connoisseurs, and 
 critics, by one of Flandrin's best portraits. Undoubtedly, the portrait was an 
 admirable likeness ; no one who had ever seen the original could deny or ques- 
 tion that ; but yet there was an air, a character, a certain depth of idealized ex- 
 pression about it which seemed to present the subject in a new light, and threw 
 one into a kind of doubt as to whether he had ever truly understood the original 
 before. Either the painter had unduly glorified his sitter, or the sitter had im- 
 pressed upon the artist a true idea of his character and intellect which had never 
 before been revealed to the public at large. The portrait was that of a man of mid- 
 dle age, with a smooth, broad, thoughtful brow, a character of command about 
 the finely-formed, somewhat sensuous lips ; chin and nose beautifully moulded, 
 in fact what ladies who write novels would call "chiselled ; " a face degenerat- 
 ing a little into mere flesh, but still dignified and imposing. Everywhere over 
 the face there was a tone of dissatisfaction, of disappointment, of sullenness 
 mingling strangely with the sensuous characteristics, and conveying somehow the 
 idea of great power and daring ambition unduly repressed by outward condi- 
 tions, or rendered barren by inward defects, or actually frustrated by failure and 
 fate. " A Caesar out of employment ! " exclaimed a celebrated French author 
 and critic. So much there was of the Caesar in the face that no school-boy, no 
 Miss in her teens could have even glanced at it without saying, " That is the face 
 of a Bonaparte ! " Were not the features a little too massive, it might have 
 passed for an admirable likeness of the victor of Austerlitz ; or, at all events, of 
 the Napoleon of Leipzig or the Hundred Days. Probably any ordinary observ- 
 er would at once have set it down as a portrait of the great Napoleon, and 
 never thought there could be any doubt about the matter. It was, in fact, the 
 likeness of Napoleon-Jerome, son of the rattle-pate King of Westphalia 
 Prince Napoleon, as he is ordinarily called, the Plon-plon whom soldiers jeer 
 at, the "Red Prince" whom priests and Legitimists denounce, the cousin of the 
 Emperor of the French, the son-in-law of the King of Italy. 
 
 It was only somewhere about, or a little before the time of the Flandrin por- 
 trait, that Prince Napoleon had the honor of becoming a mystery in the eyes of 
 the public. Up to 1860, his character was quite settled in public estimation, just 
 as that of Louis Napoleon had been up to the time of the coup d'etat. Public 
 opinion generally settles the characters of conspicuous men at first by the intuitive 
 process the most delightful and easy method possible, dispensing, as it does, 
 with any necessity for studying the subject, or even knowing anything at all 
 about it. When the intuitive process has once adjusted a man's character, it is 
 not easy to get people to believe in any other adjustment. Still, there are some 
 remarkable instances of a change in popular opinion. The case of Louis Napo- 
 leon, the Emperor, is one illustration ; that of Prince Napoleon, his cousin, is 
 another, not so remarkable, certainly, but still quile worthy of some attention. 
 
 Prince Napoleon had been before the world more or less since he appeared 
 as representative of Corsica, in the Constituent Assembly of 1848. He was 
 made conspicuous, in a negative sort of way, by having had no hand in the coup 
 d'etat, or having even opposed it, although he did not scruple to profit by its
 
 78 PRINCE NAPOLEON. 
 
 success and enjoy its golden advantages. He had a command in the Crimean 
 war; he was sent into Tuscany during the Italian campaign. All that time 
 public opinion in Europe was unanimous about him. He was a sensualist, a 
 coward, an imbecile, and a blockhead. He was. a fat, stupid, muddle-headed 
 Heliogabalus. Dulness, cowardice, and profligacy were his principal, perhaps 
 his only characteristics. When the young Clotilde, of Savoy, was given to him 
 for a wife, a positive cry of wonder and disgust went up from every country of 
 Europe. In good truth, it was a scandalous thing to marry a young and inno- 
 cent girl to a man nearly as old as her father ; and who, undoubtedly, had been 
 a rna.uva.is sujet, and had led a life of dissipation so far. But Europe cried 
 aloud as if three out of every four princely alliances were not made on the same 
 principle and endowed with the same character. Had the Princess Clotilde been 
 affianced to a hog or a gorilla, there could hardly have been greater wonder and 
 horror expressed, so clear was the public mind about the stupidity and brutality 
 of Prince Napoleon. 
 
 Certainly, if one looked a little deeper than mere public opinion, he would 
 have found, even then, that here and there some men, not quite incapable of 
 iudging, did not accept the popular estimate of the Emperor's cousin. All 
 through the memorable progress of the Congress of Paris out of which sprang 
 Italy we find, by the documents subsequently made public, that Cavour was in 
 close and frequent consultation with Prince Napoleon. Once we find Cavour 
 saying that Prince Napoleon complains of his slowness, his too great modera- 
 tion, and thinks he could serve the cause better by a little more boldness. " Per- 
 haps he is right," says Cavour, in words to that effect ; " but I fear I lack his 
 force of character, his daringness of purpose." Richard Cobden makes the 
 acquaintance of Prince Napoleon, and is surprised and delighted with his ad- 
 vanced opinions on the subject of free trade ; and deliberately describes him (I 
 heard Cobden use the words) as "one of the best informed, if not the very best 
 informed, of all the public men of Europe." Kinglake observes the Prince dur- 
 ing the Crimean campaign where Napoleon-Jerome got his reputation for 
 cowardice and his nick-name of Plon-plon and finds in him a genius very like 
 that of his uncle, the great Napoleon, especially a wonderful power of distin- 
 guishing at a glance between the essentials and the accidentals of any question 
 or situation and any one who has ever studied politics and public men will know 
 how rare a faculty that is and finally declares that he sees no reason to be- 
 lieve him inferior in courage to the conqueror of Marengo ! Edmond About, 
 not a very dull personage, and not quite given up to panegyric, bursts into a 
 strain of almost lyrical enthusiasm about the wit, the brilliancy, the culture, the 
 daring ambition of Prince Napoleon, and declares that the Prince is kept as 
 much out of the way as possible, because a man endowed with a soul of such 
 unresting energy, and the face of the great Emperor, is too formidable a per- 
 sonage to be seen hanging about the steps of a throne. To close this string of 
 illustrations, Prince Napoleon is in somewhat frequent and confidential inter- 
 course with Michel Chevalier, a man not likely to cultivate the society of heavy 
 blockheads and dullards, even though these might happen to wear princely 
 coronets. Clearly, public opinion here was even more directly at odds than it 
 often is with the opinion of some whom we may call experts ; and the difference 
 was so great that there seemed no possible way of reconciling the two. A man 
 may be a profligate and yet a man of genius, and even a patriot ; but one cannot 
 be a profligate blockhead and a man of genius, a Cloten and an Alcibiades, a 
 Caesar and a Pyrgopolinices at once.
 
 PRINCE NAPOLEON. 79 
 
 It was in the early part of 1861 that Prince Napoleon contributed some- 
 thing of his own spontaneous motion to help in the solution of the enigma. 
 That was the year when the Emperor removed the restriction which prevented 
 both Chambers of the Legislature from freely debating the address, and the 
 press from fully reporting the discussions. There was a remarkable debate in 
 the Senate, ranging over a great variety of domestic and foreign questions, and 
 one most memorable event of the debate was the brilliant, powerful and exhaust- 
 ive oration delivered, with splendid energy and rhetorical effect, by Prince Na- 
 poleon. Mon ane parle et meme il parle bien, declares the astonished Joan, in 
 Voltaire's scandalous poem, " La Pucelle." Perhaps there was something of a 
 similar wonder mingled with the burst of genuine admiration which went up first 
 from Paris, then from France, and finally from Europe and America, when that 
 magnificent democratic manifesto came to be read. Certainly, I remember no 
 single speech which, during my time, created anything like the same sensation 
 in Europe. For it took the outer world wholly by surprise. It was not a 
 case like that of the sensation lately created by the florid and fervid eloquence 
 of the young Spanish orator, Castellar. In this latter case the public were sur- 
 prised and delighted to find that there was a master of thrilling rhetoric alive, 
 and arrayed on the side of democratic freedom, of whose very existence most 
 persons had been previously ignorant. But, in the case of Prince Napoleon, 
 the surprise was, that a man whom the public had long known, and always 
 set down as a stupid sensualist, should suddenly, and without any previous 
 warning, turn out a great orator, whose eloquence had in it something so fresh, 
 and genuine, and forcible that it recalled the memory of the most glorious days 
 of the French Tribune. I write of this celebrated oration now only from rec- 
 ollection ; and, of course, I did not hear it spoken. I say " of course," because 
 the rules of the French Senate, unlike those of the Corps Legislatif, forbid the 
 presence of any strangers during the debates. But those who heard it spoke en- 
 thusiastically of the force and freedom with which it was delivered ; the sudden, 
 impulsive fervor of occasional outbursts ; and the wonderful readiness with 
 which the speaker, when interrupted, as he was very frequently, passed from one 
 topic to another in order to dispose of the interruption, and replied to sudden 
 challenge with even prompter repartee. No one could read the speech without 
 admiring the extent and variety of the political knowledge it displayed ; the prod- 
 igality of illustration it flung over every argument ; the thrilling power of some 
 of its rhetorical " phrases ; " the tone of sustained and passionate eloquence 
 which made itself heard all throughout ; and, perhaps above all, that flexible, spon- 
 taneous readiness of language and resource to which every interruption, every 
 interjected question only acted like a spur to a generous horse, calling forth new 
 and greater, and wholly unexpected efforts. In the French Senate I need, per- 
 haps, hardly tell my readers, it is the habit to allow the utmost license of in- 
 terruption, and Prince Napoleon's audacious onslaught on the reactionists and 
 the parti pretre called out even an unusual amount of impatient utterance. 
 Those who interrupted took little by their motion. The energetic Prince tossed 
 off his assailants as a bull flings the dogs away on the points of his horns. " Our 
 principles are not yours," scornfully exclaims a Legitimist nobleman the late 
 Marquis de la Rochejaquelein, if I remember rightly. " Your principles are not 
 ours ! " vehemently replies the orator. " No, nor are your antecedents ours. 
 Our pride is that our fathers fell on the battle-field resisting the foreign invaders 
 whom your fathers brought in for the subjugation of France ! " The speech 
 is studded with sudden replies equally fervid and telling. Indeed, the whole
 
 80 PRINCE NAPOLEON. 
 
 material of the oration is rich, strong, and genuine. There seems to be in the 
 eloquence of the French Chambers, of late, a certain want of freshness and 
 natural power. I do not speak of Berryer he had no such want. But Thiers 
 by far the ablest living debater who speaks only from preparation with all 
 his wonderful science and skill as an artist in debate, appears to be always some- 
 what artificial and elaborate. Jules Favre, with his exquisitely modulated 
 tones, and his unrivalled choice of words, hardly ever appears to me to rise to 
 that height where the orator, lost in his subject, compels his hearers to lose them- 
 selves also in it. Now, I cannot help thinking that the two or three really great 
 speeches made by Prince Napoleon had in them more of the native fibre, force 
 and passion of oratory than those of almost any Frenchman since the days of 
 Mirabeau. 
 
 However that may be, the effect wrought on the public mind was unmistaka- 
 ble. Plon-plon had startled Europe. He entered the palace of the Luxem- 
 bourg on that memorable day without any repute but that of a dullard and a 
 sensualist ; he came out of it a recognized orator. I have been told that he lay 
 back in his open carriage and smoked his cigar, as he drove home from the Sen- 
 ate, to all appearance the same indolent, sullen, heavy apathetic personage 
 whom all Paris had previously known and despised. 
 
 One notable effect of this famous speech was the reply which a certain pas- 
 sage in it drew from Louis Philippe's son, the Due d'Aumale. Prince Napo- 
 leon had indulged in a bitter sneer or two against former dynasties, and the Due 
 d'Aumale, a man of great culture and ability, took up the quarrel fiercely. The 
 Duke assailed Prince Napoleon in one of the keenest, most biting pamphlets 
 which the political controversy of our day has produced. Among other things, 
 the Duke replied to a supposed imputation on the weakness of Louis Philippe 
 by admitting, frankly, that the bourgeois King had not dealt with enemies, when 
 in his power, as a Bonaparte would have done. " Et tenez, Prince," wrote the 
 Duke, " the only time when the word of a Bonaparte may be believed is when 
 he avows that he will never spare a defenceless enemy." The pamphlet 
 bristled with points equally sharp and envenomed. But the Due d'Aumale was 
 not content with written rejoinder. He sent a challenge to the Prince, and in 
 serious earnest. The Prince, it need hardly be said, did not accept the chal- 
 lenge. 
 
 Yes, like enough, high-battled Caesar will 
 Unstate his greatness, and be staged to the show 
 Against a sworder ! 
 
 Our Caesar, though not "high-battled," was by no means likely to consent to 
 be " staged against a sworder." The Emperor hastened to prevent any disastrous 
 consequences, by insisting that the Prince must not accept the challenge and 
 there was no duel. People winked and sneered a good deal. It is said that the 
 martial King Victor Emmanuel grumbled and chafed at his son-in-law ; but there 
 was no fight. Let me say, for my own part, that I think Prince Napoleon was 
 quite right in not accepting the challenge, and that I do not believe him to be 
 wanting in personal courage. 
 
 From that moment, Prince Napoleon became a conspicuous figure in European 
 politics, and when any great question arose, men turned anxiously toward him, 
 curious to know what he would do or say. In three or four successive sessions 
 he spoke in the Senate, and even with the impression of the first surprise still 
 strong on the public mind, the speeches preserved abundantly the reputation 
 which the earliest of them had so suddenly created. He might be the enfant 
 terrible of the Bonaparte family ; he might be utterly wanting in statesmanship ;
 
 PRINCE .NAPOLEON. 81 
 
 he might be insincere ; he might be physically a coward ; but all the world now 
 admitted him to be an orator, and, in his way, a man of genius. 
 
 Then it became known to the public, all at once, that the Prince, whatever 
 his failings, had some rare gifts besides that of eloquence. He was undoubtedly 
 a man of exquisite taste in all things artistic ; he had an intelligent and liberal 
 knowledge of practical science ; he had a great faculty of organization ; he was a 
 keen humorjst and wit. He loved the society of artists, and journalists, and lit- 
 erary men ; he associated with them en ban camerade, and he could talk with 
 each upon his own subject ; his bon mots soon began to circulate far and wide. 
 He was a patron of Revolution. In the innermost privacy of the Palais Royal 
 men like Mieroslawski, the Polish Red Revolutionist, men like General Tiirr, 
 unfolded and discussed their plans. Prince Gortschakoff, in his despatches at 
 the time of the Polish Rebellion, distinctly pointed to the palace of Prince Na- 
 poleon as the headquarters of the insurrection. The " Red Prince" grew to be 
 one of the mysterious figures in European policy. Was he in league with his 
 cousin, the Emperor or was he his cousin's enemy ? Did he hope, on the 
 strength of that Bonaparte face, and his secret league with Democracy, to mount 
 one day from the steps of the throne to the throne itself? Between him and the 
 succession to that throne intervened only the life of one frail boy. Was Prince 
 Napoleon preparing for the day when he might play the part of a Gloster (with- 
 out the smothering), and, pushing the boy aside, succeed to the crown of the great 
 Emperor whom in face he so strikingly resembled ? 
 
 At last came the celebrated Ajaccio speech. The Emperor had gone to visit 
 Algeria ; the Prince went to deliver an oration at the inauguration of a monument 
 to Napoleon I., at Ajaccio. The speech was, in brief, a powerful, passion- 
 ate denunciation of Austria, and the principles which Austria represented be- 
 fore Sadowa' taught her a lesson of tardy wisdom. Viewed as the exposition of 
 a professor of history, one might fairly acknowledge the Prince's speech to have 
 illustrated eloquently some solid and stern truths, which Europe would have done 
 well even then to consider deeply. Subsequent events have justified and illu- 
 minated many of what then seemed the most startling utterances of the orator. 
 Austria, for example, practically admits, by her present policy, the justice of much 
 that Prince Napoleon pleaded against her. But as the speech of the Emperor's 
 cousin ; of one who stood in near order of succession to the throne ; of one who 
 had only just been raised to an office in the State so high that in the absence of 
 the sovereign it made him seem the sovereign's proper representative, it was 
 undoubtedly a piece of marvellous indiscretion. Europe stood amazed at its 
 outspoken audacity. The Emperor could not overlook it ; and he publicly repu- 
 diated it. Prince Napoleon resigned his public offices including that of Presi- 
 dent of the Commissioners of the International Exhibition, which undertaking 
 suffered sadly from lack of his organizing capacity and his admirable taste and 
 judgment and the Imperial orator of Democracy disappeared from the public 
 stage as suddenly, and amid as much tumult, as he had entered upon it. 
 
 Prince Napoleon has, indeed, been taken into favor since by his Imperial 
 cousin, and has been sent on one or two missions, more or less important or 
 mysterious ; but he has never, from the date of the Ajaccio speech up to the pres- 
 ent moment, played any important part as a public man. He is not, however, 
 "played out." His energy, his ambition, his ability, will assuredly bring him 
 prominently before the public again. Let us, meanwhile, endeavor to set before 
 the readers of THE GALAXY a fair and true picture of the man, free alike from 
 the exaggerated proportions which wondering quidnuncs or parasites attribute
 
 82 PRINCE NAPOLEON. 
 
 to him, and from the distortions of unfriendly painters. Exaggeration of both 
 kinds apart, Prince Napoleon is really one of the most remarkable figures on the 
 present stage of French history. He is, at least, a man of great possibilities. 
 Let us try to ascertain fairly what he is, and what are his chances for the future. 
 Born of a hair-brained, eccentric, adventure-seeking, negligent, selfish father, 
 Prince Napoleon had little of the advantages of a home education. His boyhood, 
 his youth, were passed in a vagrant kind of way, ranging from country, to country, 
 from court to court. He started in life with great natural talents, a strong ten- 
 dency to something not very unlike rowdyism, an immense ambition, an almost 
 equally vast indolence, a deep and genuine love of arts, letters, and luxury, an 
 eccentric, fitful temper, and a predominant pride in that relationship to the great 
 Emperor which is so plainly stamped upon his face. Without entering into any 
 questions of current scandal, everybody must know that Napoleon III. has 
 nothing of the Bonaparte in his face, a fact on which Prince Napoleon, in his 
 e.irlier and wilder days, was not always very slow to comment. Indolence, love 
 of luxury, and a capricious temper have, perhaps, been the chief enemies which 
 have hitherto prevented the latter from fulfilling any high ambition. It would be 
 affectation to ignore the fact that Prince Napoleon flung many years away in mere 
 dissipation. Stories are told in Paris which would represent him almost as a 
 Vitellius or an Egalitd in profligacy stories some of which simply transcend 
 belief by their very monstrosity. Even to this day, to this hour, it is the firm 
 conviction of the general public that the Emperor's cousin is steeped to the lips in 
 sensuality. Now, rejecting, of course, a huge mass of this scandal, it is certain 
 that Prince Napoleon was, for a long time, a downright mauvais sujet; it is by no 
 means certain that he has, even at his present mature age, discarded all his evil 
 habits. His temper is much against him. People habitually contrast the un- 
 varying courtesy and self-control of the Emperor with the occasional brusqueness, 
 and even rudeness, of the Prince. True that Prince Napoleon can be frankly 
 and warmly familiar with his intimates, and even that, like Prince Hal, he some- 
 times encourages a degree of familiarity which hardly tends to mutual respect. 
 But the outer world cannot always rely on him. He can be undiplomatically 
 rough and hot, and he has a gift of biting jest which is perhaps one of the most 
 dangerous qualities a statesman can cultivate. Then there is a personal restless- 
 ness about him which even princes cannot afford safely to indulge. He has 
 hardly ever had any official position assigned to him which he did not sometime or 
 other scornfully abandon on the spur of some sudden impulse. The Madrid em- 
 bassy in former days, the Algerian administration, the Crimean command these 
 and ojher offices he only accepted to resign. He has wandered more widely over 
 the face of the earth than any other living prince probably than any other prince 
 that ever lived. It used to be humorously said of him that he was qualifying to 
 become a teacher of geography, in the event of fortune once more driving the race 
 of Bonaparte into exile and obscurity. What port is there that has not sheltered 
 l.is wandering yacht ? He has pleasant dwellings enough to induce a man to 
 stay at home. His Palais Royal is one of the most elegant and tasteful abodes 
 belonging to a European prince. The stranger in Paris who is fortunate enough 
 to obtain admission to it and, indeed, admission is easy to procure must be 
 sadly wanting in taste if he does not admire the treasures of art and vertti which 
 are laid up there, and the easy, graceful manner of their arrangement. Nothing 
 of the air of the show-place is breathed there ; no rules, no conditions, no watchful, 
 dogging lacqueys or sentinels make the visitor uncomfortable. Once admitted, the 
 stranger goes where he will, and admires and examines what he pleases. He finds
 
 PRINCE NAPOLEON. 83 
 
 there curiosities and relics, medals and statues, bronzes and stor._. irom every 
 land in which history or romance takes any interest ; he gazes on the latest ar- 
 tistic successes Dora's magnificent lights and shadows, GeVome's audacious 
 nudities ; he observes autograph collections of value inestimable ; he notices that 
 on the tables, here and there, lie the newest triumphs or sensations of literature 
 the poem that every one is just talking of, the play that fills the theatres, George 
 Sand's last novel, Re'nan's new volume, Taine's freshest criticism : he is im- 
 pressed everywhere with the conviction that he is in the house of a man of high 
 culture and active intellect, who keeps up with the progress of the world in arts, 
 and letters, and politics. Then there was, until lately, the famous Pompeiian Pal- 
 ace, in one of the avenues of the Champs Elyse'es, which ranked among the 
 curiosities of Paris, but which Prince Napoleon has at last chosen, or been com- 
 pelled, to sell. On the Swiss shore of the lake of Geneva, one of the most re- 
 markable objects that attract the eye of the tourist who steams from Geneva to 
 Lausanne, is La Bergerie, the palace of Prince Napoleon. But the owner of these 
 palaces spends little of his time in them. His wife, the Princess Clotilde, stays at 
 home and delights in her children, and shows them with pride to her visitors, while 
 her restless husband is steaming in and out of the ports of the Mediterranean, the 
 Black Sea, or the Baltic. Prince Napoleon has not found his place yet, say 
 Edmond About and other admirers when he does he will settle firmly to it. 
 He is a restless, unmanageable idler and scamp, say his enemies unstable as 
 water, he shall not excel. Meanwhile years go by, and Prince Napoleon has 
 'ong left even the latest verge of youth behind him ; and he is only a possibility 
 as yet, and is popular with no political party in France. 
 
 Strange that this avowed and ostentatious Democrat, this eloquent, powerful 
 spokesman of French Radicalism, is not popular even with Democrats and Red 
 Republicans. They do not trust him. They cannot understand how he can 
 honestly extend one hand to Democracy, while in the other he receives the mag- 
 nificent revenues assigned to him by Despotism. One might have thought that 
 nothing would be more easy than for this man, with his daring, his ambition, his 
 brilliant talents, his commanding eloquence, his democratic principles, and his 
 Napoleon face, to make himself the idol of French Democracy. Yet he has 
 utterly failed to do so. As a politician, he has almost invariably upheld the 
 rightful cause, and accurately foretold the course of events. He believed in the 
 possibility of Italy's resurrection long before there was any idea of his becom- 
 ing son-in-law to a King of Italy; he has been one of the most earnest friends 
 of the cause of Poland ; he saw long ago what every one sees now, that the fall 
 of the Austrian system was an absolute necessity to the progress of Europe ; 
 he was a steady supporter of the American Union, and when it was the fashion 
 in France, as in England, to regard the independence of the Southern Confed- 
 eracy as all but an accomplished fact, he remained firm in the conviction that 
 the North was destined to triumph. With all his characteristic recklessness 
 and impetuosity, he has many times shown a cool and penetrating judgment, 
 hardly surpassed by that of any other European statesman. Yet the undeniable 
 fact remains, that his opinion carries with it comparatively little weight, and that 
 no party recognizes him as a leader. 
 
 Is he insincere ? Most people say he is. They say that, with all his profes- 
 sions of democratic faith, he delights in his princely rank and his princely rev- 
 enues ; that he is selfish, grasping, luxurious, arrogant and deceitful. The army 
 despises him ; the populace do not trust him. Now, for myself, I do not accept 
 this view of the character of Prince Napoleon. I think he is a sincere Demo-
 
 84 PRINCE NAPOLEON. 
 
 crat. a genuine lover of liberty and progress. But I think, at the same time, 
 that he is cursed with some of the vices of Alcibiades, and some of the vices 
 of Mirabeau ; that he has the habitual indolence almost of a Vendome. with 
 Vendome's occasional outbursts of sudden energy ; that a love of luxury, 
 and a restlessness of character, and fretfulness of temper stand in his way, 
 and are his enemies. I doubt whether he will ever play a great historical part, 
 whether he ever will do much more than he has done. His character wants 
 that backbone of earnest, strong simplicity and faith, without which even the 
 most brilliant talents can hardly achieve political greatness. He will proba- 
 bly rank in history among the Might-Have-Beens. Assuredly, he has in him 
 the capacity to play a great part. In knowledge and culture, he is far, in- 
 deed, superior to his uncle, Napoleon I. ; in justice of political conviction, he 
 is a long way in advance of his cousin, Napoleon III. Taken for all in all, 
 he is the most lavishly gifted of the race of the Bonapartes and what a part 
 in the cause of civilization and liberty might not be played by a Bonaparte en- 
 dowed with genius and culture, and faithful to high and true convictions ! But 
 the time seems going by, if not gone by, when even admirers could expect to 
 see Prince Napoleon play such a part. Probably the disturbing, distracting 
 vein of unconquerable levity so conspicuous in the character of his father, is 
 the marplot of the son's career, too. After .all, Prince Napoleon is perhaps 
 more of an Antony than a Caesar was not Antony, too, an orator, a wit, a lover 
 of art and letters, a lover of luxury and free companionship, and woman ? 
 Doubtless Prince Napoleon will emerge again, some time and somehow, from 
 his present condition of comparative obscurity. Any day, any crisis, any sud- 
 den impulse may bring him up to the front again. But I doubt whether the dy- 
 nasty of the Bonapartes, the cause of democratic freedom, the destinies of 
 France, will be influenced much for good or evil, by this man of rare and varied 
 gifts of almost measureless possibilities the restless, reckless, eloquent, bril- 
 liant Imperial Democrat of the Palais Royal, and Red Republican of the Em- 
 pire the long misunderstood and yet scarcely comprehended Prince Napoleon.
 
 THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 THERE used to be a story current in London, which I dare say is not true, 
 to the effect that her gracious Majesty Queen Victoria once demurred to 
 the Prince and Princess of Wales showing themselves too freely in society, and 
 asked them angrily whether they meant to make themselves "as common as the 
 Cambridges." 
 
 Certainly the Duke of Cambridge and his sister the Princess Mary, now 
 Princess of Teck, were for a long time, if not exactly " common," if not precise- 
 ly popular, the most social, the most easily approached, and the most often seen 
 in public pageantry of all members of the royal family. The Princess Mary 
 might perhaps fairly be called popular. The people liked her fine, winsome 
 face, her plump and buxom form. If she has not a kindly, warm, and generous 
 heart, then surely physiognomy is no index of character. But the Duke of Cam- 
 bridge, although very commonly seen in public, and ready to give his presence 
 and his support to almost any philanthropic meeting and institution which can 
 claim to be fashionable, never seems to have attained any degree of popularity. 
 Like his father, who enjoyed the repute of being the worst after-dinner speaker 
 who ever opened his mouth, the Duke of Cambridge is to be found acting as 
 chairman of some public banquet once a week on an average during the London 
 season. He is president or patron of no end of public charities and other insti- 
 tutions. Yet the people do not seem to care anything about him, or even to like 
 him. His appearance is not in his favor. He is handsome in a certain sense, 
 but he is heavy, stolid, sensual-looking, and even gross in form and face. He 
 has indeed nearly all the peculiarities of physiognomy which specially belong to 
 the most typical members of the Guelph family, and there is, moreover, descite 
 the obesity which usually suggests careless good-humor, something sinister or 
 secret in his expression not pleasant to look upon. He seems to be a man of 
 respectable average abilities. He is not a remarkably bad speaker. I think 
 when he addresses the House of Lords, which he does rarely, or a public meet- 
 ing or dinner-party, which he does often, he acquits himself rather better than 
 the ordinary county member of Parliament. Judging by his apparent mental ca- 
 pacity and his style as a speaker, he ought to be rather popular than otherwise 
 in England, for the English people like respectable mediocrity and not talent in 
 their princes. " He is so respectable and such an ass," says Thackeray speak- 
 ing of somebody, " that I positively wonder he didn't get on in England." The 
 Duke of Cambridge is so respectable (in intellectual capacity) and so dull that I 
 positively wonder he has not been popular in England. But popular he never 
 has been. No such clamorous detestation follows him as used to pursue the late 
 Duke of Cumberland, subsequently King of Hanover. No such accusations 
 have been made against him as were familiarly pressed against the Duke of 
 York. Even against the living Prince of Wales there are charges made by com- 
 mon scandal more serious than any that are usually talked of in regard to the 
 Duke of Cambridge. But the English public likes the Duke as little as it could 
 like any royal personage. England has lately been growing very jealous of the 
 manner in which valuable appointments are heaped on members of the Queen's 
 family. The Duke of Cambridge has long enjoyed some sinecure places of lib- 
 eral revenue, and he holds one office of inestimable influence, for which he has
 
 86 THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 never proved himself qualified, and for which common report declares him to be 
 utterly disqualified. He is Commander-in-Chief of the British army ; and that 
 I believe to be his grand offence in the eyes of the British public. Many of- 
 fences incident to his position are indeed charged upon him. It is said that he 
 makes an unfair use, for purposes of favoritism, of the immense patronage which 
 his office places at his disposal. Some years ago scandal used to charge him 
 with advancing men out of the same motive which induced the Marquis of 
 Steyne to obtain an appointment for Colonel Rawdon Crawley. The private 
 life of the Duke is said to have been immoral, and unluckily for him it so hap- 
 pened that some of his closest friends and favorites became now and then in- 
 volved in scandals of which the law courts had to take cognizance. But had 
 none of these things been so, or been said, I think the Duke of Cambridge would 
 have lacked popularity just as much as he does. The English people are si- 
 lently angry with him, mainly because he is an anachronism a man raised to 
 the most influential public appointment the sovereign can bestow, for no other 
 reason than because he is a member of the royal family. The Duke of Cam- 
 bridge in the office of Commander-in-Chief is an anachronism at the head of an 
 anomaly. The system is unfit for the army or the country ; the man is incompe- 
 tent to manage any military system, good or bad. As the question of army re- 
 organization, now under debate in England, has a grand political importance, 
 transcending by far its utmost possible military import, and as the position of 
 the Duke of Cambridge is one of the peculiar and typical anomalies about to be 
 abolished, it may surely interest American readers if I occupy a few pages in de- 
 scribing the man and the system. Altering slightly the words of Bugeaud to 
 Louis Philippe in 1848, this reorganization of the army in England is not a re- 
 form, but a revolution. It strikes out the keystone from the arch of the fabric of 
 English aristocracy. 
 
 The Duke of Cambridge is, as everybody knows, the first cousin of the 
 Queen of England. He is about the same age as the Queen. When both were 
 young it used to be said that he cherished hopes of becoming her husband. He is 
 now himself one of the victims of the odious royal marriage act, which in England 
 acknowledges as valid no marriage with a subject contracted by a member of the 
 royal family without the consent of the sovereign. The Duke of Cambridge, it is 
 well known, is privately married to a lady of respectable position and of character 
 which has never been reproached, but whom, nevertheless, he cannot present to 
 the world as his wife because the royal consent has not ratified the marriage. 
 Many readers of THE GALAXY may perhaps remember that only four or five 
 years ago there was some little commotion created in England by the report, 
 never contradicted, that a princess of the royal house had set her heart upon 
 marrying a young English nobleman who loved her, and that the Queen utterly 
 refused to give her consent. Much sympathy was felt for the princess, because, 
 as she was not a daughter of the Queen and was not young enough to be reason- 
 ably expected to acknowledge the control of any relative, this rigorous exercise 
 of a merely technical power seemed particularly unjust and odious. It will be 
 seen, therefore, that the objections raised against the Duke and his position in 
 England are not founded on the belief that he is himself as an individual inor- 
 dinately favored by the sovereign ; but on the obvious fact that place and powet 
 are given to him because he is a member of the reigning family. The Duke of 
 Cambridge has never shown the slightest military talent, the faintest capacity 
 for the business of war. In his only campaign he proved worse than useless, and 
 more than once made a humiliating exhibition, not of cowardice, but of utter inca- 
 pacity and flaccid nervelessness. His warmest admirer never ventured to pretend
 
 THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE. 87 
 
 that the Duke was personally the best man to take the place of Commander-in- 
 Chief. While he was constantly accused by rumor and sometimes by public in- 
 sinuation of blundering, of obstinacy, of ignorance, of gross favoritism, no de- 
 fence ever made for him, no eulogy ever pronounced upon him, went the length 
 Di describing him as a well-qualified head of the military organization. His up- 
 holders and panegyrists were content with pleading virtually that he was by no 
 means a bad sort of Commander-in-Chief ; that he was not fairly responsible for 
 this or that blunder or malversation ; that on the whole there might have been 
 men worse fitted than he for the place. The social vindication of the appoint- 
 ment was that which proved very naturally its worst offence in the eyes of the 
 public the fact that the sovereign and her family desired that the place should 
 be given to the Duke of Cambridge, and that the ministers then in power either 
 had not the courage or did not think it worth their while to resist the royal 
 inclination. 
 
 The Duke, if he never proved himself much of a soldier, had at least oppor- 
 tunity enough to learn all the ordinary business of his profession. He actually 
 is, and always has been, a professional soldier not nominally an officer, as the 
 late Prince Albert was, or as the Prince of Wales is, or as the Princess Victoria 
 (Crown Princess of Prussia) mav be said for that matter to be, the lady holding, 
 I believe, an appointment as colonel of some regiment, and being doubtless just 
 as well acquainted with her regimental duties as her fat and heavy brother. 
 The Duke of Cambridge was made a colonel at the age of eighteen, and he did 
 the ordinary barrack and garrison duties of his place. He used when young to 
 be rather popular in garrison towns. In Dublin, for example, I think Prince 
 George of Cambridge, as he was then called, was followed with glances of admi- 
 ration by many hundred pairs of bright eyes. On the death of his father (whose 
 after-dinner eloquence used to afford " Punch " a constant subject for mirth) 
 Prince George became in 1850 Duke of Cambridge. He holds some appoint- 
 ments which I presume are sinecures to him ; among the rest he is keeper of 
 some of the royal parks (I don't know the precise title of his office), and the name 
 of "George" may be seen appended to edicts inscribed on various placards on 
 the trees and gates near Buckingham Palace. Nothing in particular was known 
 about him as a soldier until the Crimean war. Indeed, up to that time there had 
 been for many years as little chance for an English officer to prove his capacity 
 as there was for a West Point man to show what he was worth in the period be- 
 tween the Mexican war and the attack on Fort Sumter. When the Crimean 
 war broke out the Duke was appointed to the command of the first division of 
 the army sent against the Russians. I believe it is beyond all doubt that he 
 proved himself unfit for the business of war. He " lost his head," people say ; 
 he could not stand the sights and sounds of the battle-field. It required on 
 one occasion at Inkerman, I believe the prompt and sharp interference of the 
 late Lord Clyde, then Sir Colin Campbell, to prevent his Royal Highness from 
 making a sad mess of his command. It is not likely that he wanted personal 
 courage few princes do ; but his nerves gave way, and as he could be of no fur- 
 ther use to anybody he was induced to return home. France and ffngland each 
 sent a fat prince, cousin of the reigning sovereign, to the Crimean war, and each 
 prince rather suddenly came home again with the invidious whispers of the ma- 
 lign unpleasantly criticising his retreat from the field. After the Duke's return 
 the corporation of Liverpool gave him (why, no man could well say) a grand tri- 
 umphal entry, and I remember that an irreverent and cynical member of one of 
 the local boards suggested that among the devices exhibited in honor of the il- 
 lustrious visitor, a white feather would be an appropriate emblem. There the
 
 88 THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 Duke's active military career began and ended. He had not distinguished him- 
 self. Perhaps he had not disgraced himself; perhaps it was really only ill- 
 health which prevented him from proving himself as genuine a warrior as his 
 relative, the Crown Prince of Prussia. But the English people only saw that 
 the Duke went out to the war and very quickly came back again. Julius Caesar 
 or the First Napoleon or General Sherman might have had to do the same tiling 
 under the same circumstances ; but then these more lucky soldiers did not have 
 to do it, and therefore were able to prove their military capacity. One thing 
 very certain is, that without such good fortune and such proof of capacity neither 
 Caesar, Napoleon, nor Sherman would ever have been made commander-in- 
 chief, and therein again they were unlike the Duke of Cambridge. For it was 
 not long after the Duke's return home that on the death or resignation (I don't 
 now quite remember which) of Viscount Hardinge, our heavy "George" was 
 made Commander-in-Chief of the British army. I venture to think that, taking 
 all the conditions of the time and the appointment into consideration, no more 
 unreasonable, no more unjustifiable instance of military promotion was ever seen 
 in England. 
 
 For observe, that the worst thing about the appointment of the Duke of 
 Cambridge is not that an incompetent person obtains by virtue of his rank the 
 highest military position in the State. If this were all, there might be just the 
 same thing said of almost every other European country indeed, of almost every 
 other country. The King of Prussia was Commander-in-Chief of the armies of 
 North Germany, but no one supposed that he was really competent to discharge 
 all the duties of such a position. Abraham Lincoln was Commander-in-Chief of 
 the Federal army, by virtue of his office of President ; but no one supposed that 
 his military knowledge and capacity would ever have recommended him to such 
 a post. The appointment in each case was only nominal, and as a matter ot 
 political convenience and propriety. It did not seem wise or even safe that the 
 supreme military authority should be formally intrusted to any one but the rukr 
 or the President. It was thoroughly understood that the duties of the office 
 were discharged by some professional expert, for whose work the King or the 
 President was responsible to the nation. But the office of Commander-in-Chief 
 of the English army is something quite different from this. It is understood to 
 be a genuine office, the occupant actually doing the work and having the au- 
 thority. In the lifetime of the Duke of Wellington the country had the services 
 of the very best Commander-in-Chief England could have selected. The sound 
 and wise principle which dictated that appointment is really the principle on 
 which the office is based in England. The Commander-in-Chief is not regarded, 
 as on the Continent, in the light of an ornamental president of a great bureau 
 whose duties are done by others, but as the most efficient military officer, the 
 man best qualified to do the work. Marlborough was Commander-in-Chief, and so 
 was Schomberg, and so was General Seymour Conway. When in 1828 the 
 Duke of Wellington became Prime Minister, and therefore resigned the com- 
 mand of the army. Lord Hill was placed at the head of military affairs. The 
 Duke of Wellington resumed the command in 1842 and held it to his death, 
 when it was given to Viscount Hardinge, a capable man. The title of the office 
 was not, I believe, actually " Commander-in-Chief," but " General Commanding- 
 in-Chief." It was, if I remember rightly, owing to the disasters arising out of 
 military mismanagement in the Crimea, that the changes were made which 
 created a distinct Secretary of War and gave to the office of Commander-in- 
 Chief its present title. Therefore it will be seen that the intrusting the 
 command of the army to the Duke of Cambridge is not even justifiable on the
 
 THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE. 89 
 
 ground that it follows an old established custom. It is, on the contrary, a-n in- 
 novation, and one which illustrates the worst possible principle. There is noth- 
 ing to be said for it. No necessity justified or even excused it. When Vis- 
 count Hardinge died, if the principle adopted in his case that of appointing the 
 best man to the place had been still in favor, there were many military gen- 
 erals in England, any one of whom would have filled the office with efficiency 
 and credit. But the superstition of rank prevailed. The Duke of Wellington 
 is believed to have once recommended that on his death Prince Albert, the 
 Queen's husband, should be created Commander-in-Chief. Ridiculous as the 
 suggestion may seem, it would probably have been a far better arrangement than 
 that which was more recently adopted. Prince Albert could hardly have been 
 called a professional soldier at all ; and this would have been greatly in his favor. 
 For he would have filled the place merely as the King of Prussia does ; he 
 would have intrusted the actual duties to some qualified man, and being endowed 
 with remarkable judgment, temper, and discretion, he would doubtless have 
 found the right man for "the work. But the Duke of Cambridge, as a profes- 
 sional soldier, although a very indifferent one, is expected to perform and does 
 perform the duties of his office, after his own fashion. He is too high in rank to 
 be openly rebuked, contradicted, or called to account ; he is not high enough to 
 be accepted as a mere official ornament or figurehead. He is too much of a pro- 
 fessional general to become willingly the pupil and instrument of a more skilled 
 subordinate ; too little of a professional general to render his authority of any 
 real value, or to be properly qualified for any high military position. So the 
 Duke of Cambridge did actually direct the affairs of the army, interfered in 
 everything, was supreme in everything, and I think it is not too much to say 
 mismanaged everything. He stood in the way of all useful reforms ; he shet 
 tered old abuses ; he was as dictatorial as though he had the military genius 
 of a Wellington or a Von Moltke ; he was as independent of public opinion as 
 the Mikado of Japan. The kind of mistakes which were made and abuses which 
 were committed under his administration were not such as to attract much ot 
 the attention or interest of the newspapers. In England the press, moreover, is 
 not supposed to be at liberty to criticise princes. Of late some little efforts 
 at daring innovation are made in this direction ; but as a rule, unless a prince 
 does something very wrong indeed, he is secure from any censure or even criti- 
 cism on the part of the newspapers. There was, besides, one great practical 
 difficulty in the way of any one inclined to criticise the military administration 
 of the Duke of Cambridge. The War Department in England had grown to be a 
 kind of anomalous two-headed institution. There is a Secretary of War, who 
 sits in the House of Lords or the House of Commons, as the case may be, and 
 whom every one can challenge, criticise, and censure as he pleases. There 
 is the Commander-in-Chief. Which of these two functionaries is the superior ? 
 The theory of course is that the Secretary of War is supreme ; that he is re- 
 sponsible to Parliament, and that every official in the department is responsible 
 to him. But everybody in England knows that this is not the actual case. 
 There stands in Pall Mall, not far from the residence of the Prince of Wales, a 
 plain business-like structure, with a statue of the late Lord Herbert of Lea (the 
 Sidney Herbert of Crimean days) in front of it ; and this is the War Office, where 
 the Secretary of War is in power. But there is in Whitehall another building 
 far better known to Londoners and strangers alike ; an old-fashioned, unlovely, 
 shabby-looking sort of barrack, with a clock in its shapeless cupola and two 
 small arches in its front, in each of which enclosures sits all day a gigantic 
 horseman in steel cuirass and high jack-boots. The country visitor comes here
 
 90 THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 to wonder at the size and the accoutrements of the splendid soldiers ; the 
 nursery-maid loves the spot, and gazes with open mouth and sparkling eyes at 
 the athletic cavaliers, and too often, like Hylas sent with his urn to the foun- 
 tain, " proposito florem pratnlit officio" prefers looking at the gorgeous military 
 carnation blazing before her to the duty of watching her infantile charge in the 
 perambulator. This building is the famous " Horse Guards," where the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief is enthroned. I suppose the theory of the thing was, that while 
 the army system was to be shaped out and directed in the War Office, the actual 
 details of practical administration were to be managed at the Horse Guards. 
 But of late years the relations of the two departments appear to have got into an 
 almost inextricable and hopeless muddle, so that no one can pretend to say 
 where the responsibility of the War Office ends or the authority of the Horse 
 Guards begins. The Duke of Cambridge, it is said, habitually acts upon his own 
 authority and ignores the War Office altogether. Things are done by him of 
 which the Secretary for War knows nothing until they are done. The late 
 Sidney Herbert, a man devoted to the duties of the War Department, over which 
 he presided for some years, once emphatically refused during a debate in the 
 House of Commons to evade the responsibility of some step taken at the Horse 
 Guards, by pleading that it was made without the knowledge of the War Office. 
 He declared that he considered himself, as War Secretary, responsible to Parlia- 
 ment for everything done in any office of the War Department. But it was quite 
 evident from the tone of his speech that the thing had been done without his 
 knowledge or consent, and that if anybody but the Queen's cousin had done it there 
 would have been a "row in the building." Now Sidney Herbert was an aris- 
 tocrat of high rank, of splendid fortune, of unsurpassed social dignity and influ- 
 ence, of great political talents and reputatian. If he then could not attempt to 
 control and rebuke the Queen's cousin, how could such an attempt be expected 
 from a man like Mr. Cardwell, the present War Secretary ? Mr. Cardwell is a 
 dull, steady-going, respectable man, who has no pretension to anything like the 
 rank, social influence, or even popularity of Sidney Herbert. In fact, the War 
 Secretaries stand sometimes in much the same relation toward the Duke of 
 Cambridge that a New York judge occasionally holds toward one of the great 
 leaders of the bar who pleads before him and is formally supposed to acknowl- 
 edge his superior authority. The person holding the position nominally superior 
 feels himself in reality quite " over-crowed," to use a Spenserian expression, by 
 the influence, importance, and dignity of the other. Let any stranger in London 
 who happens to be in the gallery of the House of Lords, observe the astonishing 
 deference with which even a pure-blooded marquis or earl of antique title will 
 receive the greeting of the Duke of Cambridge ; and then saj what chance there 
 is of a War Secretary, who probably belongs to the middle or manufacturing 
 classes, venturing to dictate to or rebuke so tremendous a magnifico. Lately an 
 audacious critic of the Duke has started up in the person of a clever, vivacious 
 young member of Parliament, George Otto Trevelyan, son of one of the ablest 
 Indian administrators and nephew of Lord Macaulay. Trevelyan once held, I 
 think, some subordinate place in the War Department, and he has lately been 
 horrifying the conservatism and veneration of English society by boldly making 
 speeches in which he attacks the Queen's cousin, declares that the latter is an 
 injury and nuisance to the army system, that he stands in the way of all im- 
 provement, and that he ought to be abolished. But although most people dc 
 profoundly and potently believe what this saucy Trevelyan says, yet his words 
 find little echo in public debate, and his direct motions in the House of Com- 
 mons have been unsuccessful. The Duke, I perceive, has lately, however, de-
 
 THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE. 91 
 
 scended so far from his position of supreme dignity as to defend himself in a 
 public speech, and to claim the merit of having always been a progressive and 
 indeed rather daring army reformer. But I do not believe the English Govern- 
 ment or Parliament would ever have ventured to take one step to lessen the 
 Duke of Cambridge's power of doing harm to the military service, were it not 
 for the pressure of events with which England had nothing directly to do, and which 
 nevertheless have proved too strong for the resistance even of princes and of 
 vested interests. The practical dethronement of the Duke of Cambridge I hold 
 to be as certain as any mortal event still in the future can well be declared. The 
 anomaly, the inconvenience, the degradation which English Governments and 
 Parliaments would have endured forever if left to themselves, may be regarded 
 as destined to be swept away by the same flood which overwhelmed the military 
 organization of France, and washed the Bonapartes off the throne of the Tuile- 
 ries. The Duke of Cambridge too had to surrender at Sedan. 
 
 For with the overwhelming successes of Prussia and the unparalleled collapse 
 of France, there arose In England so loud and general a cry for the reorganiza- 
 tion of the decaying old army system that no Government could possibly attempt 
 to disregard it. Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet had the sense and spirit to see that no 
 middle course of reform would be worth anything. In media tutissimus ibis 
 would never apply to this case. Any reform must count on the obstinate oppo- 
 sition of vested interests a tremendous power in English affairs ; and the only 
 way to bear down that opposition would be by introducing a reform so thorough 
 and grand as to carry with it the enthusiasm of popular support. Therefore the 
 Government have undertaken a new work of revolution, certainly not less bold 
 than that which overthrew the Irish Church, and destined perhaps to have a 
 still more decisive influence on the political organization of English society. 
 One of the many changes this measure will introduce and it is certain to be 
 carried, first or last will be the extinction of the anomaly now represented by 
 the position of the Duke of Cambridge. I shall not inflict any of the details of 
 the measure upon my readers in THE GALAXY, and shall even give but slight 
 attention to such of its main features as are of purely military character and im- 
 port. But I shall endeavor briefly to make it clear that some of the changes it 
 proposes to introduce will have a profound influence on the political and social 
 condition of England, and are in fact steps in that great English revolution 
 which is steadily marching on under our very eyes. 
 
 First comes the abolition of the purchase system as regards the commissions 
 held by military officers. Except in certain regiments, and certain branches of 
 the service outside England itself, the rule is that an officer obtains his commis- 
 sion by purchase. Promotion can be bought in the same way. A commission 
 is a vested interest. The owner has paid so much for it, and expects to sell it 
 for an equal sum. The regulation price recognized by law and the Horse 
 Guards is by no means the actual price of the article. It is worth ever so much 
 more to the holder, and he must of course have its real, not its regulation value. 
 The pay in the English army is, for the officers, ridiculously small. The habits 
 of the army, among officers, are ridiculously expensive. An officer is not ex- 
 pected to live upon his pay. Whether expected to do so or not, he could hardly 
 accomplish the feat under any conditions ; under the common conditions of an 
 officers' mess-room the thing would be utterly impossible. Now let any reader 
 ask himself what becomes of a department of the public service where you ob- 
 tain admission by payment, and where when admitted you receive practically no 
 remuneration ? Of course it becomes a mere club and association for the 
 wealthy and aristocratic ; a brotherhood into which admission is sought for the
 
 93 THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 sake of social distinction. Every man of rank in England will, as a matter of 
 course, have one of his sons in the army. It is the right sort of thing to do, like 
 hunting or going into the House of Commons. Then, on the other hand, every 
 person who has made money sends one of his sons into the army, because there- 
 by he acquires a stamp of gentility. Poverty and merit have no chance and no 
 business there. It certainly is not true, as is commonly believed here, that 
 promotion from the ranks never takes place ; but speaking of the system as a 
 whole, one may fairly say that promotion from the ranks is opposed to the ordi- 
 nary regulation, and occurs so rarely that it need hardly be taken into our con- 
 sideration here. Therefore the English army became an essentially aristocratic 
 service. To be an officer was the right of the aristocratic, the luxury, ambition, 
 and ornament of the wealthy. One is almost afraid now to venture on saying 
 anything in praise of the French military system ; but it had, if I do not greatly 
 mistake, one regulation among others which honorably distinguished it from the 
 English. I believe it was not permitted to a wealthy officer to distinguish him- 
 self from his fellows while in barracks by extravagance of expenditure. He had 
 to live as the others lived. But the English system allowed full scope to 
 wealth, and the result was that certain regiments prided themselves on luxury 
 and ostentation, and a poor man, or even a man of moderate means, could not 
 live in them. Add to all this that while the expenses were great and the pay 
 next to nothing, there were certain valuable prizes, sinecures, and monopolies to 
 be had in the army, which favoritism and family influence could procure, and 
 which therefore rendered it additionally desirable that the control of the military 
 organization should be retained in the hands of the aristocracy. John Bright 
 described the military and diplomatic services of England as "a gigantic system 
 of outdoor relief for the broken-down members of the British aristocracy." 
 This was especially true of the military service, which had a large number of 
 rich and pleasant prizes to be awarded at the uncontrolled discretion of the au- 
 thorities. It might be fairly said that every aristocratic family had at least one 
 scion in the army. Every aristocratic family had likewise one in the House of 
 Commons ; sometimes two, or three, or four sons and nephews. The mere nu- 
 merical strength of the military officers who had seats in the House of Com- 
 mons was enough to hold up a tremendous barrier in the way of army reform or 
 political reform. It was as clear as light that a popular Parliament would 
 among its very first works of reformation proceed to throw open the army to the 
 competition of merit, independently of either aristocratic rank or moneyed influ- 
 ence. So the military men in the House of Commons were, with some few and 
 remarkable exceptions, steady Tories and firm opponents of all reform either in 
 the army or the political system. Year after year did gallant old De Lacy Evans 
 bring forward his motion for the abolition of the purchase system in vain. He 
 was always met by the supposed practical authority of the great bulk of the mil 
 itary members and by the dead weight of aristocratic influence and vested in- 
 terests. The army, as then organized, was at once the fortress and the trophy 
 of the English aristocracy. At last the effort at reform seemed to be given up 
 altogether. Though humane reformers did at last succeed in getting rid of the 
 detestable system of flogging in the army, the practice of trafficking in commis- 
 sions seemed safer than ever. One difficulty in the way of its abolition was 
 always pressed with special emphasis by persons who otherwise were prodigal 
 enough of the public money the cost such a measure would entail on the people 
 of England. It would be impossible, of course, to abolish such a system with- 
 out compensating those who had paid money for the commissions which thence- 
 forward could be sold no more. The amount of money required for such com-
 
 THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE. 93 
 
 pensation would be some forty millions of dollars. Moreover, when commis- 
 sions are given away among all classes according to merit, the pay of officers 
 will have to be raised. It would indeed be a cruel mockery to give poor Claude 
 Melnotte an officer's rank if he does not at the same time get pay enough to 
 enable him to live. Therefore for once the English aristocrats and Tories were 
 heard to raise their voices in favor of the saving of public money ; but they were 
 only assuming the attitude of economists for the sake of upholding their own 
 privileges and defending their vested interests. There will, of course, be a fierce 
 and long fight made even still against the change, but the change, I take it, will 
 be accomplished. The English army will cease to be an army officered exclu- 
 sively from among the ranks of the aristocracy and the wealthy. Our time has 
 seen no step attempted in English political affairs more distinctly democratic 
 than this. I can hardly realize to my mind what England will be like when com- 
 missions and promotions in its military service are the recognized prizes of merit 
 in whatever rank of life, and are won by open competition. 
 
 Next, the English Government, approaching rather delicately the difficulty 
 about the Commander-in-Chief, propose to unite the two departments of the 
 service under one roof. The Commander-in-Chief and his staff and offices 
 will be transferred from the Horse Guards in Whitehall to the War Office in 
 Pall Mall, and placed more directly under the control of the Secretary of War. 
 This change must inevitably bring about the end at which it aims the 
 abolition of the embarrassing and injurious dualism of system now prevail- 
 ing. It must indeed reduce the General commanding-in-chief to his proper 
 position as the executive officer of the War Secretary, who is himself the 
 servant of Parliament. Such a position would entail no restriction whatever 
 on the military capacity or genius of the Commander-in-Chief were he another 
 Maryborough ; but it would make him responsible to somebody who is himself 
 responsible to the House of Commons. I think it may be taken for granted 
 that this will come to mean, sooner or later, the shelving of the Duke of Cam- 
 bridge. It may be hoped that he will not consider it consistent with his dignity 
 as a member of the royal family to remain in a position thus made virtually that 
 of a subordinate. Some other place perhaps will be found for the cousin of the 
 Queen. I have already heard some talk about the possibility and propriety of 
 sending his Royal Highness as Lord Lieutenant to govern Ireland. Why not? 
 There is a vile corpus convenient and ready to hand for any experiment. It 
 would be quite in keeping with all the traditions of English rule, with the prac- 
 tice which was illustrated only a few years ago when the noisy and brainless 
 scamp Sir Robert Peel, whom "Punch" christened "The Mountebank Mem- 
 ber," was made Irish Secretary, if the Duke of Cambridge were allowed to soothe 
 his offended dignity by practising his skilful hand on the government of Ireland. 
 Finally, the Government propose to introduce measures calculated to weld 
 together as far as possible the regular and irregular forces of the country. 
 There are in England three classes of soldiery the regular army, the militia, 
 and the volunteers. The militia constitute a force as nearly as possible corre- 
 sponding with that in whose companionship Sir John Falstaff declined to march 
 through Coventry. Bombastes Furioso or the Grande Duchesse hardly ever 
 marshalled such a body of men as may be seen when a British militia regiment 
 is turned out for exercise. Awkward country bumpkins and beer-swilling row- 
 dies of the poacher class make up the bulk of the privates. They are a terror to 
 any small town where they may happen to be exercising, and where not infre- 
 quently they finish up a day's drill by a general smashing of windows, sacking 
 of shops, and plundering of inhabitants. The volunteers are a force composed
 
 94 THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 of a much better class of men, and are capable, I think, of great military effi- 
 ciency and service if properly organized. Of late the volunteer force has, I be- 
 lieve, been growing somewhat demoralized. The Government never gave it 
 very cordial encouragement, its position was hardly defined, and the national en- 
 thusiasm out of which it sprang naturally began to languish. We in England 
 have always owed our volunteer force to some sudden menace or dread of 
 French invasion. It was so in the time of William Pitt. We all remember the 
 famous sarcasm with which that statesman replied to the request of some vol- 
 unteer regiments not to be sent out on foreign service. Pitt gravely assured 
 them that they never, should be sent out of the country unless in case of Eng- 
 land's invasion. Erskine was a volunteer, and I think it was as an officer of 
 volunteers that Gibbon said he acquired a practical knowledge of military af- 
 fairs, which proved useful to him in describing the decline and fall of the Roman 
 empire. Our present volunteer service originated in the last of the "three 
 panics" described by Cobden the fear of invasion by Louis Napoleon, the 
 panic which Tennyson endeavored to foment by his weak and foolish " Form, 
 form! Riflemen, form!" The volunteer force, however, continued to grow 
 stronger and stronger long after the alarm had died away ; and even though re- 
 cently the progress of improvement seems to have been somewhat checked, and 
 the volunteer body to have become lax in its organization, it appears to me that 
 in its intelligence, its earnestness, and its physical capacity there exists the ma- 
 terial out of which might be moulded a very valuable arm of the military ser- 
 vice. The War Minister now proposes to take steps which shall render the 
 militia a decent body, commanded by really qualified and responsible officers, 
 which shall give better officers to the volunteers, and place these latter under 
 more effective discipline, and which shall bring militia and volunteers into closer 
 relationship with the regular army. How far these objects may be attained by the 
 measures now under consideration I do not pretend to judge ; but I cannot regard 
 the present War Minister as a man highly qualified for the place he holds. Mr. 
 Cardwell is an admirable clerk patient, plodding, untiring ; but I doubt whether 
 he has any of the higher qualities of an administrator or much force of character. 
 He is perhaps the very dullest speaker holding a marked position in the House of 
 Commons. He is fluent, not as Gladstone and a river are fluent, but as the sand 
 in an hour-glass is fluent. That sand itself is not more dull, colorless, monoto- 
 nous, and dry, than is the eloquence of the War Minister. Mr. Cardwell is not 
 always fortunate in his military prophecies. On the memorable night in last 
 July when the news reached London that France had declared war against 
 Prussia, Mr. Cardwell affirmed that that meant the occupation of Berlin by the 
 French within a month. It must be remembered, however, as an excuse for the 
 War Minister's unlucky prediction, that an English military commission sent to 
 examine the two systems had shortly before reported wholly in favor of the 
 French army organization and dead against that of Prussia. 
 
 The English Government, wisely, I think, decline to attempt the introduction 
 of any measure for general and compulsory service, except as a last resource in 
 desperate exigencies. The England of the future is not likely, I trust, to em- 
 broil herself much in Continental quarrels ; and she may be quite expected to 
 hold her own in the improbable event of any of her neighbors attempting to in- 
 vade her. For myself, I can recollect no instance recorded by history of any 
 foreign war wherein England took part, from which good temper, discretion, 
 judgment, and justice would not alike have counselled her to hold aloof. 
 
 Such then are in substance the changes which are proposed for the recon- 
 struction of the English army. The one grand reform or revolution is the aboli-
 
 THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE. 95 
 
 tion of the purchase system. This change will inevitably convert the army into 
 a practical and regular profession, to which all classes will look as a possible 
 means of providing for some of their children. It will have one advantage over 
 the bar, that admission to the ranks of the officers will not necessarily involve 
 the preliminary payment of any sum of money, however small. The profession 
 will cease to be ornamental and aristocratic. It will no longer constitute one 
 of the great props, one of the grand privileges, of the system of aristocracy. Its 
 reorganization will be another and a bold step toward the establishment of that 
 principle of equality which is of late years beginning to exercise so powerful a 
 fascination over the popular mind of England. Caste had in Great Britain no 
 such illustration and no such bulwark as the army system presented. I should 
 be slow to undertake to limit the possible depth and extent of the influence 
 which the impulse given by this reform may exercise over the political condi- 
 tion of England. I can hardly realize to myself by any effort of imagination the 
 effect which such a change will work in what is called society in England, and in 
 the literature, especially the romantic and satirical literature, of the country. Are 
 we then no longer to have Rawdon Crawley, and Sir Derby Oaks, and " Cap- 
 tain Gandaw of the Pinks " ? Was Black-Bottle Cardigan really the last of a 
 race ? Will people a generation hence fail to understand what was meant by 
 the intimation that " the Tenth don't dance " ? Is Guy Livingstone to be- 
 come as utter a tradition and myth as Guy of Warwick ? Is the English mili- 
 tary officer to be henceforward simply a hard-working, well-qualified public 
 servant, who obtains his place in open competition by virtue of his merits ? 
 Appreciate the full meaning of the change who can, it is too much for me ; I 
 can only wonder, admire, and hope. But it is surely not possible that the Duke 
 of Cambridge, cousin of the Queen, can continue to preside over a service 
 wherein the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker have as good a 
 chance of obtaining commissions for their sons as the marquis or the earl or 
 the great millionaire. Only think of the flood of light which will be poured in 
 upon all the details of the military organization, when once it becomes the direct 
 interest of each of us to see that the profession is properly managed in which 
 his own son, however poor in purse and humble in rank, has a chance of ob- 
 taining a commission ! I believe the Duke of Cambridge had and has an honest 
 hatred and contempt for the coarse and noisy interference of public and unpro- 
 fessional criticism where the business of the sacred Horse Guards is concerned. 
 Once, when goaded on to sheer desperation by comments in the papers, his Royal 
 Highness actually wrote or dictated a letter of explanation to the " Times," 
 signed with the monosyllabic grandeur of his name " George," we all held up the 
 hands and eyes of wonder that such things had come to pass, that royal princes 
 condescended to write to newspapers, and yet the world rolled on. I cannot 
 think the Duke will abide the awful changes that are coming. He will proba- 
 bly pass into the twilight and repose of some dignified office, where blundering 
 has no occupation and obstinacy can do no harm. Everything considered, I 
 think we may say of him that he might have been a great deal worse than he was. 
 My own impression is that he is rather better than his reputation. If the popular 
 voice of England were to ask in the words of Shakespeare's " Lucio," "And 
 was the Duke a fleshmonger, a fool, and a coward, as you then reported him to 
 be?" I might answer, in the language of the pretended friar, "You must 
 change persons with me ere you make that my report. You indeed spoke so of 
 him, and much more, much worse."
 
 BRIGHAM YOUNG. 
 
 THOSE among us who are not too young to have had " Evenings at Home " 
 for a schoolday companion and instructor will remember the story called 
 " Eyes and No Eyes " and its moral. They will remember that, of the two little 
 boys who accomplished precisely the same walk at the same time, one saw all 
 manner of delightful and wonderful things, while the other saw nothing whatever 
 that was worth recollection or description. The former had eyes prepared to 
 see, and the other had not ; and that made all the difference. I have to confess 
 that, during a recent visit to Salt Lake City a visit lasting nearly as many days 
 as that out of which my friend, Hepworth Dixon, made the better part of a vol- 
 ume I must have been in the condition of the dull little reprobate who had no 
 eyes to see the wonders which delighted his companion. For, so far as the city 
 itself, its streets and its structures, are concerned, I really saw nothing in partic- 
 ular. A muddy little country town, with one or two tolerably decent streets, 
 wherein a few handsome stores are mixed up with old shanties, is not much to 
 see in any part of the civilized world. Other travellers have seen a wondrous 
 sight on the very same spot. They have seen a large and beautiful city, with 
 spacious, splendid streets, shaded by majestic trees and watered by silvery cur- 
 rents flowing in marble channels ; they have seen a city combining the cleanli- 
 ness and activity of young America with the picturesqueness and dignity of the 
 Orient; a city which would be beautiful and wonderful anywhere, but which, 
 raised up here on the bare bosom of the desert, is a phenomenon of apparently 
 almost magical creation. Naturally, therefore, they have gone into raptures over 
 the energy, and industry, and aestheticism of the Mormons ; and, even while con- 
 demning sternly the doctrine and practice of polygamy, they have nevertheless 
 been haunted by an uneasy doubt as to whether, after all, there is not some peculiar 
 virtue in the having half a dozen wives together which endows a man with super- 
 human gifts as a builder of cities. Otherwise how comes this beautiful and per- 
 fect city, here on the unfriendly and unsheltering waste ? 
 
 Well, I saw no beautiful and wonderful city, although I spent several days in 
 the Mormon capital, and tramped every one of its streets, and lanes, and roads, 
 scores of times over. Where others beheld the glorious virgin, Dulcinea del 
 Toboso, radiant in beauty and bedight with queenly apparel, I saw only the 
 homely milkmaid, with her red elbows and her russet gown. In plain words, 
 the Mormon city appeared to me just a commonplace little country town, and no 
 more. I saw in it no evidences of preternatural energy or skill. It has one de- 
 cent street, wherein may be found, at most, half a dozen well-built and attractive- 
 looking shops. It has a good many comfortable residences in the environs. It 
 has two or three decentish hotels, like the hotels of any other fiftieth-class coun- 
 try town. It has the huge Tabernacle, a gigantic barn merely, a simple covering 
 in and over of so much space a thing in shape " very like a land turtle," as 
 President George L. Smith, First Councillor of Brigham Young, observed to me. 
 Salt Lake City has no lighting and no draining, except such draining as is done 
 by the little runnels of water to be found in every street, and which remind one 
 faintly and sadly of dear, quaint old Berne in Switzerland. At night you have 
 to trudge along in the darkness and the mud, or slush, or dust, and it is a peril- 
 ous quest the seeking of your way home, for at every crossing you must look or 
 feel for the plar.k which bridges over the artificial brooklets already described,
 
 BRIGilAM YOUNG. 97 
 
 or you plunge helpless and hopeless into the little torrent. Decidedly, a "one- 
 horse " place, in my estimation ; I don't see how men endowed with average 
 heads and arms could for twenty years have been occupied in the building of a 
 city, and produced anything less creditable than this. I do not wonder at the 
 complacency and self-conceit with which all the Mormon residents talk of the 
 beauty of their city and the wonderful things they have accomplished, when 
 Gentile travellers of credit and distinction have glorified this shabby, swampy, 
 ricketty, common-place, vulgar, little hamlet into a town of sweetness and light, 
 of symmetry and beauty. For my part, and for those who were with me, I can 
 only say that we spent the first day o' so in perpetual wonder as to whether this 
 really could be the Mormon city of w.iich we had read so many bewildering and 
 glorious descriptions. And the theatre oh, Hepworth Dixon, I like you much, 
 and I think you are often abused and assailed most unjustly ; but how could you 
 write so about that theatre ? Or was the beautiful temple of the drama which 
 you saw here deliberately taken down, and did they raise in its place the big, 
 gaunt, ugly, dirty, dismal structure which /saw, and in which I and my compan- 
 ions made part of a dreary dozen or two of audience, and blinked in the dim, de- 
 pressing light of mediaeval oil-lamps? I observe that, when driven to bay by 
 sceptical inquiry, complacent Mormons generally fall back on the abundance of 
 shade-trees in the streets. Let them have the full credit of this plantation. 
 They have put trees in the streets, and the trees have grown ; and, when we ob- 
 serve to a Mormon that we have seen rows of trees similarly growing in even 
 smaller towns of the benighted European continent, he evidently thinks it is our 
 monogamic perversity and prejudice which force us to deny the wondrous works 
 of Mormonism. Making due allowance for every natural difficulty, remember- 
 ing how nearly every implement, and utensil, and scrap of raw material had to 
 be brought from across yonder rampart of mountains, and from hundreds of 
 miles away, I yet fail to see anything very remarkable about this little Mormon 
 town. Perhaps no other set of people could have made much more of the place ; 
 I cannot help thinking* that no other set of people who were not Digger Indians 
 could have made much less. 
 
 In fact, to retain the proper and picturesque ideas of Salt Lake City, one nev- 
 er ought to have entered the town at all. We ought to have remained on this 
 hillside, from which you can look across that most lovely of all valleys on earth, 
 cinctured as it is by a perfect girdle of mountains, the outlines of which are peer- 
 less and ineffable in their symmetry and beauty. The air is as clear, the skies 
 are as blue, the grass as green as the dream of a poet or painter could show him. 
 There below, fringed and mantled in the clustering green of its trees, you see the 
 city, with the long, low, rounded dome or back of the Tabernacle rising broad and 
 conspicuous. Looking down, you may well believe that the city thus exquisitely 
 placed, thus deliciously shaded and surrounded, is itself a wonder of picturesque- 
 ness and symmetry. Why go down into the two or three dirty, irregular, shabby 
 little streets, with their dust or mud for road pavement, their nozzling pigs trot- 
 ting along the sidewalks, their dung-heaps and masses of decaying vegetable 
 matter, their utterly commonplace, mean and disheartening aspect everywhere : 
 But then we did go down and where others had seen a fair and goodly, aye, 
 and queenly city, we saw a muddy, uninteresting, straggling little village, disfig- 
 uring the lovely plain on which it stood. 
 
 Profound disappointment, then, is my first sensation in Salt Lake City. The 
 place is so like any other place ! Certainly, one receives a bracing little shock 
 every now and then, which admonishes hirr. that, despite the small, shabby storesi
 
 98 BRIGHAM YOUNG. 
 
 and the pigs, and the dunghills, he is not in the regions of merely commonplace 
 dirt. For instance, we learn that the proprietor of the hotel where we are stay- 
 ing has four wives ; and it is something odd to talk with a civil, respectable, bur- 
 gess-like man, dressed in ordinary coat and pantaloons, and wearing mutton-chop 
 whiskers a sort of man who in England would probably be a church-warden 
 and who has more consorts than an average Turk. Then again it is startling to 
 
 be asked, " Do you know Mr. ? " and when I say " No, I don't," to be told, 
 
 " Oh, you ought to know him. He came from England, and he has lately mar- 
 ried two such nice English girls ! " One morning, too, we have another kind of 
 shock. There is a pretty little chambermaid in our hotel, a new-comer apparent- 
 ly, and she happens to find out that my wife and I had lived for many years in 
 that part of the North of England from which she comes herself, whereupon she 
 bursts into a perfect passion and tempest of tears, declares that she would rather 
 be in her grave than in Salt Lake City, that she was deceived into coming, that 
 the Mormonism she heard preached by the Mormon propaganda in England was 
 a quite different thing from the Mormonism practised here, and that her only 
 longing was to get out of the place, anyhow, forever. The girl seemed to be 
 perfectly, passionately sincere. What could be done for her ? Apparently 
 nothing. She had spent all her money in coming out ; and she seemed to be 
 strongly under the conviction that, even if she had money, she could not get 
 away. An influence was evidently over her which she had not the courage or 
 strength of mind to attempt to resist, or even to elude. Doubtless, as she was a 
 very pretty girl, she would be very soon sealed to some ruling elder. She said 
 her sister had come with her, but the sister was in another part of the city, and 
 since their arrival only a few days, however they had not met. My wife en- 
 deavored to console or encourage her, but the girl could only sob and protest 
 that she never could learn to endure the place, but that she could not get away, 
 and that she would rather be in her grave. We spoke of this case to one of the 
 civil officers of the United States stationed in the city, and he shook his head 
 and thought nothing could be done. The influence which enslaved this poor 
 girl was not wholly that of force, but a power which worked upon her senses and 
 her superstitions. I should think an underground railway would be a valuable 
 institution to establish in connection with the Mormon city. 
 
 I well remember that when I lived in Liverpool, some ten or a dozen years 
 ago, the Mormon propaganda, very active there, always kept the polygamy insti- 
 tution modestly in the background. Proselytes were courted and won by de- 
 scriptions of a new Happy Valley, of a City of the Blest, where eternal summer 
 shone, where the fruits were always ripe, where the earth smiled with a perpet- 
 ual harvest, where labor and reward were plenty for all, and where the outworn 
 toilers of Western Europe could renew their youth like the eagles. I remember, 
 too, the remarkable case of a Liverpool family having a large business establish- 
 ment in the most fashionable street of the great town, who were actually beguiled 
 into selling off all their goods and property and migrating, parents, sons, and 
 daughters, to the land of promise beyond the American wilderness, and how, be- 
 fore people had ceased to wonder at their folly, they all came back, humiliated, 
 disgusted, .cured. They had money and something like education, and they 
 were a whole family, and so they were able, when they found themselves de- 
 ceived, to effect a rapid retreat at the cost of nothing worse than disappointment 
 and pecuniary loss. But for the poor, pretty serving-lass from Lancashire I do 
 not know that there is much hope. Poverty and timidity and superstitious 
 weakness will help to lock the Mormon chains around her. Perhaps she will
 
 BRIGHAM YOUNG. 99 
 
 get used to the place in time. Ought one to wish that she may or rather to 
 echo her own prayer, and petition that she may find an early grave ? The grave- 
 yards are densely planted with tombs here in this sacred city of Mormonism. 
 
 The place is unspeakably dreary. Hardly any women are ever seen in the 
 streets, except on the Sunday, when all the families pour in to service in the 
 .huge Tabernacle. Most of the dwelling houses round the city are pent in behind 
 walls. Most of the houses, too, have their dismal little sucursales, one or two 
 or more, built on to the sides and in each of these additions or wings to the 
 original building a different wife and family are caged. There are no flower gar- 
 dens anywhere. Children are bawling everywhere. Sometimes a wretched, 
 slatternly, dispirited woman is seen lounging at the door or hanging over the 
 gate of a house with a baby at her breast. More often, however, the house, or 
 clump of houses, gives no external sign of life. It stands back gloomy in the 
 sullen shade of its thick fruit trees, and might seem untenanted if one did not 
 hear the incessant yelling of the children. We saw the women in hundreds, 
 probably in thousands, at the Tabernacle on the Sunday and what women they 
 were ! Such faces, so dispirited, depressed, shapeless, hopeless, soulless faces ! 
 No trace of woman's graceful pride and neatness in these slatternly, shabby, 
 slouching, listless figures ; no purple light of youth over these cheeks ; no sparkle 
 in these half-extinguished eyes. I protest that only in some of the cretin vil- 
 lages of the Swiss mountains have I seen creatures in female form so dull, miser- 
 able, moping, hopeless as the vast majority of these Mormon women. As we 
 leave the Tabernacle, and walk slowly down the street amid the crowd, we see 
 two prettily-dressed, lively-looking girls, who laugh with each other and are seem- 
 ingly happy, and we thank Heaven that there are at least two merry, spirited 
 girls in Salt Lake City. A few days after we meet our blithesome pair at Min- 
 tah station ; and they are travelling with their father and mother on to San Fran- 
 cisco, whither we too are going and we learn that they are not Mormons, but 
 Gentiles pleasant lasses from Philadelphia who had come with their parents to 
 have a passing look at the externals of Mormonism. 
 
 My object, however, in writing this paper was to speak of the chief, Brig- 
 ham Young himself, rather than of his city or his system. We saw Brigham 
 Young, were admitted to prolonged speech of him, and received his parting ben- 
 ediction. The interview took place in the now famous house with the white 
 walls and the gilded beehive on the top. We were received in a kind of office 
 or parlor, hung round with oil paintings of the kind which in England we regard 
 as " furniture," and which represented all the great captains and elders of Mor- 
 monism. Joseph Smith is there, and Brigham Young, and George L. Smith, 
 now First Councillor ; and various others whom to enumerate would be long, even 
 if I knew or remembered their names. President Young was engaged just at 
 the moment when we came, but his Secretary, a Scotchman, I think, and Presi- 
 dent George L. Smith, are very civil and cordial. George L. Smith is a huge, 
 burly man, with a Friar Tuck joviality of paunch and visage, and a roll in his 
 bright eye which, in some odd, undefined sort of way, suggests cakes and ale. 
 He talks well, in a deep rolling voice, and with a dash of humor in his words and 
 tone he it is who irreverently but accurately likens the Tabernacle to a land- 
 turtle. He speaks with immense admiration and reverence of Brigham Young, 
 and specially commends his abstemiousness and hermit-like frugality in the mat- 
 ter of eating and drinking. Presently a door opens, and the oddest, most whim- 
 sical figure I have ever seen off the boards of an English country theatre stands 
 in the room ; and in a moment we are presented formally to Brigham Young.
 
 100 BRIGHAM YOUNG. 
 
 There must be something of Impressiveness and dignity about the man, for, 
 odd as is his appearance and make up, one feels no inclination to laugh. But 
 such a figure ! Brigham Young wears a long-tailed, high-collared coat ; the 
 swallow-tails nearly touch the ground ; the collar is about his ears. In shape the 
 garment is like the swallow-tail coats which negro-melodists sometimes wear, 
 or like the dandy English dress coat one can still see in prints in some of the 
 shops of St. James street, London. But the material of Brigham's coat is some 
 kind of rough, gray frieze, and the garment is adorned with huge brass buttons. 
 The vest and trowsers are of the same material. Rouird the neck of the patri- 
 arch is some kind of bright crimson shawl, and on the patriarch's feet are natty 
 liltle boots of the shiniest polished leather. I must say that the gray frieze coat 
 of antique and wonderful construction, the gaudy crimson shawl, and the dandy 
 boots make up an incongruous whole which irresistibly reminds one at first of 
 the holiday get-up of some African King who adds to a great coat, preserved as 
 an heirloom since Mungo Park's day, a pair of modern top-boots, and a lady's 
 bonnet. The whole appearance of the patriarch, when one has got over the Af- 
 rican monarch impression, is like that of a Suffolk farmer as presented on the 
 boards of a Surrey theatre. But there is decidedly an amount of composure 
 and even of dignity about Brigham Young which soon makes one forget the 
 mere ludicrousness of the patriarch's external appearance. Young is a hand- 
 some man much handsomer than his portrait on the wall would show him. 
 Close upon seventy years of age, he has as clear an eye and as bright a com- 
 plexion as if he were a hale English farmer of fifty-five. But there is something 
 fox-like and cunning lurking under the superficial good-nature and kindliness of 
 the face. He seems, when he speaks to you most effusively and plausibly, to be 
 quietly studying your expression to see whether he is. really talking you over or 
 not. The expression of his face, especially of his eyes, strangely and provok- 
 ingly reminds me of Kossuth. I think I have seen Kossuth thus watch the face 
 of a listener to see whether or not the listener was conquered by his wonder- 
 ful power of talk. Kossuth's face, apart from its intellectual qualities, appeared 
 to me to express a strange blending of vanity, craft, and weakness ; and Brig- 
 ham Young's countenance now seems to show just such a mixture of qualities. 
 Great force of character the man must surely have ; great force of character 
 Kossuth, too. had ; but the face of neither man seemed to declare the possession 
 of such a quality. Brigham Young decidedly does not impress me as a man of 
 great ability; but rather as a man of great plausibility. I can at once under- 
 stand how such a man, with such an eye and tongue, can easily exert an immense 
 influence over women. Beyond doubt he is a man of genius ; but his genius 
 does not reveal itself, to me at .least, in his face or his words. He speaks in a 
 thin, clear, almost shrill tone, and with much apparent bonJiomie. After a little 
 commonplace conversation about the city, its improvements, approaches etc., the 
 Prophet voluntarily goes on to speak of himself, his system, and his calumnia- 
 tors. His talk soon flows into a kind of monologue, and is indeed a curious 
 rhapsody of religion, sentimentality, shrewdness and egotism. Sometimes sev- 
 eral sentences succeed each other in which his hearers hardly seem to make out 
 any meaning whatever, and Brigham Young appears a grotesque kind of Cole- 
 ridge. Then again in a moment comes up a shrewd meaning very distinctly ex- 
 pressed, and with a dash of humor and sarcasm gleaming fantastically amid the 
 scriptural allusions and the rhapsody of unctuous words. The purport of the 
 whole is that Brigham Young has been misunderstood, misprized, and calumni- 
 ated, even as Christ was ; that were Christ to come up to-morrow in New York
 
 BRIGHAM YOUNG. 101 
 
 or London He would be misundertsood, misprized, and caluminated, even as Brig- 
 ham Young now is ; and that Brigham Young is not to be dismayed though the 
 stars in their courses should fight against him.; He protests wijlilespecial emphasis 
 and at the same time especial meekness^, wrth' eye's half closed' and delicately- 
 modulated voice, against the false reports' tllat'an^ ^ariuarpf'forte/or influence 
 whatever is, or ever was, exercised to "keep men 'or women' iri'Sdn "Lake City 
 against their will. He appeals to the evidence of our own eyes, and asks us 
 whether we have not seen for ourselves that the city is free to all to come and 
 go as they will. At this time we had not heard the story told by the poor little 
 maid at the hotel ; but in any case the evidence of our eyes could go no farther 
 *han to prove that travellers like ourselves were free to enter and depart. We 
 have, however, little occasion to trouble ourselves about answering ; for the 
 Prophet keeps the talk pretty well all to himself. His manner is certainly not 
 that of a man of culture, but it has a good deal of the quiet grace and self-pos- 
 session of what we call a gentleman. There is nothing prononcc or vulgar about 
 him. Even when he is most rhapsodical his speech never loses its ease and 
 gentleness of tone. He is bland, benevolent, sometimes quietly pathetic in man- 
 ner. He poses himself en victime, but with the air of one who does this regret- 
 fully and only from a disinterested sense of duty. I begin very soon to find that 
 there is no need of my troubling myself much to keep up the conversation ; that 
 my business is that of a listener ; that the Prophet conceives himself to be ad- 
 dressing some portion of the English or American press through my humble 
 medium. So I listen and my companion listens ; and Brigham Young talks on ; 
 and I do declare and acknowledge that we are fast drifting into a hazy mental 
 condition by virtue of which we begin to regard the Mormon President as a vic- 
 tim of cruel persecution, a suffering martyr and an injured angel ! 
 
 Time, surely, that the interview should come to a close. We tear ourselves 
 away, and the Prophet dismisses us with a fervent and effusive blessing. 
 " Good-bye do well, mean well, pray always. Christ be with you, God be with 
 you, God bless you." All this, and a great deal more to the same effect, was 
 uttered with no vulgar, maw-worm demonstrativeness of tone or gesture, no 
 nasal twang, no uplifted hands ; but quietly, earnestly, as if it came unaffectedly 
 from the heart of the speaker. We took leave of Brigham Young, and came 
 away a little puzzled as to whether we had been conversing with an impostor or 
 a fanatic, a Peter the Hermit or a Tartuffe. One thing, however, is clear to me. 
 I do not say that Brigham Young is a Tartuffe ; but I know now how Tartuffe 
 ought to be played so as to render the part more effective and more apparently 
 natural and lifelike than I have ever seen it on French or English stage. 
 
 No one can doubt the sincerity of the homage which the Mormons in gener- 
 al pay to Brigham Young. One man, of the working class, apparently, with 
 whom I talked at the gate of the Tabernacle, spoke almost with tears in his eyes 
 of the condescension the Prophet always manifested. My informant told me 
 that he was at one time disabled by some hurt or ailment ; and, the first day that 
 he was able to come into the street again, President Young happened to be pass- 
 ing in his carriage, and caught sight of the convalescent. " He stopped his car- 
 riage, sir, called me over to him, addressed me by my name, shook hands with 
 me, asked me how I was getting on, and said he was glad to see me out again." 
 The poor man was as proud of this as a French soldier might have been if the 
 Little Corporal had recognized him and called him by his name. There is no 
 flattery which the great can offer to the humble like this way of addressing the 
 man by his right name, and thus proving that the identity of the small creature
 
 102 BRIGHAM YOUNG. 
 
 has lived clearly in the memory of the great being. Many a renowned com- 
 mander has endear.ed himself! to, the soldiers whom he regarded and treated only 
 as the instruments' of his_.bvrsii' s e^s. by the mere fact that he took care to remem- 
 ber men's names. .They would gladly die for one who could be so nobly gracious, 
 and could thasrprovQ tjiat.thQy. were regarded by him as worthy to occupy each 
 a distinct place in his busy mind. The niggardliness and selfishness of John, 
 Duke of Marlborough, the savage recklessness of Claverhouse, were easily for- 
 gotten by the poor private soldiers whom each commander made it his business, 
 when occasion required, to address correctly by their appropriate names of Tom, 
 Dick, or Harry. Lord Palmerston governed the House of Commons and most 
 of those outside it with whom he usually came into contact, by just such little arts 
 or courtesies as this. In one of Messrs. Erckmann and Chatrian's novels we 
 read of a soldier who declares himself ready to go to the death for Marshal Ney 
 because the Marshal, who originally belonged to the same district as himself, 
 had just recognized his fellow-countryman and called him by his name. But 
 the hero of the novel is somewhat grim and sarcastic, and he thinks it was not 
 so, wonderful a condescension that Ney should have recognized an old comrade 
 and called him by his name. Perhaps the hero of the tale had not himself re- 
 ceived any such recognition from Ney perhaps if it had been vouchsafed to him 
 he, too, would have been ready to go to the death. Anyhow, this correct calling 
 of names, and quick recognition has always been a great power in the governing 
 of men and women. " Deal you in words," is the advice of Mephistophiles to 
 the student, in Faust, "and you may leave others to do the best they can with 
 things." I was able to appreciate the governing power of Brigham Young all 
 the better when I had heard the expression of this poor Mormon's gratitude and 
 homage to the great President who had shaken hands with him and addressed 
 him promptly and correctly by his name. 
 
 This same Mormon was very communicative. Indeed, as a rule, I found 
 most of the men in Salt Lake City ready and even eager to discuss their "pecu- 
 liar institution," and to invite Gentile opinion on it. He showed us his two wives, 
 and declared that they lived together in perfect harmony and happiness ; never 
 had a word of quarrel, but were contented and loving as two sisters. He deliv- 
 ered a panegyric on the moral condition of Salt Lake City, where, he declared, 
 there was no dishonesty, no drunkenness, and no prostitution. I believe he was 
 correct in his description of the place. From many quite impartial authorities 
 I heard the same accounts of the honesty of the Mormons. There certainly is 
 no drunkenness to be observed anywhere openly, and I believe (although I have 
 heard others assert the contrary) that Salt Lake City is really and truly free from 
 this vice ; and I suppose it goes without saying that there is little or no prostitu- 
 tion in a place where a man is expected to keep as many wives as his means will 
 allow him. Intelligent Mormons rely immensely on this absence of prostitution 
 as a justification of their system. They seem to think that when they have said, 
 "We have no prostitutes," all is said; and that the Gentile, with the shames of 
 London, Paris and New York burning in his memory and his conscience, must be 
 left without a word of reply. Brigham Young, in conversation with me, dwelt much 
 on this absence of prostitution. Orson Pratt preached in the Tabernacle during 
 our stay a sermon obviously "at" the Gentile visitors, who were just then spe- 
 cially numerous ; and he drew an emphatic contrast between the hideous profli- 
 gacy of the Eastern cities and the purity of the Salt Lake community. I must 
 say, for myself, that I do not think the question can thus be settled ; I do not 
 think prostitution so great an evil as polygamy. If this blunt declaration should 
 shock anybody's moral feelings I am sorry for it ; but it is none the less the ex-
 
 BRIGHAM YOUNG. 103 
 
 pression of my sincere conviction. Prr.y do not set me down as excusing pro-- 
 titution. I think it the worst of all social evils except polygamy. 1 think 
 polygamy the worse evil, because I am convinced that, regarded from a physio- 
 logical, moral, religious, and even merely poetical and sentimental point of view, 
 the only true social bond to be sought and maintained and justified is the loving 
 union of one man with one woman at least until death shall part the two. Now, 
 I regard the existence of prostitution as a proof that some men and women fail to 
 keep to the right path. I look on polygamy as a proof that a whole community is 
 going directly the wrong way. No man proposes to himself to lead a life of 
 profligacy. He falls into it. He would get out of it if he only could if the 
 world and the flesh and the devil were not now and then too strong for him. 
 But the polygamist deliberately sets up and justifies and glorifies a system which 
 is as false to physiology as it is to morals. Observe that I do not say the polyg- 
 amist is necessarily an immoral man. Doubtless he is often in Utah I really 
 believe he is commonly a sincere, devoted, mistaken man, who honestly believes 
 himself to be doing right. But when he attempts to vindicate his system on the 
 ground that it banishes prostitution, I, for myself, declare that I believe a society 
 which has to put up with prostitution is in better case and hope than one which 
 deliberately adopts polygamy. I am emphatic in expressing this opinion because, 
 as I am opposed to any stronghanded or legal movement whatever to put down 
 Brigham Young and his system, I desire to have it clearly understood that my 
 opinions on the subject of polygamy are quite decided, and that no one who has 
 clamored, or may hereafter clamor, for the uprooting of Mormonism by fire and 
 sword, can have less sympathy than I have with Mormonism's peculiar institution. 
 Let me return to Brigham Young. I saw the Prophet but twice once in the 
 street and once in his own house, where the interview took place which I have 
 described. The day after that on which I last saw him he left Salt Lake City 
 and went into the country some people said to avoid the necessity of meeting 
 Mr. Colfax, who was just then expected to arrive with his party from the West. 
 My impressions, therefore, of Brigham Y'oung and his personal character are 
 necessarily hasty, and probably superficial. I can only say that he did not im- 
 press me either as a man of great genius, or as a mere charlatan. My impres- 
 sion is that he is a sincere man that is to say, a man who sincerely believes in 
 himself, accepts his own impulses, prejudices and passions as divine instincts 
 and intuitions to be the law of life for himself and others, and who, therefore, 
 has attained that supreme condition of utterly unsparing and pitiless selfishness 
 when the voice of self is listened to as the voice of God. With such a sincerity 
 is quite consistent the adoption of every craft and trick in the government of 
 men and women. Nobody can doubt that Napoleon I. was perfectly sincere as 
 regards his faith in himself, his destiny, and his duty ; and yet there was no trick 
 of lawyer, or play-actor, or priest, of which he would not condescend to avail 
 himself if it served his purpose. This is not the sincerity of a Pascal, or a 
 Garibaldi, or a Garrison ; but it is just as genuine and infinitely more common. 
 It is the kind of sincerity which we meet every day in ordinary life, when we see 
 some dogmatic, obstinate father of a family or sense-carrier of a small circle try- 
 ing to mould every will and conscience and life under his control according to his 
 own pedantic standard, and firmly confident all the time that his own perverseness 
 and egotism are a guiding inspiration from heaven. After all, the downright, 
 conventional stage-hypocrite is the rarest of all beings in real life. I sometimes 
 doubt whether there ever was in rerum natura any one such creature. I sup- 
 pose Tartuffe had persuaded himself into self-worship, into the conviction that 
 everything he said and did must be right. I look upon Brigham Young as a man
 
 104 BRIGHAM YOUNG. 
 
 of such a temperament and character. Cunning and crafty he undoubtedly is, 
 unless all evidences of eye, and lip, and voice belie him ; but we all know that 
 many a fanatic who boldly and cheerfully mounted the funeral pile or the scaffold 
 for his creed had over and over again availed himself of all the tricks of craft 
 and cunning to maintain his ascendancy over his followers. The fanatic is often 
 crafty just as the madman is : the presence of craft in neither case disproves the 
 existence of sincerity. 
 
 I believe Brigham Young to be simply a crafty fanatic. That he professes 
 and leads his creed of Mormonism merely to obtain lands and beeves and wives, 
 I do not believe, although this seems to be the general impression among the 
 Gentiles who visit his city. I am convinced that he regards himself as a prophet 
 and a heaven-appointed leader, and that this belief prevents him from seeing 
 how selfish he is in one sense and how ridiculous in another. Any man who can 
 deliberately put on such a coal in combination with such a pair of boots, as 
 Brigham Young displayed during my interview with him, must have a faith in 
 himself which would sustain him in anything. No human creature capable of 
 looking at any two sides of a question where he himself was concerned, ever did 
 or could present himself in public and expect to be reverenced when arrayed in 
 such uncouth and preposterous toggery. 
 
 I cannot pretend to have had any extraordinary revelations of the inner mys- 
 teries or miseries of Mormonism made to me during my stay at Salt Lake City. 
 Other travellers, nearly all other travellers indeed, have apparently been more 
 fortunate or more pushing and persevering. I fancy it is rather difficult just now 
 to get to know much of the interior of Mormon households ; and I confess 
 that I never could quite understand how people, otherwise honorable and up- 
 right, can think themselves justified in worming their way into Mormon confi- 
 dences, and then making profit one way or another by revelations to the public. 
 But one naturally and unavoidably hears, in Salt Lake City, of things which are 
 deeply significant and which he may without scruple put into print. For exam- 
 ple there was a terrible pathos to my mind in the history of a respectable and 
 intelligent woman who, years and years ago, when her life, now fading, was in its 
 prime, married a man now a shining light of Mormonism, whose photograph you 
 may see anywhere in Salt Lake City. She has been superseded since by divers 
 successive wives ; she is now striving in a condition far worse than widowhood 
 to bring up her seven or eight children, and she has not been favored with even 
 a passing call for more than a year and a half by the husband of her youth, who 
 lives with the newest of his wives a few hundred yards away. I am told that 
 such things are perfectly common ; that the result of the system is to plant in 
 Utah a number of families which may be described practically as households 
 without husbands and fathers. I believe the lady of whom I have just spoken 
 accepts her destiny with sad and firm resignation. Her faith in the religion of 
 Mormonism is unshaken, and she regards her forlorn and widowed life as the 
 heaven-appointed cross, by the bearing of which she is to win her eternal crown. 
 Of course the Indian widows regard their bed of flames, the Russian women- 
 fanatics behold their mutilated and mangled breasts with a similar enthusiasm 
 of hope and superstition. But none the less ghastly and appalling is the mon- 
 strous faith which exacts and glorifies such unnatural sacrifices. These dreary 
 homes, widowed not by death, seem to be the saddest, most shocking birth of 
 Mormonism. After all, this is not the polygamy of the East, bad as that may 
 be. ' Give us," exclaimed M. Thiers in the French Chamber, three or four 
 years ago, when Imperialism had reached the zenith of its despotic power 
 "give us liberty as in Austria ! " So 1 can well imagine one of these superseded
 
 BRIGHAM YOUNG. 105 
 
 and lonely wives in Salt Lake City, crying aloud in the bitterness of her heart, 
 " Give us polygamy as in Turkey ! " 
 
 That the thing is a religion, however hideously it may show, I do not doubt. 
 I mean that I feel no doubt that the great majority of the Mormon men are 
 drawn to and kept in Mormonism by a belief in its truth and vital force as a re- 
 ligion. I do not believe that conscious and hypocritical sensuality is the leading 
 impulse in making them or keeping them members of the Mormon church. I 
 never heard of any community where a sensual man found any difficulty in grat- 
 ifying his sensuality ; nor are the vast majority of the Mormons men belonging 
 to a class on whom a severe public opinion would bear so directly that they must 
 necessarily wander thousands of miles away across the desert in order to be able 
 comfortably to gratify their immoral propensities. To me, therefore, the possi- 
 bility which appears most dangerous of all is the chance of any sudden crusade, 
 legal or otherwise, being set on foot against this perverted and unfortunate peo- 
 ple. Left to itself, I firmly believe that Mormonism will never long bear the 
 glare of daylight, the throng of witnesses, the intelligent rivalry, the earnest and 
 active criticism, poured in and forced in upon it by the Pacific railroads. But if 
 it can bear all this then it can bear anything whatever which human ingenuity or 
 force can put in arms against it ; and it will run its course and have its day, let 
 the Federal Hercules himself do what he may. Meanwhile it would be well to 
 bear in mind that Mormonism has thus far cumbered the earth for comparatively 
 a very few years ; that all its members there in Utah counted together would 
 hardly equal the population of a respectable street in London ; and that at this 
 moment the whole concern is ricketty and shaky, and threatens to tumble to 
 pieces. I know that some of the ruling elders are panting for persecution ; that 
 they are openly doing their very best to " draw fire ; " that they are daily endeav- 
 oring to work on the fears or the passions of Federal officials resident at Salt 
 Lake by threats of terrible deeds to be done in the event of any attempt being 
 made to interfere with Mormonism. Many of these Mormon apostles, dull, vul- 
 gar and clownish as they seem, have foresight enough to see that their system 
 sadly needs just now the stimulus of a little persecution, and have fanatical courage 
 enough to put themselves gladly in the front of any danger for the sake of sowing 
 by their martyrdom the seed of the church. " That man," said William the 
 Third of England, speaking of an inveterate conspirator against him " is deter- 
 mined to be made a victim, and I am determined not to make him one." I hope 
 the United States will deal with the Mormons in a similar spirit. At the same 
 time, I would ask my brothers of the pen whether those of them who have visited 
 Salt Lake City have not made the place seem a good deal more wonderful, more 
 alluringly mysterious, more grandly paradoxical in its nature, than it really is ? 
 I feel convinced that if people in Lancashire and Wales and Sweden had all been 
 made distinctly aware that Salt Lake City is only a dusty or muddy little com- 
 monplace country hamlet, where labor is not less hard and is not any better paid 
 than in dozens or scores of small hamlets this side the Missouri, one vast tempta- 
 tion to emigrate thither, the temptation supplied by morbid curiosity and igno- 
 rant wonder, would never have had any conquering power, and Mormonism would 
 have oeen deprived of many thousand votaries. For, regarded in an artistic 
 point of view, the City of the Saints is a vulgar sham ; a trumpery humbug ; and 
 I verily believe that it has swelled into importance not more through the fanatical 
 energy of its governing elders and the ignorance of their followers, than through 
 the extravagant exaggeration and silly wonder of most of its hostile visitors and 
 critics.
 
 THE LIBERAL TRIUMVIRATE OF ENGLAND. 
 
 A YEAR ago I happened to be talking with some French friends at a din- 
 ner-table in Paris, about the Reform agitation then going on in England. 
 " We admire your great orators and leaders," said an enthusiastic French gen- 
 tleman ; "your Bright, your Beales " and he was warming to the subject when 
 he saw that I was smiling, and he at once pulled up, and asked me earnestly 
 whether he had said anything ridiculous. I endeavored to explain to him gently 
 that in England we did not usually place our Bright and our Beales on exactly 
 the same level that the former was our greatest orator, our most powerful 
 .eader, and the latter a respectable, earnest gentleman of warm emotions and 
 ordinary abilities whom chance had made the figure-head of a passing and vehe- 
 ment agitation, and who would probably be forgotten the day after to-morrow or 
 thereabouts. 
 
 My French friend did not seem convinced. He had seen Mr. Beales's 
 name in the London papers quite as often and as prominently for some months 
 as Mr. Bright's ; and, moreover, he had met Mr. Beales at dinner, and did not 
 like to be told that he had not thereby made the acquaintance of a great tribune 
 of the British people. So I dropped the subject and allowed our Bright and 
 and our Beales to rank together without farther protest. 
 
 Here in New York, where English politics are understood infinitely better 
 than in Paris, I have noticed not a little of this *' Bright and Beales " classifica- 
 tion when people talk of the leaders of English Liberalism. I have heard, with 
 surprise, this or that respectable member of Parliament, who never for a moment 
 dreamed of being classed among the chiefs of his party, exalted to a place of 
 equality with Gladstone or Bright. In truth the English Liberal party (I mean 
 now the advancing and popular party not the old Whigs) has only three men 
 who can be called leaders. After Gladstone, Bright, and Mill there comes a 
 huge gap and then follow the subalterns, of whom one might name half a dozen 
 having about equal rank and influence, and of whom you may choose any favor- 
 ite you like. Take, for example, Mr. W. E. Forster, Mr. Stansfeld, Mr. Thomas 
 Hughes, the O'Donoghue, Mr. Coleridge (who, however, is marked out for the 
 judicial bench, and therefore need hardly be counted), and one or two others, 
 and you have the captains of the advanced Liberal party. The Liberals are not 
 rich in rising talent ; at least there seems no man of the younger political gen- 
 eration who gives any promise of commanding ability. They have many good 
 debaters and clever politicians, but I see no " pony Gladstone " to succeed him 
 who used to be called the " pony Peel ; " and the man has yet to show himself 
 in whom the House of Commons can hope for a future Bright. The great Lib- 
 erals of our day have apparently not the gift of {raining disciples in order that 
 the latter may become apostles in their time. Like Cavour, they r\re too earnest 
 about the work and do too much of it themselves to have leisure or inclination 
 for teaching and pushing others. 
 
 Officially Mr. Gladstone has been, of course, for several years the leader of 
 the party. He is formally invested with all the insignia of command. He is 
 indeed the only possible leader ; for he is the only man who has the slightest 
 chance just now of commanding the allegiance of the old Whigs with their 
 dukes and earls, and the young Radicals with their philosophers, their Comtists,
 
 THE LIBERAL TRIUMVIRATE OF ENGLAND. 107 
 
 their Irish Nationalists, and their working men. But the true soul and voice 
 and heart of the Liberal party pay silent allegiance to John Bright. He is, by 
 universal acknowledgment, the maker of the Reform agitation and the Reform 
 Bill. 
 
 Mr. Disraeli has over and over again flung in the face of Mr. Gladstone the 
 fact that Bright, and not he, is the master spirit of Radicalism. Of late the 
 Tories have taken to praising and courting Bright incessantly and ostentatious- 
 .y, and contrasting his calm, consistent wisdom with Gladstone's impetuosity 
 and fitfulness. Of course both Bright and Gladstone thoroughly understand 
 the meaning of this, and smile at it and despise it. The obvious purpose is to 
 try to set up a rivalry between the two. If Gladstone's authority could be dam- 
 aged that would be quite enough ; for it would be impossible at present to get 
 the Whig dukes and earls to follow Bright, and the dethronement of Gladstone 
 would be the break-up of the party. The trick is an utter failure. Bright is sin- 
 cerely and generously loyal to Gladstone, and is a' man as completely devoid of 
 personal vanity or self-seeking as he is of fear. No personal question will ever 
 divide these two men. 
 
 Gladstone is beyond doubt the most fluent and brilliant speaker in the Eng- 
 lish Parliament. No other man has anything like his inexhaustible flow and 
 rush of varied and vivid expression. His memory is as surprising as his fluency. 
 Grattan spoke of the eloquence of Fox as " rolling in resistless as the waves of 
 the Atlantic." So far as this description conveys the idea of a vast \ olume of 
 splendid words pouring unceasingly in, it may be applied to Gladstone. A lis- 
 tener new to the House is almost certain to prefer him to any other speaker 
 there, "nd to regard him as the greatest English orator of the present genera- 
 tion. I was myself for a long time completely under the spell, and a little im- 
 patient of those who insisted on the superiority of Bright. But when one be- 
 comes accustomed to the speaking of the two men it is impossible not to find 
 the fluency, the glitter, the impetuous volubility, the involved and complicated 
 sentences, the Latinized, sesquipedalian words of Gladstone gradually losing 
 their early charm and influence, just as the pure noble Saxon, the unforced 
 energy, the exquisite simplicity, the perfect "fusion of reason and passion" 
 which are the special characteristics of Bright's eloquence, grow more and more 
 fascinating and commanding. Perhaps the same effect may be found to arise 
 from a study or a contrast (if one must contrast them) between the political char- 
 acters of the two men. 
 
 It is a somewhat singular fact that one English county has produced the 
 three men who undoubtedly rank beyond all others in England as Parliamentary 
 orators. The Earl of Derby, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Bright are all Lanca- 
 shire men. But Gladstone is only Lancashire by birth. His shrewd old Scotch 
 father came to Liverpool from across the Tweed, and made his money and 
 founded his family in the great port of the Mersey. The Gladstones had, and 
 have, large West Indian property ; and when England emancipated her slaves 
 by paying off the planters, the Gladstones came in for no small share of the na- 
 tional purchase-money. When the great Liberal orator came out so impetu- 
 ously and unluckily with his celebrated panegyric on Jefferson Davis, a few 
 years ago, some people shook their heads and remarked that the old planter 
 spirit does not quite die out in the course of one generation ; and I heard bitter 
 allusion made to the celebrated declaration flung by Cooke, the great tragedian, 
 in the face of an indignant theatre in Liverpool, that there was not a stone in the 
 of that town which was not " cemented by the blood of Africans."
 
 108 THE LIBERAL TRIUMVIRATE OF ENGLAND. 
 
 indeed, Gladstone's outburst had no traditional, or hereditary, or other such 
 source. It came straight from the impulsive heart and nature of the speaker. 
 His strength and his weakness are alike illustrated by that sudden, indiscreet, 
 unjustifiable, and repented outburst. Thus he every now and then disappoints 
 his friends and shakes the confidence of his followers. A keen, intellectual, cyn- 
 .cal member of the Liberal party, Mr. Grant Duff, not long since publicly re- 
 proached Mr. Gladstone with this trick of suddenly " turning round and firing 
 his revolver in the face of his followers." Certain it is that there is little or no 
 enthusiasm felt toward Gladstone personally, by his party. Admirers of Mr. 
 Disraeli are usually devotees of the man himself. Young men, especially, de- 
 light in him and adore him. Mr. Gladstone is followed as a leader, admired as 
 an orator ; but I have heard very few of his followers ever express any personal 
 affection or enthusiasm for him ; but it is quite notorious in London that some 
 of his adherents can hardly control their dislike of him. Mr. Bright, although 
 a man of somewhat cold and reserved demeanor, and occasionally brusque in 
 manner, is popular everywhere in the House. Mr. Gladstone is not personally 
 popular even among his own followers. What is the reason? His enemies say 
 that he has a bad temper and an unbending intellectual pride, which is as untrue 
 as if they were to say he had a hoarse voice and a stammer. The obscurest 
 man in the House of Commons is not more modest ; and there is nothing unge- 
 nial in his manner or his temper. But the truth is that people cannot rely upon 
 him, or think they cannot, which, so far as they are concerned, amounts to the 
 same thing. His strongest passion in life stronger than his love of figures, or 
 of Homer, or even of liberty is a love of argument. He is always ready to 
 sacrifice his friend, or his party, or even his cause, to his argument. Add to 
 this that he has a conscience so sensitive that it can hardly ever find any cause 
 or deed smooth enough to be wholly satisfactory ; add, moreover, that he has an 
 eloquence so fluent as to flow literally away from him, or with him, and the won- 
 der will be how such a man ever came to be the successful leader of a great 
 party at all. He is always reconsidering what he has done, always penitent for 
 something he has said, always turning up to-day the side of the question which 
 everybody supposed was finally put away and done with yesterday. 
 
 You can read all this in his face. Furrowed with deep and rigid lines, it 
 proclaims a certain self-torturing nature the nature of the penitent, self-exam- 
 ining ascetic, whose heart is always vexed by doubts of his own worth and 
 purity, and past and future. Decidedly, Gladstone wants force of character, 
 and force of intellect as well. He is not a man of great thought. Every such 
 man settles a question, so far as he is himself concerned, finally, one way or the 
 other, before long ;- sees and accepts what the human limitations of thinking 
 are ; recognizes the necessity of being done with mere thinking about it, and so 
 decides and is free to act. There is intellectual weakness in Gladstone's inter- 
 minable consideration and reconsideration, qualification and requalification of 
 every subject and branch of a subject. But there is also a strong, genuine, un- 
 mingled delight in mere argument perhaps as barren a delight as human intel- 
 lect can yield to. 
 
 Last year there were three Fenian prisoners lying under sentence of death in 
 Manchester. Their crime was such as undoubtedly all civil governments are 
 accustomed to punish by death. But there was considerable sympathy for 
 them, partly because of their youth, partly because the deed they had done 
 the killing of a policeman in order to rescue a political conspirator did not 
 seem to be a mere base and malignant murder. Some eminent Liberals, Mr.
 
 THE LIBERAL TRIUMVIRATE OF ENGLAND. 109 
 
 Bright among the rest, endeavored to obtain a mitigation of the sentence. The 
 Torv Government refused ; then a point of law was raised on their behalf, and 
 argued in the House of Commons. The point was new, the Tory law -officers, 
 dull men at the best, were taken by surprise, and broke down in reply. Yet 
 there was a reply, and legally, a sufficient one. Mr. Gladstone saw it ; saw 
 where the point raised was defective, and how it might be disposed of. He 
 sprang to his feet, pulled the Tory law-officers out of their difficulty, and upset 
 the case for the Fenians. Now this must have seemed to a conscientious man 
 quite the right thing to do. To a lover of argument the temptation of upsetting 
 a defective plea was irresistible. But most of Mr. Gladstone's Irish followers, 
 on whom he must needs rely, were surprised and angry, and even some of his 
 English friends thought he might have left the Tories unaided to hang their 
 own political prisoners. Gladstone's conduct was eminently characteristic. No 
 impartial man could honestly say that he had done a wrong thing ; but no one 
 acquainted with political life could feel surprised that a leader who habitually 
 does such things, is almost always being grumbled at by one or other section 
 of his followers. 
 
 There is an obvious lack of directness as well as of robustness in the whole 
 intellectual and political character of the man. I think it was Nathaniel Haw- 
 thorne who said of General McClellan that if he could only have shut one 
 eye he might have gone straight into Richmond almost at any time during his 
 command of the Army of the Potomac. I am sure if Gladstone would only 
 close one eye now and then he might lead his party much more easily to splen- 
 did victory. With all his great, varied, comprehensive faculties, he is not a 
 man to make a deep mark on the history of his country. He has to be driven 
 on. Somebody must stand behind him. He is not self-sufficing. His style of 
 eloquence is not straightforward, cleaving its way like an arrow. It goes round 
 and round a subject, turning it up, holding it to the light, now this way, now that, 
 examining and re-examining it. Even his reform speeches are as Disraeli once 
 said very happily of Lord Palmerston, rather speeches about Reform than ora- 
 tions on behalf of it. He is indeed the brilliant Halifax of his age at least he 
 is a complete embodiment of Lord Macaulay's Halifax. A leader with so many 
 splendid gifts and merits, no English parlimentary party of modern times has 
 ever had. Taking manner, voice, elocution and all into account, as is but 
 right in judging of a speaker, I think he is the most splendid of all English 
 orators. Burke's manner and accent were terribly against him ; Fox was full of 
 repetition, and often stammered and stuttered in the very rush and tumult of his 
 thoughts ; Sheridan's glitter was sometimes tawdriness ; both the Pitts were 
 given to pompousness and affectation ; Bright has neither the silver voice nor 
 the varied information of Gladstone ; Disraeli I do not rank among orators at 
 all. Gladstone has none of the special defects of any of these men, yet I am 
 tat vlnced that Fox was a greater orator than Gladstone ; I know that Bright 
 is ; while Burke's speeches are, as intellectual studies, incomparably beyond 
 anything that Gladstone will ever bequeath to posterity ; and as instruments to 
 an end, some of Disraeli's speeches have been more effective and triumphant 
 than anything ever spoken by his present rival. 
 
 In brief, Gladstone is not, to my thinking, a great orator ; and I do not be- 
 lieve he is a great statesman. A great statesman, I presume, is tested by a 
 crisis, and is greatest at a crisis. Such was Chatham ; such was Washington ; 
 such was Napoleon Bonaparte ; such was Cavour ; such is Bismarck. All I 
 have seen of Gladstone compels me to believe that he is not such a man. He
 
 110 THE LIBERAL TRIUMVIRATE OF ENGLAND 
 
 s just the man to lead the Liberal party at this time ; but I should despair of 
 the triumph of that party for the present generation, if there were rot stronger 
 and simpler minds behind his to keep him in the right way, to drive him on 
 and, above all, to prevent him from recoiling after he has made an effective stride 
 forward. 
 
 One of the great questions likely to arise soon in English political discussion 
 is that of national education. On educational questions I fancy Mr. Gladstone 
 is rather narrow-minded and old-fashioned ; taking too much the tone and view 
 of a college Don. His recent severance from the political representation of 
 Oxford may have done something to release his mind from tradition and pedan- 
 try ; but I much doubt whether he will not be found sadly wanting when a seri- 
 ous attempt i% made to revolutionize the principles and the system of the Eng- 
 lish universities, and to substitute there (I quote again the language of Grant 
 Duff) " the studies of men for the studies of children." Gladstone is a devotee 
 of classical study ; and his whole nature is under the influence of aestheticism, 
 or of what is commonly called " sentiment." The sweet and genial traditions 
 of the past have immense influence over him. His love of Greek poetry and of 
 Italian art follow him into politics. With the Teuton, his poetry and his 
 politics he has little or no sympathy ; and I think the question to be decided 
 shortly as regards the university system in England maybe figuratively described 
 as a question between Classic and Teuton. Gladstone is a profound Greek and 
 Latin scholar a master of Italian, a connoisseur of Italian art ; he does not, I 
 believe, know or care much about German literature. Accordingly, he was a 
 devoted Philhellene and a passionate champion of Italian independence ; while 
 the outbreak of the recent struggle between the past and the present in Germany 
 found him indifferent, and probably even ignorant. So it was in regard to the 
 American crisis the other day. He knew little of American politics and national 
 life ; and the whole thing was a bewilderment and a surprise to him. If the 
 Laocoon had been the work of a New England artist I think the North would 
 have found at once a warm advocate in Mr. Gladstone. 
 
 Of a mould utterly different is John Bright, at the very root of whose charac- 
 ter are found simplicity and straightforwardness. By simplicity I do not mean 
 freedom from pretence or affectation ; for no man can be more thoroughly un- 
 affected and sincere than Gladstone. I mean that purely intellectual attribute 
 which frees the judgment from the influence of complex emotions ; which dis- 
 tinguishes at once essentials from non-essentials ; which sees at a glance the 
 true end and the real way to it, and can go directly onward. Men supremely 
 gifted with this great practical quality are commonly set down as men of one 
 idea. In this sense, undoubtedly, John Bright is a man of one idea ; but the 
 phrase does not justly describe him, or men like him, who are peculiar merely in 
 having an accurate appreciation of what I may call political perspective, and 
 thus knowing what proportion of public consideration certain objects ought, un- 
 der certain circumstances, to obtain. 
 
 So far as ideas are the offspring of information, Mr. Bright has undoubtedly 
 fewer ideas than some of his contemporaries. He is not a profound classical 
 scholar like Gladstone ; he has had nothing like the varied culture of Lowe ; he 
 makes, of course, no pretence to the attainments of Mill, who is at once a master 
 of science, of classics,, and of belles-lettres. But given a subject, almost any 
 subject, coming at all within the domain of politics or economics, and time to 
 think over it, and he is much more likely to be right in his judgment of it than 
 any of the three men I have named. He is gifted beyond any Englishman now
 
 THE LIBERAL TRIUMVIRATE OF ENGLAND. Ill 
 
 .iving with the rare and admirable faculty of seeing right into the heart of a 
 subject, and discerning what it means and what it is worth. Nor is this ever a 
 ucky jump at a conclusion. Bright never gives an opinion at random or off- 
 nand. Some new policy is announced ; some new subject is broached in 
 the House of Commons ; and Bright sits silent and listens. Friends and follow- 
 ers come round him and ask him what he thinks of it. <; Wait until to-morrow 
 and I will tell you," is almost invariably, in whatever form of words, the tenor ot 
 his reply and to-morrow's judgment is certain to be right. I can remember 
 no great public question coming up in England for the past dozen years in 
 regard to which Mr. Bright's deliberate judgment did not prove itself to be 
 just. 
 
 This quality of sagacious judgment, however valuable and uncommon, would 
 *ot of itself make a man a great statesman or even a great party leader ; but it 
 is only one of many remarkable attributes which are found harmoniously illus- 
 trated in the character of Mr. Bright. I do not mean, however, to dwell at any 
 length here on the place John Bright holds in English political life or the quali- 
 ties which have won him that place. He has lately been the subject of an article 
 in this magazine, and he is indeed better known to American readers than any 
 other English political man now living. One or two observations are all that 
 just now seem necessary to make. 
 
 Men who have not heard Bright speak, and who only know him by repute as 
 a powerful tribune of the people, a demagogue ("John of Bromwicham," Carlyle 
 calls him, classing him with John of Leyden), are naturally apt to think of him 
 as an impetuous, passionate, stormy orator, shaking people's souls with sound 
 and fury. Almost anybody who only knew the two men vaguely and by rumor, 
 would be likely to assume that the style of the classical Gladstone was stately, 
 calm, and regular ; that of the popular orator and democrat, impetuous, rugged, and 
 vehement. Now, the great characteristic of Gladstone, after his fluency, is his 
 impetuosity; that of Bright is his magnificent composure and self-control. In- 
 tensity is his great peculiarity. He never foams or froths or bellows, or wildly 
 gesticulates. The heat of his oratorical passion is a white heat which consumes 
 without flash or smoke or sputter. Some of his greatest effects have been pro- 
 duced by passages of pathetic appeal, of irony, or of invective, which were de- 
 livered with a calm intensity that might almost have seemed coldness, if the fire 
 of genius and of eloquence did not burn beneath it. Another remark I should 
 make is that Mr. Bright is the greatest master of pure Saxon English now 
 speaking the English language. As the blind commonly have their sen^e of 
 sound and of touch intensified, so it maybe that Mr. Bright's comparative indif- 
 ference to classic and foreign literature has tended to concentrate all his atten- 
 tion upon the culture of pure English, and given him a supreme faculty of 
 appreciating and employing it. Certain it is that his unvarying choice of the 
 very best Saxon word in every case seems to come from an instinct which is in 
 itself something like genius. 
 
 Finally, let me remark, that the extent of Mr. Bright's democratic tenden- 
 cies would probably disappoint some Americans. I may say now what I should 
 probably have been laughed at for saying two or three years ago, that there is a 
 good deal of the conservative about John Bright ; that he is by nature disposed 
 to shrink from innovation ; that change for the mere sake of change is quite ab- 
 horrent to him ; and that he is about the last man in England who would care 
 to make political war for an idea. He seems to me to be the only one English- 
 man I have lately spoken with who retains any genuine feeling of personal loy-
 
 112 THE LIBERAL TRIUMVIRATE OF ENGLAND. 
 
 alty toward the sovereign of England. But for his eloquence and his power, I 
 fancy Mr. Bright would seem rather a slow sort of politician to many of the 
 vounger Radicals. The "Times " lately attributed Mr. Bright's conservatism 
 to his advancing years. This was merely absurd. Mr. Bright is little older 
 now than O'Connell was when he began his Parliamentary career. He is con- 
 siderably younger than Disraeli, or Gladstone, or Mill. What Bright now is he 
 always was. A dozen years ago he was defending the Queen and Prince Albert 
 against the attacks of Tories and of some Radicals. He never was a Democr xt 
 in the French or Italian sense. He has always been wanting even, in sympathy s 
 with popular revolution abroad. He never showed the slightest interest in spec- 
 ulative politics. I doubt if he ever talked of the "brotherhood of peoples." 
 He has been driven into political agitation only because, like Schiller's Wilhelm 
 Tell, he saw positive, practical, and pressing grievances bearing down upon his 
 neighbors, which he felt called by duty to make war against. I have many 
 times heard Mr. Bright say that he detests the House of Commons, and would 
 be glad if it were permitted him never to mount a platform again. 
 
 But if Mr. Bright had little natural inclination for a Parliamentary career, 
 what is one to say of Mr. John Stuart Mill's natural disinclination for such a 
 path of life ? 
 
 Physical constitution, intellectual peculiarities, temperament, habits all 
 seemed to mark out Mr. Mill as a man destined to close his career, as he had so 
 long conducted it in almost absolute seclusion. He is a silent, shy, shrinking 
 man, of feeble frame and lonely ways. Until the general election of three years 
 back, Mr. Mill was to his countrymen but as an oracle as a voice almost as a 
 myth. The influence of his writings was immense. Personally he was but a 
 name. He never came into any public place ; he knew nobody. When the 
 promoters of the movement to return him to Parliament came to canvass the 
 Westminster electors, the great difficulty they had to contend with was, that 
 three out of every four of the honest traders and shopkeepers had never heard 
 of him ; and the few who knew anything of his books had a vague impression 
 that the author was dead years before. The very men who formed the executive 
 of his committee could not say that they knew him, even by sight. Half in jest, 
 half for a serious purpose, some of the Tories sent abroad over Westminster an 
 awful report that there was no such man in existence as John Stuart Mill. 
 "Did you ever see him?" was the bewildering question constantly put to this 
 or that earnest canvasser, and invariably answered with an apologetic negative. 
 I believe the services of my friend Dr. Chapman, editor of the " Westminster 
 Review," were brought into pressing requisition, because he was one of the very 
 few who really could boast a personal acquaintance with Stuart Mill. The day 
 when the latter first entered the House of Commons was the first time he and 
 Fright ever saw each other. I believe Cobden and Mill never met. Mill had 
 no university acquaintances he had never been to any university. He had no 
 school friends he had never been to a school. Perhaps the best educated man 
 of his time in England, he owes his education to the personal care and teaching 
 of his distinguished father, James Mill, who would have been illustrious if his 
 son had not overshadowed his fame. Assuredly, to know James Mill intimately 
 was, if I may thus apply Leigh Hunt's saying, in itself a liberal education. 
 Following his father's steps at the India House, John Mill worked there me- 
 thodically and quietly, until he rose to the highest position his father had occu- 
 pied ; and then he resigned his office, declined an offer of a seat at the Indian 
 Council Board, subsequently made by Lord Stanley, and lapsed wholly into pri-
 
 THE LIBERAL TRIUMVIRATE OF ENGLAND. 118 
 
 vate life. Of late he rarely met even his close and early friends. Some es- 
 trangement, not necessary to dwell on, had taken place, I believe, between him 
 and his old friend Thomas Carlyle, and I suppose they ceased to meet. After 
 the death of the wife whom he so loved and revered, Mill lived almost always at 
 Avignon, in the south of France, where she died, and where he raised a monu- 
 ment over her remains, which he visits and tends with a romantic devotion and 
 constancy worthy of a Roland. 
 
 Only a profound sense of duty could drag such a man from his scholarly and 
 sacred seclusion into the stress and storm of a parliamentary life. But it was 
 urged upcM Mill that he could do good to the popular cause by going into Par- 
 liament ; and he is not a man to think anything of his personal preference in 
 such a case. He accepted the contest and won. Some of his warmest admirers 
 regretted that he had ever given his consent. They feared not so much that he 
 might damage his reputation as that he might weaken the influence of his 
 authority, and with it the strength of every great popular cause. Certainly those 
 who thought thus, and.who met Mr. Mill for the first time during the progress 
 of the Westminester contest, did not feel much inclined to take a more encourag- 
 ing view of the prospect. 
 
 Mr. Mill seems cut out by nature not to be a parliamentary success. He has 
 a thin, fragile, awkward frame ; he has a nervous, incessant twitching of the 
 lips and eyes ; he has a weak voice and a sort of stammer ; he is over sixty 
 years of age ; he had never, so far as I know, addressed a political meeting of 
 any kind up to the time of the Westminster contest. Yet with all these disad- 
 vantages, Mill has, as a political leader and speaker, been an undoubted success 
 with the country, and a sort of success in the House. An orator of any kind he 
 never could be. One might call him a wretchedly bad speaker, if his speaking 
 were not so utterly unlike anybody else's, as to refuse to be classified with any 
 other speaking, good or bad. But, so far as the best selection of words, the 
 clearest style, the most coherent and convincing argument can constitute elo- 
 quence, Mill's speeches are eloquent. They are, of course, only spoken 
 essays. They differ in no wise from the speaker's writings ; and I need hardly 
 say that a speech, to be effective, must never be just what the speaker would 
 have written if it were to be consigned at once to print as a letter or an ess?y. 
 As speeches, therefore, Mr. Mill's utterances in the House have little or no 
 effect. Indeed, they are only listened to by a very few men of real intelligence 
 and judgment on both sides. Some of the more boisterous of the Tories 
 made many attempts to cough and laugh Mill into silence ; indeed, there was obvi- 
 ously a deliberate plan of this kind in operation at one time. But Mill is a man 
 whom nothing can deter from saying or doing what he thinks right. A more 
 absolutely fearless being does not exist. He is even free from that fear 
 which has sometimes paralyzed the boldest- spirits, the fear of becoming ridicu- 
 lous. So the Tory trick filled. Mill went on with patient, imperturbable, 
 proud good-humor, despite all interruption now and then paying off his 
 Tory enemies by some keen contemptuous epigram or sarcasm, made all the 
 more pungent by the thin, bland tone in which it was uttered. So the Tories 
 gave up shouting, groaning and laughing ; the more quickly because one at least 
 of their chiefs, the Marquis of Salisbury (then in the House of Commons as 
 Lord Cranbourne) had the spirit and sense to express openly and loudly his 
 anger and disgust at the vulgar and brutal behaviour of some of his followers. 
 Therefore Mr. Mill ceased to be interrupted ; but he is not much listened to 
 That supreme, irrefutable evidence that a man fails to interest the House the
 
 114 THE LIBERAL TRIUMVIRATE OF ENGLAND. 
 
 fact that a hum and buzz of conversation may be heard all the time he is speaking 
 is always fatally manifest when Mr. Mill addresses the Commons. But the 
 House, after all, is only a platform from which a man endeavors to speak to the 
 country, and if Mill does not always get the ear of the House, he never fails 
 to be heard by the nation. I have no doubt that even the Tory members of the 
 House read Mill's speeches when they appear in print; assuredly all intelli- 
 gent Tories do. These speeches, in any case, are never lost on the country. 
 They form at once a part of the really successful literature of each session. 
 They always excite controversy of some kind not even the great orations of 
 Br ght and Gladstone are more talked of. 
 
 So far they are a success, and there is something in the personal character 
 of Mr. Mill himself, which makes him specially popular with the working classes 
 of England. I doubt if there is now any Englishman whose name would be 
 received with a more cordial outburst of applause at a popular meeting. Work- 
 ing-men, in fact, are very proud of Mr. Mill's scholarship, culture, and profundity. 
 They can perceive easily enough that he is remarkable for just those intellec- 
 tual qualities which the conventional demagogue never has. Tory newspapers 
 and the " Saturday Review " sometimes affect to regard Mr. Bright as a man of 
 defective education, but it is impossible to pretend to think that Mill is ignorant 
 of Greek or superficial in his knowledge of history. When such a man makes 
 himself especially the champion of working-men, the working-men think of him 
 very much as the Irish peasants of '98 and '48 did of Edward Fitzgerald and 
 Smith O'Brien, the aristocrats of birth and rank, who stepped down from their 
 high places and gave themselves up to the cause of the unlettered and the poor. 
 
 There is something fascinating, moreover, about the singular blending' 
 of the emotional, and even the romantic, with the keen, vigorous, logical intellect, 
 which is to be observed in Mill. Even political economy, in Mill's mind, is 
 strangely guided and governed by mere feeling. Somebody said he was a com- 
 bination of Ricardo and Tom Hughes somebody else said, rather more happily, 
 I think, that he is Adam Smith and Fe"ne"lon revived and rolled into one. 
 The " Pall Mall Gazette " found his picture well painted in Lord Macaulay's 
 analysis of the motives which influenced Edmund Burke, when he flung his 
 soul into the impeachment of Warren Hastings. The mere eccentricities, the 
 very defects of such a nature have in them something captivating. The admir- 
 ers of Mr. Mill are therefore not unusually somewhat given to exalting admira- 
 tion into idolatry. The classes who most admire him are the scholarly and 
 adventurous young Radicals, who have a dash of Positivism in them ; the ex- 
 treme Radicals, who are prepared to go any and all lengths for the mere sake 
 of change ; and the working-men. 
 
 This is the Triumvirate of the English Liberal Party. Combined they repre- 
 sent, guide, and govern every section and fraction of that party that is worth 
 taking into 'any consideration. Mr. Gladstone represents official Liberalism; 
 All Bright speaks for and directs the old-fashioned, robust, popular Liberalism 
 of which Manchester was the school ; Mr. Mill is the exponent of the new Lib- 
 eralism, 'the Liberalism of Idea and Logic. Bright's programme is a little ahead 
 of Gladstone's, hut Gladstone will probably be easily pulled up to it. Mill goes 
 far beyond ..either, far beyond any point at which either is ever likely to arrive. 
 Indeed, Mr. Mill may be fairly described by a phrase, which I believe is Ger- 
 man, as a man in advance of every possible future at least in England. But 
 he is quite prepared to act loyally and steadily with his party and its leader on 
 all momentous issues. On some minor questions he has lately gone widely
 
 THE LIBERAL TRIUMVIRATE OF ENGLAND. 115 
 
 away fiom them, and given thereby much offence ; and indeed I am sure there 
 are not a few of the old-fashioned Liberals and the Manchester men who would 
 rather Mr. Mill had never come into Parliament, and sat at their side. But on 
 nearly all questions of Parliamentary Reform, and on that of the Irish Church, 
 Mill and his Liberal colleagues will pull cordially together. So, too, on most 
 economic questions, reduction of taxation, imposition of duties and the like. 
 Where a sharp difference is likely to arise will only be in relation to some sub- 
 ject having an idea behind it some question of foreign policy perhaps, some- 
 thing not at present imminent ; and, let us hope, not destined in any case to be 
 vital to the interests of the party. Only where an idea is involved will Mr. Mill 
 refuse to allow his own judgment Jo bend to the general necessities of the party. 
 It was his objection (a very unwise one, I think) to the idea behind the system of 
 the ballot, which led him to separate himself sharply from Bright and other 
 Liberals on that subject ; it was the idea which lies at the bottom of a represen- 
 tation of minorities, which beguiled him into lending his advocacy to that most 
 chimerical, awkward, and absurd piece of political mechanism which we know 
 in England as the three-cornered constituency. The cohesion of Gladstone and 
 Bright is decidedly more close and likely to endure than that between Bright 
 and Mill. But on all immediate questions of great importance, these two men 
 are sure to be found side by side. Mill has a deep and earnest admiration for 
 Bright, who is sometimes, perhaps, a little impatient of the Politics of Idea. 
 
 During the session of 1868, I attended a meeting of a few representative 
 Liberals of all classes, brought together to decide on some course of agitation 
 with regard to Ireland. Mr. Mill was there, so were Professor Fawcett. Mr. 
 Thomas Hughes, Lord Amberley, and other members of Parliament ; Mr. Fred- 
 erick Harrison, with some of his Positivist colleagues, and several representa- 
 tive working men. Mr. Bright was unable to attend. A certain course of ac- 
 tion being recommended, Mr. Mill expressed his own approval of it, but em- 
 phatically declared that he considered Mr. Bright's judgment was entitled to be 
 regarded as authoritative, and that should Mr. Bright recommend the meeting 
 not to go on, the scheme had better be given up. Mr. Bright subsequently dis- 
 couraged the scheme, and it was, on Mr. Mill's recommendation, at once aban- 
 doned. I mention this fact to illustrate the loyalty which Mr. Mill, with all his 
 tendency to political eccentricity, usually displays toward the men whom he re- 
 gards as the leaders of the party. 
 
 Mill and Bright are alike warm admirers of Gladstone and believers in him. 
 Indeed one sometimes feels ashamed to doubt for a moment the steadfastness 
 of a man in whom Bright and Mill put so full a faith. 
 
 Certainly the English Liberal has reason to congratulate himself, and fee 1 
 proud when he remembers what sort of men his party's leaders used to be, and 
 sees what men they are to-day. It will not do to study too closely the private 
 characters of the chiefs of any political band in the House of Commons, from 
 the days of BolSngbroke to those of Fox. The man who was not a sinecurist 
 or a peculator was pretty sure to be a profligate or a gambler. Not a few emi- 
 nent men were sinecurists, peculators, profligates, and gamblers. The political 
 purity of the English Liberal leaders to-day is absolutely without the faintest shade 
 of suspicion it never even occurs to any one to suspect them, while their pri- 
 vate lives, it may be said without indelicacy, are in pure and perfect accord with 
 the noble principles they profess. Not often has there been a political trium- 
 virate of greater men ; of better men, never.
 
 THE ENGLISH POSITIVISTS. 
 
 SOME few months ago, a little bubble of interest was made on the surface 
 of London life, by a course of Sunday lectures of a peculiar kind. 
 
 These lectures were given in a small room in Bouverie street, off Fleet street 
 Bouverie street, sacred to publishing and newspaper offices and only a very 
 small stream of persons was drawn to the place. There was something very 
 peculiar, however, about the lectures, the lecturer, and the audience, which 
 might well have repaid a stranger in London for the trouble of going there. I 
 doubt whether such a proportion of intellectual faces could have been seen among 
 the congregation of any London church on these Sunday mornings ; and I know 
 one. at least, who attended the lectures, less for the sake of what he heard than 
 because such listeners as the authoress of "Romola" were among the audience. 
 The lecturer was Mr. Richard Congreve, and the subject of his discourses was 
 i\\fi creed of Positivism. 
 
 I do not know how familiar Mr. Congreve and his writings and his doctrines 
 are to the American public. In London, Mr. Congreve is, in a quiet way, a sort 
 of celebrity or peculiarity. He is the head of the small, compact band of English 
 Positivists. It is understood that he goes as far in the direction of the creed 
 which was the dream of Auguste Comte's later years as any sane human creature 
 can well go. I have, however, very little to say here of Mr. Congreve, individu- 
 ally ; and I take his recent course of Sunday lectures only as a convenient start- 
 ing point from which to begin a few remarks on the political principles, charac- 
 ter, and influence of that small, resolute, aggressive body of intellectual, highly- 
 educated and able men who are beginning to be known in the politics and 
 society of England as the London Positivists. 
 
 A discourse on the principles of Positivism would be quite out of place here ; 
 but even those who understand the whole subject will, perhaps, allow me, for the 
 benefit of those who do not, to explain very briefly what an English Positivist 
 is. Positivism, it is known to my readers, is the name given to the philosophy 
 which Auguste Comte, more than any other man, helped to reduce to a system. 
 Regarded as a philosophy of history and human society, its grand and funda- 
 mental doctrine merely is that human life evolves itself in obedience to certain 
 fixed laws, of which we could obtain a knowledge if only we applied ourselves 
 to this study as we do to all other studies in practical science, by the patient 
 observation of phenomena. Auguste Comte's reduction of this philosophical 
 theory to a scientific system is undoubtedly one of the grandest achievements 
 of human intellect. The philosophy did not begin with him or his genera- 
 tion, or, indeed, any generation of which we have authentic record. Whenever 
 there were men capable of thinking at all, there must have bee some whose 
 minds were instinct with this doctrine ; but Comte made it a system at once 
 simple, grand, and fascinating, and he will always remain identified with its de- 
 velopment, in the memory of the modern world. Unfortunately, Comte, in his 
 later years, set to founding a religion also a religion which has, perhaps, called 
 down upon its founder and its followers more ridicule, contempt, and discredit 
 than any vagary of human imagination in our clay. I speak of all this only to 
 explain to my readers that there is some little difficulty in defining what is meant 
 by a Positivist. If we mean merely a believer in the philosophical theory of his-
 
 THE ENGLISH POSITIVISTS. H7 
 
 * 
 
 tory, then Positivists are, indeed, to be named as legion, and their captains are 
 among the greatest intellects of the world to-day. In England, we regard Mr. John 
 Stuart Mill as, in this sense, the greatest Positivist, and undoubtedly he is so 
 regarded here. But Mill utterly rejects and ridicules the fantastic religion 
 which Comte, in his days of declining mental power, sought to graft on his grand 
 philosophy. In his treatise on Comte, Mr. Mill showed no mercy to the Positiv- 
 ist religion, and, indeed, bitterly offended many of its votaries by his contemptu- 
 ous exposure of its follies. What is said of Mill maybe said of nineteen out of 
 every twenty, at least, of the English followers of Comte. They accept the phi- 
 losophy as grand, scientific, inexorable truth ; they reject the religion with pity 
 or with scorn, as a fantastic and barren chimera. Mr. Congreve is, in London, 
 the leader of the small school who go for taking all or nothing, and to whom 
 Auguste Comte is the prophet of a new and final religion, as well as the teacher 
 of a new philosophy. Now this little school is the nucleus of the body of Eng- 
 lishmen of whom I write. 
 
 When I speak, therefore, of English Positivists, I do not mean the men who go 
 no farther than John Stuart Mill does. These men are to be found everywhere ; 
 they are of all schools, and all religions. I mean the much smaller body of 
 votaries who go, or feel inclined to go, much farther, and accept Comte's reli- 
 gious teaching as a law of life. It is quite probable that, even among the men 
 who are now identified more or less, in the public mind, with Mr. Congreve and 
 his school, there may be some who do not adopt, or even concern themselves 
 about the religion of Positivism. A community of sentiment on historical and 
 political questions, the habit of meeting together, consulting together, writing 
 for publication together, might naturally bring into the group men who may not 
 go the length of adopting the Comte worship. It is quite possible, therefore, 
 that, in mentioning the names of English Positivists, I may happen to speak of 
 some who have no more to do with that worship than I have. 
 
 I mean, then, only the group of men, most of whom are young, most of whom 
 are highly cultured, many of whom are endowed with remarkable ability, who 
 are to be found in a literary and political phalanstery with Mr. Congreve, and 
 of whom the majority are understood to be actual votaries of the religion of 
 Comte. Of course I have nothing to do here with their faith or their practices. 
 If they adopt the worship of woman I think they do a better thing after all than 
 the increasing and popular class of writers, whose principal business in life is 
 to persuade us that our wives and sisters are all Messalinas in heart and nearly 
 all Messalinas in practice. If, when they pray, they touch certain cranial bumps 
 at certain passages of the prayer, I do not see that they institute anything 
 worse than the genuflections of the Ritualist or the breast-beating of the Roman 
 Catholics. If, finally, one is sometimes a little puzzled when he receives a letter 
 from a Positivist friend, and finds it dated "5th Marcus Aurelius," or "i 2th 
 Auguste Comte," instead of July or December, as the case may be, one must re- 
 member that there never yet was a young sect which did not delight in puzzling 
 outsiders by a new and peculiar nomenclature. I never heard anything worse 
 charged against the Positivists than that they worship woman, touch their fore- 
 heads when they pray, and arrange the calendar according to a plan of their 
 own invention ; except, of course, the general charge of Atheism ; but as that is 
 made in England against anybody whom all his neighbors do not quite under- 
 stand, I hardly think it worth discussing' in this particular instance. We are 
 all Atheists in England in the estimation of our neighbors, whose political 
 opinions are different from our own.
 
 118 THE ENGLISH POSITIVISTS. 
 
 The English Positivists, then, are beginning to stand out sharply against the 
 common background of political life. . They are a little school ; as distinctly a 
 school for their time and chances as the Girondists were, or the Manchester 
 school, or the Massachusetts Abolitionists, or the Boston Transcendentalists. 
 They are Radical, of course, but their Radicalism has a curious twist in it. On 
 any given question of Radicalism they go as far as any practical politician does ; 
 but then they also go in most cases so very much farther that they often alarm 
 the practical politician out of his ordinary composure. They are generally in- 
 cisive of speech, aggressive of purpose, defiant of political prudery, and even 
 of political orudence. Their politics are always politics of idea. 
 
 Some three or four years ago the Positivists published a large and ponder- 
 ous volume of essays on subjects of international policy. Each man who con- 
 tributed an essay signed his name, and although a general community of idea 
 and principle pervaded the book, it was not understood that everybody who 
 wrote necessarily adopted all the views of his associates. The book, in fact, 
 was constructed on the model of the famous " Essays and Reviews " which had 
 sent such a thrill through the religious world a few years before. The political 
 essays naturally failed to create anything like the sensation which was produced 
 by their theological predecessors ; but they did excite considerable attention, and 
 awoke the echoes. They astonished a good many Liberal politicians of the 
 steady old school, and they set many men thinking. What surprised people at 
 first was the singular combination of literary culture and ultra-Radical opinion. 
 Literary young men in England, of late, are generally to be divided into two 
 classes the smart writers for periodicals, the minor novelists and dramatists, and 
 so forth, who know no more and care no more about politics than ballet girls 
 do, and the University men, the men of " culture," who affect Toryism as some- 
 thing fine and distinguished, and profess a patrician horror of democracy and the 
 " mob." If at the time this volume was published one had taken aside some 
 practical politician in London and said, " Here is a collection of practical es- 
 says written by a cluster of young men who all have University degrees after 
 their names will you read it?" the answer would certainly have been "Not 
 I, it's sure to be some contemptible sham Tory rubbish ; some ' blood-and-cul- 
 ture ' trash ; some schoolboy impertinence about demagoguism and the mob." 
 Therefore the surprise was not slight to such men when they read the book and 
 found that its central idea, its connecting thread, was a Radicalism which might 
 well be called thorough ; a Radicalism which made Bright look like a steady old 
 Conservative ; invited Mill to push his ideas a little farther ; and poured scorn 
 upon the Radical press for its slowness and its timidity. A simple, startling 
 foreign policy was prescribed to England. Its gospel, after all, was but an old 
 one so old that it had been forgotten in English politics. It was merely Be 
 just and fear not. Renounce all aggression ; give back the spoils of conquest 
 Give Gibraltar back to the Spaniards who own it ; prepare to cast loose your 
 colonial dependencies ; prepare even to quit your loved India ; ask the Irish 
 people fairly and clearly what they want, and if they desire to be free of your 
 rule, bid them go and be free and Godspeed. All the old traditional policies 
 seemed to these men only obsolete and odious superstitions. They would have 
 England, the State, to-stand up and act precisely as an Englishman of honor 
 and conscience would do, and they treated with utter contempt any policy of 
 expediency or any policy whatever that aimed at any end but that of finding out 
 the right thing to do and then doing it at once This seemed to me, studying 
 the school quite as an outside observer, its one great central idea ; and it would
 
 THE ENGLISH FOSIT1VISTS. ll'j 
 
 of course be impossible not to honor the body of writers who proposed to show 
 how it was to be accomplished. 
 
 But no school lives on one grand idea ; and this school had its chimeras and 
 crotchets almost its crazes. For example, the leader of the Positivist band 
 took great trouble to argue that Europe ought to form herself into a noble fed- 
 eration of States, to the exclusion of Russia, which was to be regarded as an 
 Oriental, barbarous, unmanageable, intolerable sort of thing, and pushed out of 
 the European system altogether. Then a good many of the leading minds of 
 the school are imbued with a passionate love for a sort of celestial despotism, an 
 ideal imperialism which the people are first to create and then to obey which 
 is to teach them, house them, keep them in employment, keep them in health, 
 and leave them nothing to do for themselves, while yet securing to them the 
 most absolute freedom. To some of these men the condition of New York, 
 where the State does hardly anything for the individual, would seem as dis- 
 tressing and objectionable as that of despotic Paris or even Constantinople. A 
 distinguished member of the school declared that nothing was to him more 
 odious than any manner of voluntaryism, and that he hoped to see State opera- 
 tion introduced into every department of English social organization. The con- 
 nection of this theory with the principle of Positivism, which would mould all 
 men into a sort of hierarchy, is natural and obvious enough, and there is, to sup- 
 port it, a certain reaction now in England against the voluntary principle, in 
 education and in public charities. But, as it js put forward and argued by men 
 of the school I describe, iv may be taken as one of the most remarkable points 
 of departure from the common tendency of thought in England. The Positivists 
 are all, indeed, un-English, in the common use of a phrase which is ceasing of 
 late to be so dreaded a stigma as it once used to be in British politics. They 
 are, as I have already said, a somewhat aggressive body, and are imbued with a 
 contempt, which they never care to conceal, for the average public opinion of the 
 British Philistine, whether he present himself as a West End tradesman or a 
 West End Peer. 
 
 The Positivists are almost always to be found in antagonism with this sort of 
 public opinion. They attack the Philistine, and they attack no less readily the 
 dainty scholar and critic who lately gave the Philistine his name, and whose 
 over-refining love of sweetness and light is so terribly offended by the rough and 
 earnest work of Radical politics. Whatever way average opinion tends, the in- 
 fluence of the Positivists is sure to tend the other way. 
 
 There was a time, nearly two years ago, when the average English mind was 
 suddenly seized with a passion of blended hate, fear, and contempt for Feni- 
 anism. The thing was first beginning to show itself in a serious light and it had 
 not gone far enough to show what it really was. It looked more formidable than 
 it proved to be, and it seemed less like an ordinary rebellious organization than 
 like some mysterious and demoniacal league against property and public 
 security. When I say it seemed, I mean it seemed to the average English mind, 
 to the ordinary swell and the ordinary shopkeeper. Just at this time the Posi- 
 tivists drew up a petition to be presented to the House of Commons, in which 
 they called upon the House to insist that lenity should be shown to all Fenian 
 prisoners, that they should be regarded as men driven into rebellion by a deep 
 sense of injustice, and that measures should be taken to prevent the British 
 troops from committing such excesses in Ireland as had been perpetrated in the 
 suppression of the Indian mutiny, and more lately in Jamaica, Now, if there 
 was anything peculiarly calculated to vex and aggravate the House of Commons
 
 120 THE ENGLISH POSITIVISTS. 
 
 and the English public generally, it was such a view of the business as this. 
 Fenianism had not acquired the solemn and tragic interest which it obtained a 
 few months afterward. It is only just to say that Englishmen in general be- 
 gan to look with pity and a sort of respect on Fenianism, once it became clear 
 that it had among its followers men who, to quote the language of one of the 
 least sympathetic of London newspapers, "knew how to die." But, at the time 
 I speak of, Fenianism was a vague, mystic, accursed thing, which it was proper to 
 regard as utterly detestable and contemptible. Imagine then what the feeling 
 of the English county member must have been when he learned that there 
 were actually in London a set of educated Englishmen, nearly all trained in the 
 universities and nearly all moving in good society, who regarded the Fenians 
 just as he himself regarded rebels against the Emperor of Austria or the Pope 
 of Rome, and who not merely asked that consideration should be shown toward 
 them, but went on to talk of the necessity of protecting them against the bru- 
 tality of the loyal British soldier ! The petition was signed by all who had a 
 share in its preparation. Such men as Richard Congreve, T. M. Ludlow, Fred- 
 erick Harrison and Professor Beesly, were among the petitioners who risked 
 their admission into respectable society by signing the document. The petition- 
 ers did not feel quite sure about getting any one of mark to present their 
 appeal ; and it is certain that a good many professed Liberals, of advanced 
 opinions and full of sympathy with foreign rebels of any class or character, 
 would have promptly refused to 4 accept the ungenial office. The petitioners, 
 however, applied to one who was not likely to be Influenced by any considera- 
 tions but those of right and justice, and whom, moreover, no body in the House 
 of Commons would think of trying to put down. They asked Mr. Bright to pre- 
 sent their petition, and there was, of course, no hesitation on his part. Mr. 
 Bright not merely presented the petition, but read it amid the angry and impa- 
 tient murmurs of an amazed and indignant House ; and he declared, in tones of 
 measured and impressive calmness, that he entirely approved of and adopted the 
 sentiments which the petitioners expressed. There was, of course, a storm of in- 
 dignation, and some members went the length of recommending that the petition 
 should not even be received an extreme and indeed extravagant course in a 
 country where the right of petitiuon is supposed to be held sacred, and which 
 the good sense even of some Tory members promptly repudiated. Mr. Disraeli 
 did his very best to aggravate the feeling of the House against the petitioners. 
 During the Indian mutiny he had himself loudly protested against the spirit of 
 vengeance which our press encouraged ; asked whether we meant to make 
 Nana Sahib the model for a British officer, and whether Moloch or Christ was 
 our divinity. Yet he now declared that the language of the petition was a libel 
 on the Indian army, and that nothing had ever occurred during the Bengal cut- 
 break to warrant the imputations cast on the humanity of our soldiers. 
 
 I suppose it is not easy to convey to an American reader a correct idea of 
 the degree of boldness involved in the presentation of this celebrated petition. 
 It really was a very bold thing to do. It was running right in the very teeth of 
 the public opinion of all the classes which are called respectable in England. 
 It was, however, strictly characteristic of the men who signed it. Most, if not 
 all of them, took a prominent part in the prosecution of Governor Eyre of Ja- 
 maica, foi the lawless execution of George William Gordon and the wholesale 
 and merciless floggings and hangings by which order was made to reign in the 
 island. Most of them, indeed, have a pretty spirit of contradiction of their own, 
 and a pretty gift of sarcasm. I think I hardly remember any man who received,
 
 THE ENGLISH POSITIVISTS. 121 
 
 during an equal length of time, a greater amount of abuse from the press than 
 Professor Beesly drew down on himself not very long ago. It was at the time 
 when the public mind was in its wildest thrill of horror at the really fearful reve- 
 lations of organized murder in connection with the Sawgrinders' Union in Shef- 
 field. The whole question of trades' union organization had been under dis- 
 cussion ; and even before the Sheffield revelations came out, the general voice 
 of English respectability was against the workmen's societies altogether. But 
 when the disclosures of organized murder in connection with one union came 
 out, a sort of panic took possession of the public mind. The first, and not un- 
 natural impulse was to assume that all trades' unions must be very much the 
 same sort of thing, and that the societies of workmen were little better than or- 
 ganized Thuggism. Now. Professor Beesly, Mr. Frederick Harrison and other 
 signers of the petition for the Fenians, had long been prominent and influen- 
 tial advocates of the trades' union principle. They had been to the English 
 artisan something like what the Boston Abolitionist was so long to the negro. 
 The trades' union bodies, who felt aggrieved at the unjust suspicion which made 
 them a party to hideous crimes they abhorred, began to hold public meetings to 
 repudiate the charge, and record their detestation of the Sheffield outrages. 
 Professor Beesly attended one of these meetings in London. He made a speech, 
 in which he told the working men that he thought enough had been done in the 
 way of disavowing crimes which no one had a right to impute to them ; that 
 there was no need of their further humiliating themselves ; and that it was rath- 
 er odd the English Aristocracy had such a horror of murderers among the poorer 
 classes, seeing how very fond they were of men like Eyre, of Jamaica ! In fact, 
 Professor Beesly uplifted his voice very honestly, but rather recklessly and out 
 of time, against the social hypocrisy which is the stain and curse of London 
 society, and which is never so happy as when it can find some chance of de- 
 nouncing sin or crime among Republicans, or Irishmen, or workingmen. There 
 was nothing Professor Beesly said which had not sense and truth in it ; but it 
 might have been said more discreetly and at a better time ; and it was said with 
 a sarcastic and scornful bitterness which is one of the characteristics of the 
 speaker. For several days the London press literally raged at the professor. 
 " Punch " persevered for a long time in calling him "Professor Beastly;" a 
 a strong effort was made to obtain his expulsion from the college in which he has 
 a chair. He was talked of and written of as if he were the advocate and the 
 accomplice of assassins, instead of being, as he is, an honorable gentleman and 
 an enlightened scholar, whose great influence over the working classes had al- 
 ways been exerted in the cause of peaceful progress and good order. It was a 
 common thing, for days and weeks, to see the names of Broadhead and Beesly 
 coupled with ostentatious malignity in the leading columns of London news- 
 papers. 
 
 1 give these random illustrations only to show in what manner the school of 
 writers and thinkers I speak of usually present themselves before the English 
 public. Now Mr. Harrison devotes himself to a pertinacious, powerful series 
 of attacks on Eyre, of Jamaica, at a time when that personage is the hero and pet 
 martyr of English society ; now Professor Beesly horrifies British respecta- 
 bility by pointing out that there are respectable murderers who are quite as bad 
 as Broadhead ; now Mr. John Morley undertakes even to criticise the Queen ; 
 now Mr. Congreve assails the anonymous writers of the London press as hired 
 and masked assassins ; now the whole band unite in the defence of Fenians. 
 This sort of thing has a startling effect upon the steady public mind of England ;
 
 122 THE ENGLISH POSIT; VISTS. 
 
 and it is thus, and not otherwise, that the public mind of England ever comes 
 to hear of these really gifted and honest, but very antagonistic and somewhat 
 crochetty men. Several of them are brilliant and powerful writers. Professor 
 Beesly writes with a keen, caustic, bitter force which has something Parisian in 
 it. I know of no writer in English journalism who more closely resembles in 
 style a certain type of the literary gladiator of French controversy. He has 
 much of Eugene Pelletan in him, and something of Henri Rochefort, blended 
 with a good deal that reminds one of Jules Simon. Frederick Harrison is fast 
 becoming a power in the Radical politics and literature of England. John Mor- 
 ley is a young man of great culture, and who writes with a quite remarkable 
 freshness and force. I could mention many other men of the same school (I 
 have already said that I do not know whether each and every one of these is or 
 is not a professed Positivist) who would be distinguished as scholars and writers 
 in the literature of any country. However they may differ on minor points, 
 however they may differ in ability, in experience, in discretion, they have one 
 peculiarity in common : they are to be found foremost in every liberal and radi- 
 cal cause ; they are always to be found on the side of the weak, and standing up 
 for the oppressed ; they are inveterate enemies of cant ; they hate vulgar idola- 
 try and vulgar idols. Looking back a few years, I can remember that almost, 
 if not quite, every man I have alluded to was a fearless and outspoken advocate 
 of the cause of the North, at a time when it was de rigueur among men of " cul- 
 ture " in London to champion the cause of the South. Some of the men I have 
 named were indefatigable workers at that time on the unfashionable side. They 
 wrote pamphlets ; they wrote leading articles ; they made speeches ; they deliv- 
 ered lectures in out-of-the-way quarters to workingmen and poor men of all 
 kinds ; they hardly came, in any prominent way, before the public, in most of this 
 work. It brought them, probably, no notoriety or recognition whatever on this 
 side of the ocean ; but their work was a power in England. I feel convinced 
 that, in any case, the English workingmen would have gone right on such a 
 question as that which was at issue between North and South. As Mr. Motley 
 truly said in his address to the New York Historical Society, the workers and 
 the thinkers were never misled ; but I am bound to say that the admirable 
 knowledge of the realities of the subject ; the clear, quick, and penetrating judg- 
 ment, and the patient, unswerving hope and confidence which were so signally 
 displayed by the London workingmen from first to last of that great struggle, 
 were in no slight degree the result of the teaching and the labor of men like 
 Professor Beesly and Frederick Harrison. 
 
 If I were to set up a typical Positivist, in order to make my American 
 reader more readily and completely familiar with the picture which the word 
 calls up in the minds of Londoners, I should do it in the following way: 
 1 should exhibit my model Positivist as a man still young for anything like 
 prominence in English public life, but not actually young in years say thirty- 
 eight or forty. He has had a training at one of the great historical Universi- 
 ties, or at all events at the modern and popular University of London. He is 
 a barrister, but does not practise much, and has probably a modest competence 
 on which he can live without working for the sake of living, and can indulge his 
 own tastes in literature and politics. He has immense earnestness and great 
 self-conceit. He has an utter contempt for dull men and timid or half-measure 
 men, and he scorns Whigs even more than Tories. He devotes much of his 
 time generously and patiently to the political and other instruction of working 
 men. He writes in the " Fortnightly Review," and sometimes in " MacMil-
 
 THE ENGLISH POS1T1V1STS. 123 
 
 Ian," and sometimes in the "Westminster Review." He plunges into gallant 
 and fearless controversy with the " Pall Mall Gazette," and he is not easily 
 worsted, for his pen is sharp and his ink very acrid. Nevertheless, is any 
 great question stirring, with a serious principle or a deep human interest at the 
 heart of it, he is sure to be found on the right side. Where the controversy is 
 of a smaller kind and admits of crotchet, then he is pretty sure to bring out a 
 crotchet of some kind. He is perpetually giving the " Saturday Review" an 
 opportunity to ridicule him and abuse him, and he does not care. He writes 
 pamphlets and goes to immense trouble to get up the facts, and expense to give 
 them to the world, and he never grudges trouble or money, where any cause or 
 even any crotchet is to be served. He is ready to stand up alone, against all the 
 world if needs be, for his opinions or his friends. Benevolent schemes which 
 are of the nature of mere charity he never concerns himself about. I never 
 heard of him on a platform with the Earl of Shaftesbury, and I fancy he has a 
 contempt for all patronage of the poor or projects of an eleemosynary character. 
 He is for giving men their political rights and educating them if necessary 
 compelling them to be educated ; and he has little faith in any other way of 
 doing good. He has, of course, a high admiration for and faith in Mr. Mill. 
 His nature is not quite reverential in general he is rather inclined to sit in 
 the chair of the scorner ; but if he reverenced any living man it would be MilL 
 He admires the manly, noble character of Bright, and his calm, strong elo- 
 quence. I do not think he cares much about Gladstone I rather fancy our 
 Positivist looks upon Gladstone as somewhat weak and unsteady and with him 
 to be weak is 'indeed to be miserable. Disraeli is to him an object of entire 
 scorn and detestation, for he can endure no one who has not deeply-rooted prin- 
 ciples of some kind. He has a crotchet about Russia, a theory about China ; he 
 gets quite beside himself in his anger over the anonymous leading articles of 
 the London press. He is not an English type of man at all, in the present and 
 conventional sense. He cares not a rush about tradition, and mocks at the wis- 
 dom of our ancestors. The bare fact that some custom, or institution, or way 
 of thinking has been sanctioned and hallowed by long generations of usage, is 
 in his eyes rather ^prima facie reason for despising it than otherwise. He is 
 pitilessly intolerant of all superstitions save his own that is to say, he is in- 
 tolerant in words and logic and ridicule, for the wildest superstition would find 
 him its defender, if it once came to be practically oppressed or even threatened. 
 He is " ever a fighter," like one of Browning's heroes ; he is the knight-errant, 
 the Quixote of modern English politics. He admires George Eliot in litera- 
 ture, and, I should say, he regards Charles Dickens as a s6rt of person who 
 does very well to amuse idlers and ignorant people. I do not hear of his going 
 much to the theatre, and it is a doubt to me if he has yet heard of the " Grande 
 Duchesse." Life with him is a very earnest business, and, although he has a 
 pretty gift of sarcasm, which he uses as a weapon of offence against his enemies, 
 I cannot, with any effort of imagination, picture him to myself as in the act of 
 making a joke. 
 
 A small drawing-room would assuredly hold all the London Positivists who 
 make themselves effective in English politics. Yet I do not hesitate to say that 
 Miey are becoming that they have already become a power which no one, calcu- 
 lating on the chances of any coming struggle, can afford to leave out of his con- 
 sideration. Their public influence thus far has been wholly for jrood ; and they 
 set up no propaganda that I have ever seen or heard of, as regards either phi- 
 bsophy or religion. The course of lectures I have already mentioned was the
 
 124 THE ENGLISH POSITIVISTS. 
 
 nearest approach to any public diffusion of their peculiar doctrines wh ; .ch I can 
 remember, and it created little or no sensation in London. Indeed, little or no 
 publicity was sought for it. I have read lately somewhere that a newspaper, 
 specially devoted to the propagation and vindication of Positivism, is about to 
 be, or has been started in London. I do not know whether this is true or not ; 
 but for any such journal I should anticipate a very small circulation, and an ex- 
 istence only to be maintained by continual subsidy. 
 
 So quietly have these men hitherto pursued their course, whatever it may be, 
 in religion or religious philosophy, that it was long indeed before any idea got 
 abroad that the cluster of highly-educated, ultra-radical thinkers, who were to 
 be found sharpshooting on the side of every great human principle and every 
 oppressed cause, and who seemed positively to delight in standing up against 
 the vulgar rush of public opinion, were anything more than chance associates, 
 or were bound by any tie more close and firm than that of general political sym- 
 pathy. Even now that people are beginning to know them, and to classify them, 
 in a vague sort of way, as "those Positivists," they make so little parade of any 
 peculiarity of faith that, without precise and personal knowledge, it would be 
 rash to say for certain that this or that member of the group is or is not an actual 
 professor of the Comtist religion. I read a few days ago, in one of the few 
 sensible books written on America by an Englishman, some remarks made about 
 a peculiar view of Europe's duty to Egypt, which was described as being held by 
 " the Comtists." I do not know whether the men referred to hold the view 
 ascribed to them or not ; but, assuredly, if they do, the fact has no more direct 
 connection with their Comtism than Bright's free-trade views have with Bright' s 
 Quakerism. An illustration, however, will serve well enough as an example of 
 the vague and careless sort of way in which doctrines and the men who profess 
 them get mixed up together insolubly in the public mind. The Sultan of a gen- 
 eration back, who told the European diplomatist that if he changed his religion 
 at all he would become a Roman Catholic, because he observed that Roman 
 Catholic people always grew the best wine, was not more unreasonable in his 
 logic than many well-informed men when they are striving to connect cause and 
 effect in dealing with the religion of others. 
 
 I do not myself make any attempt to explain why a follower of Comte's wor- 
 ship should, at least in England, be always on the side of liberty and equality 
 and human progress. Indeed, if inclined to discuss such a question at all, I 
 should rather be disposed to put it the other way and ask how it happens that 
 men so enlightened and liberal in education and principles should yield a mo- 
 ment's obedience to the ghostly shadow of Roman Catholic superstition, which 
 Auguste Comte, in the decaying years of his noble intellect, conjured up to form 
 a new religion. But I am quite content to let the question go unanswered and 
 should be willing, indeed, to leave it unasked. I wish just now to do nothing 
 more than to direct the attention of American readers to the fact that a new set 
 or sect has arisen to influence English politics, and that their influence and its 
 origin are different from anything which, judging by the history of previous gen- 
 erations, one might naturally have been led to expect. " Culture " in England 
 has, of late years, almost invariably ranked itself on the side of privilege. The 
 Oxford undergraduate shouts himself hoarse in cheering for Disraeli and groan- 
 ing for Bright. Oxford rejects Gladstone the moment he becomes a Liberal. 
 The vigorous Radicalism of Thorold Rogers costs him his chair as pro- 
 fessor of political economy, although no man in England is a more per- 
 fect master of some of the more important branches of that science. The
 
 THE ENGLISH POSIT1VISTS. 125 
 
 journals which are started for the sake of being read by men of "cul- 
 ture " are sure to throw their influence, nine times out of ten, into the cause 
 of privilege and class ascendency. The " Saturday Review " does this deliber- 
 ately ; the " Pall Mall Gazette " does it instinctively. Suddenly there comes out 
 from the bosom of the universities themselves a band of keen, acute, fearless 
 gladiators, who throw themselves into the van of every great movement which 
 works for democracy, equality and freedom. They invade the press and the 
 platform ; they write in this journal and in that ; they are always writing, always 
 printing ; they are ready for any assailant, however big, they are willing to work 
 with any ally, however small ; they shrink from no logical consequence or practi- 
 cal inconvenience of any argument or opinion ; they take the working man by 
 the hand and talk to him and tell him all they know and it is something worth 
 studying, the fact that their scholarship and his no-scholarship so often come to 
 the same conclusion. They will work with anybody, because they go farther 
 than almost anybody ; and they will allow anybody the full swing of his own 
 crotchet, even though he -be not so willing to give them scope enough for theirs. 
 Thus they are commonly associated with Goldwin Smith, who has a perfect hor- 
 ror of French Democracy and French Imperialism, and who sees in Mirabeau 
 only a " Voltairean debauchee ; " with Tom Hughes, who is a sturdy member of 
 the Church of England, and does not, I fancy, care three straws about the policy 
 of ideas ; with Bright, whose somewhat Puritanical mind draws back with a kind 
 of dread from anything that savors of free-thinking ; with Auberon Herbert, the 
 mild young aristocrat, converted from Toryism by pure sentimentalism and 
 philanthropy ; with Connolly, the eloquent Irish plasterer, whose vigorous stump 
 oratory aroused the warm admiration of Louis Blanc. It would be impossible 
 that such a knot of men, so gifted and so fearless, so independent and so unrest- 
 ing, so keen of pen, and so unsparing of logic, should be without a clear and 
 marked influence on the politics of England. It is quite a curious phenomenon 
 that such a group of men should be found in close and constant co-operation 
 with the English artisan, his trades' union organizations, and his political cause. 
 Frederick Harrison represented the working men in the Parliamentary commis- 
 sion lately held to inquire into the whole operation of the trades' unions. Pro- 
 fessor Beesly writes continually in the " Beehive," the newspaper which is the 
 organ of George Potter and the trades' societies. I cannot see how the cause 
 of Democracy can fail to derive strength and help from this sort of alliance, and 
 I therefore welcome the influence upon English politics of the little group of 
 Positivist penmen, believing that it will have a deeper reach than most people 
 now imagine, and that where it operates effectively at all, it will be for good.
 
 ENGLISH TORYISM AND ITS LEADERS. 
 
 SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE tells a story of a man who set out on a 
 voyage of discovery, and sailing on and on in a westerly direction, at 
 last touched a land where he was surprised to find a climate the same as his 
 own ; animals like those he had left behind ; men and women not only having 
 the same dress and complexion, but actually speaking the same language as the 
 people of his own country. He was so struck with this unexpected and won- 
 derful discovery, that he took to his ship again without delay, and sailed back 
 eastward to impart to his own people the news that in a far-off, strange, western 
 sea he had found a race identical with themselves. The truth was that the sim- 
 ple voyager had gone round the world, reached his own country without recog- 
 nizing it, and then went round the world again to get home. 
 
 If the voyage were made in our time, and the explorer were a British Tory 
 who had left England in the opening of the year 1867, and after unconsciously 
 sailing round the world had fallen in with British Tories again in the autumn of 
 the same year, one could easily excuse his failing to recognize his own people. 
 For in the interval of time from February to August, British Toryism underwent 
 the most sudden and complete transformation known outside the sphere of 
 Ovid's Metamorphoses. If any of my American readers will try to imagine a 
 whole political party, great in numbers, greater still in wealth, station and influ- 
 ence, suddenly performing just such a turn-round as the " New York Herald " 
 accomplished at a certain early crisis of the late civil war, he will have some 
 idea of the marvellous and unprecedented feat which was executed by the En- 
 glish Tories, when, renouncing all their time-honored traditions, watchwords 
 and principles, they changed a limited and oligarchical franchise into household 
 suffrage. It is singular, indeed, that such a thing should have been done. It 
 is more singular still that it should have been done, as it most assuredly was 
 done, in order that one man should be kept in power. It is even more singular 
 yet that it should have been done by a party of men individually high principled, 
 honorable, unselfish, incapable of any deliberate meanness and of whom many 
 if not most actually disliked and distrusted the man in whose interest and by 
 whose influence the surrender of principle was made. 
 
 Perhaps when I have said a little about the leadership of the English Tories, 
 the phenomenon will appear less wonderful or at least more intelligible. It was 
 not a mere epigram which Mr. Mill uttered when he described the Tories as the 
 stupid party. An average Tory really is a stupid man. He is a gentleman in 
 all the ordinary acceptation of the word. He has been to Oxford or Cambridge ; 
 he has received a decent classical education ; he has travelled along the beaten 
 tracks made what would have been called in Mary Wortley Montague's day 
 "the grand tour;" he has birth and high breeding; he is a good fellow, with 
 manly, honorable ways, and that genial consideration for the feelings of others 
 which is the fundamental condition, the vital element of gentlemanly breeding. 
 But he is, with all this, stupid. His mind is narrow, dull, inflexible ; he cannot 
 connect cause with effect, or see that a change is coming, or why it should come ; 
 with him post hoc always means propter hoc; he cannot account for Goodwin 
 Sands otherwise than because of Tenterden steeple. You cannot help liking 
 him, and sometimes laughing at him. It may seem paradoxical, but I at least
 
 ENGLISH TORYISM AND ITS LEADERS. 127 
 
 am unable to get out of my mind the conviction that there is a solid basis of 
 stupidity in the mind of the great Conservative Chief, Lord Derby. Let me ex- 
 plain what I mean. The Earl of Derby is in one sense a highly accomplished 
 man. He is a good classical scholar, and can make a speech in Latin. He has 
 produced some very spirited translations from Horace ; and I like his version 
 of the Iliad better on the whole than any other I know. He is a splendid de- 
 bater Macaulay said very truly that with Lord Derby the science of debate 
 was an instinct. He will roll out resonant, rotund, verbose sentences by the 
 hour, by the yard ; he is great at making hits and points ; he has immense power 
 of reply and repartee of a certain easy and obvious kind ; his voice is fine, his 
 manner is noble, his invective is powerful. But he has no ideas. The light he 
 throws 'out is a polarized light. He adds nothing new to the political thought 
 of the age. I have heard many of his finest speeches ; and I can remember 
 that they were then very telling, in a Parliamentary point of view ; but I cannot 
 remember anything he said. He is always interpreting into eloquent and effec- 
 tive words the commonplace Philistine notions, the hereditary conventionalities 
 of his party and nothing more. His mind is not open to new impressions, and 
 he is not able to appreciate the cause, the purpose or the tendency of change. 
 This I hold to be the essential characteristic of stupidity ; and this is an attri- 
 bute of Lord Derby, with all his Greek, his Latin, his impetuous rhetoric, his 
 debating skill and his audacious blunders, which sometimes almost deceive 
 one into thinking him a man of genius. Now the Earl of Derby is the greatest 
 Tory living ; and if I have fairly described the highest type of Tory, one can 
 easily form some conception of what the average Tory must be. Every one 
 likes Lord Derby, and I fully believe it to be the fact that those who know him 
 best like him best. I cannot imagine Lord Derby doing a mean thing; I can- 
 not imagine him haughty to a poor man, or patronizingly offensive to a timid visi- 
 tor of humble birth. Look at Lord Derby through the wrong end of the intel- 
 lectual telescope and you have the average British Tory. The Tory's knowl- 
 edge is confined to classics and field sports when he knows anything. Even 
 Lord Derby has been guilty of the most flagrant mistakes in geography and 
 modern history. People are never tired of alluding to a famous blunder of his 
 about Tambov in Russia. It is also told of him that he once spoke in Parlia- 
 ment of Demerara as an island ; and when one of his colleagues afterward re- 
 monstrated with him on the mistake, he asked with ingenuousness and naivett 
 " How on earth was I to know that Demerara was not an island ? " He once, 
 at a public meeting, spoke of himself very frankly as having been born "in the 
 pre-scientific period " the period but too recently closed, when English Universi- 
 ties and high class schools troubled themselves only about Greek and Latin, 
 and thought it beneath their dignity to show much interest in such vulgar, prac- 
 tical studies as chemistry and natural history, to say nothing of that ungentle- 
 manly and ungenerous study, the science of political economy. The average 
 British Tory is a Lord Derby without eloquence, brains, official habits and po- 
 litical experience. 
 
 How, then, do the Tories exist as a party ? How do they continue to be- 
 lieve themselves to be Tories, and speak of themselves as Tories, when they 
 have surrendered all, or nearly all, the great principles which are the creed and 
 faith, and business of Toryism ? Because they have, in our times, never had 
 Tories for leaders. A man is not a Tory merely because he fights the Tory bat- 
 tles, any more than a captain of the Irish Brigade was a Frenchman because he 
 fought for King Louis, or Hobart Pasha is a Turk because he commands the
 
 128 ENGLISH TORYISM AND ITS LEADERS. 
 
 Ottoman navy. The Tory party has always, of late years, had to call in the aid 
 of brilliant outsiders, political renegades, refugees from broken-down agitations, 
 disappointed and cynical deserters from the Liberal camp, or mere adventurers, 
 to fight their battles for them. It used to be quite a curious sight, some three 
 or four years ago, when the Tories were, as they are now again, in opposition, 
 to look clown from the gallery of the House of Commons and see the men who 
 did gladiatorial duty for the party. Along the back benches, above and below the 
 "gangway," were stretched out huge at length the stalwart, handsome, manly 
 country gentlemen, the bone and sinew of the Tory party the only real Tories 
 to be found in the House. But they did not bear the brunt of debate. They 
 could cheer splendidly, and vote in platoons ; but you don't suppose they were 
 just the sort of men to confront Gladstone, and reply to Bright? Not they; 
 and they knew it. There sat Disraeli, the brilliant renegade from Radicalism, 
 who was ready to think for them and talk for them : and who were his lieuten- 
 ants ? Cairns, the successful, adroit, eloquent lawyer, a North of Ireland man, 
 with about as much of the genuine British Tory in him as there is in Disraeli 
 himself; Seymour Fitzgerald, the clever, pushing Irishman, also a lawyer; 
 Whiteside, the voluble, eloquent, rather boisterous advocate, also a lawyer, and 
 also an Irishman ; smart, saucy Pope Hennessy, a young Irish adventurer, who 
 had taken up with Toryism and ultramontanism as the best way of making a 
 career, and who would, at the slightest hint from his chief, have risen, utterly 
 ignorant of the subject under debate, and challenged Gladstone's finance or 
 Roundel Palmer's law. These men, and such men these and no others did 
 the debating and the fighting for the great Tory party of England at a most 
 critical period of that party's existence. Needless to say that the party who 
 \rere compelled by their own poverty of idea, their own stupidity, to have these 
 men for their representatives, were stupid enough to be led anywhere and into 
 anything by the force of a little dexterity and daring on the part of the one man 
 into whose hands they had confided their destinies. 
 
 In speaking, therefore, of the leaders of Toryism, I must distinctly say that I 
 am not speaking of Tories. The rank and file are Tories ; the general and offi- 
 cers belong to another race. Mr. Disraeli is so well known on this side of the 
 Atlantic that I need not occupy much time or space in describing him. He is 
 the most brilliant specimen of the adventurer or political soldier of fortune 
 known to English public life in our days. I do not suppose anybody believes 
 Mr. Disraeli's Toryism to be a genuine faith. This is not merely because he 
 has changed his opinions so completely since the time when he came out as a 
 Radical, under the patronage of O'Connell, and wrote to William Johnson Fox, 
 the Democratic orator, a famous letter, in which he, Disraeli, boasted that "his 
 forte was revolution." Men ha"ve changed their views as completely, and even as 
 suddenly, and yet obtained credit for sincerity and integrity. It is not even be- 
 cause, in all of Mr. Disraeli's novels, a prime and favorite personage is a daring 
 political adventurer, who carries all before him by the audacity of his genius and 
 his unscrupulousness ; it is not even that Mr. Disraeli, in private life, frequently 
 speaks of success in politics as the one grand object worth striving for or living 
 for. " What do you and I come to this House of Commons night after night 
 for?" said Mr. Disraeli once to a great Englishman, and when the latter failed 
 to reply very quickly, he answered his own question by saying, " You know we 
 come here for fame." The man to whom he spoke declared, in all truthfulness, 
 that he did not follow a political career for the sake of fame. But Disraeli was 
 quite incredulous, and probably could not, by any earnestness and apparent
 
 ENGLISH TORYISM AND ITS LEADERS. 129 
 
 sincerity of asseveration, be got to believe that there lives a being who could 
 sacrifice time, and money, and intellect, and eloquence merely for the sake of 
 serving the public. Yet it is not alone this cynical avowal of selfishness which 
 makes people so profoundly sceptical as to Mr. Disraeli's Toryism. It is the 
 fact that he always escapes into Liberalism whenever he has an opportunity ; 
 that he lives by hawking Toryism, not by imbibing it himself; that he is ready 
 to sell it, or betray it, or drag it in the dirt whenever he can safely serve him- 
 self by doing so ; that he can become the most ardent of Freetraders, the most 
 uncompromising champion of a Popular Suffrage to-day, when it is for his inter- 
 est, after having fought fiercely against both yesterday, when to fight against 
 them was for his interest. Mr. Disraeli is decidedly a man without scruple. 
 Those who have read his "Vivian Grey" will remember with what zest and unc- 
 tion he describes his hero bewildering a company and dumbfoundering a scien- 
 tific authority by extemporizing an imaginary quotation from a book which he 
 holds in his hand, and from which he pretends to read the passage he is reciting. 
 It is not long since Mr. Disraeli himself publicly ventured on a bold little ex- 
 periment of a somewhat similar kind. The story is curious, and worth hearing ; 
 and it is certain that it cannot be contradicted. 
 
 Three or four years ago, a bitter factious attack was made in the House of 
 Common; upon Mr. Stansfeld, then holding office in the Liberal government, 
 because of his open and avowed friendship for, and intimacy with Mazzini. 
 This was at a time when the French government were endeavoring to connect 
 Mazzini with a plot to assassinate the Emperor Napoleon. Mr. Disraeli was 
 \ r ery stern in his condemnation of Mr. Stansfeld for his friendship with one who, 
 twenty odd years before, had encouraged a young enthusiast (as the enthusiast 
 said) in a design to kill Charles Albert, King of Sardinia. Mr. Bright, in a mod- 
 erate and kindly speech, deprecated the idea of making unpardonable crimes out 
 of the hotheaded follies of enthusiastic men in their young days ; and he added 
 that he believed there would be found in a certain poem, written by Disraeli him- 
 self some twenty-five or thirty years before, and called " A Revolutionary Epick," 
 some lines of eloquent apostrophe in praise of tyrannicide. Up sprang Mr. Dis- 
 raeli, indignant and- excited, and vehemently denied that any such sentiment, any- 
 such line, could be found in the poem. Mr. Bright at once accepted the assur- 
 ance ; said he had never seen the poem himself, but only heard that there was 
 such a passage in it ; apologized for the mistake and there most people thought 
 the matter would have ended. In truth, the volume which Mr. Disraeli had pub- 
 lished a generation before, with the grandiloquent title, " A Revolutionary Ep- 
 ick " (not " epic," in the common way, but dignified, old-fashioned " epick "), 
 was a piece of youthful, bombastic folly long out of print, and almost wholly for- 
 gotten. But Disraeli chose to attach great importance to the charge he supposed 
 to be made against him ; and he declared that he felt himself bound to refute it 
 utterly by more than a mere denial. Accordingly, in a few weeks, there came 
 out a new edition of the Epick, with a dedication to Lord Stanley, and a preface 
 explaining that, as the first edition was out of print, and as a charge founded on 
 a passage in it had been made against the author, said author felt bound to issue 
 this new edition, that all the world might see how unfounded was the accusation. 
 Sure enough, the publication did seem to dispose of the charge effectually. 
 There was only one passage which in any way bore on the subject of tyrannicide, 
 and that certainly did not express approval. What could be more satisfactory ? 
 Unluckily, however, the gentleman on whose hint Mr. Bright spoke, happened 
 to possess one copy of the original edition. He compared this, to make assur-
 
 130 ENGLISH TORYISM AND ITS LEADERS. 
 
 ance doubly sure, with the copy at the British Museum, the only other copy 
 accessible to him, and he found that the passage which contained the praise of 
 tyrannicide had been partly altered, partly suppressed, in the new edition specially 
 issued by Mr. Disraeli, in order to prove to the world that he had not written a 
 line in the poem to imply that he sanctioned the slaying of a tyrant. Now, this 
 was a small and trifling affair ; but just see how significant arid characteristic it 
 was ! It surely did not make much matter whether Mr. Disraeli, in his young, 
 nonsensical days, had or had not indulged in a burst of enthusiasm about the 
 slaying of tyrants, in a poem so bombastical that no rational man could think of 
 it with any seriousness. But Mr. Disraeli .chose to regard his reputation as 
 seriously assailed; and what did he do to vindicate himself? He published a 
 new edition, which he trumpeted as not merely authentic,, but as issued for the 
 sole purpose of proving that he had not praised tyrannicide, and he deliberately 
 excised the lines which contained the passage in question ! The controversy 
 turned on some two lines and a half; and of these Mr. Disraeli cut out all the 
 dangerous words and gave the garbled version to the world as his authoritative 
 reply to the charge made against him ! This, too, after the famous "annexation " 
 of one of Thiers's speeches, and the delivery of it as a panegyric on the memory 
 of the Duke of Wellington, and after the appropriation of a page or two out of 
 an essay by Macaulay, and its introduction wholesale, as original, into one of 
 Mr. Disraeli's novels. 
 
 The truth is that Disraeli is so reckless a gladiator that he will catch up any 
 weapon of defence, use any means of evasion and escape ; will fight anyhow, 
 and win anyhow. In political affairs, at least, he has no moral sense whatever ; 
 and the public seems to tolerate him on that understanding. Certainly, esca- 
 pades and practices which would ruin the reputation of any other public man do 
 not seem, to bring Disraeli into serious disrepute. The few high-toned men of 
 his own party and the other who hold all trickery in detestation, had made up 
 their minds about him long ago ; and nothing could hurt him more in their es- 
 teem the great majority of politicians laugh at the whole thing, and take no 
 thought. The feeling seems to be, " We don't expect grave and severe virtue 
 from this man ; we take him as he is. It would be ridiculous to apply a grave 
 moral test to anything he may say or do." In Lockhart's "Life of Walter 
 Scott," it is told that the great novelist went one morning very early to call on a 
 certain friend. The friend was in bed, and Scott, pushing into the room famil- 
 iarly, found that his friend was not alone, as he expected him to be. Scott was 
 a highly moral man, and he would have turned his back indignantly on any other 
 of his friends whom he found guilty of vice ; but his biographer says that he 
 took the discovery he had made very lightly in this instance ; and he afterward 
 explained that the delinquent was so ridiculously without depth of character it 
 would be absurd to find serious fault with anything he did. Perhaps it is in a 
 similar spirit that the British public regard Mr. Disraeli. He delivered a memo- 
 rable peroration one night last year in the House of Commons, the utterance 
 and the language of which were so peculiar that charity itself could not affect to 
 be ignorant of the stimulating cause which sent forth such extraordinary elo- 
 quence. Yet hardly anybody seemed to regard it as more than a good joke ; 
 and the newspapers which were most indignant and most scandalized over An- 
 drew Johnson's celebrated inaugural address made no allusion whatever to Mr. 
 Disraeli's bewildering outburst. One reason, probably, is that Disraeli, in pri- 
 vate, is much liked. He is very kindly; he is a good friend ; he is sympathetic 
 ia his dealings with young politicians, and is always glad to give a helping hand
 
 ENGLISH TORYISM AND ITS LEADERS. 131 
 
 to a young man of talent. Personal ambition, which, in Mr. Bright's eyes, is 
 something despicable, and which Mr. Gladstone probably regards as a sin, is, 
 in Disraeli's acceptation, something generous and elevating, something to be 
 fostered and encouraged. Therefore, young men of talent admire Disraeli, and 
 are glad and proud to gather round him. The men who have any brains in the 
 Tory ranks are usually of the adventurer class ; and they form a phalanx by the 
 aid of which Disraeli can do great things. No matter how the honest, dull bulk 
 of his party may distrust him, they cannot do without him and his phalanx ; and 
 they allow him to win his battles by the force of their votes, and they think he 
 is winning their battles all the time. 
 
 One young man of brains there was on the Tory side of the House of Com- 
 mons, who did not like Disraeli, and never professed to like him. This was 
 Lord Robert Cecil, who subsequently became Viscount Cranbourne, and now 
 sits in the House of Lords as Marquis of Salisbury. Lord Robert Cecil was by 
 far the ablest scion of noble Toryism in the House of Commons. Younger 
 than Lord Stanley he had not Lord Stanley's solidity and caution; but he had 
 much more of original ability; he had brilliant ideas, great readiness in debate, 
 and a perfect genius for saying bitter things in the bitterest tone. The younger 
 son of a wealthy peer, he had, in consequence of a dispute with his father, man- 
 fully accepted honorable poverty, and was glad, for no short time, to help out 
 his means by the use of his pen. He wrote in the " Quarterly Review," the 
 time-honored organ of Toryism ; and after a while certain political articles regu- 
 larly appearing in that periodical became identified with his name. One great 
 object of these articles seemed to be to denounce Mr. Disraeli and warn the 
 Tory party against him as a traitor, certain in the end to sell and surrender their 
 principles. Lord Robert Cecil was an ultra-Tory or at least thought himself 
 so I feel convinced that his intellect and his experience will set him free one 
 day. He was a Tory on principle and would listen to no compromise. People 
 did not at first see how much ability there was in him very few indeed saw how 
 much of genuine manhood and nobleness there was in him. His tall, bent, 
 awkward figure ; his prematurely bald crown, his face with an outline and a 
 beard that reminded one of a Jew pedler from the Minories, his ungainly ges- 
 tures, his unmelodious voice, and the extraordinary and wanton bitterness of his 
 tongue, set the ordinary observer strongly against him. He seemed to delight 
 in being gratuitously offensive. Let me give one illustration. He assailed Mr. 
 Gladstone's financial policy one night, and said it was like the practice of a pet- 
 tifogging attorney. This was rather coarse and it was received with loud mur- 
 murs of disapprobation, but Lord Robert went on unheeding. Next night, how- 
 ever, when the debate was resumed, he rose and said he feared he had used lan- 
 guage the previous evening which was calculated to give offence, and which he 
 could not justify. There were murmurs of encouraging applause nothing de- 
 lights the House of Commons like an unsolicited and manly apology. Yes, he 
 had, on the previous night, in a moment of excitement, compared the policy of 
 the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the practice of a pettifogging attorney. 
 That was language which on sober consideration he felt he could not justify and 
 ought not to have used, " and therefore," said Lord Robert, " I beg leave to 
 offer my sincere apology" here Mr. Gladstone half rose from his seat, with face 
 of eager generosity, ready to pardon even before fully asked " I beg leave to 
 tender my sincere apology to the attorneys ! " Half the House roared with 
 laughter, the other half with anger and Gladstone threw himself back in his 
 seat with an expression of mingled disappointment, pity and scorn, on his pallid, 
 noble features.
 
 132 ENGLISH TORYISM AND ITS LEADERS. 
 
 There was something so wanton, something so nearly approaching to out- 
 rageous buffoonery, in conduct like this, on the part of Lord Robert Cecil, that it 
 was long before impartial observers came to recognize the fine intellect and the 
 manly character that were disguised under such an unprepossessing exterior. 
 When the Tories came into power, the great place of Secretary for India was 
 given to Lord Robert, who had then become Viscount Cranbourne, and the 
 responsibilities of office wrought as complete a change in him as the wearing of 
 the crown did in Harry the Fifth. No man ever displayed in so short a time 
 greater aptitude for the duties of the office he had undertaken, or a loftier sense 
 of its tremendous moral and political responsibility, than did Lord Cranbourne 
 during his too brief tenure of the Indian Secretaryship. The cynic had become 
 a statesman, the intellectual gladiator an earnest champion of exalted political 
 principle. The license of tongue, in which Lord Cranbourne had revelled 
 while yet a free lance, he absolutely renounced when he became a responsible 
 minister. He extorted the respect and admiration of Gladstone and Bright, and 
 indeed of every one who took the slightest interest in the condition and the fu- 
 ture of India. The manner of his leaving office became him, too, almost as 
 much as his occupation of it. He was sincerely opposed to a sudden lowering 
 of the franchise, and he insisted that his party ought to think nothing of power 
 when compared with principle. He found that Disraeli was determined to sur- 
 render anything rather than power, and he withdrew from the uncongenial com- 
 panionship. He resigned office, and dropped into the ranks once more, never 
 hesitating to express his conviction of the utter insincerity of the Conservative 
 leader. He would have been a sharp and stinging thorn in Disraeli's side, only 
 that death intervened and took away, not him, but his father. The death of his 
 elder brother had made Lord Robert Cecil, Viscount Cranbourne ; the death of 
 his father now converted Viscount Cranbourne into the Marquis of Salisbury, and 
 condemned him to the languid, inert, lifeless atmosphere of the House of Peers. 
 The sincere pity of all who admired him followed the brilliant Salisbury in his 
 melancholy descent. I should despair of conveying to an American reader 
 unacquainted with English politics any adequate idea of the profundity and 
 hopelessness of the fall which precipitates a young, ardent and gifted politician 
 from the brilliant battle-ground of the House of Commons into the lifele-ss, 
 Lethean pool of the House of Lords. 
 
 Still, the Tory party may be led, as it has been, by a chief in the House of 
 Lords, although its great and splendid fights must be fought in the Commons. 
 If then, in our time, Toryism ever should again become a principle which a 
 man of genius and high character could fairly fight for, it has a leader ready 
 to its hand in the Marquis of Salisbury. For the present it has Lord Cairns. 
 The Earl of Derby's health no longer allows him to undertake the serious and 
 laborious duties of party leadership. When he withdrew from the front, an at- 
 tempt was made to put up with Lord Malmesbury. But Malmesbury is stupid 
 and muddle-headed to a degree which even Tory peers cannot endure in a Tory 
 peer ; and it has somehow been " borne in upon him " that he had better leave 
 the place to some one really qualified to fill it. Now, the Tories in the House 
 of Commons, the country gentlemen of England, the men whose ancestors came 
 over, perhaps, with the Conqueror, the men who imbibed family Toryism from 
 the breasts of their mothers, are driven, when they want a capable leader, to fol- 
 low a renegade Radical, the son of a middle-class Jew. In like manner the 
 Tory Lords, also sadly needing an efficient leader, are compelled to take up with 
 a lawyer from Belfast, the son of middle-class parents in the North of Ireland,
 
 ENGLISH TORYISM AND ITS LEADERS. IStr 
 
 who has fought his way by sheer talent and energy into the front rank of the 
 bar, into the front bench of the Parliamentary Opposition, and at last into a peer 
 age. Lord Cairns is a very capable man ; his sudden rise into high place and in- 
 fluence proves the fact of itself, for he was not a young man when he entered 
 Parliament, obscure and unknown, and he is now only in the prime of life, while 
 he leads the Opposition in the House of Lords. He is one of the most fluent 
 and effective debaters in either House ; he has great command of telling argu- 
 ment ; his training at the bar gives him the faculty of making the very most, 
 and at the shortest notice, of all the knowledge and all the facts he can bring to 
 bear on any question. He has shown more than once that he is capable of pour- 
 ing forth a powerful, almost indeed, a passionate invective. An orator in the 
 highest sense he certainly is not. No gleam of the poetic softens or brightens 
 his lithe and nervous logic ; no deep feeling animates, inspires and sanctifies it. 
 He has made no speeches which anybody hereafter will care to read. He has 
 made, he will make, no mark upon his age. When he dies, he wholly dies. 
 But living, he is a skilful and a capable man far better qualified to be a party 
 leader than an Erskine or a Grattan would be. A North of Ireland Presbyte- 
 rian, he has made his way to a peerage, and now to be the leader of peers, with 
 less of native genius than that which conducted Wolfe Tone, another North of 
 Ireland Presbyterian, to rebellion and failure and a bloody death. He has, 
 above/ all things, skill and discretion ; and he can lead the Tory party well, so 
 long as no great cause has to be vindicated, no splendid phantom of a principle 
 maintained. His name and his antecedents are useful to us now, inasmuch as 
 they serve still farther to illustrate the fact that Toryism is not led by Tories. 
 
 In speaking of Tory leaders one ought not, of course, to leave out the name 
 of Lord Stanley. But Lord Stanley is only a Tory ex officio, and by virtue of 
 his position as the eldest son and heir of the great Earl of Derby. I have never 
 heard of Lord Stanley's uttering a Tory sentiment, even when he had to play a 
 Tory part. His speeches are all the speeches of a steady, respectable, thought- 
 ful sort of Liberal, inclined to study carefully both or all sides of a question, and 
 opposed to extreme opinions either way. He will never, it is quite clear, be 
 guilty of the audacity of openly breaking with his party while his father lives ; 
 and perhaps when he becomes Earl of Derby, there may be nothing distinc- 
 tively Tory worth fighting about. Lord Stanley is indeed totally devoid of that 
 generous ardor which makes men open converts. He is no longer young, and 
 he will probably remain all his life where he stands at present. But a gen- 
 uine Tory he is not. I confess that at one time I looked to him with great 
 hope, as a man likely to develop into statesmanship of the highest order, and to 
 announce himself as a votary of political and intellectual progress. Some years 
 ago I wrote an article in the "Westminster Review," the object of which was 
 to point to Lord Stanley as the future colleague of Gladstone in a great and a 
 really liberal government. I have changed my opinion since. Lord Stanley 
 wants, not the brains, but the heart for such a place. He has not the spirit to 
 step out of his hereditary way. He is one of the sort of men of whom Goethe 
 used to say, " If only they would commit an extravagance even, I should have 
 some hope for them." He seems to care for little beyond accuracy of judgment 
 and propriety ; and I do not suppose accuracy of judgment and propriety ever 
 made a great statesman. There is nothing venturesome about Lord Stanley 
 therefore there is nothing great. A man to be great must brave being ridicu- 
 lous ; and I do not remember that Lord Stanley has ever run the risk of being 
 ridiculous. One of the finest and most celebrated passages of modern Parlia-
 
 1S4 ENGLISH TORYISM AND ITS LEADERS. 
 
 mentary eloquence is that in which George Canning, vindicating his recognition 
 of the South American republics, proclaimed that he had called in the New 
 World to redress the balance of the Old. I once heard a member of the House 
 of Lords, now dead, who sat in the House of Commons near Canning, when 
 Canning spoke that famous speech, say that when the orator came to the great 
 climax the House was actually breaking into a titter, so absurd then did any 
 grandiloquence about South American republics seem ; and it was only the ear- 
 nestness and resolve of his manner that commanded a respectful attention, and 
 thus compelled the House to recognize the genuine grandeur of the idea, and to 
 break into a tempest of applause. I have heard something the same told of 
 one of the grandest passages in any of Bright's speeches that in one of his ora- 
 tions against the Crimean War, in which he declared that he already heard, during 
 the debate, the beating of the wings of the Angel of Death. The House was 
 under the influence of a war fever, and disposed to scoff at all appeals to pru- 
 dence or to pity ; and it was just on the verge of a laugh at the orator's majestic 
 apostrophe, when his earnestness conquered, the grandeur of the moment was 
 recognized, and a peal of irrepressible applause proclaimed the triumph of his 
 eloquence. Now, these are the risks that a man like Lord Stanley never will 
 run. Only genius makes such ventures. He is always safe : great statesmen 
 must sometimes brave terrible hazards. In England he has received immense 
 praise for the part he took in averting a war between France and Prussia on the 
 Luxembourg question. Now, it is quite true that he did much ; that, in fact, he 
 lent all the influence of England to the mode of arrangement by which both the 
 contending Powers were enabled to back decently out of a dangerous and pain- 
 ful position. But the idea of such a mode of settlement did not come from him. 
 It was originated by Baron von Beust, the Austrian Prime Minister, and it was 
 quietly urged a good deal before Lord Stanley saw it. Von Beust, who has a 
 keener wit than Stanley, knew that if the proposition came directly from him it 
 would, ipso facto, be odious to Prussia ; and he was, therefore, rejoiced when 
 Lord Stanley took it up and adopted it as his own and England's. Von Beust 
 was well content, and so was Lord Stanley just as Cuddie Headrigg, in " Old 
 Mortality," is content that John Gudyill shall have the responsibility and the 
 honor of the shot which the latter never fired. The one original thing which 
 Lord Stanley did during the controversy was to write a dispatch to Prussia 
 recommending her to come to terms, because of the superior navy of France, and 
 the certainty, in the event of war, that France would have the best of it at sea. 
 Now, this was a capital argument to influence a man like Lord Stanley him- 
 self calm, cold-blooded, utterly rational. But human ingenuity could hardly 
 have devised an appeal less likely to influence Prussia in the way of peace. 
 Prussia, flushed with her splendid victories over Austria, and deeply offended by 
 the arrogant and dictatorial conduct of France, was much more likely to be 
 stung by such an argument, if it affected her at all, into flinging down the gaunt- 
 let at once, and inviting France to come if she dared. The use of such a mode 
 of persuasion is, indeed, an adequate illustration of the whole character of Lord 
 Stanley. Cool, prudent, and rational, he is capable enough of weighing things 
 fairly when they are presented to him ; but he can neither create an opportunity 
 nor run a risk. Therefore, he remains officially a Tory, mentally a, Liberal, po- 
 litically neither the one nor the other. His bones are marrowless, his blood is 
 cold. He can forfeit his own career, and hazard his reputation for his party ; 
 but that is all. He cannot give his mind to it. and he cannot redeem himself 
 from his futile bondage to it. He is a respectable speaker, despite his defective
 
 ENGLISH TORYISM AND ITS LEADERS. loo 
 
 articulation and his lifeless manner ; he will be a respectable politician, despite 
 his want of faith in, or zeal for the cause he tries to follow. That is his career ; 
 that is the doom to which he voluntarily condemns himself. 
 
 I do not know that there are any other Tory chiefs worth talking about. Sir 
 Stafford Northcote looks like a Bonn or Heidelberg professor, and has a fair 
 average intellect, fit for commonplace finance and elementary politics ; there is 
 not a ghost of an idea in him. Walpole is a pompous, well-meaning, gentle- 
 manlike imbecile. Gathorne Hardy is fluent, as the sand in an hourglass is 
 fluent he can pour out words and serve to mark the passing of time. Sir 
 John Pakington is an educated Dogberry, a respectable Justice Shallow. Not 
 upon men like these do the political fortunes of the Tory party of our day de- 
 pend, although Walpole and Pakington fairly represent the sincerity, the man- 
 hood, and the respectability of Toryism. 
 
 I come back to the point from which I started that Toryism, in itself, is 
 only another word for stupidity, and that any triumphs the party have won or 
 may win are secured by the surrender of the principle they profess to be fighting 
 for, and by the skilful management of men whose conscience permits them to 
 adapt the means unscrupulously to the end. Were the Tory party led by genu- 
 ine Tories it would have been extinct long ago. It lives and looks upon the 
 earth, it has its triumphs and its gains, its present and its future, only because 
 by very virtue of its own dulness it has allowed itself to be led by men whom 
 it ought to detest, whom it sometimes does distrust, but who have the wit to sell 
 principle in the dearest market, and buy reputation in the cheapest.*
 
 "GEORGE ELIOT" AND GEORGE LEWES. 
 
 LITERARY reputations are, in one respect, like wines some are greatly 
 improved by a long voyage, while others lose all zest and strength in the 
 process of crossing the ocean. There ought to be hardly any difference, one 
 would think, between the literary taste of the public of London and that of the 
 public of New York ; and yet it is certain that an author or a book may be posi- 
 tively celebrated in the one city and only Larely known and coldly recognized in 
 the other. Every one, of course, has noticed the fact that certain English au- 
 thors are better known and appreciated in New York than in London ; certain 
 American writers more talked of in London than in New York. The general 
 public of England do not seem to me to appreciate the true position of Whitticr 
 and Lowell among American poets. The average Englishman knows hardly 
 anything of any American poet but Longfellow, who receives, I venture to think, 
 a far more wholesale and enthusiastic admiration in England than in his own 
 country. Robert Buchanan, the Scottish poet, lately, I have read, described 
 " Evangeline " as a far finer poem than Goethe's " Hermann und Dorothea," a 
 judgment which I presume and hope it would be impossible to get any Ameri- 
 can scholar and critic to indorse or even to consider seriously. On the other 
 hand, it is well known that both the Brownings certainly Mrs. Browning 
 found quicker and more cordial appreciation in America than in England. 
 Lately, we in London have taken to discussing and debating over Walt Whit- 
 man with a warmth and interest which people in New York do not seem 
 to manifest in regard to the author of " Leaves of Grass." Charles Dickens 
 appears to me to have more devoted admirers among the best class of readers 
 here than he has in his own country. Of course, it would be hardly possible for 
 any man to be more popular and more successful than Dickens is in England ; 
 but New York journals quote him and draw illustrations from him much more 
 frequently than London papers do I do not think any day has passed since 
 first I came to this country, six or seven months ago, that I have not seen at 
 least two or three allusions to Dickens in the leading articles of the daily papers 
 and I question whether, among critics standing as high in London as George 
 William Curtis does here, Dickens could find the enthusiastic, the almost lyrical 
 devotion of Curtis's admiration. Charles Reade, again, is more generally and 
 warmly admired here than in England. Am I wrong in supposing that the re- 
 verse is the case with regard to the authoress of " Romola " and " The Mill on 
 the Floss?" All American critics and all American readers of taste, have 
 doubtless testified practically their recognition of the genius of this extraordi- 
 nary woman ; but there seems to me to be relatively less admiration for her in 
 New York than in London. The general verdict of English criticism would, I 
 feel no doubt, place George Eliot on a higher pedestal than Charles Dickens. 
 We regard her as belonging to a higher school of art, as more nearly affined 
 to the great immortal few whose genius and fame transcend the fashion of the 
 age and defy the caprice of public taste. So far as I have been able to observe, 
 I do not think this is the opinion of American criticism. 
 
 In any case, the mere question will excuse my writing a few pages about a 
 woman whom I regard as the greatest living novelist of England ; as, on the 
 whole, the greatest woman now engaged in European literature. Only George 
 Sand and Harriet Martineau could fairly be compared with her ; and, while Miss
 
 "GEORGE ELIOT" AND GEORGE LEWES. 137 
 
 Martineau, of course, is far inferior in all the higher gifts of imagination and the 
 higher faculties of art, George Sand, with all her passion, her rich fancy, and 
 daring, subtle analysis of certain natures, has never exhibited the serene, sym- 
 metrical power displayed in " Romola " and in " Silas Marner." Mrs. Lewes 
 (it would be affectation to try to assume that there is still any mystery about the 
 identity of " George Eliot") is what George Sand is not a great writer, merely 
 as a writer. Few, indeed, are the beings who have ever combined so many high 
 qualities in one person as Mrs. Lewes does. Her literary career began as a 
 translator and an essayist. Her tastes seemed then to lead her wholly into the 
 somewhat barren fields where German metaphysics endeavor to come to the re- 
 lief or the confusion of German theology. She became a contributor to the 
 " Westminster Review ; " then she became its assistant editor, and worked as- 
 siduously for it under the direction of Dr. John Chapman, the editor, with whose 
 family she lived for a time, and in whose house she first met George Henry 
 Lewes. She is an accomplished linguist, a brilliant talker, a musician of extra- 
 ordinary skill. She has a musical sense so delicate and exquisite that there are 
 tender, simple, true ballad melodies which fill her with a pathetic pain almost too 
 keen to bear ; and yet she has the firm, strong command of tone and touch, 
 without which a really scientific musician cannot be made. I do not think this 
 exceeding sensibility of nature is often to be found in combination with a genu- 
 ine mastery of the practical science of music. But Mrs. Lewes has mastered 
 many sciences as well as literatures. Probably no other novel writer, since novel 
 writing became a business, ever possessed one tithe of her scientific knowledge. 
 Indeed, hardly anything is rarer than the union of the scientific and the literary 
 or artistic temperaments. So rare is it, that the exceptional, the almost solitary 
 instance of Goethe comes up at once, distinct and striking, to the mind. Eng- 
 lish novelists are even less likely to have anything of a scientific taste than 
 French or German. Dickens knows nothing of science, and has, indeed, as lit- 
 tle knowledge of any kind, save that which is derived from observation, as any 
 respectable Englishman could well have. Thackeray was a man of varied read- 
 ing, versed in the lighter literature of several languages, and strongly imbued with 
 artistic tastes ; but he had no care for science, and knew nothing of it but just 
 what every one has to learn at school. Lord Lytton's science is a mere sham. 
 Charlotte Brontd was all genius and ignorance. Mrs. Lewes is all genius and 
 culture. Had she never written a page of fiction, nay, had she never written a 
 line of poetry or prose, she must have been regarded with wonder and admira- 
 tion by all who knew her as a woman of vast and varied knowledge ; a woman 
 who could think deeply and talk brilliantly, who could play high and severe 
 classical music like a professional performer, and could bring forth the most 
 delicate and tender aroma of nature and poetry lying deep in the heart of some 
 simple, old-fashioned Scotch or English ballad. Nature, indeed, seemed to have- 
 given to this extraordinary woman all the gifts a woman could ask or have save 
 one. It will not, I hope, be considered a piece of gossipping personality if I 
 allude to a fact which must, some day or other, be part of literary history. Mrs. 
 Lewes is not beautiful. In her appearance there is nothing whatever to attract 
 admiration. Hers is not even a face like that of Charlotte Cushman, which, at 
 least, must make a deep impression, and seize at once the attention of the gazer. 
 Nor does it seem, like that of Madame de Stae'l or Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 
 informed and illuminated by the light of genius. Mrs. Lewes is what we in 
 England call decidedly plain what people in New York call homely ; and what 
 persons who did not care to soften the force of an unpleasant truth would de- 
 scribe probably by a still harder and more emphatic adjective.
 
 ir.8 "GEORGE ELIOT" AND GEORGE LEWES. 
 
 This woman, thus rarely gifted with poetry and music and imagination thus 
 disciplined in man's highest studies and accustomed to the most laborious of man's 
 literary drudgery does not seem to have found out, until she had passed what is 
 conventionally regarded as the age of romance, that she had in her, transcendent 
 above all other gifts, the faculty of the novelist. When an author who is not 
 very young makes a great hit at last, we soon begin to learn that he had already 
 made many attempts in the same direction, and his publishers find an eager de- 
 mand for the stories and sketches which, when they first appeared, utterly failed 
 lo attract attention. Thackeray's early efforts, Trollope's, Charles Reade's, 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne's, all these have been lighted into success by the blaze of 
 the later triumph. But it does not seem that Miss Marion Evans, as she then 
 was, ever published anything in the way of fiction previous to the series of 
 sketches which appeared in " Blackwood's Magazine," and were called " Scenes 
 of Clerical Life." These sketches attracted considerable attention, and were 
 much admired ; but I do not think many people saw in them the capacity which 
 produced " Adam Bede " and " Romola." With the publication of " Adam 
 Bede " came a complete triumph. The author was elevated at once and by ac- 
 clamation to the highest rank among living novelists. I think it was in the very 
 first number of the "Cornhill Magazine" that Thackeray, in a gossiping para- 
 graph about novelists of the day, whom he mentioned alphabetically and by their 
 initials, spoke of "E " as a "star of the first magnitude just risen on the hori- 
 zon." Thackeray, it will be remembered, was one of the first, if not, indeed, the 
 very first, to recognize the genius manifested in "Jane Eyre." The publishers 
 sent him some of the proof sheets for his advice, and Thackeray saw in them the 
 work of a great novelist. 
 
 The place which Mrs. Lewes thus so suddenly won, she has, of course, always 
 maintained. Her position of absolute supremacy over all other women writers 
 in England is something peculiar and curious. She is first and there is no 
 second. No living authoress in Britain is ever now compared with her. I 
 read, not long since, in a New York paper, a sentence which spoke of George 
 Eljot and Miss Mulock as being the greatest English authoresses in the field of 
 fiction. It seemed very odd and funny to me. Certainly, an English critic 
 would never have thought of bracketing together such a pair. Miss Mulock is a 
 graceful, true-hearted, good writer ; but Miss Mulock and George Eliot ! Rob- 
 ert Lytton and Robert Browning ! "A. K. H. B." (I think these are the initials) 
 and John Stuart Mill ! Mark Lemon's novels and Charles Dickens's ! Mrs. 
 Lewes has made people read novels who perhaps never read fiction from any 
 other pen. She has made the novel the companion and friend and study of 
 scholars and thinkers and statesmen. Her books are discussed by the gravest 
 critics as productions of the highest school of art. Men and journals which have 
 always regarded, or affected to regard, Thackeray as a mere cynic, and Dickens 
 as little better than a professional buffoon, have discussed "The Mill on the 
 Floss " and " Romola " as if these novels were already classic. Of course it 
 would be a very doubtful kind of merit which commanded the admiration of lit- 
 erary prigs or pedants ; but that is not the merit of George Eliot. Her books 
 find their way to all hearts and intelligences, but it is their peculiarity that they 
 compel, they extort the admiration of men who would disparage all novels, if 
 they could, as frivolous and worthless, but who are forced even by their own 
 canons and principles to recognize the deep clear thought, the noble culture, 
 the penetrating, analytical power, which are evident in almost every chapter of 
 these stories. Most of our novelists write in a slipslop, careless style. Die-
 
 " GEORGE ELIOT" AND GEORGE LEWES. 139 
 
 kens is worthless, if regarded merely as a prose writer ; Trollope hardly cares 
 about grammar ; Charles Reade, with all his masculine force and clearness, is 
 terribly irregular and rugged. The woman writers have seldom any style at all. 
 George Eliot's prose might be the study of a scholar anxious to acquire and 
 appreciate a noble English style. It is as luminous as the language of Mill ; far 
 more truly picturesque than that of Ruskin ; capable of forcible, memorable ex- 
 pression as the robust Saxon of Bright. I am not going into a criticism of 
 George Eliot, who has been, no doubt, fully criticised in America already. I 
 am merely engaged in pointing out the special reasons why she has won in Eng- 
 land a certain kind of admiration which, it seems to me, hardly any novelist 
 ever has had before. I think she has infused into the novel some elements it 
 never had before, and so thoroughly infused them that they blend with all the 
 other materials, and do not form anywhere a solid lump or mass distinguishable 
 from the rest. There are philosophical novels " Wilhelm Meister," for exam- 
 ple which are weighed down and loaded with the philosophy, and which the 
 world admires in spite of th6 philosophy. There are political novels Disraeli's, 
 for instance which are only intelligible to those who make politics and political 
 personalities a study, and which viewed merely as stories would not be worth 
 speaking about. There are novels with a great direct purpose in them, such as 
 " Uncle Tom's Cabin," or " Bleak House," or Charles Reade's " Hard Cash ; " 
 but these, after all, are only magnificent pamphlets, splendidly illustrated dia- 
 tribes. The deep philosophic thought of George Eliot's novels suffuses and 
 illumines them everywhere. You can point to no sermon here, no lecture there, 
 no solid mass interposing between this incident and that, no ponderous moral 
 hung around the neck of this or that personage. Only you feel that you are 
 under the control of one who is not merely a great story-teller but who is also a 
 deep thinker. 
 
 It is not, perhaps, unnecessary to say to American readers that George Eliot 
 is the only novelist who can paint such English people as the Poysers and the 
 Tullivers just as they really are. She looks into the very souls of these people. 
 She tracks out their slow peculiar mental processes ; she reproduces them fresh 
 and firm from very life. Mere realism, mere photographing, even from the life, 
 is not in art a very great triumph. But George Eliot can make her dullest peo- 
 ple interesting and dramatically effective. She can paint two dull people with 
 quite different ways of dulness say a dull man and a dull woman, for example 
 and you are astonished to find how utterly distinct the two kinds of stupidity 
 are and how intensely amusing both can be made. Look at the two pedantic, 
 pompous, dull advocates in the later part of Robert Browning's " The Ring and 
 the Book." How distinct they are ; how different, how unlike, and how true, are 
 the two portraits. But then it must be owned that the poet is himself terribly 
 tedious just there. His pedants are quite as. tiresome as they would be in real 
 life, if each successively held you by the button. George Eliot never is guilty 
 of this great artistic fault. You never want to be rid of Mrs. Poyser or Aunt 
 Glegg. or the prattling Florentines in " Romola." It is almost superfluous to 
 say that there never was or could be a Mark Tapley, or a Sam Weller. We put 
 up with these impossibilities and delight in them, because they are so amusing 
 and so full of fantastic humor. But Mrs. Poyser lives, and I have met Aunt 
 Glegg often ; and poor Mrs. Tulliver's cares and hopes, and little fears, and piti- 
 ful reasonings, are animating scores of Mrs. Tullivers all over England to-day. 
 I would propose a safe and easy test to any American or other " foreigner " (I 
 am supposing myself now again in England), who is curious to know how much
 
 140 "GEORGE ELIOT" AND GEORGE LEWES. 
 
 he understands of the English character. Let him read any of George Eliot's 
 novels even " Felix Holt," which is so decidedly inferior to the rest and if he 
 fails to follow, with thorough appreciation, the talk and the ways of the Poysers 
 and such like personages, he may be assured he does not understand one great 
 phase of English life. 
 
 Are these novels popular in England ? Educated public opinion, I repeat, 
 ranks them higher than the novels of any other living author. But they are 
 not popular that is, as Wilkie Collins or Miss Braddon is popular ; and I do 
 not mean to say anything slighting of either Wilkie Collins or Miss Braddon, 
 both of whom I think possess very great talents, and have been treated with 
 quite too much of the de haut en has mood of the great critics. George El- 
 iot's novels certainly are not run after and devoured by the average circulating 
 library readers, as "The Woman in White," and " Lady Audley's Secret" were. 
 She has, of course, nothing like the number of readers who follow Charles Dic- 
 kens ; nor even, I should say, nearly as many as Anthony Trollope. When " Ro- 
 mola," which the " Saturday Review " justly pronounced to be, if not the great- 
 est, certainly the noblest romance of modern days, was being published as a 
 serial in the " Cornhill Magazine," it was comparatively a failure, in the circulat- 
 ing library sense ; and even when it appeared in its complete form, and the pub- 
 lic could better appreciate its artistic perfection, it was anything but a splendid 
 success, as regarded from the publisher's point of view. Perhaps this may be 
 partly accounted for by the nature of the subject, the scene and the time ; but 
 even the warmest admirer of George Eliot may freely admit that "Romola" 
 lacks a little of that passionate heat which is needed to make a writer of fiction 
 thoroughly popular. When a statue of pure and perfect marble attracts as great 
 a crowd of gazers as a glowing picture, then a novel like " Romola" will have 
 as many admirers as a novel like " Consuelo " or " Villette." 
 
 I am not one of the admirers of George Eliot who regret that she ventured 
 on the production of a long poem. I think " The Spanish Gypsy " a true and 
 a fine poem, although I do not place it so high in artistic rank as the best of the 
 author's prose writings. But I believe it to be the greatest story in verse ever 
 produced by an Englishwoman. This is not, perhaps, very high praise, for 
 Englishwomen have seldom done much in the higher fields of poetry ; but we 
 have "Aurora Leigh ; " and I think " The Spanish Gypsy," on the whole, a finer 
 piece of work. Most of our English critics fell to discussing the question 
 whether " The Spanish Gypsy " was to be regarded as poetry at all, or only as a 
 story put into verse ; and in this futile and vexatious controversy the artistic 
 value uf the work itself almost escaped analysis. I own that I think criticism 
 shows to little advantage when it occupies itself in considering whether a work 
 of art "is to be called by this name or that ; and I am rather impatient of the critic 
 who comes with his canons of art r his Thirty-Nine articles of literary dogma, and 
 judges a book, not by what it is in itself, but by the answer it gives to his self-in- 
 vented catechism. I do not believe that the art of man ever can invent I know 
 it never has invented any set of rules or formulas by which you can decide, off- 
 hand and with certainty, that a great story in verse, which you admit to have pow- 
 er and beauty and pathos and melody, does not belong to true poetry. One great 
 school of critics discovered, by the application of such high rules and canons 
 that Shakespeare, though a great genius was not a great poet ; a later school 
 made a similar discovery with regard to Schiller ; a certain body of critics now 
 say the same of Byron. I don't think it matters much what you call the work. 
 "The Spanish Gypsy" has imagination and beauty; it has exquisite pictures 
 and lofty thoughts ; it has melody and music. Admitting this much, and the
 
 "GEORGE ELIOT" AND GEORGE LEWES. 141 
 
 most depreciating criiies <.!id admit it, 1 think it hardly worth considering what 
 name we are to apply to the book. Such, however, was the soit of controversy 
 in which all deep and true consideration of the artistic value of " The Spanish 
 Gvpsy " evaporated. I am not sorry Mrs. Lewes published the poem; but I 
 am sorry she put her literary name to it in the first instance. Had it appeared 
 anonymously it would have astonished and delighted the world. But people 
 compared " The Spanii.il Gypsy" with the author's prose works, and were dis- 
 appointed because the woman who surpassed Dickens in fiction did not likewise 
 surpass Tennyson and Browning in poetry. Thus, and in no other sense, was 
 " The Spanish Gypsy" a failure. No woman had written anything of the same 
 kind to surpass it ; but some men, even of our own day, had and no man of our 
 day has written novels which excel those of George Eliot. Mrs. Lewes will prob- 
 ably not write any more long poems ; but I think English poetry has gained 
 something by her one venture. 
 
 Mrs. Lewes's mind is of a class which, however varied its power, is not fairly 
 described by the word "versatile." Versatility is a smaller kind of faculty, a 
 dexterity of intellect and capacity the property of a mind of the second order. 
 If we want a perfect type and pattern of versatility, we may find it very close to 
 the authoress of " Silas Marner," in the person of her husband, George Henry 
 Lewes. What man of our day has done so many things and done them so well ? 
 He is the biographer of Goethe and of Robespierre ; he has compiled the " His- 
 tory of Philosophy," in which he has something really his own to say of every 
 great philosopher, from Thales to Schelling ; he has translated Spinoza ; he has 
 published various scientific works ; he has written at least two novels ; he has 
 made one of the most successful dramatic adaptations known to our stage ; he 
 is an accomplished theatrical critic ; he was at one time so successful as an ama- 
 teur actor that he seriously contemplated taking to the stage as a profession, in 
 the full conviction, which he did not hesitate frankly to avow, that he was des- 
 tined to be the successor to Macready. He did actually join a company at one 
 of the Manchester theatres, and perform there for some time under a feigned 
 name ; but the amount of encouragement he received from the public did not 
 stimulate him to continue on the boards, although I believe his confidence in his 
 own capacity to succeed Macready remained unshaken. Mr. Lewes was always 
 remarkable for a frank and fearless self-conceit, which, by its very sincerity and 
 audacity, almost disarmed criticism. Indeed, I do not suppose any man less 
 gifted with self-confidence would have even attempted to do half the things which 
 George Henry Lewes has done well. Margaret Fuller was very unfavorably im- 
 pressed by Lewes when she met him at Thomas Carlyle's house, and she wrote 
 of him contemptuously and angrily. But these were the days of Lewes's Bo- 
 hemiamsm ; days of an audacity and a self-conceit unsubdued as yet by ex- 
 perience and the world, and some saddening and some refining influences ; and 
 Margaret Fuller failed to appreciate the amount of intellect and manliness that 
 was in him. Charlotte Bronte", on the other hand, was quite enthusiastic about 
 Lewes, and wrote to him and of him with an almost amusing veneration. In- 
 deed, he is a man of ability and versatility that may fairly be called extraordi- 
 nary. His merit is not that he has written books on a great variety of subjects. 
 London has many hack writers who could go to work at any publisher's order 
 and produce successively an epic poem, a novel, a treatise on the philosophy of 
 the conditioned, a handbook of astronomy, a farce, a life of Julius Caesar, a his- 
 tory of African explorations, and a volume of sermons. But none of these pro- 
 ductions would have one gleam of genuine native vitality about it. The moment 
 ; t had served its purpose in the literary market it would go, dead, down to the
 
 142 
 
 "GEORGE ELIOT" AND GEORGE LEWES. 
 
 dead. Lewes's works are of quite a different style. They have positive merit 
 and value of their own, and they live. It was a characteristically audacious thing 
 to attempt to cram the history of philosophy into a couple of medium-sized vol- 
 umes, polishing off each philosopher in a few pages draining him, plucking out 
 the heart of his mystery and his system, and stowing him away in the glass jar 
 designed to exhibit him to an edified class of students. But it must be avowed 
 that Lewes's has been a marvellously clever and successful attempt. He cer- 
 tainly crumples up the whole science of metaphysics, sweeps away transcenden- 
 tal philosophy, and demolishes a priori reasoning, in a manner which strongly 
 reminds one of Arthur Pendennis upsetting, in a dashing criticism and on the 
 faith of an hour's reading in an encyclopaedia, some great scientific theory of 
 which he had never heard previously, and the development of which had been 
 the life's labor of a sage. But Lewes does, somehow or other, very often come 
 to a right conclusion, and measure great theories and men with accurate estimate ; 
 and the work is immensely interesting, and it is not easy to see how anybody 
 could have done it better. His "Life of Goethe" 5s undoubtedly a very suc- 
 cessful, symmetrical, and comprehensive piece of biography. Some of his sci- 
 entific studies have a genuine value, and they are all fascinating. One of his 
 pieces adapted from the French, of course, as most so-called English pieces 
 are will always be played while Charles Mathews lives, or while there are ac- 
 tors who can play in Charles Mathews's style. I wonder whether any of the 
 readers of THE GALAXY read, or having read remember, Lewes's novels ? I only 
 recollect two of them, and I do not know whether he wrote any others. One 
 was called " Ranthorpe," and it had, in its day, quite a sort of success. How long 
 ago was it published ? Fully twenty years, I should think : I remember quite 
 well being thrown into youthful raptures with it at the time. But I do not go 
 upon my boyish admiration for it. I came across it somewhere much more re- 
 cently, and read it through. There was a good deal of inflation, and audacity, 
 and nonsense in it ; but at the same time it showed more of brains and artistic 
 impulse and constructive power than nine out of every ten novels published in 
 England to-day. It was all about a young poet, who came to London and made, 
 for a moment, a great success, and was dazzled by it, and became intoxicated 
 with love for a lustrous beauty of high rank, who only played with him ; and how 
 he forgot, for a time, the modest, delightful, simple girl to whom he was pledged 
 at home ; and how he did not get on, and the public and the salons grew tired 
 of him ; and he became miserable, and was going to drown himself (I think), but 
 was prevented by some wise and timely person ; and how, of course, it all came 
 right in the end, and he was redeemed. This outline, probably, will not suggest 
 much of originality to any reader ; but there was a great deal of freshness and 
 thought in the book, some of the incidents and one or two of the characters had 
 a flavor of originality about them ; and the style was, for the most part, animated 
 and attractive. It was the work of a man of brains, and culture, and taste ; and 
 one felt this all through, and was not ashamed of the time spent in reading it. 
 The other of Lewes's novels was called "Rose, Blanche, and Violet." It 
 charmed me a good deal when I read it ; but I have not read it lately, and so I 
 forbear giving any decided opinion as to its merits. It is, of course, quite set- 
 tled now that George Lewes had not in him the materials to make a successful 
 novelist ; but men of far less talent have produced far worse novels than his, 
 and been, in their way, successful. 
 
 Lewes first became prominent in literature as a contributor to the " Leader," 
 a very remarkable weekly organ of advanced opinions on all questions, which 
 was started in London seventeen or eighteen years ago, and died, after much
 
 "GEORGE ELIOT" AND GEORGE LEWES. 1-13 
 
 flickering and lingering, in 1861 or thereabouts. The " Leader," in its early 
 and best days, fairly sparkled all over with talent, originality and audacity. It 
 was to extreme philosophical radicalism, (with a dash of something like atheism) 
 what the " Saturday Review " now is to cultured swelldom and Belgravian Sad- 
 duceeism. Miss Martineau wrote for it. Lewes and Thornton Hunt (they 
 were then intimates, unfortunately for Lewes) were among its principal contri- 
 butors ; Edward Whitty flung over its pages the brilliant eccentric light which 
 was destined to immature and melancholy extinction. Lewes's theatrical criti- 
 cisms, which he used to sign "Vivian," were inimitable in their vivacity, their 
 wit, and their keenness, even when their soundness of judgment was most open to 
 question. Poor Charles Kean was an especial object of Lewes's detestation, 
 and was accordingly pelted and peppered with torturingly clever and piquant 
 pasquinades in the form of criticism. Lewes has got wonderfully sober and 
 grave in style since those wild days, and his occasional contributions in the 
 shape of dramatic criticism to the " Pall Mall Gazette " are doubtless more gen- 
 erally accurate, are certainly much more thoughtful, but are far less amusing 
 than the admirable fooling of days gone by. It was in the " Leader," I think, 
 that Lewes carried on his famous controversy with Charles Dickens on the pos- 
 sibility of such spontaneous combustion as that of the old brute in "Bleak 
 House," and it was in the " Leader" that he made an equally famous exposure 
 of a sham spiritualist medium, about whom London was then much agitated. 
 The " Leader," probably, never paid ; it was far too iconoclastic and eccen- 
 tric to be a commercial success, but it made quite a mark and will always be a 
 memory. It did not succeed in its object; but, like the arrow of the hero in 
 Virgil, it left a long line of sparkles and light behind it. Lewes has abandoned 
 Bohemia long since, and Edward Whitty is dead, and Thornton Hunt has come 
 to nothing and there is another "Leader" now in London which bears about 
 as much resemblance to the original and real "Leader" as Richard Cromwell 
 did to Oliver, or Charles Kean to Edmund. 
 
 Bohemianism, and novel-writing, and amateur acting, and persiflage, and 
 epigram, are all gone by now with Lewes. He has settled into a grave and 
 steady writer, for the most part of late confining himself to scientific subjects. 
 A few years ago he started the " Fortnightly Review," in the hope of establish- 
 ing in England a counterpart of the " Revue des Deux Mondes." The first num- 
 ber was enriched by one of the most thoughtful, subtle, beautiful essays lately 
 contributed to literature ; and it bore the signature of George Eliot. Lewes 
 himself wrote a series of essays on "The Principles of Success in Literature." 
 very good, very sound, but not very lively reading. A great English novelist 
 was pleased graciously to say, apropos of these essays, "Success in literature ! 
 What does Lewes know about success in literature ? " and the small devotees of 
 the great successful novelist laughed and repeated the joke. It is certain that 
 the "Fortnightly Review" was not a success under the editorship of George 
 Henry Lewes ; and people sa?d, I do not know how truly, that a good deal of the 
 nobly-earned money paid for " Silas Marner " and the "Mill on the Floss" 
 disappeared in the attempt to erect a British " Revue des Deux Mondes." The 
 " Fortnightly " lives still, and is called " Fortnightly " still, although it now only 
 comes out once a month, but Lewes has long ceased to edit it. I think the 
 present editor, John Morley, a young man of great ability and promise, is bettei 
 suited for the work than Lewes was indeed I doubt whether Lewes, with all his 
 varied gifts and acquirements, possesses the peculiar qualities which make a 
 man a genuine editor. But the difference between wild Hal, the Prince of 
 G.idshill. nnd grave, wise Henry the Fifth. cmiK! h:mlly be greater than that be-
 
 144 "GEORGE ELIOT" AND GEORGE LEWES. 
 
 tween the Vivian of the " Leader " and the late editor of the solemn, ponder- 
 ous "Fortnightly Review." 
 
 Lewes wrote atone time a great deal for the "Westminster Review." It 
 was during his connection with it that he became acquainted, at Dr. Chapman's 
 house, with Marion Evans. There was a great similarity between their tastes. 
 Both loved the study of languages, and of philosophical thought, and of litera- 
 ture and science generally. Both were splendid in conversation, brilliant in ep- 
 igram ; both loved music and were intensely susceptible to its influence. The 
 mind of the woman was, I need hardly say, far the stronger, wider, deeper of 
 the two ; but the affinity was clear and close. A great misfortune had fallen on 
 Lewes ; and he was probably in that condition of mind which makes a man not 
 unlikely to lose his faith in everything and drift into hopeless, perpetual cyni- 
 cism. From this, if this impended over him, Lewes was saved by his inter- 
 course with the rarely-gifted woman he had met in so timely an hour. The re- 
 sult is, as every one knows, a companionship and union unusual indeed in lit- 
 erary life. Very seldom has a distinguished author had for wife a distinguished 
 authoress, or vice versa; indeed, it used to be one of the dear delightful theories 
 of blockheads that such unions, if they could take place, would be miserably 
 unhappy. This theory, so soothing to complacent dulness, was hardly borne 
 out in the instance of the Brownings ; it is just as little corroborated by the ex- 
 ample of "George Eliot" and George Lewes. I believe, too, the example of 
 George Eliot is highly unsatisfactory to the devotees of that other theory, so 
 long cherished by dolts of both sexes, that a woman of talent and culture can 
 never do anything in the way of mending or making, of cooking a chop or or- 
 dering a household. People tell us they can trace th-e influence of Levves's va- 
 ried scholarship and critical judgment in the novels of George Eliot. It is 
 hardly possible to doubt that some such influence must be there, but I cer- 
 tainly never saw it anywhere distinctly and openly evident. It would be poor 
 art which allowed a thin stream of Lewes to be seen sparkling through the broad, 
 deep, luminous lake which mirrors the genius of George Eliot. I am, however, 
 rather inclined to fancy that Lewes, in general, abstains from critical surveillance 
 or restraint over the productions of his greater companion, believing, perhaps, 
 that the higher mind had better be a law to itself. If this be so, I think it is a 
 wholesome principle pushed sometimes too far, for one can hardly believe that 
 the calm judgment of any sincere and qualified adviser would not have discour- 
 aged and condemned the painful, unnecessary underplot of past intrigue and 
 sin which is so great a blot in " Felix Holt," or suggested a rapider dramatic 
 movement in some passages of " The Spanish Gypsy." Lewes once wrote to 
 Charlotte Bronte' that he would rather be the author of Miss Austen's stories 
 than of the whole of the Waverley Novels. I certainly do not agree with him 
 in that opinion ; but it is strange that one who held it should not have endeav- 
 ored to prevent an authoress greater than Miss Austen, and far more directly 
 under his influence than Charlotte Bronte", from sinking, in one or two instances, 
 into faults which neither Miss Austen nor Miss Bronte' would ever have com- 
 mitted. Many things are strange about this literary and domestic companion- 
 ship ; this comparatively trifling fact seems to me not the least strange. 
 
 Finally let me say that I fully expect George Eliot yet to give to the world 
 some work of art even greater than any she has already produced. She is not 
 a woman to close with even a comparative failure. Her maxim, I feel confi- 
 dent, would be that of the Emperor Napoleon offer terms of peace and repose 
 after a great victory ; never otherwise.
 
 GEORGE SAND. 
 
 WE are all of us probably inclined now and then to waste a little time fa 
 vaguely speculating on what might have happened if this or that par- 
 ticular event had not given a special direction to the career of some great man or 
 woman. If there had been an inch of difference in the size of Cleopatra's nose ; 
 if Hannibal had not lingered at Capua ; if Cromwell had carried out his idea of 
 emigration ; if Napoleon Bonaparte had taken service under the Turk and so 
 on through all the old familiar illustrations dear to the minor essayist and the de- 
 bating society. I have sometimes felt tempted thus to lose myself in speculating 
 on what might have happened if the woman whom all the world knows as George 
 Sand had been happily married in her youth to the husband of her choice. 
 Would she ever have taken to literature at all ? Would she, loving as she does, 
 and as Frenchwomen so rarely do, the changing face of inanimate nature the 
 fields, the flowers, and the brooks have lived a peaceful and obscure life in 
 some happy country place, and been content with home, and family, and love, 
 and never thought of fame ? Or if, thus happily married, she still had allowed 
 her genius to find an expression in literature, would she have written books with 
 no passionate purpose in them books which might have seemed like those of a 
 good Miss Mulock made perfect books which Podsnap might have read with 
 approval and put without a scruple into the hands of that modest young person, 
 his daughter ? Certainly one cannot but think that a different kind of early life 
 would have given a quite different complexion to the literary individuality of 
 George Sand. 
 
 Buiwer Lytton, in one of his novels, insists that true genius is always quite in- 
 dependent of the individual sufferings or joys of its possessor, and describes some 
 inspired youth in the novel as sitting down while sorrow is in his heart and hun- 
 ger gnawing at his vitals, to throw off a sparkling and gladsome little fairy tale. 
 Now this is undoubtedly true in general of any high order of genius ; but there 
 are at least some great and striking exceptions. Rousseau and Byron are, in 
 modern days, remarkable illustrations of genius, admittedly of a very high rank, 
 governed and guided almost wholly by the individual fortunes of the men them- 
 selves. So too must we speak of the genius of George Sand. Not Rousseau, 
 not even Byron, was in this sense more egotistic than the woman who broke the 
 chains of her ill-assorted marriage with a crash that made its echoes heard at 
 last in every civilized country in the world. Just as people are constantly quot- 
 ing nous avons changt tout cela who never read a page of Moliere, or pour en- 
 courager les autres without even being aware that there is a story of Voltaire's 
 called " Candide," so there have been thousands of passionate protests uttered 
 in America and Europe for the last twenty years by people who never saw a vol- 
 ume of George Sand, and yet are only echoing her sentiments and even repeat- 
 ing her words. 
 
 In a former number of THE GALAXY I expressed casually the opinion that 
 George Sand is probably the most influential writer of our day. I am still, and 
 deliberately, of the same opinion. It must be remembered that very few English 
 or American authors have any wide or deep influence over peoples who do not 
 speak English. Even of the very greatest authors this is true. Compare, for 
 example, the literary dominion of Shakespeare with that of Cervantes. All na-
 
 146 GEORGE SAND. 
 
 tions who read Shakespeare read Cervantes : in Stratford-upon-Avon itself Don 
 Quixote is probably as familiar a figure in people's minds as Fafstaff; but 
 Shakespeare is little known indeed to the vast majority of readers in the country 
 of Cervantes, in the land of Dante, or in that of Racine and Victor Hugo. In 
 something of the same way we may compare the influence of George Sand with 
 that of even the greatest living authors of England and America. What influ- 
 ence has Charles Dickens or George Eliot outside the range of the English 
 tongue ? But George Sand's genius has been felt as a power in every country 
 of the world where people read any manner of books. It has been felt almost 
 as Rousseau's once was felt ; it has aroused anger, terror, pity, or wild and rap- 
 turous excitement and admiration ; it has rallied around it every instinct in man 
 or woman which is revolutionary ; it has ranged against it all that is conservative. 
 It is not so much a literary influence as a great disorganizing force, riving the 
 rocks of custom, resolving into their original elements the social combinations 
 which tradition and convention would declare to be indissoluble. I am not now 
 speaking merely of the sentiments which George Sand does or did entertain on 
 the subject of marriage. Divested of all startling effects and thrilling dramatic 
 illustrations, these sentiments probably amounted to nothing more dreadful than 
 the belief that an unwedded union between two people who love and are true to 
 each other is less immoral than the legal marriage of two uncongenial creatures 
 who do not love and probably are not true to each other. But the grand, revo- 
 lutionary idea which George Sand announced was that of the social indepen- 
 dence and equality of woman the principle that woman is not made for man in 
 any other sense than as man is made for woman. For the first time in the his- 
 tory of the world woman spoke out for herself with a voice as powerful as that of 
 man. For the first time in the history of the world woman spoke out as woman, 
 not as the servant, the satellite, the pupil, the plaything, or the goddess of man. 
 Now I intend at present to write of George Sand rather as an individual, or 
 an influence, than as the author of certain works of fiction. Criticism would now 
 be superfluously bestowed on the literary merits and peculiarities of the great 
 woman whose astonishing intellectual activity has never ceased to produce, dur- 
 ing the last thirty years, works which take already a classical place in French 
 literature. If any reputation of our day may be looked upon as established, we 
 may thus regard the reputation of George Sand. She is, beyond comparison, 
 the greatest living novelist of France. She has won this position by the most 
 legitimate application of the gifts of an artist. With all her marvellous fecundity, 
 she has hardly ever given to the world any work which does not seem at least 
 to have been the subject of the most elaborate and patient care. The greatest 
 temptation which tries a story-teller is perhaps the temptation to rely on the at- 
 tractiveness of story-telling, and to pay little or no attention to style. Walter 
 Scott's prose, for example, if regarded as mere prose, is rambling, irregular, and 
 almost worthless. Dickens's prose is as bad a model for imitation as a musical 
 performance which is out of tune. Of course, I need hardly say that attention 
 to style is almost as characteristic of French authors in general, as the lack of it 
 is characteristic of English authors ; but even in France, the prose of George 
 Sand stands out conspicuous for its wonderful expressiveness and force, its al- 
 most perfect beauty. Then of all modern French authors I might perhaps say 
 of all modern novelists of any country George Sand has added to fiction, has 
 annexed from the worlds of reality and of imagination, the greatest number of 
 original characters of what Emerson calls new organic creations. Moreover, 
 George Sand is, after Rousseau, the one only great French author who has looked
 
 GEORGE SAND 147 
 
 directly and lovingly into the face of Nature, and learned the secrets which skies 
 and waters, fields and lanes, can teach to the heart that loves them. Gifts such a* 
 these have won her the almost unrivalled place which she holds in living liter- 
 ature, and she has conquered at last even the public opinion which once detested 
 and proscribed her. I could therefore hope to add nothing to what has been al- 
 ready said by criticism in regard to her merits as a novelist. Indeed, I think 
 it probable that the majority of readers in this country know more of George 
 Sand through the interpretation of the critics than through the pages of her 
 books. And in her case criticism is so nearly unanimous as to her literary 
 merits, that I may safely assume the public in general to have in their minds a 
 just recognition of her position as a novelist. My object is rather to say some- 
 thing about the place which George Sand has taken as a social revolutionist, 
 about the influence she has so long exercised over the world, and about the 
 woman herself. For she is assuredly the greatest champion of woman's rights, 
 in one sense, that the world has ever seen ; and she is, on the other hand, the one 
 woman out of all the world who has been most commonly pointed to as the 
 appalling example to scare doubtful and fluttering womanhood back into its 
 sheepfold of submissiveness and conventionality. There is hardly a woman's 
 heart anywhere in the civilized world which has not felt the vibration of George 
 Sand's thrilling voice. Women who never saw one of her books, nay, who never 
 heard even her nom de plume, have been stirred by emotions of doubt or fear or 
 repining or ambition, which they never would have known but for George 
 Sand, and perhaps but for George Sand's uncongenial marriage. For indeed 
 there is not now, and has not been for twenty years, I venture to think, a single 
 "revolutionary" idea, as slow and steady-going people would call it, afloat any- 
 where in Europe or America, on the subject of woman's relations to man, so- 
 ciety, and destiny, which is not due immediately to the influence of George Sand, 
 and to the influence of George Sand's unhappy marriage upon George Sand 
 herself. 
 
 The world has of late years grown used to this extraordinary woman, and 
 has lost much of the wonder and terror with which it once regarded her. I can 
 quite remember younger people than I can remember the time when all good 
 and proper personages in England regarded the authoress of " Indiana " as a 
 sort of feminine fiend, endowed with a hideous power for the destruction of souls 
 and an inextinguishable thirst for the slaughter of virtuous beliefs. I fancy a 
 good deal of this sentiment was due to the fearful reports wafted across the 
 seas, that this terrible woman had not merely repudiated the marriage bond, 
 but had actually put off the garments sacred to womanhood. That George Sand 
 appeared in men's clothes was an outrage upon consecrated proprieties far 
 more astonishing than any theoretical onslaught upon old opinions could be. 
 Reformers indeed should always, if they are wise in their generation, have a 
 care of the proprieties. Many worthy people can listen with comparative forti- 
 tude when sacred and eternal truths are assailed, who are stricken with horror 
 when the ark of propriety is never so lightly touched. George Sand's pantaloons 
 were therefore regarded as the most appalling illustration of George Sand's 
 wickedness. I well remember what excitement, scandal, and horror were created 
 in the provincial town where I lived some twenty years ago, when the editor of 
 a local Panjandrum (to borrow Mr. Trollope's word) insulted the feelings and 
 the morals of his constituents and subscribers by polluting his pages with a 
 translation from one of George Sand's shorter novels. Ah me, the little novel 
 might, so far as morality was concerned, have been written every word by
 
 148 GEORGE SAND. 
 
 Miss Phelps, or the authoress of the "Heir of RedclifFe " ; it had not a word, 
 from beginning to end, which might not have been read out to a Sunday school 
 of girls ; the translation was made by a woman of the purest soul, and in 
 her own locality the highest name ; and yet how virtue did shriek out against 
 the publication ! The editor persevered in the publishing of the novel, spurred 
 on to boldness by some of his very young and therefore fearless coadjutors, 
 who thought it delightful to confront public opinion, and liked the notion 
 of the stars in their courses fighting against Sisera, and Sisera not being dis- 
 mayed. That charming, tender, touching little story ! I would submit it to- 
 day cheerfully to the verdict of a jury of matrons, confident that it would be de- 
 clared a fit and proper publication. But at that time it was enough that the 
 story bore the odious name of George Sand ; public opinion condemned it, and 
 sent the magazine which ventured to translate it to an early and dishonored 
 grave. I remember reading about that time a short notice of George Sand by 
 an English authoress of some talent and culture, in which the Frenchwoman's 
 novels were described as so abominably filthy, that even the denizens of the 
 Paris brothels were ashamed to be caught reading them. Now this declaration 
 was made in all good faith, in the simple good faith of that class of persons who 
 will pass wholesale and emphatic judgment upon works of which they have never 
 read a single page. For I need hardly tell any intelligent person of to-day, that 
 whatever may be said of George Sand's doctrines, she is no more open to the 
 charge of indelicacy than the authoress of " Romola." I cannot myself remem- 
 ber any passage in George Sand's novels which can be called indelicate ; and 
 indeed her severest and most hostile critics are fond of saying, not without a 
 certain justice, that one of the worst characteristics of her works is the delicacy 
 and beauty of her style, which thus commends to pure and innocent minds cer- 
 tain doctrines that, broadly stated, would repel and shock them. Were I one of 
 George Sand's inveterate opponents, this, or something like it, is the ground I 
 would take up. I would say: "The welfare of the human family demands that 
 a marriage, legally made, shall never be questioned or undone. Marriage is not 
 a union depending on love or congeniality, or any such condition. It is just as 
 sncred when made for money, or for ambition, or for lust of the flesh, or for any 
 oilier pupose, however ignoble and base, as when contracted in the spirit of the 
 purest mutual love. Here is a woman of great power and daring genius, who 
 says that the essential condition of marriage is love and natural fitness ; that a 
 legal union of man and woman without this is no marriage at all, but a detestable 
 and disgusting sin. Now the more delicately, modestly, plausibly she can put this 
 revolutionary and pernicious doctrine, the more dangerous she becomes, and the 
 more earnestly we ought to denounce her." This was in fact what a great many 
 persons did say ; and the protest was at least consistent and logical. 
 
 But horror is an emotion which cannot long live on the old fuel, and even 
 the world of English Philistinism soon ceased to regard George Sand as a mere 
 monster. Any one now taking up " Indiana," for example, would perhaps find 
 it not quite easy to understand how the book, produced such an effect. Our 
 novel-writing women of to-day commonly feed us on more fiery stuff than this. 
 Not to speak of such accomplished artists in impurity as the lady who calls her- 
 self Ouida, and one or two others of the same school, we have young women 
 only just promoted from pantalettes, who can throw you off such glowing chapters 
 of passion and young desire as would make the rhapsodies of " Indiana" seem 
 very feeble milk-and-water brewage by comparison. Indeed, except for some 
 of the descriptions in the opening chapters, I fail to see any extraordinary merit
 
 GEORGE SAND. 149 
 
 in " Indiana " ; and toward the end it seems to me to grow verbose, weak, and 
 tiresome. " Leone Leoni " opens with one of the finest dramatic outbursts of 
 emotion known to the literature of modern fiction ; but it soon wanders away 
 into discursive weakness, and only just toward the close brightens up into a 
 burst of lurid splendor. It is not those which I may call the questionable nov- 
 els of George Sand the novels which were believed to illustrate in naked and 
 appalling simplicity her doctrines and her life that will bear up her fame through 
 succeeding generations. If every one of the novels which thus in their time 
 drew down the thunders of society's denunciation were to be swept into the wal- 
 let wherein Time, according to Shakespeare, carries scraps for oblivion, George 
 Sand would still remain where she now is, at the head of the French fiction of 
 her day. It is true, as Goethe says, that "miracle-working pictures are rarely 
 works of art." The books which make the hair of the respectable public stand 
 on end, are not often the works by which the fame of the author is preserved for 
 posterity. 
 
 It is a curious fact that at the early time to which I have been alluding, little 
 or nothing was known in England (or, I presume, in America) of the real life 
 of Aurore Amandine Dupin, who had been pleased to call herself George Sand. 
 People knew, or had heard, that she had separated from her husband, that she 
 had written novels which depreciated the sanctity of legal marriage, and that she 
 sometimes wore male costume in the streets. This was enough. In England, 
 at least, we were ready to infer any enormity regarding a woman who was un- 
 sound on the legal marriage question, and who did not wear petticoats. What 
 would have been said had people then commonly known half the stories which 
 vrere circulated in Paris ; half the extravagances into which a passionate soul 
 and the stimulus of sudden emancipation from restraint had hurried the au- 
 thoress of "Indiana" and " Lucrezia Floriani " ? For it must be owned that 
 the life of that woman was, in its earlier years, a strange and wild phenomenon, 
 hardly to be comprehended perhaps by American or English natures. I have 
 heard George Sand bitterly arraigned even by persons who protested that they 
 were at one with her as regards the early sentiments which used to excite such 
 odium. I have heard her described by such as a sort of Lamia of literature and 
 passion ; a creature who could seize some noble, generous, youthful heart, drain 
 it of its love, its aspirations, its profoundest emotions, and then fling it, squeezed 
 and lifeless, away. I have heard it declared that George Sand made " copy " of 
 the fierce and passionate loves which she knew so well how to awaken and to fos- 
 ter; that she distilled the life-blood of youth to obtain the mixture out of which 
 she derived her inspiration. The charge so commonly (I think unjustly) made 
 against Goethe, that he played with the girlish love of Bettina and of others in 
 order to obtain a subject for literary dissection, is vehemently and deliberately 
 urged in an aggravated form, in many aggravated forms, against George Sand. 
 Where, such accusers ask, is that young poet, endowed with a lyrical genius 
 rare indeed in the France of later days, that young poet whose imagination was 
 at once so daring and so subtle ; who might have been Beranger and Heine in 
 one, and have risen to an atmosphere in which neither Be*ranger nor Heine ever 
 floated ? Where is he, and what evil influence was it which sapped the strength of 
 his nature, corrupted his genius, and prepared for him a premature and shameful 
 grave ? Where is that young musician, whose pure, tender, and lofty strains 
 sound sweetly and sadly in the ears, as the very hymn and music of the Might- 
 Ha\e-Been where is he now, and what was the seductive power which made a 
 plaything of him and then flung him away ? Here and there some man of
 
 150 GEORGE SAND. 
 
 stronger mould is pointed out as one who was at the first conquered, and then 
 deceived and trifled with, but who ordered his stout heart to bear, and rose su- 
 perior to the hour, and lived to retrieve his nature and make himself a name of 
 respect ; but the others, of more sensitive and perhaps finer organizations, are 
 only the more to be pitied because they were so terribly in earnest. Seldom, 
 even in the literary history of modern France, has there been a more strange and 
 shocking episode than the publication by George Sand ot the little book called 
 " Elle et Lui," and the rejoinder to it by Paul de Musset called " Lui et Elle." 
 I can hardly be accused of straying into the regions of private scandal when I 
 speak of two books which had a wide circulation, are still being read, and may 
 be had, I presume, in any New York bookstore where French literature is sold. 
 The former of the two books, " She and He," was a story, or something which 
 purported to be a story, by George Sand, telling of two ill-assorted beings whom 
 fate had thrown together for a while, and of whom the woman was all tenderness, 
 love, patience, the man all egotism, selfishness, sensuousness, and eccentricity. 
 The point of the whole business was to show how sublimely the woman suffered, 
 and how wantonly the man flung happiness away. Had it been merely a piece 
 of fiction, it must have been regarded by any healthy mind as a morbid, un- 
 wholesome, disagreeable production; a sin of the highest aesthetic kind against 
 true art, which must always, even in its pathos and its tragedy, leave on the 
 mind exalted and delightful impressions. But every one in Paris at once hailed 
 the story as a chapter of autobiography, as the author's vindication of one epi- 
 sode in her own career a vindication at the expense of a man who had gone 
 down, ruined and lost, to an early grave. Therefore the brother of the dead 
 man flung into literature a little book called " He and She," in which a story, 
 substantially the same in its outlines, is so told as exactly to reverse the condi- 
 tions under which the verdict of public opinion was sought. Very curious in- 
 deed was the manner in which the same substance of facts was made to present 
 the two principal figures with complexions and characters so strangely altered. 
 In the woman's book, the woman was made the patient, loving, suffering victim ; 
 in the man's reply, this same woman was depicted as the most utterly selfish 
 and depraved creature the human imagination could conceive. Even if one had 
 no other means whatever of forming an estimate of the character of George 
 Sand, it would be hardly possible to accept as her likeness the hideous picture 
 sketched by Paul de Musset. No woman, I am glad to believe, ever existed in 
 real life so utterly selfish, base, and wicked as his bitter pen has drawn. I must 
 say that the thing is very cleverly done. The picture is at least consistent with 
 itself. As a character in romance it might be pronounced original, bold, brilliant, 
 and, in an artistic sense, quite natural. There is something thoroughly French 
 in the easy and delicate force of the final touch with which de Musset dismisses 
 his hideous subject. Having sketched this woman in tints that seem to flame 
 across the eyes of the reader ; having described with wonderful realism and 
 power her affectation, her deceit, her reckless caprices, her base and cruel co- 
 quetries, her devouring wantonness, her soul-destroying arts, her unutterable self- 
 ishness and egotism; having, to use a vulgar phrase, "turned her inside out," 
 and told her story backwards, the author calmly explains that the hero of the 
 narrative in his dying hour called his brother to his bedside, and enjoined him, if 
 occasion should ever arise, if the partner of his sin should- ever calumniate him 
 in his grave, to vindicate his memory and avenge the treason practised upon 
 him. " Of course," adds the narrator, " the brother made the promise and I 
 have since heard that he has kept his word." I can hardly hope to convey to
 
 GEORGE SAND. 1C1 
 
 the reader any adequate idea of the effect produced on the mind by these few 
 simple words of compressed, whispered hatred and triumph, closing a philippic, 
 or a revelation, or a libel of such extraordinary bitterness and ferocity. The whole 
 episode is, I believe and earnestly hope, without precedent or imitation in literary 
 controversy. Never, that I know of, has a living woman been publicly exhibited to 
 the world in a portraiture so hideous as that which Paul de Musset drew of 
 George Sand. Never, that I know of, has any woman gone so near to deserving 
 and justifying such a measure of retaliation. 
 
 For if it be assumed and I suppose it never has been disputed that in 
 writing "Elle et Lui " George Sand meant to describe herself and Alfred de 
 Musset, it is hard to conceive of any sin against taste and feeling, against art 
 and morals, more flagrant than such a publication. The practice, to which 
 French writers are so much addicted, of making "copy" of the private lives, 
 characters, and relationships of themselves and their friends, seems to me in all 
 cases utterly detestable. Lamartine's sins of this kind were grievous and glar- 
 ing ; but were they red as scarlet, they would seem whiter than snow when com- 
 pared with the lurid monstrosity of George Sand's assault on the memory of the 
 dead poet who was once her favorite. The whole affair indeed is so unlike any- 
 thing which could occur in America or in England, that we can hardly find any 
 canons by which to try it, or any standard of punishment by which to regulate its 
 censure. I allude to it now because it is the only substantial evidence I know 
 of which does fairly seem to justify the worst of the accusations brought against 
 George Sand; and I do not think it right, when writing for grown men and 
 women, who are supposed to have sense and judgment, to affect not to know 
 that such accusations are made, or to pretend to think that it would be proper 
 not to allude to them. They have been put forward, replied to, urged again, 
 made the theme of all manner of controversy in scores of French and in some 
 English publications. Pray let it be distinctly understood that I am not entering 
 into any criticism of the morality of any part of George Sand's private life. With 
 that we have nothing here to do. I am now dealing with the question, fairly 
 belonging to public controversy, whether the great artist did not deliberately 
 deal with human hearts as the painter of old is said to have done with a pur- 
 chased slave inflicting torture in order the better to learn how to depict the strug- 
 gles and contortions of mortal agony. In answer to such a question I can only 
 point to " Lucrezia Floriani " and to "Elle et Lui," and say that unless the uni- 
 versal opinion of qualified critics be wrong these books, and others too, owe 
 their piquancy and their dramatic force to the anatomization of dead passions 
 and discarded lovers. We have all laughed over the pedantic surgeon in Mo- 
 liere's " Malade Imaginaire," who invites his fiancee as a delightful treat to see 
 him dissect the body of a woman. I am afraid that George Sand did sometimes 
 invite an admiring public to an exhibition yet more ghastly and revolting the 
 dissection of the heart of a dead lover. 
 
 But in truth we shall never judge George Sand and her writings at all if we 
 insist on criticising them from any point of view set up by the proprieties or 
 even the moralities of Old England or New England. When the passionate 
 young woman, in whose veins ran the wild blood of Marshal Saxe, found herself 
 surrendered by legality and prescription to a marriage bond against which her 
 soul revolted, society seemed for her to have resolved itself into its original ele- 
 ments. Its conventionalities and traditions contained nothing which she held 
 herself bound to respect. The world was not her friend, nor the world's law. 
 By one great decisive step she sundered herself forever from the bonds of what
 
 152 GEORGE SAND. 
 
 we call society. She had shaken the dust of convention from her feet ; the 
 world was all before her where to choose. No creature on earth is so absolutely 
 free as the Frenchwoman who has broken with society. There, then, stood this 
 daring young woman, on the threshold of a new, fresh, and illimitable world ; a 
 young woman gifted with genius such as our later years have rarely seen, and 
 blessed or cursed with a^ nature so strangely uniting the most characteristic qual- 
 ities of man and woman as to be in itself quite unparalleled and unique. Just 
 think of it try to think of it ! Society and the world had no longer any laws 
 which she recognized. Nothing was sacred ; nothing was settled. She had 
 to evolve from her own heart and brain her own law of life. What wonder if 
 she made some sad mistakes ? Nay, is it not rather a theme for wonder and admi- 
 ration that she did somehow come right at last ? I know of no one who seerns 
 to me to have been open at once to the temptations of woman's nature and man's 
 nature except this George Sand. Her soul, her brain, her style may be described, 
 from one point of view, as exuberantly and splendidly feminine ; yet no other 
 woman has ever shown the same power of understanding and entering into the 
 nature of a man. If Balzac is the only man who has ever thoroughly mastered 
 the mysteries of a woman's heart, George Sand is the only woman, so far as I 
 know, who has ever shown that she could feel as a man can feel. I have read 
 stray passages in her novels which I would confidently submit to the criticism 
 of any intelligent men unacquainted with the text, convinced that they would 
 declare that only a man could have thus analyzed the emotions of manhood. I 
 have in my mind just now especially a passage in the novel "Piccinino" which, 
 were the authorship unknown, would, I am satisfied, secure the decision of a 
 jury of literary experts that the author must be a man. Now this gift of entire 
 appreciation of the feelings of a different sex or race is, I take it, one of the 
 rarest and highest dramatic qualities. Especially is it difficult for a woman, as 
 our social life goes, to enter into the feelings of a man. While men and women 
 alike admit the accuracy of certain pictures of women drawn by such artists as 
 Cervantes, Moliere, Balzac, and Thackeray, there are few women indeed, per- 
 haps there are no women but one by whom a man has been so painted as to 
 challenge and compel the recognition and acknowledgment of men. In THE 
 GALAXY some months ago I wrote of a great Englishwoman, the authoress of 
 " Romola," and I expressed my conviction that on the whole she is entitled to 
 higher rank as a novelist than even the authoress of " Consuelo." Many, very 
 many men and women, for whose judgment I have the highest respect, differed 
 from me in this opinion. I still hold it, nevertheless ; but I freely admit that 
 George Eliot has nothing like the dramatic insight which enables George Sand 
 to enter into the feelings and the experiences of a man. I go so far as to say 
 that, having some knowledge of the literature of fiction in most countries, I am 
 not aware of the existence of any woman but this one who could draw a real, 
 living, struggling, passion-tortured man. All other novelists of George Sand's 
 sex even including Charlotte Bronte draw only what I may call " women's 
 men." If ever the two natures could be united in one form, if ever a single 
 human being could have the soul of man and the soul of woman at once, George 
 Sand might be described as that physical and psychological phenomenon. Now 
 the point to which I wish to direct attention is the peculiarity of the temptation 
 to which a nature such as this was necessarily exposed at every turn when, free 
 of all reslraint and a rebel against all conventionality, it confronted the world 
 and the world's law, and stood up, itself alone, against the domination of custom 
 and the majesty of tradition. I claim, then, that when we have taken all these
 
 GEORGE SAND. 153 
 
 considerations into account, we are bound to admit that Aurora Dudevant de- 
 serves the generous recognition of the world for the use which she made of her 
 splendid gifts. Her influence on French literature has been on the whole a puri- 
 fying and strengthening power. The cynicism, the recklessness, the wanton, 
 licentious disregard of any manner of principle, the debasing parade of disbelief 
 in any higher purpose or nobler restraint, which are the shame and curse of mod- 
 ern French fiction, find no sanction in the pages of George Sand. I remember 
 no passage in her works which gives the slightest encouragement to the " noth- 
 ing new, and nothing true, and it don't signify" code of ethics which has been 
 so much in fashion of late years. I find nothing in George Sand which does not 
 do homage to the existence of a principle and a law in everything. This daring 
 woman, who broke with society so early and so conspicuously, has always insisted, 
 through every illustration, character, and catastrophe in her books, that the one 
 only reality, the one only thing that can endure, is the rule of right and of virtue. 
 Nor has she ever, that I can recollect, fallen into the enfeebling and sentimental 
 theory so commonly expressed in the works of Victor Hugo, that the vague 
 abstraction society is always to bear the blame of the faults committed by the 
 individual man or woman. Of all persons in the world Aurora Dudevant might 
 be supposed most likely to adopt this easy and complacent theory as her guiding 
 principle. She had every excuse, every reason for endeavoring to preach up the 
 doctrine that our errors are society's and our virtues our own. But I am not 
 aware that she ever taught any lesson save the lesson that men and women must 
 endeavor to be heroes and heroines for themselves, heroes and heroines though 
 all the world else were craven and weak and selfish and unprincipled. Evea 
 that wretched and lamentable "Elle et Lui" affair, utterly inexcusable as it is 
 when we read between the lines its secret history, has at least the merit of being 
 an earnest and powerful protest against the egotistical and debasing indulgence 
 of moral weaknesses and eccentricities which mean and vulgar minds are apt to 
 regard as the privilege of genius. " Stand upon your own ground ; be your own 
 ruler ; look to yourself, not to your stars, for your failure or success ; always 
 make your standard a lofty ideal, and try persistently to reach it, though all the 
 temptations of earth and all the power of darkness strive against you" this and 
 nothing else, if I have read her books rightly, is the moral taught by George 
 Sand. She may be wrong in her principle sometimes, but at least she always 
 has a principle. She has a profound and generous faith in the possibilities of 
 human nature ; in the capacity of man's heart for purity, self-sacrifice, and self- 
 redemption. Indeed, so far is she from holding counsel with wilful weakness or 
 sin, that I think she sometimes falls into the noble error of painting her heroes 
 as too glorious in their triumph over temptation, in their subjugation of every 
 passion and interest to the dictates of duty and of honor. Take, for instance, 
 that extraordinary book which has just been given to the American public in 
 Miss Virginia Vaughan's excellent translation, " Mauprat." If I understand 
 that magnificent romance at all, its purport is to prove that no human nature is ever 
 plunged into temptation beyond its own strength to resist, provided that it really 
 wills resistance ; that no character is irretrievable, no error inexpiable, where 
 there is sincere resolve to expiate and longing desire to retrieve. Take again 
 that exquisite little story, "La Derniere Aldini"; I do not know where one 
 could find a finer illustration of the entire sacrifice of man's natural impulse, 
 passion, interest, to what might almost be called an abstract idea of honor and 
 principle. I have never read this little story without wondering how many men 
 oue ever has known who, placed in the same situation as that of Nello, the hero,
 
 154 GEORGE SAND. 
 
 would have done the same thing ; and yet so simply and naturally are the char- 
 acters wrought out and the incidents described, that the idea of pompous, dra- 
 matic self-sacrifice never enters the mind of the reader, and it seems to him 
 that Nello could not do otherwise than as he is doing. I speak of these two 
 stories particularly, because in both of them there is a good deal of the worlr 1 
 and the flesh ; that is, both are stories of strong human passion and temptation. 
 Many of George Sand's novels, the shorter ones especially, are as absolutely 
 pure in moral tone, as entirely free from even a taint or suggestion of impurity, 
 as they are perfect in style. Now, if we cannot help knowing that much of 
 this great woman's life was far from being irreproachable, are we not bound to 
 give her all the fuller credit because her genius at least kept so far the white- 
 ness of its soul ? Revolutions are not to be made with rose water ; you cannot 
 have omelettes without breaking of eggs. I am afraid that great social revolu- 
 tionists are not often creatures of the most pure and perfect nature. It is not to 
 patient Griselda you must look for any protest against even the uttermost tyran- 
 ny of social conventions. One thing I think may at least be admitted as part of 
 George Sand's vindication that the marriage system in France is the most de- 
 based and debasing institution existing in civilized society, now that the buying 
 and selling of slaves has ceased to be a tolerated system. I hold that the most 
 ardent advocates of the irrevocable endurance of the marriage bond are bound 
 by their very principles to admit that in protesting against the so-called marriage 
 svstem of France George Sand stood on the side of purity and right. Assuredly 
 she often went into extravagances in the other direction. It seems to be the 
 fate of all French reformers to rush suddenly to extremes ; and we must remem- 
 ber that George Sand was not a Bristol Quakeress or a Boston transcenclentalist, 
 but a passionate Frenchwoman, the descendant of one of the maddest votaries 
 of love and war who ever stormed across the stage of European history. 
 
 Regarding George Sand then as an influence in literature and on society, I 
 claim for her at least four great and special merits. First, she insisted on calling 
 public attention to the true principle of marriage ; that is to say, she put the 
 question as it had not been put before. Of course, the fundamental principle 
 she would have enforced is always being urged more or less feebly, more or less 
 sincerely; but she made it her own question, and illuminated it by the fervid, 
 fierce rays of her genius and her passion. Secondly, her works are an exposi- 
 tion of the tremendous reality of the feelings which people who call themselves 
 practical are apt to regard with indifference or contempt as mere sentiments. In 
 the long run the passions decide the life-question one way or the other. They 
 are the tide which, as you know or do not know how to use it, will either turn your 
 mill and float your boat, or drown your fields and sweep away your dwellings. 
 Life and society receive no impulse and no direction from the influences out of 
 which the novels of Dickens or even of Thackeray are made up. These are but 
 pleasant or tender toying with the playthings and puppets of existence. George 
 Sand constrains, us to look at the realities through the medium of her fiction. 
 Thirdly, she insists that man can and shall make his own career ; not whine to 
 the stars and rail out against the powers above, when he has weakly or wantonly 
 marred his own destiny. Fourthly and this ought not to be considered her 
 least service to the literature of her country she has tried to teach people to 
 look at nature with their own eyes, and to invite the true love of her to flow into 
 their hearts. The great service which Ruskin, with all his eccentricities and 
 extravagances, has rendered to English-speaking peoples by teaching them to 
 use their own eyes when they look at clouds, and waters, and grasses, and hills, 
 George Sand has rendered to France.
 
 GEORGE SAND. 155 
 
 I hold that these are virtues and services which ought to outweigh even very 
 grave personal and artistic errors. We often hear that this or that great poet 
 or romancist has painted men as they are ; this other as they ought to be. I 
 think George Sand paints men as they are, and also not merely as they ought 
 to be, but as they can be. The sum of the lesson taught by her books is one of 
 confidence in man's possibilities, and hope in his steady progress. At the same 
 time she is entirely practical in her faith and her aspirations. She never expects 
 that the trees are to grow up into the heavens, that men and women are to be 
 other than men and women. She does not want them to be other ; she finds 
 the springs and sources of their social regeneration in the fact that they are just 
 what they are, to begin with. I am afraid some of the ladies who seem to base 
 their scheme of woman's emancipation and equality on the assumption that, by 
 some development of time or process of schooling, a condition of things is to be 
 brought about where difference of sex is no longer to be a disturbing power, will 
 find small comfort or encouragement in the writings of George Sand. She deals 
 in realities altogether; the realities of life, even when they are such as to shal- 
 low minds may seem mere sentiments and ecstasies ; the realities of society, of 
 suffering, of passion, of inanimate nature. There is in her nothing unmeaning, 
 nothing untrue ; there is in her much error, doubtless, but no sham. 
 
 I believe George Sand is growing into a quiet and beautiful old age. After a 
 life of storm and stress, a life which, metaphorically at least, was " worn by war 
 and passion," her closing years seem likely to be gilded with the calm glory of 
 an autumnal sunset. One is glad to think of her thus happy and peaceful, ac- 
 cepting so tranquilly the reality of old age, still laboring with her unwearied pen, 
 still delighting in books, and landscapes, and friends, and work. The world can 
 well afford to forget as soon as possible her literary and other errors. Of the vast 
 mass of romances, stories, plays, sketches, criticisms, pamphlets, political articles, 
 even, it is said, ministerial manifestoes of republican days, which she poured 
 out, only a few comparatively will perhaps be always treasured by posterity ; 
 but these will be enough to secure her a classic place. And she will not be re- 
 membered by her writings alone. Hers is probably the most powerful individ- 
 uality displayed by any modern Frenchwoman. The influence of Madame Ro- 
 land was but a glittering unreality, that of Madame de Stael only a boudoir and 
 coterie success, when compared with the power exercised over literature, human 
 feeling, and social law, by the energy, the courage, the genius, even the very 
 errors and extravagances of George Sand.
 
 EDWARD BULWER, LORD LYTTON. 
 
 TEN years ago an important political question was agitating the Englisti 
 House of Commons and the English public. It was the old question of 
 Parliamentary Reform in a new shape. Thirty years before Lord John Russell 
 had pleaded the right of the middle classes to have a voice in the election of 
 their Parliamentary representatives ; this time he was asserting a similar right 
 for the working population. Then he had to contend against the opposition of 
 the aristocracy only ; this time he had to fight against the combined antagonism 
 of the aristocracy and the middle classes, the latter having made common cause 
 with their old enemies to preserve a monopoly of their new privileges. The de- 
 bate in the House of Commons on the proposed Reform Bill of 1860 was long 
 and bitter. When it was reaching its height, a speaker arose on the Tory side 
 of the House whose appearance on the scene of the debate lent a new and 
 piquant interest to the night's discussion. He sat on the front bench of the 
 Opposition, quite near to Disraeli himself. The moment he rose, every head 
 craned forward to see him ; the moment he began to speak, every ear was strained 
 with keen curiosity to hear him. The ears were for a while sorely tried and 
 perplexed. What was he saying nay, what language was he speaking ? What 
 extraordinary, indescribable sounds were those which were heard issuing from 
 his lips ? Were they articulate sounds at all? For some minutes certainly 
 those who like myself had never heard the speaker before were utterly bewil- 
 dered. We could only hear what seemed to us an incoherent, inarticulate gut- 
 tural jabber, like the efforts at speech of somebody with a mutilated tongue or 
 excided palate. Anything like it I never heard before or since ; for no subse- 
 quent listening to the same speaker ever produced nearly the same impression : 
 either he had greatly improved in elocution, or his listener had grown used to 
 him. But the night of this famous speech, nothing could have exceeded the ex- 
 traordinary nature of the sensations produced on those who heard the orator for 
 the first time. After a while we began to detect articulate sounds; then we" 
 guessed at and recognized words ; then whole sentences began to shape them- 
 selves out of the guttural fag ; and at last we grew to understand that, with an 
 elocution the most defective and abominable ever possessed by mortal orator, this 
 Tory speaker was really delivering a speech of astonishing brilliancy, ingenuity, 
 and power. The sentences had a magnificent, almost majestic rotundity, en- 
 ergy, and power ; they reminded one of something cut out of solid and glittering 
 marble, at once so dazzling and so impressive. The speech was from first to 
 last an aristocratic argument against the fitness of the working man to be any- 
 thing but a political serf. In the true fashion of the aristocrat, the speaker was 
 for patronizing the working man in every possible way; behaving to him as a 
 kind and friendly master ; seeing that he had a decent home to live in and coals 
 and blankets in winter ; but all the time insisting that the ruin of England must 
 follow any successful attempt to place political power in the hands of "poverty 
 and passion." The speech overflowed with illustration, ingenious analogy, 
 felicitous quotation, brilliant epigram, and political paradoxes that were made 
 to sound wondrously like maxims of wisdom. Despite all its hideous defects 
 of delivery, this speech was. beyond the most distant comparison, the finest de- 
 livered on the Tory side during the whole of that long and memorable debate. For
 
 EDWARD BULWER, LORD LYTTOX. 157 
 
 a time one was almost cheated into the belief that that elaborate and splendid dic- 
 t ; on. now so stately and now so sparkling, was genuine eloquence. Yet to the last 
 the listener was frequently baffled by some uncouth, semi-articulate, hardly intel- 
 ligible sound. " What on earth does he mean," asked a puzzled and indeed 
 agonized reporter of some laboring brother, " by talking so often about the polit- 
 ical authority of Joe Miller?" Careful inquiry elicited the fact that the name 
 of the political authority to which the orator had been alluding was John Mill. 
 Fortunately for his readers and his fame, the speaker had taken good care to 
 write out his oration and send the manuscript to the newspapers. 
 
 Now this inarticulate orator, this Demosthenes without the pebble-training, 
 was, as my readers have already guessed, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, then a baronet 
 and a member of the House of Commons, now a peer. Undoubtedly he suc- 
 ceeded, by this and one or two other speeches, in securing for himself a place 
 among the few great Parliamentary debaters of the day. Despite of physical 
 defects which would have discouraged almost any other man from entering into 
 public life at all, he had succeeded in winning a reputation as a great speaker in 
 a debate where Palmerston, Gladstone, Bright, and Disraeli were champions. 
 So deaf that he could not hear the arguments of his opponents, so defective in 
 utterance as to become often almost unintelligible, he actually made the House 
 of Commons doubt for a while whether a new great orator had not come 
 among them. It was not great oratory after all ; it was not true oratory of 
 any kind ; but it was a splendid imitation of the real thing the finest electro- 
 plate anywhere to be found. " If it is not Bran, it is Bran's brother," says a 
 Scottish proverb. If this speech of Bulwer-Lytton's was not true oratory, it 
 was oratory's illegitimate brother. 
 
 Nearly a whole generation before the winning of that late success, Bulwer- 
 Lytton had tried the House of Commons, and miserably, ludicrously failed. The 
 young Tory members who vociferously cheered his great anti-reform speech of 
 1860, were in their cradles when Bulwer-Lytton first addressed the House of 
 Commons, and having signally failed withdrew, as people supposed, altogether 
 from Parliamentary life. His failure was even more complete than that of 
 his friend Disraeli, and he took the failure more to heart. Rumor affirms that 
 the first serious quarrel between Bulwer and his wife arose out of her vexation 
 and disappointment at his break-down, and the bitter, provoking taunts with 
 which she gave vent to her anger. I know no other instance of a rhetorical tri- 
 umph so long delayed, and at length so completely effected. Nor can one 
 learn that it was by any intervening practice or training that Bulwer in his de- 
 clining years atoned for the failure of his youth. He was never that I know of a 
 public speaker ; he won his Parliametary success in defiance of Charles James 
 Fox's famous axiom, that a speaker can only improve himself at the expense of 
 his audiences. Between his failure and his triumph Bulwer-Lytton may be said 
 to have had no political audience. 
 
 A statesman Bulwer-Lytton never became, although he held high office in a 
 Tory Cabinet. He did little or nothing to distinguish himself, unless there be 
 distinction in writing some high-flown, eloquent despatches, such as Ernest 
 Maltravers might have penned, to the discontented islanders of Ionia ; and it 
 was he, if I remember rightly, who thought of sending out " Gladstone the 
 Philhellene" on that mission of futile conciliation which only misled the lonians 
 and amused England. It always seemed to me that in his political career Bul- 
 wer acted just as one of the heroes of his own romances might have done. Hav- 
 ing suffered defeat and humiliation, he vowed a vow to wrest from Fate a vie-
 
 158 EDWARD JBULWER, LORD LYTTON. 
 
 tory upon the very spot which had seen his discomfiture ; and he kept his word, 
 won his victory, and then calmly quitted the field forever. A more prosaic expla- 
 nation might perhaps be found in the fact that weak physical health rendered 
 it impossible for Bulwer to encounter the severe continuous labor which Eng- 
 lish political life exacts. But I prefer for myself the more romantic and less 
 commonplace explanation, and I hope my readers will do likewise. I prefer to 
 tnink of the great romancist retrieving after thirty years of silence his Parliament- 
 ary defeat, and then, having reconciled himself with Destiny, retiring from the 
 scsne contented, to struggle in that arena no more.. In all seriousness, there 
 must be some quality of greatness in the man who, after bearing such a defeat 
 for so many years, can struggle with Fate again, and accomplish so conspicuous 
 a success. 
 
 Now this is in fact one grand explanation of Bulwer-Lytton's rank in Eng- 
 lish literature. He has the self-reliance, the patience, the courage so rare among 
 literary men, by which one is enabled to extract their full and utter value from 
 whatsoever intellectual endowments he may possess. Bulwer-Lytton alone 
 among all famous English authors of our days has apparently done all that he 
 could possibly do obtained from his faculties their entire tribute. Readers of 
 the letters of poor Charlotte Bronte may remember the impatience with which 
 she occasionally complained that her idol Thackeray would not put forth his 
 whole strength. No such fault could possibly be found with Bulwer-Lytton. 
 Sooner or later he always put forth his whole strength. He had many failures, 
 but, as in the case of his political discomfiture, he had always the art of learning 
 from failure the way how to succeed, and accordingly succeeding. When he 
 wrote his wretched " Sea Captain," the critics all told him he could not produce 
 a successful drama. Bulwer thought he could. He thought the very failure of 
 that attempt would show him how to succeed another time. He was determined 
 not to give in until he had satisfied himself as to his fitness, one way or the 
 other, and so he persevered. Now observe the character of the man, and see 
 how much superior he himself is to his works, and how much of their success 
 the works owe to the man's peculiar temper. We all know what authors usually 
 are, and how they receive criticism. In ordinary cases, when the critics declare 
 some piece of work a failure, the author either is crushed for the time by the 
 fiat, or he insists that the critics are idiots, hired assassins, personal enemies, 
 and so forth ; he defiantly adheres to his own notions and his own method and 
 he probably fails. Bulwer-Lytton looked at the matter in quite a different light. 
 He said, apparently, to himself: " The critics only know what I have done ; I 
 know what I can do. From their point of view they are quite right this thing 
 is a failure. But I know that it is a failure only because I went to work the 
 wrong way. I can do something infinitely better. Their experience and their 
 comments have given me some valuable hints ; I will forthwith go to work on a 
 better principle." So Bulwer-Lytton wrote "Richelieu," "Money," and the 
 " Lady of Lyons " the last probably the most successful acting drama produced 
 in England since the days of Shakespeare, and the first hardly below it in stage 
 success. Of course I am not claiming for either of these plays a high and gen- 
 uine dramatic value. They probably bear the same resemblance to the true 
 drama that their author's Parliamentary speech-making does to true eloquence. 
 But of their popularity and their transcendent technical success there cannot be 
 the slightest doubt. Bulwer-Lytton proved to his critics that he could do bet- 
 ter than any other living man the very thing they said he could never do write 
 a play that should conquer the public and hold the stage. So to those who
 
 EDWARD BULWER, LORD LYTTON. 159 
 
 affirmed that, whatever else he might do, he never could be a Parliamentary 
 speaker, he replied by standing up when approaching the very brink of old 
 age, and delivering speeches which won the willing and generous applause of 
 Disraeli, and extorted the reluctant but manly and frank recognition of such an 
 opponent as John Bright. 
 
 Bulwer-Lytton once insisted, in an address delivered to some English liter- 
 ary institution, that the word " versatile " is generally used wrongly when we 
 speak of men who do a great many things well ; that it is a comprehensive, not 
 merely a versatile mind, each of these men has ; not a knack of adroitly turning 
 himself to many heterogeneous labors, but a capacity so wide that it unfolds 
 quite naturally many fields of labor. In this sense Bulwer-Lytton has undoubt- 
 edly a more comprehensive mind than any of his English contemporaries. He 
 has written the most successful dramas and some of the most successful novels 
 of his day ; and he has so varied the method of his novel-writing that he may 
 be said to have at least three distinct and separate principles of construction. 
 Some of his poetic translations seem to me almost absolutely the best done in 
 England of late years; many of his essays approach a true literary value, while 
 all or nearly all of them are attractive reading ; his satire, " The New Timon," 
 is the only thing of the kind which is likely to outlive his age ; and his political 
 speeches are what I have already described.* Now, to estimate the personal value 
 of these successes, let us not fail to remember that their author never was placed 
 in a condition to make literary or other labor a necessity, and that for nearly a 
 whole generation he has been in the enjoyment of actual wealth ; that in Eng- 
 land literature adds little or no social distinction to a man of Bulwer-Lytton's 
 rank; and that during a considerable portion of his life the author of "The 
 Caxtons " and " My Novel " has been tortured by almost incessant ill-health. 
 Almost everything that could tend to make a man shun continuous and patient 
 labor (opulence and ill-health would be quite enough to make most of us shun 
 it) combined to render Buhver-Lytton an idle or at least an indolent man. Yet 
 almost all the literary success he attained was due to a patient toil which would 
 have wearied out a penny-a-liner, and a laborious self-study and self-culture 
 which might have overtaxed the nerves of a Konigsberg professor. " Easy writ- 
 ing is cursed hard reading," is a maxim which Bulwer-Lytton fully understood, 
 and of which he showed his appreciation in his personal practice. 
 
 Bulwer-Lytton was born on the fringe of the aristocratic region. He can 
 hardly be said to belong to the genuine aristocracy, although of late, thanks to his 
 political opinions and his peerage, he has come to be ranked among aristocrats. 
 He is the brother of a distinguished diplomatist, Sir Henry Bulwer, and the 
 father of a somewhat promising diplomatist, not quite unknown to Washington 
 people, Robert Lytton, " Owen Meredith." Bulwer-Lytton had advanced tol- 
 erably far upon his career when he inherited through his mother a magnificent 
 estate, which enabled him to set up for an aristocrat. His baronetcy had been 
 conferred upon him by the Crown, as his peerage lately was. He started in 
 political life, like Mr. Disraeli, as a Liberal ; indeed, it was, if I am not greatly 
 mistaken, on the introduction of Bulwer-Lytton that Disraeli obtained the early 
 patronage of Daniel O'Connell, which he so soon forfeited by the political 
 tergiversation that drew down from the great Agitator the famous outburst of 
 fierce and savage scorn wherein, alluding to Disraeli's boasted Jewish origin, he 
 proclaimed him evidently descended in a right line from the blasphemous thief 
 who died impenitent on the cross. Disraeli's apostasy was sudden and glaring, 
 and he kept the field. Buhver-Lytton soon faded out of politics altogether for
 
 ICO EDWARD BULWER, LORD LYTTON. 
 
 nearly thirty years, and when he reappeared in the House of Commons and wore 
 the garb of a Tory, his old friend and political patron O'Connell had long be- 
 come a mere tradition. Nearly all of those who listened with curiosity to Bul- 
 wer-Lytton's speeches in 1859 and 1860, were curious only to hear how a great 
 romancist and dramatist would acquit himself in a part which, so far as they were 
 concerned, was entirely a new appearance. They had no personal memory of 
 his former efforts ; no recollection of the time when the young author of the 
 sparkling, piquant, and successful "Pelham" endeavored to take London by 
 storm as a political orator, and failed in the enterprise. 
 
 In one peculiarity, at least, Bulwer-Lytton the novelist surpassed all his ri- 
 vals and contemporaries. His range was so wide as to take in all circles and 
 classes of English readers. He wrote fashionable novels, historical novels, po- 
 litical novels, metaphysical novels, psychological novels, moral-purpose novels, 
 immoral-purpose novels. " Wilhelm Meister " was not too heavy nor " Tristram 
 Shandy " too light for him. He tried to rival Scott in the historical romance ; he 
 strove hard to be another Goethe in his "Ernest Maltravers " ; he quite sur- 
 passed Ainsworth's "Jack Sheppard," and the general run of what we in Eng- 
 land call " thieves' literature," in his " Paul Clifford " ; he became a sort of pinch- 
 beck Sterne in "The Caxtons," and was severely classical in "The Last Days 
 of Pompeii." One might divide his novels into at least half a dozen classes, each 
 class quite distinct and different from all the rest, and yet the one author, the 
 one Bulwer-Lytton, showing and shining through them all. Bulwer is always 
 there. He is masquerading now in the garb of a mediaeval baron, and now in 
 that of an old Roman dandy ; anon he is disguised as a thief from St. Giles's, 
 and again as a full-blooded aristocrat from the region of St. James's. But he is 
 the same man always, and you can hardly fail to recognize him even in his clev- 
 erest disguise. It may be questioned whether there is one spark of true and 
 original genius in Bulwer. Certain ideas commonly floating about in this or that 
 year he collects and brings to a focus, and by their aid he burns a distinct im- 
 pression into the public mind. Just as he expressed the thin and spurious clas- 
 sicism of one period in his Pompeian romance, so he made copy out of the pseudo- 
 science and bastard psychology of a later day in his "Strange Story." Never 
 was there in literature a more masterly and wonderful mechanic. Many-sided 
 he never was, although probably the fame of many-sidedness (if one may use so 
 ungraceful an expression) is the renown which he specially coveted and most 
 strenuously strove to win. Only genius can be many-sided, and Bulwer- Lytton's 
 marvellous capability never can be confounded with genius. The nearest ap- 
 proach to genius in all his works may be found in their occasional outbursts and 
 flashes of audacious, preposterous absurdity. The power which could palm off 
 such outrageous nonsense as in some instances he has done on two or three 
 generations of novel-readers, which could compel the public to swallow it and 
 delight in it, despite all that the satire of a Thackeray or a Jerrold could do, 
 must surely, one would almost say, have had something in it savoring of a sort 
 of genius. For there are in some even of the very best and purest of Bulvver's 
 novels whole scenes and characters which it seems almost utterly impossible 
 that any reader whatever could follow without laughter. I protest that I think 
 the author of " Ernest Maltravers " owed much of his success to the daring which 
 assumed that anything might be imposed on the public, and to the absence of 
 that sense of the ludicrous which might have made a man of a different stamp 
 laugh at his own nonsense. I assume that Bulwer wrote in perfect faith and 
 seriousness, honestly believing them to be fine, the most ridiculous, bombastic,
 
 EDWARD BULWER, LORD LYTTON. 1G1 
 
 fantastic passages in all his novels. I take it for granted that Mr. Morris's sad 
 hero, " The Man who never Laughed Again," must have been frivolity itself 
 when compared with Bulwer-Lytton at work upon a novel. The sensitive dis- 
 trust of one's own capacity, the high-minded doubt of the value of one's own 
 works, which is probably the companion, the Mentor, the tormentor often, and 
 not un frequently the conqueror and destroyer of true genius, never seems to 
 have vexed the author of "Eugene Aram" and "Godolphin." Bulwer-Lytton 
 won a great name partly because he was not a man of genius. The kind of thing 
 he tried to do could not have been done truly and successfully, in the high ar- 
 tistic sense, by any one with a capacity below that of a Shakespeare, or at least 
 a Goethe. A man of genius, but inferior genius, would have made a wretched 
 failure of it. Between the two stools of popularity and art, of time and eter- 
 nity, he n.ust have fallen to the ground. But where genius might fail to achieve 
 a splendid success, talent and audacity might turn out a magnificent sham. This 
 is the sort of success, this and none other, which I believe Bulwer-Lytton to 
 have achieved. He is the finest faiseur in the literature of to-day. His wax- 
 work gallery surpasses Madame Tussaud's ; or rather his sham art is as much 
 superior to that of a James or an Ainsworth as Madame Tussaud's gallery is to 
 Mrs. Jarley's show. That sort of sentiment which lies somewhere down in the 
 heart of every one, however commonplace, oc busy, or cynical the sentiment 
 which is represented by the applause of the galleries in a popular theatre, and 
 which cultivated audiences are usually ashamed to acknowledge was the feeling 
 which Bulwer-Lytton could always reach and draw forth. He had so much at 
 least of the true artistic instinct as to recognize that the strongest element of 
 popularity is the sentimental ; and he knew that out of ten persons who openly 
 laugh at such a thing, nine are secretly touched by it. Bulwer-Lytton found 
 much of his stock and capital in the human emotions which sympathize with 
 youthful ambition and youthful love, just as Dickens makes perpetual play with 
 the feelings which are touched by the death of children. When Claude Mel- 
 notte, transfigured into the splendid Colonel Morier, rushes forward just at the 
 critical moment, outbids yon sordid huckster for his priceless jewel Pauline, flings 
 down the purse containing double the needful sum, declares that he has bought 
 every coin of it in the cause of nations with a Frenchman's blood, and sweeps 
 away his ransomed bride amid the thunder of the galleries, of course we all 
 know that sort of thing is not poetry, or high art, or anything but splendiferous 
 rubbish. Yet it does touch most of us somehow. I know I always feel divided 
 between laughter and enthusiastic sympathy even still, when I see it for the hun- 
 dred and fiftieth time or so. In the same way, when Paul Clifford charges on 
 society the crimes of his outlaw career ; when Rienzi vows vengeance for his 
 brother's blood ; when Zanoni resigns his immortal youth that "the flower at his 
 feet may a little longer drink the dew " ; when Ernest Maltravers silently laments 
 amid all his splendor of success the obscure Arcadia of his boyish love, we can 
 all see at a glance how bombastic, gaudy, melodramatic, is the style in which the 
 author works out his ideas ; how utterly unlike the simple, strong majesty of true 
 art the whole thing is ; but yet we must acknowledge that the author under- 
 stands thoroughly how to touch a certain vein of what may be called elementary 
 emotion, common almost to all minds, which it is the object of society to repress 
 or suppress, and the object of the popular artist to stir up into activity. Preach, 
 advise, remonstrate, demonstrate as you will, the majority of us will always feel 
 inclined to give alms to beggar-women and whining little children in the snowy 
 streets. We know we are doing unwisely, and perhaps even wrongly ; we know
 
 162 EDWARD BULWER, LORD LYTTON. 
 
 that the misery which touches us is probably a trumped-up and sham misery ; 
 we know that whatever we give to the undeserving and the insincere is practically 
 withdrawn from the deserving and the sincere ; we are ashamed to be seen giving 
 the money, and yet we do give it whenever we can. Because, after all, our com- 
 mon emotion of sympathy with the more obvious, intelligible, and r would almost 
 say vulgar forms of human suffering, are far too strong for our mi derating max- 
 ims and our more refined mental conditions. So of the sympathies which heroes 
 and heroines, aspirations and agonies of the style of Bulwer-Lytton awaken in 
 us. Virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish it; and is not 
 he something of ar artis* whc recognizes this great fact in human nature, and 
 plays upon that vibrating, imperishable chord, and compels ii to give him back 
 such an applauding echo ? After all, I think there is just as much of sham and 
 of Madame Tussaud, and of the beggar-child in the snow, about Paul Dombey's 
 deathbed and Little Dorrit's filial devotion, as about the mock heroics of Claude 
 Melnotte or the domestic virtues of the Caxtons. Of course I am not compar- 
 ing Bulwer-Lytton with Dickens. The latter was a man of genius, and one of the 
 greatest humorists known at least to modern literature. But nearly all the pa- 
 thetic side of Dickens seems to me of much the same origin as the heroic side 
 of Bulwer-Lytton, and I question whether the greater part of the popularity won 
 by the author of " Bleak House "'has not been gained by a mastery of the verv 
 same kind of art as that which sets galleries applauding for Claude Melnotte, and 
 young women in tears for Eugene Aram. 
 
 There are, moreover, two points of superiority in artistic purpose which may 
 be claimed for Bulwer-Lytton over either Dickens or Thackeray. They do not, 
 perhaps, "amount to much" in any case; but they are worth mentioning. Bul- 
 wer-Lytton has more than once drawn to the best of his power a gentleman, and 
 he has often drawn, or tried to draw, a man possessed by some great, impersonal, 
 unselfish object in life. The former of these personages Dickens never seemed 
 to have known or believed in ; the latter, Thackeray never even attempted to 
 paint. Why has Dickens never drawn a gentleman ? I am not using the word 
 in the artificial, conventional, snobbish sense. I mean by a gentleman a creature 
 with intellect as well as heart, with refined and cultivated tastes, with something 
 of personal dignity about him. I do not care from what origin he may have 
 sprung, or to what class he may have belonged : there is no reason, even in Eng- 
 land, why a man born in a garret might not acquire all the ways, and thoughts, 
 and refinements of a gentleman. Among the class to which most of Dickens's 
 heroes are represented as belonging, have we not all in England known gentle- 
 men of intellect and culture ? Yet Dickens has never painted such a being. 
 Nicholas Nickleby is a plucky, honest, good-hearted blockhead ; Tom Pinch is 
 a benevolent idiot ; Eugene Wrayburn is a low-bred, impertinent snob a mere 
 "cad," as Londoners would say. I have had no sympathy with the "Saturday 
 Review" in its perpetual accusations of vulgarity against Dickens ; and I think 
 a recent English critic was pleasantly and purposely extravagant when he charged 
 the author of the " Christmas Carol " with having no loftier idea of human hap- 
 piness than the eating of plum pudding and kissing girls under the mistletoe. 
 But I do say that Dickens never drew a cultivated English gentleman or lady a 
 cultivated and refined English man or woman, if you will ; and yet I know that 
 there are such personages to be found without troublesome quest among the 
 very classes of society which he was always describing. 
 
 Now Thackeray could draw and has drawn English gentlemen and gentle- 
 women ; but has he ever drawn a high-minded, self-forgetting man or woman
 
 163 
 
 devoted to some, to any, great object, or cause, or purpose of any kind in life 
 absorbed by it and faithful to it ? Is it true that even in London society men are 
 wholly given up to dining, and paying visits, and making and spending money? 
 Is it true that all men, even in London society, pass their lives in a purposeless, 
 drifting way, making good resolves and not carrying them out ; doing good things 
 now and then out of easy, generous impulse ; loving lightly, and recovering from 
 love quickly ? Are there in London society, on the one hand, no passions ; on 
 the other hand, no simple, strong, consistent, unselfish, high-minded lives ? As- 
 suredly there are ; but Thackeray, the greatest painter of English society Eng- 
 land has ever had, chose, for some reason or another, to ignore them. Only 
 when he comes to speak of artists, more especially of painters, does he ever 
 hint that he is aware of the existence of men whose lives are consistent, stead- 
 fast, and unselfish. Surely this is a great omission. One does not care to drag 
 into this discussion the names of living illustrations ; but I should like to have 
 pointed Thackeray's attention to this and that and the other man whom, to my 
 certain knowledge, he knew and warmly, fully appreciated, and asked him, 
 " Why, when you were painting with such incomparable fidelity such illustrations 
 of English life as you chose to select, did you not think fit to picture such a sim- 
 ple, strong, consistent, magnanimous, self-forgetting, self-devoting nature as that, 
 or that, or that ? " and so on, through many examples which I or anybody could 
 have named. I suppose the honest answer would have been, " I cannot draw 
 that kind of character ; I cannot quite enter into its experiences and make it 
 look life-like as I see it; it is not in my line, and I prefer not to attempt it." 
 Now, I think it to the credit of Bulwer-Lytton, as a mere artist, that he did in- 
 clude such figures even in his wax-work gallery. He could not make them look 
 like life ; but he showed at least that he was aware of their existence, and that 
 he did his best to teach the world to recognize them. 
 
 Thus then, using with inexhaustible energy and perseverance his wonderful 
 gifts as an intellectual mechanician, Edward Bulwer-Lytton went on from 1828 
 to 1860 grinding out of his mill an almost unbroken succession of novels and 
 romances to suit all changes in public taste. I do not believe he changed his 
 themes and ways of treating them purposely, to suit the changes of public taste ; 
 but rather that, being a man of no true original and creative power, his style and 
 his views were modified by the modifying conditions of successive years. Some 
 new idea, some new way of looking at this or that question of human life came 
 up, and it attracted him who was always a close and diligent student of the world 
 and its fashions ; and he made it into a romance. Whatever new schools of 
 fiction came into existence, Bulwer-Lytton, always directing the new ideas into 
 the channel where popular and elementary sympathies flowed freely, succeeded 
 in turning each change to advantage, and keeping his place. Dickens sprang 
 up and founded a school ; and yet Bulwer-Lytton held his own. Thackeray 
 arose and established a new school, and Bulwer-Lytton, whom no human being 
 would have thought of comparing with either as a man of genius, did not lose a 
 reader. Charlotte Bronte came like a shadow, and so departed ; George Eliot 
 gave a new lift and life to romance ; the realistic school was followed by the 
 sensational school ; the Literature of Adultery ran its vulgar course and Bulwer- 
 Lytton remained where he always had been, and moulted no feather. 
 
 It is not likely that any true critic ever thought very highly of him, or indeed 
 took him quite seriously ; but for many, many years criticism, which had so 
 scoffed and girded at him once, had only civil words and applauding smiles for 
 him. How Thackeray once did make savage fun of "Bullwig," and more lately
 
 164 EDWARD BULWER, LORD LYTTON. 
 
 how Thackeray praised him ! Charles Dickens what an enthusiastic admirer of 
 the genius of his friend Lytton he too became ! And Tennyson what a fierce pas- 
 sage of arms that was long ago between Bulwer and him ; and now what cordial 
 mutual admiration ! Fonblanque and Forster, the "Athenaeum " and "Punch," 
 Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart how they all welcomed in chorus each new effort 
 of genius by the great romancist who was once the stock butt of all lively satir- 
 ists. How did this happy change come about ? Nobody ever had harder deal- 
 ing at the hands of the critics than Bulwer when his powers were really most 
 fresh and forcible ; nobody ever had more general and genial commendation than 
 shone of late years around his sunny way. How was this ? Did the critics 
 really find that they had been mistaken and own themselves conquered by his 
 transcendent merit? Did he " win the wise who frowned before to smile at 
 last" ? To some extent, yes. He showed that he was not to be written down ; 
 that no critical article could snuff him out; that he really had some stuff in him 
 and plenty of mettle and perseverance; and he soon became a literary institu- 
 tion, an accomplished fact which criticism could not help recognizing. But there 
 was much more than this operating towards Bulwer-Lytton's reconciliation with 
 criticism. He became a wealthy man, a man of fashion, a sort of aristocrat, with 
 yet a sincere love for the society of authors and artists, with a taste for encour- 
 aging private theatricals and endowing literary institutions, and with a splendid 
 country house. He became a genial, golden link between literature and society. 
 Even Bohemia was enabled by his liberal and courteous good-will to penetrate 
 sometimes into the regions of Belgravia. The critics began to fall in love with 
 him. I do not believe that Lord Lytton made himself thus agreeable to his lit- 
 erary brethren out of any motive whatever but that of honest goodfellowship and 
 kindness. I have heard too many instances of his frank and brotherly friendli- 
 ness to utterly obscure writers, who could be of no sort of service to him or to 
 anybody, not to feel satisfied of his unselfish good-nature and his thorough loy- 
 alty to that which ought to be the esprit de corps of the literary profession. But 
 it is certain that he thus converted enemies into friends, and stole the gall out of 
 many an inkstand, and the poison from many a penman's feathered dart. Not 
 that the critics simply sold their birthright of bitterness for an invitation to din- 
 ner or the kindly smile of a literary Peer. But you cannot, I suppose, deal very 
 rigidly with the works of a man who is uniformly kind to you ; who brings you 
 into a sort of society which otherwise you would probably never have a chance 
 of seeing ; who, being himself a lord, treats you, poor critic, as a friend and 
 brother ; and whose works, moreover, are certain to have a great public success, 
 no matter what you say or leave unsaid. The temptation to look for and discov- 
 er merit in such books is strong indeed perhaps too strong for frail critical na- 
 ture. Thus arises the great sin of English criticism. It is certainly not venal ; 
 it is hardly ever malign. Mere ill-nature, or impatience, or the human delight 
 of showing one's strength, may often induce a London critic to deal too sharply 
 with some new and nameless author ; but although we who write books are each 
 and all of us delighted to persuade ourselves that any disparaging criticism must 
 be the result of some personal hatred, I cannot remember ever having had serious 
 reason to believe that a London critic had attacked a book because of his per- 
 sonal ill-will to the author. The sin is quite of another kind a tendency to 
 praise the books of certain authors merely because the critic knows the men so 
 intimately, and likes them so well, that he is at once naturally prejudiced in their 
 favor, and disinclined to say anything which could hurt or injure them. Thus 
 of late criticism has had hardly anything to say of Lord Lytton, except in the way
 
 EDWARD BULWER, LORD LYTTON. "16:, 
 
 of praise. He is the head, and patron, and ornament of a great London literary 
 " Ring." I use this word because none other could so well convey to a reader in 
 New York a clear idea of the friendly professional unity of the coterie I desire to 
 describe; but I wish it to be distinctly understood that I do not attribute any- 
 thing like venality or hired partisanship of any kind to the literary Ring of which 
 Lord Lytton is the sparkling gem. Of course it has become, as such cliques al- 
 ways must become, somewhat of a Mutual Admiration Society ; and it is certain 
 that a place in that brotherhood secures a man against much disparaging criti- 
 cism. There are indeed literary cliques in London, of a somewhat lower range 
 than this, where the influence of personal friendships does operate in a manner 
 that closely borders upon a sort of literary corruption. But Lord Lytton and 
 his friends and admirers are not of that sort. They are friends together, and 
 they do admire each other, and I suppose everybody (save one person) likes Lord 
 Lytton now ; and so it is only in the rare case of a fresh, independent outsider, 
 like the critic who wrote in the "Westminster Review" some two years ago, 
 that a really impartial, keen, artistic survey is taken of the works of him that 
 was "Bullwig/ 1 When Lytton published his " Caxtons," the reviewer of the 
 "Examiner," even up to that time a journal of great influence and prestige, hav- 
 ing nearly exhausted all possible modes of panegyric, bethought himself that som* 
 unappreciative and cynical persons might possibly think there was a lack of origi- 
 nality in a wo.k so obviously constructed after the model of "Tristram Shandy." 
 So he hastened to confute or convince all such persons by pointing out that ia 
 this very fact consisted the special claim of "The Caxtons " to absolute origi- 
 nality. The original genius of Lytton was proved by his producing so excellent 
 a copy. Don't you see? You don't, perhaps. But then if you were intimate 
 with Lord Lytton, and were liked by him, and were a performer in the private 
 theatricals at Knebworth, his country seat, you would probably see it quite 
 clearly, and agree with it, every word. 
 
 There was one person indeed who had no toleration for Lord Lytton, or for his 
 friendly critics. That was Lord Lytton's wife. There really is no scandal in allud- 
 ing to a conjugal quarrel which was brought so persistently under public notice by 
 one of the parties as that between Buhver- Lytton and his wife. I do not know 
 whether I ought to call it a quarrel. Can that be called a fight, piteously asks the 
 man in Juvenal, where my enemy only beats and I am merely beaten ? Can that be 
 called a quarrel in which, so far as the public could judge, the wife did all the denun- 
 ciation, and the husband made no reply ? Lady Lytton wrote novels for the pur- 
 pose of satirizing her husband and his friends his parasites, she called them. 
 Bulwer- Lytton she gracefully described as having "the head of a goat on the 
 body of a grasshopper" a description which has just enough of comical truth- 
 fulness in its savage ferocity to make it specially cruel to the victim of the sa- 
 tire, and amusing to the unconcerned public. Lady Lytton attributed to her 
 husband the most odious meannesses, vices, and cruelties ; but the public, with all 
 its love of scandal, seems to have steadfastly refused to take her ladyship's word 
 for these accusations. Dickens she denounced and vilified as a mere parasite 
 and sycophant of her husband. At one time she poured out a gush of fulsome eulogy 
 on Thackeray because he apparently was not one of Lytton's friends ; afterwards, 
 when the relationship between " Pelham " and " Pendennis " became friendly, 
 she changed her tune and tried to bite the file, to satirize the great satirist. 
 Disraeli she caricatured under the title of "Jericho Jabber." This sort of thing 
 she kept always going on. Sometimes she issued pamphlets addressed to the 
 women of England, calling on them to take up her quarrel which somehow
 
 Ififi EDWARD 13ULWER, LORD LYTTON. 
 
 they did not seem inclined to do. Once when Lord Lytton, then only Sir Ed- 
 ward, was on the hustings, addressing his constituents at a county election, her 
 ladyship suddenly mounted the platform and "went for" him. Sir Edward 
 and his friends prudently and quietly withdrew. I do not know anything of the 
 merits of the quarrel, and have always been disposed to think that something 
 like insanity must have been the explanation of much of Lady Lytton's conduct. 
 But it is beyond doubt that her husband's demeanor was remarkable for its 
 quiet, indomitable patience and dignity. Lately the public has happily heard 
 little of Lady Lytton's complaints. I did not even know whether she was still 
 living, until I saw a little book announced the other day by some publisher, 
 which bore her name. Let her pass with the one remark that her long suc- 
 cession of bitter attacks upon her husband does not seem to have done him 
 any damage in the estimation of the world. 
 
 It is not likely that posterity will preserve much of Lord Lytton's writings. 
 They do not, I think, add to literature one original character. Even the glori- 
 fied murderer or robber, the Eugene Aram or Paul Clifford sort of person, had 
 been done and done much better by Schiller, by Godwin, and by others, before 
 Bulwer- Lytton tried him at second hand. As pictures of English society, those 
 of them which profess to deal with modern English life have no value whatever. 
 The historical novels, the classical novels, are glaringly false in their color and 
 tone. Some of the personages in " The Last Days of Pompeii " are a good 
 deal more like modern English dandies than most of the people who are given 
 out as such in " Pelham." The attempts at political satire in "Paul Clifford," 
 at broad humor in " Eugene Aram " (the Corporal and his cat for example), are 
 feeble and miserable. There is hardly one touch of refined and genuine pathos 
 of pathos drawn from other than the old stock conventional sources in the 
 whole of the romances, plays, and poems. The one great faculty which the 
 author possessed was the capacity to burnish up and display the absolutely com- 
 monplace, the merely conventional, the utterly unreal, so that it looked new, 
 original, and real in the eyes of the ordinary public, and sometimes even suc- 
 ceeded, for the hour, in deceiving the expert. Bulwer-Lytton's romance is only 
 the romance of the London " Family Herald " or the " New York Ledger," plus 
 high intellectual culture and an intimate acquaintance with the best spheres of 
 letters, art, and fashion. I own that I have considerable admiration for the man 
 who, with so small an original outfit, accomplished so much. So successful a 
 romancist ; occasionally almost a sort of poet; a perfect master of the art of 
 writing plays to catch audiences ; so skilful an imitator of oratory that, despite 
 almost unparalleled physical defects, he once nearly persuaded the world that 
 his was genuine eloquence who shall say that the capacity which can do all 
 this is not something to be admired ? It is a clever thing to be able to make 
 ornaments of paste which shall pass with the world for diamonds ; mock-turtle 
 soup which shall taste like real ; wax figures which look at first as if they were 
 alive. Of the literary art which is akin to this, our common literature has prob- 
 ably never had so great a master as Lord Lytton. Such a man is especially the 
 one to stand up as the appropriate representative of literature in such an assem- 
 bly as the English House of Lords. I should be sorry to see a Browning, a 
 Thackeray, a Carlyle, a Tennyson, a Dickens there ; but I think Lord Lytton 
 is in his right place a splendid sham author in a splendid sham legislative 
 assembly.
 
 "PAR MOBILE FRATRUM THE TWO NEWMANS." 
 
 * 6 fTlHE truth, friend," exclaims Mr. Arthur Pendennis, debating some ques- 
 1 tion with his comrade Warrington ; " where is the truth? Show it me. 
 I see it on both sides. I see it in this man who worships by act of Parliament, 
 and is rewarded with a silk apron and five thousand a year ; in that man who, 
 driven fatally by the remorseless logic of his creed, gives up everything, 
 friends, fame, dearest ties, closest vanities, the respect of an army of churchmen, 
 the recognized position of a leader, and passes over, truth-impelled, to the 
 enemy in whose ranks he is ready to serve henceforth as a nameless private 
 soldier ; I see the truth in that man as I do in his brother, whose logic drives 
 him to quite a different conclusion, and who, after having passed a life in vain 
 endeavors to reconcile an irreconcilable book, flings it at last down in despair, 
 and declares, with tearful eyes and hands up to heaven, his revolt and recanta- 
 tion." 
 
 Perhaps many American readers, meeting with this passage, may have 
 supposed that the two brothers here described were merely typical figures, in- 
 vented almost at random by Thackeray to enable Pendennis to point his moral 
 But in England people know that the two brothers are real personages, and 
 still live. I saw one of them a few nights ago, the one last mentioned by Ar 
 thur Pendennis. I saw him, as he is indeed often to be seen, the centre and 
 leader of a little group or knot, a hopeless minority, vainly striving by force 
 of argument and logic, of almost unlimited erudition, and a keen bright intel- 
 lect, to obtain public attention for something which the public persisted in re- 
 garding as an idle crotchet, an impotent craze. The other brother, the elder, 
 is a man whose secession from the Church of England has lately been described 
 by Disraeli, in the preface to the collected edition of his works, as having 
 " dealt a blow to the Church under which it still reels." " That extraordinary 
 event," says Disraeli, "has been ' apologized for ' but has never been explained. 
 It was a mistake and a misfortune." Probably no reader of " The Galaxy " 
 will now need to be told that the typical brothers alluded to by Pendennis are 
 John Henry and Francis W. Newman. 
 
 The Atlantic deals curiously and capriciously with reputations. Both 
 these brothers Newman seem to me to be less known in America than they 
 deserve to be. John Henry in especial I found to be thus comparatively ig- 
 nored in the United States. He is beyond doubt one of the greatest, certainly 
 one of the most influential Englishmen of our time. He has engraved his 
 name deeply on the history of his age. He has led perhaps the most remark- 
 able religious movement known to England for generations. He is one of the 
 very few men whose lofty and commanding intellect has been acknowledged 
 and admired by all sects and parties. Gather together any company of emi- 
 nent Englishmen, however select in its composition, however splendid in its 
 members, and John Henry Newman will be among the few especially conspic- 
 uous. 
 
 Perhaps most of my readers will be of opinion that Newman's intellect 
 lias been sadly misused ; that his influence has been for the most part disastrous. 
 But no one who knows anything of the subject can deny the greatness alike of 
 the intellect and of the influence. Let me add, too, that no enemy ever yet
 
 168 "PAR NOBILE FRATRUM THE TWO NEWMANS." 
 
 called into question the simple sincerity, the blameless purity of John Henry 
 Newman's purposes and character. Of later years he has been rarely seen in 
 London, for his duties keep him in Birmingham, where he is at the head of a 
 religious and educational institution. I have heard that years are telling heav- 
 ily on him, and that when he now preaches he is listened to with the kind of 
 half-melancholy reverence which hangs on the words of a great man who is 
 already beginning to be a portion of the past. But his influence was a power 
 almost unequalled in its day, and that day has not yet wholly faded. 
 
 The Newman brothers are Londoners by birth, sons of a wealthy banker of 
 Lombard street the British Wall street. Both were educated at Ealing school, 
 and both went to the University of Oxford. John Henry is by some four years 
 the senior of Francis, who was born in 1805, and who now looks at least a 
 dozen or iifteen years younger than his distinguished brother. Both men vvc.re 
 endowed with remarkable gifts; both had a splendid faculty of acquiring 
 knowledge. John Henry Newman became a clergyman of the Established 
 Church. He was a close and intimate friend of Keble, of Pusey, and of Man- 
 ning. He grew to be regarded as one of the rising stars of Protestantism. 
 No name, soon, stood higher than his. His friends loved him, and Protestant 
 England began to revere him. Now observe the change that came on these 
 two brothers, alike so gifted and earnest, alike so wooed by the promise of 
 brilliant worldly career. Two movements of thought, having perhaps a com- 
 mon origin in the dissatisfaction with the existing intellectual stagnation of 
 the Church, but tending in widely different directions, carried the brothers 
 along with them "seized," to use the words of Richter, " their bleeding hearts 
 and flung them different ways." The younger brother found himself drawn 
 toward rationalism. He could not subscribe the Thirty-Nine Articles for his de- 
 gree as a Master ; he left Oxford. He wandered for years in the East, endeavor- 
 ing, not very successfully, to teach Christianity on its broadest basis to the Mo- 
 hammedans ; and he finally returned to England to take his place among the 
 leaders of that school of free thought which the ignorant, the careless, or the 
 malignant set down as infidelity. In the mean time his brother became one of 
 the pioneers of a still more unexpected movement. In the English Church 
 for a long time everything had seemed to be settled and at rest. The old 
 controversy with Rome appeared out of date, unnecessary, and perhaps vulgar. 
 Everything was just as it should be stable and respectable. But it suddenly 
 occurred to some earnest, unresting sonls, like that of Keble souls "without 
 haste and without rest," like Goethe's star to insist that the Church of Eng- 
 land had higher claims and nobler duties than those of preaching harmless 
 sermons and enriching bishops. Keble could not bear to think of the Church 
 taking pleasure since all is well. He urged on some of the more vigorous and 
 thoughtful minds around him that they should reclaim for the Church the place 
 which ought to be hers as the true successor of the Apostles. He claimed for 
 her that she, and she alone, was the real Catholic Church, authorized to teach 
 all nations, and that Rome had wandered away from the right path, foregone 
 the glorious mission which she might have maintained. One of Keble's clos- 
 est and dearest friends was John Henry Newman, and Keble regarded New- 
 man as a man qualified beyond all others to become the teacher and leader of 
 the new movement. Keble preached a famous sermon in 1838, and inau- 
 givrated the publication of a series of tracts designed to vindicate the real mis- 
 sion of the Church of England. This was the Tractarian movement, which had 
 early, various, and memorable results. John Henry Newman wrote the most
 
 "PAR NOBILE FRATRUM THE TWO NEWMANS." 169 
 
 celebrated of all the tracts, the famous "No. 90," which drew down the censure 
 of the University authorities on the ground that it actually tended to abolish 
 all difference between the Church of England and the Church of Rome. Yet 
 a little, and the gradual workings of Xewman's mind became evident to all the 
 world. The brightest and most penetrating intellect in the English Protestant 
 Church was publicly and deliberately withdrawn from her service, and John 
 Henry Xe\vman became a priest of the Church of Rome. To tliis had the in- 
 quiry conducted him which led his friend Dr. Pusey merely to endeavor to 
 incorporate some of the mysticism and the symbols of Some with the practk-e 
 and the progress of the English Church; which had led Dr. Kcble only to a 
 more liberal and truly Christianlike temper of Protestant faith; which had 
 sent Francis Newman into radical rationalism. The two brothers were intel- 
 lectually divided forever. Each renounced a career rich in promise for mere 
 conscience' sake ; and the one went this way, the other that. 
 
 Disraeli has in no wise exaggerated the depth and painfulness of the sensa- 
 tion produced among English Protestants by the secession of John Henry 
 Newman. It was of course received upon the opposite side with correspond- 
 ing exultation. No man, indeed, could be less qualified than Mr. Disraeli to 
 understand the tremendous, the irresistible force of conviction in a nature like 
 that of Newman. The brilliant master of political tactics has made it evident 
 that he did not understand the motive of Newman's secession any more than he 
 did the meaning of the title of Newman's celebrated book, "Apologia pi-o Vita 
 sua." " That extraordinary event," says Disraeli, speaking of the secession, 
 " has been apologized for, but has never been explained." Evidently Disraeli 
 believed that the English word " apology " is the correct translation of the Lat- 
 inized Greek word " apologia," which it most certainly is not. Nothing could 
 have been further from Newman's mind or from the purpose, or indeed from 
 the title of his book, than to apologize for his secession. On the contrary, the 
 book is sharply and pertinaciously aggressive. It was called forth by an at- 
 tack made on Dr. Newman by the Rev. Charles Kingsley. I think Kingsley 
 was in the main right in his views, but he was rough and blundering in his ex- 
 pression of them, and he is about as well qualified to carry on a controversy 
 with John Henry Newman as Governor Hoffman would be to undertake a 
 rhetorical competition with Mr. Wendell Phillips. Kingsley's bluff, rude, illo- 
 gical way of fighting, his " wild and skipping spirit," were placed at ludicrous 
 and fearful disadvantage. Newman " went for him " unsparingly, and literally 
 tore him with the beak and claws of logic, satire, and invective. One was re- 
 minded of Pascal's attacks on the Jesuits only that this time the wit and 
 power were on the side which might fairly be called Jesuitical. Out of this 
 merciless onslaught on Kingsley came the "Apologia pro Vita sufi," in which 
 Newman endeavored to vindicate and glorify, not excuse or apologize for, his 
 strange secession. The book is well worth reading, if only as a curious illus- 
 tration of the utter inadequacy of human intellect and human logic to secure a 
 soul from the strangest wandering, the saddest possible illusion. You cannot 
 read a page of it without admiration for the intellect of the author, and without 
 pity for the poverty even of the richest intellectual gifts where guidance is 
 sought in a faith and in things which transcend the limits of human logic. 
 
 John Henry Newman threw his whole soul, energy, genius, and fame into 
 the cause of the Roman Catholic Church. Rome welcomed him with that cor- 
 dial welcome she always gives to a new-comer, and she utilized him and set 
 work for him to do. Macaulay has shown very effectively in one of his essays
 
 170 'TAR NOBILE FRATRUM THE TWO NEWMANS." 
 
 how tho Roman Church seldom loses any one it has gained, because it is so 
 skilful iu. finding for everybody his proper place, and assigning him in her ser- 
 vice the task he is best qualilied to do, so that her ambition becomes his ambi- 
 tion, her interest his interest, her conquests his conquests. Newman appears 
 to have been made a sort of missionary from Rome to the intellect and culture 
 of the English people. Within the Church to which he had gone over he be- 
 came an immense influence and almost unequalled power. The Catholics de- 
 lighted to have a leader whose intellect no one could pretend to despise, whoso 
 gifts and culture had been panegyrized in the most glowing terms, over and 
 over again, by the foremost statesmen and divines of the Protestant Church. 
 Newman was appointed head of the oratory of St. Philip Neri at Birmingham, 
 and was for some years rector of the Roman Catholic University of Dublin. 
 He rarely came before the public. In all the arts that make an orator or a 
 great preacher he is strikingly deficient. His manner is constrained, awk- 
 ward, and even ungainly ; his voice is thin and weak. His bearing is not im- 
 pressive. His gaunt, emaciated figure, his sharp, eagle face, his cold, medita- 
 tive eye, rather repel than attract those who see him for the first time. The 
 matter of his discourse, whether sermon, speech, or lecture, is always admir- 
 able, and the language is concise, scholarly, expressive perhaps a little over- 
 weighted with thought; but there is nothing there of the orator. It is as a 
 writer, and as an " influence " I don't know how better to express it that 
 Newman has become famous. I doubt if we have many better prose writers. 
 He is full of keen, pungent, satirical humor ; and there is, on the other hand, a 
 subtle vein of poetry and of pathos suffusing nearly all he writes. One of the 
 finest and one of the most frequently quoted passages in modern English liter- 
 uttire is Newman's touching and noble apostrophe to England's "Saxon 
 Bible." He has published volumes of verse which I think belong to the very 
 highest order of verse-making that is not genuine poetry. They are full of 
 thought, feeling, pathos, tenderness, beauty of illustration; they are all that 
 verse can be made by one who just fails to be a poet. An English critical re- 
 view not long since classed the poetical works of Dr. Newman and George Eliot 
 together, as the nearest approach which intellect and culture have made in our 
 days toward the production of genuine poetry. When Newman made his fa- 
 mous attack on Dr. Achilli, an Italian priest who had renounced the Roman 
 Church, and whom Newman publicly accused of many crimes, the judge who 
 had to sentence the accuser to the payment of a fine for libel pronounced a 
 panegyric on his intellect and his character such as is rarely heard from an 
 English judgment seat. Not long after, when the subject came up somehow in 
 the House of Commons, Mr. Gladstone broke into an encomium of John Henry 
 Newman which might have seemed poetical by hyperbole to those who did not 
 know the merits of the one man and the conscientious truthfulness of the 
 other. We have heard the testimony borne by Mr. Disraeli to the importance 
 of Newman's intellect as a support of the English Church, and the shock which 
 was caused by his withdrawal. Seldom, indeed, has a man seceded from one 
 church and become the aggressive, unsparing, intolerant champion of its 
 enemy, and yet retained the esteem and the affection of those whom he 
 abandoned, as this good, great, mistaken Englishman has done. 
 
 The two brothers then are hopelessly divided. One consorts with tho Pope 
 and Cardinal Wiseman and Archbishop Manning, and is the idol and saint of 
 the Ultramontanes, and devotes his noble intellect to the task of making the 
 Irish Catholic a more bigoted Catholic than ever. The other falls in with the
 
 "PAR XOBILE FRATRUM THE TWO NEWMANS." 171 
 
 little band, that once seemed a forlorn hope, of what we may call the philo- 
 sophical radicals of England. lie becomes a professor of the rationalistic 
 University of London, and a contributor to the free-thinking " Westminster 
 Review." Judging each brother's success merely by what each sought to do, 
 I suppose the career of the Catholic has been the more successful. Not that I 
 think he has made much way toward the conversion of England to Catholi- 
 cism. With all its Puseyism and ritualism, England seems to hav.e little real 
 inclination toward the doctrines of Rome. There is indeed a distinguished 
 " convert" every now and then the Marquis of Bute some two years ago, 
 Lord Robert Montagu last year ; but the great mass of the English people re- 
 main obstinately anti-papal. The tendency is far more toward Rationalism 
 than toward Romanism ; with the Newman \vho withdrew from all churches 
 rather than with the Newman who renounced one church to enter another. 
 Therefore, when I say that the career of John Newman appears to me to have 
 boon more successful than that of Francis, I mean only that he has been a 
 greater influence, a more powerful instrument of his cause than his brother 
 ever has been. The bsast was made unjustly for Voltaire that he almost ar- 
 rested the progress of Christianity in Europe. I think the admirers of John 
 Newman might claim for him that he actually did for a time at least arrest the 
 progress of Protestantism in England. He had indeed the great advantage of 
 passing from one organization to another. Like Coriolanus, when he seceded 
 he became the leader of the enemy's army. It was quite otherwise with his 
 brother, who leaving the English Church was thenceforward only an individual, 
 and for the most part an isolated worker. But indeed, with all his intellect, his 
 high culture, and his indomitable courage, Francis Newman has never been an 
 influential man in English politics. It may be that his keen logic is too un- 
 compromising; and there can be no practical statesmanship without compro- 
 mise. It may be that there is something eccentric, egotistic (in the less offen- 
 sive sense), and crotchety in that sharp, independent, and self-sufficing intelli- 
 gence. Whatever the reason, nine out often men in London set down Francis 
 Newman as hopelessly given over to crotchets, while the tenth man, admiring 
 however much his character and his capacity, is sometimes grieved and some- 
 times provoked that both together do not make him a greater power in the na- 
 tion. I never remember Francis Newman to have been in accord with what 
 I may call the average public opinion of English political life, except in one 
 instance; and in that case I believe him to have been wrong. He was in 
 favor of the Crimean war; and for this once therefore he found himself on the 
 side of the majority. As if to mark the contrast of views which it has been 
 the fate of these two brothers to present during their lives, it so happened that, 
 so far as John Henry's opinions on the subject could be learned by the public, 
 they were against the war. At least they were decidedly against the Turks. 
 I remember hearing him deliver at that time a course of lectures in an educa- 
 tional institution, having for their subject the origin and the results of the 
 Ottoman settlement in Europe. I well remember how effectively and vividly 
 hi- argued, with his thin voice and his constrained, ungraceful action, that the 
 Turk had no greater moral right to the territory he occupies, but does not culti- 
 vate and improve, than the pirate has to the sea over which he sails. But 
 Francis Newman was then for once mixed up with the majority; and I doubt 
 whether he could have much liked the unwonted position. He certainly took 
 care to explain more than once that his reasons for taking that side were not 
 those of the average Englishman. He thus might have given some of his 
 casual associates occasion to say of him, as Charles Mathews says of woman
 
 172 "PAR NOBILE FRATRUM THE TWO NEWMANS." 
 
 in general, that even when he is right he is right in a wrong sort of 
 way. For myself I am inclined to reverse the saying, and declare of Francis 
 Newman that even when he is wrong he is wrong in a right sort of way. He 
 was right, and in a very right sort of way, when he came out from his habitual 
 seclusion during the American civil war, and stood up on many a platform for 
 the cause of the Union. Like his brother, he is a poor public speaker. At his 
 very best he is the professor talking to his class, not the orator addressing a 
 crowd. His manner is singulai'ly constrained, ineffective, and even awkward ; 
 his voice is thin and weak. There is a certain very small and rare class of 
 bad speakers, which has yet a virtue and charm of its own almost equal to elo- 
 quence. I am now thinking of men utterly wanting in all the arts and graces, 
 in all the power and effect of rhetorical delivery, but who yet with whatever 
 defect of manner can say such striking things, can put such noble thoughts into 
 expressive words, can be so entirely original and so completely masters of their 
 subject, that they seem to be orators in all but voice and manner. Horace 
 Greeley always is, to me at least, such a speaker; so is Stuart Mill. These are 
 bad speakers as Jane Eyre or Consuelo may have been an unlovely woman ; 
 all the rules declare against them, all the intelligences and sympathies are in 
 their favor. But Francis Newman is not a speaker of this kind. He is feeble, i n- 
 elfective, and often even commonplace. Nature has denied to him the faculty of 
 adequately expressing himself in spoken words. He is almost as much out of hi.s 
 element when addressing a public meeting as he would be if ho were singing 
 In an opera. Few Englishmen living can claim to be the intellectual superiors 
 of Francis Newman; but you would never know Francis Newman by hearing 
 him speak on a platform. The last time I heard him address a public meeting 
 was on an occasion to which I have already alluded. He was presiding over 
 an assemblage called together to protest against compulsory vaccination. The 
 Government and Parliament have lately made very stringent the enactment for 
 compulsory vaccination, in consequence of the terrible increase of small-pox. 
 There is in London, as in all other great capitals, a certain knot of persons who 
 would refuse to wash their faces or kiss their wives if Government ordered or 
 even recommended either performance. Therefore there was a small agitation 
 got up against vaccination, and Francis Newman consented to become the 
 president of one of its meetings. This meeting was held in Exeter Hall not 
 indeed in the vast hall where the oratorios are performed, and whore once 
 upon a time Henry Ward Beecher pleaded the cause of the Union ; but in the 
 " lower hall," as it is called, a little subterranean den. Some qminent classic 
 person, I really forget who, being reproached with the small size of his apart- 
 ments, declared that he should be only too glad if he could fill his rooms, small 
 as they were, with wen his friends. The organizers of this meeting might have 
 been content if they could have filled the hall, small as it was, with men and 
 women their friends. The attendance was not nearly up to the size of the 
 room. There on the platform sat the good, the gifted, and the fearless Francis 
 Newman; and immediately around him were some dozen embodied and living 
 crotchets and crazes. There was this learned physician who has communica- 
 tion with the spirit-world regularly. There was this other eminent person 
 who has long been trying in vain to teach an apathetic Government how to 
 cure crime on phrenological principles. There was Smith, who is opposed to 
 all wars ; Brown, who firmly believes that every disease comes from the use 
 of salt; Jones, who has at his own expense put into cimilation thousands of 
 copies of his work against the employment of medical men in puerperal cases- 
 Robinson, who is ready to spend his last coin for the purpose of proving that
 
 'TAR NOBILE FRATRUM THE TWO NEWMANS." 173 
 
 vaccination and original sin are one and the same thing. How often, oh, how 
 often have I not heard those theories expounded! How often have I marvelled 
 at the extraordinary perversion of ingenuity by which figures, facts, philosophy, 
 and Scripture are jumbled up together to convince you that the moon is made 
 of green cheese! We just wanted on this memorable occasion the awful per- 
 sons who prove to you that the earth is flat, and the indefatigable ladies who 
 expound their claims to the British crown feloniously usurped by Queen Vic- 
 toria. There sat Francis Newman presiding over this preposterous little con- 
 clave, and having of course what seemed to him satisfactory and just reasons 
 for the position he occupied. He spoke rather better than usual, and there was 
 a bewildering bravery of paradox writhing through his speech which must 
 have delighted his listeners. The meeting came to nothing. The papers took 
 hardly any notice of it (London papers were never in my time so entirely 
 conventional, respectable, and Philistiuish as they are just now) ; and New- 
 man's effort went wholly in vain. I have mentioned it only because it was 
 illustrative or typical of so much in the man's whole career. So much of lovely 
 independence; such a disdain of public opinion and public ridicule; such an 
 absence of all perception of the ridiculous ! Thus it was that he endeavored 
 to rouse up the English public, who except for the extreme democracy always 
 have had a strong hankering for the Austrian Government, to a sense of the 
 crimes of the House of Hapsburg against its subjects. Thus he was for reform 
 in Parliament when Parliamentary reform was a theme supposed to be dead 
 and buried; when Palmcrston had trampled on its ashes, and Disraeli had 
 made merry over its coffin. Thus he came out for tile American Union when 
 John Bright stood almost alone in the House of Commons, and Mill and Gold- 
 win Smith and two or three others were trying to organize public opinion out- 
 side the House. The same qualities after all which made Newman nearly sub- 
 lime in these latter instances, were just those which made him well nigh ridic- 
 ulous in the anti-vaccination business. But in all the instances alike the same 
 thing can be said of Francis Newman. There is a turn or twist of some kind 
 in his nature and intellect which always seems to mar his l^est efforts at practi- 
 cal accomplishment. Even his purely literary and scholastic productions are 
 marked by the same fatal characteristic. All the outfit, all the materials are 
 there in surprising profusion. There is the culture, there is the intellect, the 
 patience, the sincerity. But the result is not in proportion to *Jie value of the 
 materials. The blending is not complete, is not effectual. Something has 
 always intervened or been wanting. Francis Newman has never done and 
 probably never will do anything equal to his strength and his capacity. 
 
 I am not inviting a comparison between these two brothers, so alike in their 
 sincerity, their devotion, their courage, and their gifts so singularly unlike, 
 so utterly divided, in their creeds and their careers. My own sympathies, 
 of course, naturally go with Francis Newman, who has in a vast majority of 
 instances been a teacher of some opinion, a champion of some political cause 
 of which I am proud to be a disciple and a follower. But I suppose the greater 
 intellect and the richer gifts were those which were given up so meekly and 
 wholly to the service of the dogmatism of the Roman Catholic Church. Tlw 
 career of John Henry Newman may probably be regarded as having practically 
 clewed. His latest work of note, " The Grammar of Assent," does not indeed 
 pt^om to show any falling away of his intellectual powers; but I have heard 
 that his physical strength has suffered severely with years, and he never 
 was a strong man. He is now in his seventieth year, and it is therefore only 
 reasonable to regard him as one who has done his work and whose life is fullj
 
 174 "PAR NOBILE FRATRUM THE TWO NEWMANS." 
 
 open to the judgment of his time. May I be allowed to say that I think he has 
 done some good even to that English Church to which his secession struck so 
 heavy a blow? Newman was really the mainspring of that movement which 
 proposed to rescue the Church from apathy, from dull easy-going quiescence, 
 from the perfunctory discharge of formal duties, and to quicken her once again 
 with the spirit of a priesthood, to arouse her to the living work, physical and 
 spiritual, of an ecclesiastical sovereignty. The impulse indeed overshot itself 
 in his case, and was misdirected in the case of Dr. Pusey, plunging blindly 
 into Romanism with the one, degenerating into a somewhat barren symbolism 
 with the other. But throughout the English Church in general there has been 
 surely a higher spirit at work since that famous Oxford movement which was 
 inspired by John Henry Newman. I think its influence has been more active, 
 more beneficent, more human, and yet at the same time more spiritual, since 
 that sudden and startling impulse was given. For the man himself little more 
 needs to be said. Every one acknowledges his gifts and his virtues. No one 
 doubts that in his marvellous change he sought only the pure truth. His the- 
 ology, I presume, is not that of the readers of "The Galaxy" in general, any 
 more than it is mine ; but I trust there is none of us so narrowed to his own 
 form of Christianity as to refuse his respect and admiration to one so highly 
 lifted above the average of men in goodness and intellect, even though his 
 career may have been sacrificed at the shrine of a faith that is not ours. For 
 me, I am sometimes lost in wonder at the sacrifice, but I can only think with 
 respect and even veneration of the man. 
 
 The younger brother needs no apology or vindication, in the United States 
 especially. He is, be it understood, a thoroughly religious man. He has never 
 sunk into materialism or frittered away his earnestness in mere skepticism. 
 He is not orthodox he has gone his own way as regards church dogma and 
 discipline; but except in the vulgarest and narrowest application of the word, 
 he is no " infidel." The United States owe him some good feeling, for lie was 
 one of the few eminent men in England who never were faithless to the cause 
 of the Union, and never doubted of its ultimate triumph. I have now before 
 me one of the most powerful arguments addressed to an English audience for 
 the Union and against secession that reason, justice, and eloquence could frame. 
 It is a pamphlet published in 1863 by " F. W. Newman, late Professor at Uni- 
 versity College, London," in the form of a " Letter to a Friend who had joined 
 the Southern Independence Association." How wonderful it seems now that 
 such arguments ever should have been needed ; how few there were then in 
 England who regarded them ; how completely time has justified and sealed 
 them as true, right, and prophetic. I read the pages over, and all the old 
 struggle comes back with its rancors and its dangers, and I honor anew the 
 brave man who was not afraid to stand as one of a little group, isolated, de- 
 nounced, and laughed at, confiding always injustice and time. 
 
 The story of these two brothers is on the whole as strange a chapter as any 
 I know in the biography of human intellect and creed. I think it may at least 
 teach us a lesson of toleration, if nothing better. The very pride of intellect 
 itself can hardly pretend to look down with mere scorn upon beliefs or errors 
 which have carried off in contrary directions these two Newmans. The stern- 
 est bigot can scarcely refuse to admit that truthfulness and goodness may abide 
 without the limits of his own creed, when he remembers the high and noble 
 example of pure, true, and disinterested lives which these intellectually-sun- 
 ilered brothers alike have given to their fellow-men
 
 ARCHBISHOP MANNING. 
 
 ST. JAMES'S HALL, London, is primarily a place for concerts and singers, 
 as Exeter Hall is. But, like its venerable predecessor, St. James's Hall 
 Has come to be identified with political meetings of a certain class. Exeter 
 Hall, a huge, gaunt, unadorned, and dreary room in the Strand, is resorted to 
 for the most part as the arena and platform of ultra-Protestantism. St. James's 
 Hall, a beautiful and almost lavishly ornate structure in Piccadilly, is com- 
 monly used by the leading Roman Catholics of London when they desire to 
 make a demonstration. There are political classes which will use either place 
 indifferently ; but Exeter Hall has usually a tinge of Protestant exclusiveness 
 about its political expression, while the ceiling of the other building has rung 
 alike to the thrilling music of John Bright's voice, to the strident vehemence of 
 Mr. Bradlaugh, the humdrum humming of Mr. Odger, and the clear, delicate, 
 tremulous intonations of Stuart Mill. But I never heard of a Roman Catholic 
 meeting of great importance being held anywhere in London lately, except in 
 St. James's Hall. 
 
 Let us attend such a meeting there. The hall is a huge oblong, with gal- 
 leries around three of the sides, and a platform bearing a splendid organ on the 
 fourth. The room is brilliantly lighted, and the mode of lighting is peculiar 
 and picturesque. The platform, the galleries, the body of the hall alike are 
 crowded. This is a meeting held to make a demonstration in favor of some 
 Roman Catholic demand say for separate education. On the platform are 
 the great Catholic peers, most of them men of lineage stretching back to years 
 when Catholicism was yet unsuspicious of any possible rivalry in England. 
 There are the Norfolks, the Denbighs, the Dormers, the Petres, the Staf- 
 fords ; there are such later accessions to Catholicism as the Marquis of Bute, 
 whose change created such a sensation, and Lord Robert Montagu, who " went 
 over " only last year. There are some recent accessions of the peerage also 
 Lord Acton, for instance, head of a distinguished and ancient family, but only 
 .utely called to the Upper House, and who, when Sir John Acton, won honora- 
 ble fame as a writer and scholar. Lord Acton not many years ago started the 
 " Home and Foreign Review," a quarterly periodical which endeavored to 
 reconcile Catholicism with liberalism and science. The universal opinion of 
 England and of Europe declared the " Home and Foreign Review " to be un- 
 surpassed for ability, scholarship, and political information by any publication
 
 176 ARCHBISHOP MANNING. 
 
 in the world. It leaped at one bound to a level with the " Edinburgh," the 
 " Quarterly," and the " Revue des Deux Mondes." But the Pope thought the 
 Review too liberal, and intimated that it ought to be suppressed; and Lord 
 Acton meekly bowed his head and suppressed it in all the bloom of its growing 
 fame. Some Irish members of Parliament are on the platform men of sta- 
 tion and wealth like Munsell, men of energy and brains like John Francis Ma- 
 gnire ; perhaps, too, the handsome, brilliant-minded O'Donoghue, with his pic- 
 turesque pedigree and his broken fortunes. But in general there is not a very 
 cordial rapprochement between the English Catholic peers and the Irish Catholic 
 members. Of all slow, cold, stately Conservatives in the world, the slowest, 
 coldest, and stateliest is the English Catholic peer. Only the common bond 
 f religion brings these two sets of men together now and then. They meet, 
 but do not blend. In the body of the hall are the middle-class Catholics of 
 London, the shopkeepers and clerks, mostly Irish or of Irish parentage. In 
 the galleries are swarming the genuine Irishmen of London, the Paddies who 
 are always threatening to interrupt Garibaldiau gatherings in the parks, arid 
 who throw up their hats at the prospect of any " row " on behalf of the Pope. 
 The chair is taken by some duke or earl, who is listened to respectfully, but with- 
 out any special fervor of admiration. The English Catholics are undemonstra- 
 tive in any case, and Irish Paddy does not care much about a chilly English 
 peer. But a speaker is presently introduced who has only to make his appear- 
 ance in front of the platform in order to awaken one universal burst of applause. 
 Paddy and the Duke of Norfolk vie with each other ; the steady English shop- 
 keeper from Islington is as demonstrative as any O'Donoghue or Maguire. 
 The meeting is wide awake and informed by one spirit and soul at last. 
 
 The man who has aroused all this emotion shrinks back almost as if he were 
 afraid of it, although it is surely not new to him. He is a tall thin personage, 
 some sixty-two years of age. His face is bloodless pale as a ghost, one might 
 s;iy. He is so thin as to look almost cadaverous. The outlines of the face are 
 handsome and dignified. There is much of courtly grace and refinement about 
 the bearing, and gestures of this pale, weak, and wasted man. He wears a 
 long robe of violet silk, with some kind of dark cape or collar, and has a mas- 
 sive gold chain round his neck, holding attached to it a great gold cross. There 
 is a cei'tain nervous quivering about his eyes and lips, but otherwise he is per- 
 fectly collected and master of the occasion. His voice is thin, but wonderfully 
 clear and penetrating. It is heard all through this great hall a moment ago 
 so noisy, now so silent. The words fall with a slow, quiet force, like drops of 
 water. Whatever your opinion may be, yon cannot choose but listen ; and, in- 
 deed, you want only to listen and see. For this is the foremost man in the 
 Catholic Church of England. This is the Cardinal Grandison of Disraeli's 
 " Lothair " Dr. Henry Edward Manning, Roman Catholic Archbishop of 
 Westminster, successor in that office of the late Cardinal Wiseman. 
 
 It is no wonder that the Irishmen at the meeting are enthusiastic about 
 Archbishop Manning. An Englishman of Englishmen, with no drop of Irish 
 blood in his veins, he is more Hibernian than the Hibernians themselves in his 
 sympathies with Ireland. A man of social position, of old family, of the high- 
 tst education and the most refined instincts, he woxild leave the Catholic noble- 
 men at any time to go down to his Irish teetotallers at the East End of Lon- 
 don. He firmly believes that the salvation of England is yet to be accom- 
 plished through the influence of that religious devotion which is at the bottom 
 of the Irish nature, and which some of us call superstition. He loves his own
 
 ARCHBISHOP MANNING. 177 
 
 country dearly, but turns away from her present condition of industrial pros- 
 perity to the days before the Reformation, when yet saints trod the English soil. 
 " In England there has been no saint since the Reformation," he said the other 
 day, in sad, sweet tones, to one of wholly different opinions, who listened with 
 a mingling of amazement and reverence. No views that I have ever heard 
 put into living words embodied to anything like the same extent the full 
 chums and pretensions of Ultramontanism. It is quite wonderful to sit and lis- 
 ten. One cannot but be impressed by the sweetness, the thoughtful ness, the 
 dignity, I had almost said the sanctity of the man who thus pours forth, with a 
 manner full of the most tranquil conviction, opinions which proclaim all mod- 
 ern progress a failure, and glorify the Roman priest or the Irish peasant as the 
 true herald and repository of light, liberty, and regeneration to a sinking and 
 degraded world, 
 
 Years ago, Henry Edward Manning was one of the brilliant lights of the 
 English Protestant Church. Just twenty years back he was appointed to the 
 high place of Archdeacon of Chichester, having also, according to the manner 
 in which the English State Church rewards its dignitaries, more than one 
 other ecclesiastical appointment at the same time. Dr. Manning had distin- 
 guished himself highly during his career at the University of Oxford. His 
 father was a member of the House of Commons, and Manning on starting into 
 life had many friends and very bright prospects. Nothing would have been 
 easier, nothing seemingly would have been more natural than for him to tread 
 the way so plainly opened before him, and to rise to higher and higher dignity, 
 xmtil at last perhaps the princely renown of a bishopric and a seat in the House 
 of Lords Avould have been his reward. But Dr. Manning's career was cast in 
 a time of stress and trial for the English State Church. I have described 
 briefly in a former article the origin, growth, and effects of that remarkable 
 movement which, beginning within the Church itself and seeking to establish 
 loftier claims for her than she had long put forward, ended by convulsing her 
 in a manner more troublous than any religious crisis which had occurred since 
 the Reformation. Dr. Manning's is evidently a nature which must have been 
 specially allured by what I may be allowed to call the supernatural claims put for- 
 ward on behalf of the Church of England. He was of course correspondingly dis- 
 appointed by what he considered the failure of those claims. As Coleridge says 
 that every man is born an Aristotelian or a Platonist, so it may perhaps be saU 
 that every man is born with a predisposition to lean either on natural or super- 
 natural laws in the direct guidance of life. I am not now raising any religious 
 question whatever. What I say may be said of members of the same sect or 
 church of any sect, of any church. One man, as faithful and devout a be- 
 liever as any, is yet content to go through his daily duties and fulfil his career 
 trusting to his religious principles, his insight, and his reason, without requiring 
 at every moment the light of spiritual or supernatural guidance. Another 
 must always have his world in direct communion with the spiritual, or it is no 
 world of faith to him. Now it is impossible to look in Dr. Manning's face 
 without seeing that his is one of those sensitive, spiritual, I had almost said 
 morbid natures, which can find no endurable existence without a close and con- 
 stant communion with the supernatural. Keble, Newman, Time and the Hour, 
 called out for the assertion of the claim that the Church of England was the true 
 heir of the apostolic succession. Such a nature as Manning's must have delight- 
 edly welcomed the claim. But the mere investigation sent, as I have already 
 explained, one Newman to Catholicism and the other to Rationalism. Dr. Man-
 
 178 ARCHBISHOP MANNING. 
 
 liing, too, felt compelled to ask himself whether the Church could make good its 
 claim, and whether, if it could not, he had any longer a place within its walls. 
 The change does not appear to have come so rapidly to fulfilment with him as 
 with John Henry Newman. Dr. Manning seems to me to have a less aggressive 
 temperament than his distinguished predecessor in secession. There is more 
 about him of the quietist, of the ecstatic, so far as religious thought is concerned, 
 while it is possible that he may be a more practical and influential guide in the 
 mere policy of the church to which he belongs. There is an amount of scorn 
 in Newman's nature which sometimes reminds one of Pascal, and which I have 
 not observed in Dr. Manning or in his writings. I cannot imagine Dr. Man- 
 ning, for example, pelting Charles Kingsley with sarcasms and overwhelming 
 him with contempt, as Dr. Newman evidently delighted to do in the famous 
 controversy which was provoked by the apostle of Muscular Christianity. I 
 suppose therefore that Dr. Manning clung for a long time to the faith in which 
 he was bred. But his whole nature is evidently cast in the mould which makes 
 Roman Catholic devotees. He is a man of the type which perhaps found in 
 Fenelon its most illustrious example. I think it is not too much to say that to 
 him that light of private judgment which some of us regard as man's grand- 
 est and most peculiarly divine attribute, must always have presented itself as 
 something abhorrent to his nature. I am judging, of course, as an outsider 
 and as one little acquainted with theological subjects; but my impression of the 
 two men would be that Dr. Newman joined the Roman Catholic Church in 
 obedience to some compulsion of reason, acting in what must seem to most of 
 us an inscrutable manner, and that Dr. Manning never would have been a 
 Protestant at all if he had not believed that the Protestant Church was truly 
 all which its rival claims to be. 
 
 Dr. Manning in fact did not leave the Church. The Church left him. He 
 had misunderstood it. It became revealed at last as it really is, a church 
 founded on the right of private judgment, and Manning was appalled and 
 turned away from it. Something that may almost be called accident brought 
 home to his mind the true character of the Church to which he belonged. 
 Many readers of " The Galaxy " may have some recollection of the once cele- 
 brated Gorham case in England a case which I shall not now describe any 
 further than by saying that it raised the question whether the Church of Eng- 
 land can prescribe the religion of the State. Had the Church the right to de- 
 cide whether cei-tain doctrine taught by one of its clergy was heretical, and to 
 condemn it if so declared? In England, Church and State are so bound up to- 
 gether, that it is practically the State and not the Church which decides whether 
 this or that teaching is heresy or true religion. A lord chancellor who may 
 be an infidel, and two or three "law lords" who may be anything or nothing, 
 settle the question in the end. We all remember the epigram about Lord 
 Chancellor Westbury, the least godly of men, having " dismissed Hell with 
 costs," and taken away from the English Protestant " his last hope of damna- 
 tion." The Gorham case, twenty years ago, showed that the Church, as 
 an ecclesiastical body, had no power to condemn heresy. This, to men like 
 Stuart Mill, appears on the whole a satisfactory condition of things so long as 
 there is a State Church, for the plain reason which he gives namely, that the 
 State in England is now far more liberal than the Church. But to Dr. Man- 
 ning the idea of the Church thus abdicating its function of interpreting and de- 
 claring doctrine was equivalent to the renunciation of its right to existence. 
 lie strove hard to bring about an organized and solemn declaration and pro-
 
 ARCHBISHOP MANNING. 179 
 
 test from the Church a declaration of doctrine, a protest against secular con- 
 trol. He became the leader of an effort in this direction. The effort met 
 with little support. The then Bishop of London did indeed introduce a bill into 
 the House of Lords for the purpose of enacting that in matters of doctrine, as 
 distinct from questions of mere law, the final decision should rest with the pre- 
 lates. Dr. Manning sat in the gallery of the House of Lords on that memo- 
 rable night. The Bishop of London wholly failed. The House of Lords scouted 
 the idea of liberal England tolerating a sort of ecclesiastical inquisition. Every 
 one admitted the anomalous condition in which things then were placed ; but 
 few indeed would think of enacting a dogma of infallibility in favor of the 
 bishops of the Church. Lord Brougham spoke against the bill with what Dr. 
 Manning himself admits to be plain English common sense. He said the 
 House of Lords through its law peers could decide questions of mere ecclesias- 
 tical law, and the decisions would carry weight and authority; but neither 
 peers nor bishops could in England decide a question of doctrine. Suppose, he 
 asked, the bishops were divided equally on such a question, where would the 
 decision be then ? Suppose there was a very small majority, who would ac- 
 cept such a decision ? Or even suppose there was a large majority, but that 
 the minority comprised the few men of greatest knowledge, ability, and au- 
 thority, what value would attach to the judgment of such a majority? The bill 
 was a hopeless failure. Dr. Manning has himself described with equal candor and 
 clearness the effect which the debate had upon him. He mentally supplemented 
 Lord Brougham's questions by one other. Suppose that all the bishops of the 
 Church of England should decide unanimously on any doctrine, would any one 
 receive the decision as infallible? He was compelled to answer, "No one." 
 The Church of England had no pretension to be the infallible spiritual guide of 
 men. Were she to raise any such pretension, it would be rejected with con- 
 tempt by the common mind of the nation. Hear then how this conviction af- 
 fected the man who up to that time had had no thought but for the interests 
 and duties of the English Church. "To those," he has himself told us, "who 
 believed that God has established upon the earth a divine and therefore an un- 
 erring guardian and teacher of his faith, this event demonstrated that the 
 Church of England could not be that guardian and teacher." 
 
 While Dr. Manning was still uncertain whither to turn, the celebrated 
 " Papal aggression " took place. Cardinal Wiseman was sent to England by 
 the Pope, with the title of Archbishop of Westminster. All England raged. 
 Earl Russell wrote his famous " Durham Letter." The Lord Chancellor Camp- 
 bell, at a public dinner in the city of London, called up a storm of enthusiasm 
 by quoting the line from Shakespeare, which declares that 
 
 Under our feet we'll stamp the cardinal's hat. 
 
 Protestant zealots in Stockport belabored the Roman Catholics and sacked their 
 houses ; Irish laborers in Birkenhead retorted upon the Protestants. The Gov- 
 ernment brought in the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill a measure making it penal 
 for any Catholic prelate to call himself archbishop or bishop of any place in 
 England. Let him be "Archbishop Wiseman " or " Cardinal Wiseman, Arch- 
 bishop of Mesopotamia," as long as he liked but not Archbishop of Westmin- 
 ster or Tuam. The bill was powerfully, splendidly opposed by Gladstone, 
 Bright, and Cobden, on the broad ground that it invaded the precincts of re- 
 ligious liberty ; but it was earned and made law. There it remained. There 
 never was the slightest attempt made to enforce it. The Catholic prelates held
 
 180 ARCIIBISIIOr MANNING. 
 
 to the titles the Pope had given them ; and no English court, judge, magistrate. 
 or policeman ever offered to prevent or punish them. So ludicrous, so barren 
 a proceeding as the carrying of that measure has not been known in the Eng- 
 land of our time. 
 
 Cardinal Wiseman was an able and a discreet man. He was calm, plausi- 
 ble, powerful. He was very earnest in the cause of his Church, but he seemed 
 much more like a man of the world than Newman or Dr. Manning. There 
 was little of the loftily spiritual in his manner or appearance. His bulky 
 person and swollen face suggested at the first glance a sort of Abbot Boni- 
 face ; he was, I believe, in reality an ascetic. The corpulence which seemed 
 the result of good living was only the effect of ill health. He had a persuasive 
 and an imposing way. His ability was singularly flexible. His eloquence was 
 often too gorgeous and ornamental for a pure taste, but when the occasion 
 needed he could address an audience in language of the simplest and most 
 practical common sense. The same adaptability, if I may use such a word, was 
 evident in all he did. He would talk with a cabinet minister on terms of calm 
 equality, as if his rank must be self-evident, and he delighted to set a band of 
 poor school children playing around him. He was a cosmopolitan English 
 and Irish by extraction, Spanish by birth, Roman by education. When he spoke 
 English he was exactly like what a portly, dignified British bishop ought to be 
 a John Bull in every respect. When he spoke Italian at Rome he fell in- 
 stinctively and at once into all the peculiarities of intonation and gesture which 
 distinguish the people of Italy from all other races. When he conversed in 
 Spanish he subsided into the grave, somewhat saturnine dignity and repose of 
 the true Castilian. All this, I presume, was but the natural effect of that flexi- 
 bility of temperament I have attempted to describe. I had but slight personal 
 acquaintance with Cardinal Wiseman, and I paint him only as he impressed 
 me, a casual observer. I am satisfied that he was a profoundly earnest and 
 single-minded man; the testimony of many whom I know and who knew him 
 well compels me to that conviction. But such was not the impression he 
 would have left on a mere acquaintance. He seemed rather one who could, for 
 a purpose which he believed great, be all things to all men. He impressed me 
 quite differently from the manner in which I have been impressed by John 
 Henry Newman and by Archbishop Manning. He reminded one of some 
 great, capable, worldly-wise, astute Prince of the Church of other generations, 
 politician rather than priest, more ready to sustain and skilled to defend the 
 temporal power of the Papacy than to illustrate its highest spiritual influence. 
 
 The events which brought Cardinal Wiseman to England had naturally a 
 powerful effect upon the mind of Dr. Mr-inning. It was the renewed claim 
 of the Roman Church to enfold England in its spiritual jurisdiction. For Dr. 
 Manning, who had just seen what he regarded as the voluntary abdication of 
 the English Church, the claim would in any case have probably been decisive. 
 It " stepped between him and his fighting soul." But the personal influence 
 of Cardinal Wiseman had likewise an immense weight and force. Dr. Man- 
 ning ever since that time entertained a feeling of the profoundest devotion and 
 reverence for Cardinal Wiseman. > The change was consummated in 1851, 
 and one of the first practical comments upon the value of the Ecclesiastical 
 Titles Act was the announcement that a scholar and divine of whom the Pro- 
 testant Church had long been especially proud had resigned his preferments, 
 his dignities, and his prospects, and passed over to the Church of Rome. I 
 jannot better illustrate the effect produced on the public mind than by saying
 
 ARCHBISHOP MANNING. 181 
 
 that even the secession of John Henry Newman hardly made a deeper im- 
 pression. 
 
 Dr. Manning, of course, rose to high rank in the church of his adoption. 
 He became Roman of the Romans Ultramontane of the Ultramontanes. On 
 the death of his friend and leader, Cardinal Wiseman, whose funeral sermon 
 he preached, Henry Manning became Archbishop of Westminster. Except for 
 his frequent journeys to Rome, he has always since his appointment lived in 
 London. Although a good deal of an ascetic, as his emaciated face and figure 
 would testify, he is nothing of a hermit. He mingles to a certain extent in so- 
 ciety, he takes part in many public movements, and he has doubtless given Mr. 
 Disraeli ample opportunity of studying his manner and bearing. I don't be- 
 lieve Mr. Disraeli capable of understanding the profound devotion and single- 
 minded sincerity of the man. A moi'e singular, striking, marvellous figure 
 does not stand out, I think, in our English society. Everything that an ordi- 
 nary Englishman or American would regard as admirable and auspicious in 
 the progress of our civilization, Dr. Manning calmly looks upon as lamentable 
 and evil-omened. What we call progress is to his mind decay. What we call 
 light is to him darkness. What we reverence as individual liberty he deplores 
 as spiritual slavery. The mere fact that a man gives reasons for his faith 
 seems shocking to this strangely-gifted apostle of unconditional belief. Though 
 you were to accept on bended knees ninety-nine of the decrees of Rome, yon 
 would still be in his mind a heretic if you paused to consider as to the accept- 
 ance of the hundredth dogma. All the peculiarly modern changes in the legis- 
 lation of England, the admission of Jews to Parliament, the introduction of the 
 principle of divorce, the practical recognition of the English divine's right of 
 private judgment, are painful and odious to him. I have never heard from 
 any other source anything so clear, complete, and astonishing as his cordial 
 acceptance of the uttermost claims of Rome ; the prostration of all reason and 
 judgment before the supposed supernatural attributes of the Papal throne. In 
 one of the finest passages of his own writings he says : " My love for England 
 begins with the England of St. Bede. Saxon England, with all its tumults, 
 seems to me saintly and beautiful. Norman England I have always loved less, 
 because, although majestic, it became continually less Catholic, until the evil 
 spirit of the world broke off the light yoke of faith at the so-called Reforma- 
 tion. Still I loved the Christian England which survived, and all the lingering 
 outlines of diocese aSd parishes, cathedrals and churches, with the names of 
 paints upon them. It is this vision of the past which still hovers over England 
 and makes it beautiful and full of the memories of the kingdom of God. Nay, 
 I loved the parish church of my childhood and the college chapel of my youtlr, 
 and the little church under a green hillside where the morning and evening 
 prayers and the music of the English Bible for seventeen years became a part 
 of my soul. Nothing is more beautiful in the natural order, and if there were 
 no eternal world I could have made it my home." To Dr. Manning the time 
 when saints walked the earth of England is more of a reality than the day be- 
 fore yesterday to most of us. Where the ordinary eye sees only a poor, igno- 
 rant Irish peasant, Dr. Manning discerns a heaven-commissioned bearer of 
 light and truth, destined by the power of his unquestioning faith to redeem 
 perhaps, in the end, even English philosophers and statesmen. When it was 
 said in the praise of the murdered Archbishop of Paris that he was disposed to 
 regret the introduction of the dogma of infallibility, Archbishop Manning came 
 eagerly to the rescue of his friend's memory, and as one would vindicate a per-
 
 182 ARCHBISHOP MANNING. 
 
 eon unjustly accused of crime, he vindicated the dead Archbishop from the 
 stigma of having for a moment dared to have an opinion of his own on such a 
 subject. Of course, if Dr. Manning were an ordinary theological devotee or fa- 
 natic, there would be nothing remarkable in all this. But he is a man of the 
 widest culture, of high intellectual gifts, of keen and penetrating judgment in 
 all ordinary affairs, remarkable for his close and logical argument, his persua- 
 sive reasoning, and for a genial, quiet kind of humor which seems especially 
 calculated to dissolve sophistry by its action. He is an English gentleman, a 
 man of the world; he was educated at Oxford with Arthur Pendennis and 
 young Lord Magnus Charters ; he lives at York Place in the London of to-day ; 
 he drives down to the House of Commons and talks politics in the lobby with 
 Gladstone and Lowe ; he meets Disraeli at dinner parties, and is on friendly 
 terms, I dare say, with Huxley and Herbert Spencer ; he reads the newspapers, 
 and I make no doubt is now well acquainted with the history of the agitation 
 against Tammany and Boss Tweed. I think such a man is a marvellous phe- 
 nomenon in our age. It is as if one of the mediaeval saints from the stained 
 windows of a church should suddenly become infused with life and take a part 
 in all the ways of our present world, I can understand the long-abiding power 
 of the Catholic Church when I remember that I have heard and seen and talked 
 with Henry Edward Manning. 
 
 Dr. Manning is not, I fancy, very much of a political reformer. His incli- 
 nations would probably be rather conservative than otherwise. He is drawn 
 toward Gladstone and the Liberal party less by distinct political affinity, of 
 which there is but little, than by his hope and belief that through Gladstone 
 something will be done for that Ireland which to this Oxford scholar is still the 
 " island of the saints." The Catholic members of Parliament, whether English 
 or Irish, consult Archbishop Manning constantly upon all questions connected 
 with education or religion. His parlor in York Place not far from Adhere 
 Mine. Tussaud's wax- work exhibition attracts the country visitor is the fre- 
 quent scene of conferences which have their influence upon the action of the 
 House of Commons. He is a devoted upholder of the doctrine of total absti- 
 nence from intoxicating drinks ; and he is the only Englishman of real influence 
 and ability, except Francis Newman, who is in favor of prohibitory legislation. 
 He is the medium of communication between Rome and England; the living 
 link of connection between the English Catholic peer and the Irish Catholic 
 bricklayer. The position which he occupies is at all events quite distinctive. 
 There is nobody else in England who could set up the faintest claim to any such 
 place. It would be superfluous to remark that I do not expect the readers of 
 " The Galaxy " to have any sympathy with the opinions, theological or political, 
 ef such a man. But the man himself is worthy of profound interest, of study, 
 and even of admiration. He is the spirit, the soul, the ideal of mediaeval faith 
 embodied in the form of a living English scholar and gentleman. He repre- 
 sents and illustrates a movement the most remarkable, possibly the most por- 
 tenUnis, which has disturbed England and the English Church since the time 
 of Wyckliffe. No one can have any real knowledge of the influences at work 
 in English life to-day, no one can understand the history of the past twenty 
 years, or even pretend to conjecture as to the possibilities of the future, who 
 has not paid some attention to the movement which has Dr. Manning for one 
 of its most distinguished leaders, and to the position and character of Manning 
 himself.
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 ANY one who has visited the National Gallery in London must have seen ? 
 and seeing must have studied, the contrasted paintings placed side by 
 side of Turner and of Claude. They will attract attention if only because the 
 two Turners are thus placed apart from the rooms used as a Turner Gallery, and 
 containing the great collection of the master's works. The pictures of which I 
 am now speaking are hung in a room principally occupied by the paintings of 
 Murillo. As you enter you are at once attracted by four large pictures which 
 hang on either side of the door opposite. On the right are Turner's " Dido 
 Building Carthage," and Claude's " Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba." On 
 the left are a " Landscape with the Sun Rising " by Turner, and " The Mar- 
 riage of Isaac and Rebecca " by Claude. Nobody could fail to observe that the 
 pictures are thus arranged for some distinct purpose. They are in fact placed 
 side by side for the sake of comparison and contrast. They are all eminently 
 characteristic ; they have the peculiar faults and the peculiar merits of the art- 
 ists. In the Claudes we have even one of those yellow trunks which are the 
 abomination of the critic I am about to speak of, and one might almost suppose 
 that the Queen of Sheba was embarking for Saratoga. I do not propose to 
 criticise the pictures ; but in them you have, to the full, Turner and Claude. 
 
 Now in the contrast between these pictures may be found, symbolically at 
 least, the origin and motive of John Ruskin's career. He sprang into literary 
 life simply as a vindicator of the fame and genius of Turner. But as he went 
 on with his task he found, or at least he convinced himself, that the vindication 
 of the great painter was essentially a vindication of all true art. Still further 
 proceeding with his self-imposed task, he persuaded himself that the cause of 
 true art was identical with the cause of truth, and that truth, from Ruskin's 
 point of view, enclosed in the same rules and principles all the morals, all the 
 politics, all the science, industry, and daily business of life. Therefore from an 
 art-critic he became a moralist, a political economist, a philosopher, a states- 
 man, a preacher anything, everything that human intelligence can impel a 
 man to be. All that he has written since his first appeal to the public has been 
 inspired by this conviction that an appreciation of the truth in art reveals to 
 him who has it the truth in everything. This belief has been the source of Mr. 
 Ruskin's greatest successes and of his most complete and ludicrous failures. 
 It has made him the admiration of the world one week, and the object of its 
 placid pity or broad laughter the next. A being who could be Joan of Arc to- 
 day and Voltaire's Pucelle to-morrow would hardly exhibit a stronger psychi- 
 cal paradox than the eccentric genius of Mr. Ruskin commonly displays. But 
 in order to understand him, or to do him common justice in order not to re- 
 gard him as a mere erratic utterer of eloquent'contradictions, poured out on the 
 impulse of each moment's new freak of fancy we must always bear in mind 
 this fundamental faith of the man. Extravagant as this or that doctrine may 
 be, outrageous as to-day's contradiction of yesterday's assertion may be, yet 
 the whole career is consistent with its essential principles and belief. 
 
 Ruskin was singularly fitted by fortune to live for a purpose ; to consecrate 
 his life to the cause of art and of what he considered truth. As everybody knows, 
 he was born to wealth so considerable as to allow him to indulge all his tastes and 
 whims, and to write without any regard for money profit. I hardly know of
 
 184 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 any other author of eminence who in our time has worked with so complete an 
 independence of publisher, public, or paymaster. I do not suppose lluskin evtii 
 wrote one line for money. Some of his works must have brought him in a 
 good return of mere pounds and shillings; but they would have been written 
 just the same if they had never paid for printing; and indeed the author is al- 
 ways spending money on some benevolent crotchet. He was born in London, 
 and he himself attributes much of his early love for nature to the fact that he 
 was "accustomed for two or three years to no other prospect than that of the 
 brick walls over the way," and that he had " no brothers nor sisters nor com- 
 panions." I question whether anybody not acquainted with London can un- 
 derstand how completely one can be shut in from the pure face of free nature 
 in that vast city. In New York one can hardly walk far in any direction without 
 catching glimpses of the water and the shores of New Jersey or Long Island. 
 But in some of the most respectable middle-class regions of London, you might 
 drudge away or dream away your life and never have one sight of open nature 
 unless you made a regular expedition to find her. Ruskin speaks somewhere 
 of the strange and exquisite delight which the cockney feels when he treads on 
 grass ; and every biographical sketch of him recalls that passage in his writings 
 which tells us of the first thing he could remember as an event in his life his 
 being taken by his nurse to the brow of one of the crags overlooking Derwent- 
 water, and the " intense joy, mingled with awe, that I had in looking through 
 the hollows in the mossy roots over the crag into the dark lake, and which has 
 associated itself more or less with all twining roots of trees ever since." Rus- 
 kin travelled much, and at a very early age, through Europe. He became fa- 
 miliar with most of the beautiful show-places of the European Continent when 
 a boy, and I believe he never extended the sphere of his travels. About his 
 early life there is little to be said. He completed his education at Oxford, and, 
 more successful than Arthur Pendennis, he went in for a prize poem and won 
 the prize. He visited the Continent, more especially Switzerland and Italy, 
 again and again. He married a Scottish lady, and the marriage was not a 
 happy one. I don't propose to go into any of the scandal and talk which the 
 events created; but I may say that the marriage was dissolved without any 
 moral blame resting on or even imputed to either of the parties, and that the 
 lady afterwards became the wife of Mr. Millais. Since then Mr. Ruskin has led a 
 secluded rather than a lonely life. His constitution is feeble ; he has as little 
 robustness of physique as can well be conceived, and no kind of excitement is 
 suitable for him. Only the other day he sank into a condition of such exhaus- 
 tion that for a while it was believed impossible he could recover. At one time 
 he used to appear in public rather often; and was ready to deliver lectures on 
 the ethics of art wherever he thought his teaching could benefit the ignorant 
 or the poor. He was especially ready to address assemblages of workingmen, 
 the pupils of charitable institutions for the teaching of drawing. I cannot re- 
 member his ever having taken part in any fashionable pageant or demonstra- 
 tion of any kind. Of late he has ceased to show himself at any manner of pub- 
 lic meeting, and he addresses his favorite workingmen through the medium 
 of an irregular little publication, a sort of periodical or tract which he calls 
 " Fors Clavigera." Of this publication " I send a copy," he announces, " to 
 each of the principal journals and periodicals, to be noticed or not at their pleas- 
 ure; otherwise, I shall use no advertisements." The author also informs us 
 that " the tracts will be sold for sevenpence each, without abatement on quan- 
 tity." I doubt whether many sales have taken place, or whether the reference
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 185 
 
 to purchase in quantity was at all necessary, or whether indeed the author 
 cared one way or the other. In one of these printed letters he says : " The 
 scientific men are busy as ants, examining the sun and the moon and the seven 
 stars ; and can tell nae all about them, I believe, by this time, and how they 
 move and what they are made of. And I do not care, for my part, two copper 
 spangles how they move nor what they are made of. I can't move them any 
 other way than they go, nor make them of anything else better than they are 
 made." This might sound wonderfully sharp and practical, if, a few pages on, 
 Mr. Raskin did not broach his proposition for the founding of a little model 
 colony of labor in England, where boys and girls alike are to be taught agricul- 
 ture, vocal music, Latin, and the history of five cities Athens, Rome, Venice, 
 Florence, and London. This scheme was broached last August, and it is 
 rather soon yet even to ask whether any steps have been taken to put it into 
 execution; but Mr. Ruskin has already given five thousand dollars to begin 
 with, and will probably give a good deal more before he acknowledges the in- 
 evitable failure. Ruskiu lives in one of the most beautiful of London suburbs, 
 on Denmark Hill, at the south side of the river, near Dulwich and the exquisite 
 Sydenham slopes where the Crystal Palace stands. Here he indulges his love 
 of pictures and statues, and of rest when he is not in the mood for unrest and 
 nourishes philanthropic schemes of eccentric kinds, and is altogether about 
 the nearest approach to an independent, self-sufficing philosopher our modern 
 days have known. Of his life as a private citizen this much is about all that it 
 concerns us to hear. 
 
 Twenty-eight years have passed away since Mr. Ruskin leaped into the 
 critical arena, with a spring as bold and startling as that of Ed\vard Kean on 
 the Kemble-haunted stage. The little volume, so modest in its appearance, so 
 self-sufficient in its tone, which the author defiantly flung down like a gage of 
 battle before the world, was entitled "Modern Painters : their Superiority in 
 the Art of Landscape Painting to all the Ancient Masters. By a Graduate of 
 Oxford." I was a boy of thirteen, living in a small provincial town, when this 
 book made its first appearance, but it seems to me that the echo of the sensa- 
 tion it created still rings in my ears. It was a challenge to all established be- 
 liefs and prejudices; and the challenge was delivered in the tones of one who 
 felt confident that he could make good his words against any and all oppo- 
 nents. If there was one thing that more than another seemed to have been 
 fixed and rooted in the English mind, it was that Claude and one or two other 
 of the old masters possessed the secret of landscape painting. When, there- 
 fore, this bold young dogmatist involved in one common denunciation " Claude, 
 Gaspar Poussin, Salvator Rosa, Ruysdael, Paul Potter, Cavaletto, and the vari- 
 ous Van-Somethings and Koek-Somethings, more especially and malignantly 
 those who have libelled the sea," it was no wonder that affronted authority 
 raised its indignant voice and thundered at him. Affronted authority, how- 
 ever, gained little by its thunder. The young Oxford graduate possessed, along 
 with genius and profound conviction, an imperturbable and magnificent self- 
 conceit, against which the surges of angry criticism dashed themselves in vain. 
 Mr. Ruskin, when putting on his armor, had boasted himself as one who takes 
 it off; but in his case there proved to be little rashness in the premature fortili- 
 cation. For assuredly that book overrode and bore down its critics. I need 
 not follow it through its various editions, its successive volumes, its amplifica- 
 tions, wherein at last the original design, the vindication of Turner, swelled into 
 an enunciation and illustration of the true principles of landscape art. Nof do
 
 186 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 1 mean to say that the book carried all its points. Far from it. Claude still 
 lives, and Salvator Rosa has his admirers, among whom most of us are very 
 glad to enroll ourselves ; and Ruskin himself has since that time pointed out 
 many serious defects in Turner, and has unsaid a great deal of what he then 
 proclaimed. But if the Oxford graduate had been wrong in every illustration 
 of his principal doctrine, I should still hold that the doctrine itself was true and 
 of inestimable value, and that the book was a triumph. For, I think, it pro- 
 claimed and firmly established the true point of view from which we must 
 judge of the art of painting in all its departments. In plain words, Ruskin 
 taught the English public that they must look at nature with their own eyes, 
 and judge of art by the help of nature. Up to the publication of that book 
 England, at least, had been falling into the way of regarding art as a sort of 
 polite school to which it was our duty to endeavor to make nature conform. 
 Conventionality and apathy had sunk apparently into the very souls of men 
 and women. Hardly one in ten thousand ever really saw a landscape, a wave, 
 a ray of the sun as it is. Nobody used his own eyes. Every one was content 
 to think that he saw what the painters told him he saw. Ruskin himself tells 
 us somewhere about a test question which used to be put to young landscape 
 painters by one who was supposed to be a master of the craft: "Where do you 
 put your brown tree ?" The question illustrates the whole theory and school 
 of conventionality. Conventionality had decreed first that thei'e are brown 
 trees, and next that there cannot be a respectable landscape without a brown 
 tree. Long after the teaching of Ruskin had well-nigh revolutionized opinion 
 in England, I stood once with a lover of art of the old-fashioned school, look- 
 ing on one of the most beautiful and famous scenes in England. The tender 
 autumn season, the melancholy woods in the background, the little lake, the 
 half-ruined abbey, did not even need the halo of poetic and romantic associa- 
 tion which hung around them in order to render the scene a very temptation, 
 one might have thought, to the true artist. I suggested something of the kind. 
 My companion shook his head almost contemptuously. " You could never 
 make a picture of that," he said. I pressed him to tell me why so picturesque 
 a scene could not be represented somehow in a picture. He did not care evi- 
 dently to argue with ignorance, and he even endeavored to concede something 
 to my untutored whim. "Perhaps," he began with hesitation, "if one were to 
 put a large dark tree in there to the left, one might make something of it. 
 But no " (he had done his best and could not humor me any further), " it is out 
 of the question; there couldn't be a picture made out of that." How could I 
 illustrate more clearly the kind of thing which Ruskin came to put down and 
 did put down in England ? 
 
 Of course Mr. Ruskin was never a man to do anything by halves, and hav- 
 ing once laid down the canon that nature and truth are to be the guides of the 
 artist, he soon began to write and to think as if nature and truth alone were 
 concerned. He seemed to have taken no account of the fact that one great ob- 
 ject of art is simply to give delight, and that however natural and truthful an 
 artist may be, yet he is to bear in mind this one purpose of his work, or he 
 might almost as well let it alone. Nature and truth are to be his guides to the 
 delighting of men ; to show him how he is to give a delight which shall be pure 
 and genuine. A single inaccuracy as to fact seems at one time to have spoiled 
 all Mr. Ruskin's enjoyment of a painting, and filled him with a feeling of scorn 
 and detestation for it. He denounces Raphael's " Charge to Peter," on the 
 ground that the apostles are not dressed as men of that time and place would
 
 JOHN RUSKIN. 187 
 
 have been when going out fishing ; and he makes no allowance for the fact, 
 pointed out by M. Taine, that Raphael's design first of all was to represent a 
 group of noble, serious men, majestic and picturesque, and that mere realism 
 entered little into his purpose. It may seem the oddest thing to compare Rus- 
 kin with Macaulay, but it is certain that the very kind of objection which the 
 former urges against the paintings of Raphael the latter brings forward 
 against one of the poems of Goldsmith. " What would be thought of a paint- 
 er," asks Macaulay, " who would mix January and August in one landscape, 
 who would introduce a frozen river into a harvest scene? Would it be a suffi- 
 cient defence of such a picture to say that every part was exquisitely colored ; 
 that the green hedges, the apple trees loaded with fruit, the wagons reeling 
 under the yellow sheaves, and the sunburned reapers wiping their foreheads, 
 were very fine; and that the ice and the boys sliding were also very fine? To 
 such a picture the ' Deserted Village ' bears a great resemblance." Now it 
 would indeed be an incomprehensible mistake if a painter were to mix up Au- 
 gust and January as Macaulay suggests, or to depict the apostles like a group 
 of Greek philosophers, as in Ruskin's opinion Raphael did. But I venture to 
 think that even the extraordinary blunder mentioned in the first part of the 
 sentence would not necessarily condemn a picture to utter contempt. It was 
 a great mistake to make Dido and lulus contemporaries ; a great mistake to 
 represent angels employing gunpowder for the suppression of Lucifer's insur- 
 rection ; a great mistake to talk of the clock having struck in the time of Julius 
 Caesar. Yet I suppose Virgil and Milton and Shakespeare were great poets, 
 and that the very passages in which those errors occur are nevertheless gen- 
 uine poetry. Now Ruskin criticises Raphael and Claude on precisely the 
 principle which would declare Virgil, Milton, and Shakespeare worthless be- 
 cause of the errors I have mentioned. The errors are errors no doubt, and 
 ought to be pointed out, and there an end. Virgil was not writing a history of 
 the foundation of Carthage. Shakespeare was not describing the social life of 
 Rome under Julius Caesar. Milton was not a gazetteer of the revolt of Lucifer 
 and his angels. Mr. Ruskin might as well dispose of a sculptured group of 
 Centaurs by remarking that there never were Centaurs, or of the famous her- 
 maphrodite in the Louvre by explaining that hermaphrodites of that perfect 
 order are unknown to physiology. The beauty of color and contour, the effect 
 of graceful grouping, the reach of poetic imagination, the dignity of embodied 
 thought, outlive all such criticism even when in its way it is just, for they bear 
 in themselves the vindication of their existence. But Ruskin's criticism is the 
 legitimate result of the cardinal error of his career the belief that the moral- 
 ity of art exactly corresponds with the morality of human life ; that there is a 
 central law of right and wrong for everything, like Stephen Pearl Andrews's 
 universal science, of which when you have once got the key you can open 
 every lock which is the solving word of every enigma, the standard by which 
 everything is finally to be judged. I need ndt show how he followed out that 
 creed and gave it a new application in " The Seven Lamps of Architecture " 
 and the " Stones of Venice." In these masterpieces of eloquent declamation, 
 the building of houses was brought up to be tried according to Mr. Ruskin's 
 self-constructed canons of aesthetic and architectural morality. No one, I ven- 
 ture to think, cares much about the doctrine ; everybody is carried away by the 
 eloquence, the originality, and the feeling. Later still Mr. Ruskin applied the 
 same central, all-pervading principle to the condemnation of fluttering ribbons 
 in a woman's bonnet. The stucco of a house he set down as false and immoral,
 
 188 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 like the painting of a meretricious cheek. His aesthetic transcendentalism soon 
 ceased to have any practical influence. It would be idle to try to persuade 
 English house-builders that the attributes of a building are moral qualities, and 
 that the component parts of a London residence ought to symbolize and embody 
 "action," "voice," and "beauty." It may be doubted whether a single archi- 
 tect was ever practically influenced by the dogmatic eloquence of Mr. Ruskin. 
 In fact the architects, above all other men, rebelled against the books and 
 scorned them. But the books made their way with the public, who, oaring 
 nothing about the principles of morality which underlie the construction of 
 houses, were charmed by the dazzling rhetoric, the wealth of gorgeous imagery, 
 the interesting and animated digressions, the frequent flashes of vigorous good 
 sense, and the lofty thought whose only fault was that which least affected the 
 ordinary reader its utter inapplicability to the practical subject of the books. 
 
 It was about the year 1849 that that great secession movement in art broke 
 out to which its leaders chose to give the title of pre-Raphaelite. The principal 
 founder of the movement has since been almost forgotten as an artist, but has 
 come into a sort of celebrity as a poet Mr. Dante Gabriel Rossetti. With him 
 were allied, it is almost needless to say, the two now famous and successful 
 painters,. Hoi man Hunt and Millais. Decidedly that was the most thriving 
 controversy in the world of art and letters during our time. It was the only 
 battle of schools which coiild tell us what the war for and against the Sturm-und- 
 Drang school in Germany, the Byron epoch in England, the struggle of the 
 Classicists and Romanticists in France, must have been like. The pre-Raphael- 
 ite dispute has long ceased to be heard. Years ago Mr. Ruskin himself, the 
 prophet and apostle of the new sect, described the defection of its greatest pu- 
 pil as " not a fall, but a catastrophe." Rossetti's sonnets are criticised, but not 
 his paintings. "Are not you still a pre-Raphaelite? " asked an inquisitive per- 
 son lately of the sonneteer. " I am not an ' ite ' of any kind," was the answer; 
 " I am an artist." John Everett Millais is among the most fortunate and fash- 
 ionable painters of the day. Those who saw his wonderful " Somnambulist" in 
 last season's exhibition of the London Royal Academy would have found in it 
 little of the harsh and " crawling realism " which distinguished the " Beauty in 
 Bricks Brotherhood," as somebody called the rebellious school of twenty years 
 ago. A London comic paper lately published a capital likeness of Mr. Mil- 
 lais, handsome, respectable, tending to stoutness and baldness, and described 
 the portrait as that of the converted pre-Raphaelite. The progress of things 
 was exactly similar to that which goes on in the English political world so often. 
 A fiery young Radical member of Parliament begins by denouncing the Govern- 
 ment and the constitution. He wins first notoriety, and then, if he has any real 
 stuff in him, reputation ; and then he is invited to office, and he takes it and 
 becomes respectable, wealthy, and fashionable; and his rebellion is all over, 
 and the world goes on just as before. Such was, so far as individuals are con- 
 cerned, the course of the pre-Raphaelite rebellion; undoubtedly the movement 
 did some good ; most rebellions do. It was a protest against the vague and fee- 
 ble generalizations and the vapid classicism which were growing too common 
 in art. Ruskin himself has happily described the generalized and conventional 
 way of painting trees and shrubs which was groAving to be common and toler- 
 ated, and which he says was no less absurd than if a painter were to depict some 
 anomalous animal, and defend it as a generalization of pig and pony. Any- 
 thing which teaches a careful and rigid study of nature must do good. The 
 pre-Raphaelite school was excellent discipline for its young scholars. Proba-
 
 JOHX RUSKIX. 189 
 
 hly even those of Millais's paintings which bear on the face of them least evi- 
 dent traces of that early school, might have been far inferior to what they are, 
 Avere it not for the slow and severe study which the original principles of the 
 movement demanded. The present interest which the secession has for me 
 is less on its own account than because of the vigorous, ingenious, and eloquent 
 pages which Ruskin poured forth in its vindication. He gave it meanings 
 which it never had ; found out truth and beauty in its most prosaic details such as 
 its working scholars never meant to symbolize ; he explained and expounded it as 
 Johnson did the meaning of the word " slow " in the opening line of the " Travel- 
 ler," and in fact well-nigh persuaded himself and the world that a new priest- 
 hood had arisen to teach the divinity of art. But even he could not write pre- 
 Raphaelitism into popularity and vitality. The common instinct of human 
 nature, which looks to art as the representative of beauty, pathos, humor, and 
 passion, could not be talked into an acceptance of ignoble and ugly realisms. 
 It may be an error to depict a Judean fisherman like a stately Greek philoso- 
 pher ; but error for error, it is far less gross and grievous than to paint the ex- 
 quisite heroine of Keats's lovely poem as a lank and scraggy spinster, with high 
 cheek bones like one of Walter Scott's fishwives, undressing herself in a green 
 moonlight, and displaying a neck and shoulders worthy of Miss Miggs, and 
 st-ivs and petticoat that bring to mind Tilly Slowboy. 
 
 The pre-Raphaelite mania faded away, but Ruskin's vindication endures ; 
 just as the letters of Pascal are still read by every one, although nobody cares 
 " two copper spangles " about the controversy which provoked them. Mr. 
 Ruskin's mental energy did not long lie fallow. Turning the bull's-eye of his 
 central theory upon other subjects, he dragged political economy up for judg- 
 ment. Who can forget the whimsical sensation produced by the appearance in 
 the "Cornhill Magazine" of the letters entitled "Unto this Last"? I need not 
 say much about them. They were a series of fantastic sermons, sometimes 
 eloquent and instructive, sometimes turgid and absurd, on the moral duty of 
 man. They had literally nothing to do with the subject of political economy. 
 The political economists were talking of one thing, and Mr. Ruskin was talking 
 of another and a totally different thing. The value of an article is what it will 
 bring in the market, say the economists. " For shame ! " cries Mr. Ruskin ; " is 
 the value of her rudder to a ship at sea in a tempest only what it would be bought 
 for at home in Wapping? " So on through the whole, the two disputants talk- 
 ing on quite different subjects. Mr. Ruskin might just as reasonably have in- 
 terrupted a medical professor lecturing to his class on the effects and uses of 
 castor oil, by telling him in eloquent verbiage that castor oil will not make 
 men virtuous and nations great. Nobody ever said it would; but it is impor- 
 tant to explain the properties of castor oil for all that. It would be a grand 
 thing of course if, as Mr. Ruskin prayed, England would " cast all thoughts 
 of possessive wealth back to the barbaric nations among whom they first arose," 
 and leave "the sands of the Indus and the adanmnt of Golconda" to "stiffen 
 the housings of the charger, and flash from the tm-ban of the slave." This 
 would be ever so much finer than opening banks, making railways (which Mr. 
 Ruskin specially detests), and dealing in stocks. But it has nothing to do, good 
 or bad, with the practical exposition of the economic laws of banking and 
 exchange. It is about as effective a refutation of the political economist's doc- 
 trines as a tract from the Peace Society denouncing all war would be to a lec- 
 ture from Von Moltke on the practical science of campaigning. But Mr. Rus- 
 kin never saw this, and never was disconcerted. He turned to other missions
 
 190 JOHN RUSKIN. 
 
 with the firm conviction that he had finished off political economy, as a clever 
 free-thinking London lady calmly announced a few years back to her friends 
 that she had abolished Christianity. Then Mr. Ruskin condemned mines and 
 factories, railways and engines. With all the same strenuous and ornate elo- 
 quence he passed sentence on London pantomimes and "cascades of girls," 
 and the too liberal exposure of " lower limbs " by the young ladies composing 
 those cascades. Nothing is too trivial for the omniscient philosopher, and 
 nothing is too great. The moral government of a nation is decreed by the 
 same voice and on the same principles as those which have prescribed the 
 length of a lady's waist-ribbon and the shape of a door-scraper. The first Na- 
 poleon never claimed for himself the divine right of intermeddling with and 
 arranging everything more complacently than does the mild and fragile phi- 
 losopher of Denmark Hill. Be it observed that his absolute ignorance of a sub- 
 ject never deters Mr. Ruskin from pronouncing prompt judgment upon it. It 
 may be some complicated question of foreign, say of American politics, on 
 which men of good ability, who have mastered all the facts and studied the ar- 
 guments on both sides, are slow to pronounce. Mr. Ruskin, boldly acknowl- 
 edging that until this morning he never heard of the subject, settles it out of 
 hand and delivers final judgment. Sometimes his restless impulses and his ex- 
 travagant way of plunging at conclusions and conjecturing facts lead him into 
 unpleasant predicaments. He delivered a manifesto some years ago upon the 
 brutality of the lower orders of Englishmen, founded on certain extraordinary 
 persecutions inflicted on his friend Thomas Carlyle. Behold Carlyle himself 
 corning out with a letter in which he declares that all these stories of persecu- 
 tion were not only untrue, but were " curiously the reverse of truth." Of 
 course every one knew that Ruskin believed them to be time; that he half 
 heard something, conjectured something else, jumped at a conclusion, and as 
 usual regarded himself as an inspired prophet, compelled by his mission to 
 come forward and deliver judgment on a sinful people. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's devotion to Carlyle has been unfortunate for him, as it has for 
 so many others. For that which is reality in Carlyle is only echo and imita- 
 tion in Ruskin, and the latter has power enough and a field wide enough of his 
 own to render inexcusable the attempt to follow slavishly another man. More- 
 over, Carlyle's utterances, right or wrong, have meaning and practical applica- 
 tion; but when Ruskin repeats them they become meaningless and inapplica- 
 ble. Mr. Ruskin endeavoring to apply Cai - lyle's dogmas to the business of art 
 and social life and politics often reminds one of the humorous Hindoo story of 
 the Gooroo Simple and his followers, who went through life making the most 
 outrageous blunders, because they would insist on the literal application of their 
 traditional maxims of wisdom to every common incident of existence. When 
 a self-conceited man ever consents to make another man his idol, even his 
 very self-conceit only tends to render him more awkwardly and unconditionally 
 devoted and servile. The amount of nonsense that Ruskin has talked and 
 written, under the evident conviction that thus and not otherwise would 
 Thomas Carlyle have dealt with the subject, is something almost inconceiv- 
 able. I never beard of Ruskin taking up any political question without being 
 on the wrong side of it. I am not merely speaking of what I personally con- 
 sider the wrong side ; I am alluding to questions which history and hard faet 
 and the common voice and feeling of humanity have since decided. Against 
 every movement to give political freedom to his countrymen, against every 
 movement to do common justice to the negro race, against every effort to
 
 JOIIX RUSKIN. 191 
 
 secure fair play for a democratic cause, Mr. Ruskin has peremptorily arrayed 
 himself. " I am a Kingsman and no Mobsman," he declares ; and this decla- 
 ration seems in his mind to settle the question and to justify his vindication 
 of every despotism of caste or sovereignty. To this has his doctrine of aesthetic 
 moral law, to this has his worship of Carlyle, conducted him. 
 
 For myself, I doubt whether Mr. Ruskin has any great qualities but his elo- 
 quence, and his true, honest love of Nature. As a man to stand up before a 
 society of which one part was fashionably languid and the other part only too 
 busy and greedy, and preach to it of Nature's immortal beauty and of the true 
 way to do her reverence, I think Ruskin had and has a place almost worthy 
 the dignity of a pi-ophet. I think, too, that he has the capacity to fill the 
 place, to fulfil its every duty. Surely this ought to be enough for the work and 
 for the praise of any man. But the womanish restlessness of Ruskin's tem- 
 perament, combined with the extraordinary self-sufficiency which contributed 
 so much to his success when he was master of a subject, sent him perpetually 
 intruding into fields where he was unfit to labor, and enterprises which he had 
 no capacity to conduct. No man has ever contradicted himself so often, so 
 recklessly, so complacently, as Mr. Ruskin has done. It is absurd to call him 
 a great critic even in art, for he seldom expresses any opinion one day without 
 flatly contradicting it the next. He is a great writer, as Rousseau was fresh, 
 eloquent, audacious, writing out of the fulness of the present mood, and heed- 
 less how far the impulse of to-day may contravene that of yesterday ; but as 
 Rousseau was always faithful to his idea of Truth, so Ruskin is ever faithful to 
 Nature. When all his errors and paradoxes and contradictions shall have 
 been utterly forgotten, this his great praise will remain : No man since Words- 
 worth's brightest days ever did half so much to teach his countrymen, and 
 those who speak his language, how to appreciate and honor that silent Nature 
 which " never did betray the heart that loved her."
 
 CHARLES READE. 
 
 A FEW days ago I came by chance upon an old number of an illustrated 
 publication which made a rather brilliant start in London four or five 
 years since, but died, I believe, not long after. It sprang up when there was 
 a sudden rage in England for satirical portraits of eminent persons, and it 
 really showed some skill and humor in this not very healthful or dignified de- 
 partment of art. This number of which I speak has a humorous cartoon called 
 "Companions of the Bath," and representing a miscellaneous crowd of the cel- 
 ebrated men and women of the day enjoying a plunge in the waves at Havre, 
 Dieppe, or some other French bathing-place. There are Gladstone and Dis- 
 raeli ; burly Alexandre Dumas and small, fragile Swinburne ; Tennyson and 
 Longfellow ; Christine Nilsson and Adelina Patti, the two latter looking very 
 pretty in their tunics and calefons. Most of the likenesses are good, and the atti- 
 tudes are often characteristic and droll. Mr. Spurgeon flounders and puffs wildly 
 in the waves; Gladstone cleaves his way sternly and earnestly; Mario floats 
 with easy grace. One group at present attracts very special attention. It re- 
 presents a big, heavy, gray-headed man, ungainly of appearance, whom a smaller 
 personage, bald and neat, is pushing off a plank into the water. The smaller 
 man is Dion Boucicault; the larger is Mr. Charles Reade. This was the time 
 when Reade and Boucicault were working together in " Foul Play." The in- 
 sinuation of the artist evidently was that Boucicault, always ready for any 
 plunge into the waves of sensationalism, had to give a push to his hesitating 
 companion in order to impel him to the decisive "header." 
 
 The artist has been evidently unjust to Mr. Reade. Indeed, one can hardly 
 help suspecting that there must have been some little personal grievance which 
 the pencil was employed to pay off, after the fashion threatened moi'e than onee 
 by Hogarth. Mr. Reade is not an Adonis, but this attempt at his likeness is cruelly 
 grotesque and extravagant. Charles Reade is a big, heavy, rugged, gray man ; 
 a sort of portlier Walt Whitman, but with closer-cut hair and beard ; a Walt 
 Whitman, let us say, put into training for the part of a stout British vestryman. 
 He impresses you at once as a man of character, energy, and originality, al- 
 though he is by no means the sort of person you would pick out as a typical 
 romaneist. But the artist who has delineated him in this cartoon, and who has 
 dealt so fairly, albeit humorously, with Tennyson and Swinburne and Longfel- 
 low, must surely have had some spite against the author of " Peg Wonington "
 
 CHARLES REABF 193 
 
 when he depicted him as a sort of huge human gorilla. It is in fact for this 
 reason only that I have thought it worth while to introduce an allusion to such 
 a caricature. The caricature is in itself illustrative of my subject. It helps 
 to introduce an inevitable allusion to a weakness of Mr. Charles Reade's which 
 makes for him many enemies and satirists among minor authors, critics, and 
 artists in London. To a wonderful energy and virility of genius and temper- 
 ament Charles Reade adds a more than feminine susceptibility and impa- 
 tience when criticism attempts to touch him. With a faith in his own capacity 
 and an admiration for his own works such as never were surpassed in literary 
 history, he can yet be rendered almost beside himself by a disparaging remark 
 from the obscurest critic in the corner of the poorest provincial newspaper. 
 There is no pen so feeble anywhere but it can sting Charles Reade into some- 
 thing like delirium. He replies to every attack, and he discovers a personal 
 enemy in every critic. Therefore he is always in quarrels, always assailing 
 this man and being assailed by that, and to the very utmost of his power trying 
 to prevent the public from appreciating or even recognizing the wealth of gen- 
 nine manhood, truth, and feeling, which is bestowed everywhere in the rugged 
 ore of his strange and paradoxical character. I am not myself one of Mr. 
 Reade's friends, or even acquaintances ; but from those who are, and whom I 
 know, I have always heard the one opinion of the sterling integrity, kindness, 
 and trueheartedness of the man who so often runs counter to all principles of 
 social amenity, and whose bursts of impulsive ill-humor have offended many 
 who would fain have admired. 
 
 I said once before in the pages of " The Galaxy," when speaking of anothei 
 English novelist, that Charles Reade seems to me to rank more highly in 
 America than he does in England. It is only of quite recent yeai-s that Eng- 
 lish criticism of the higher class has treated him with anything like fair con- 
 sideration. There was a long time of Reade's growing popularity during 
 which such criticism declined altogether to regard him au sericux. Even 
 now he has not justice done to him. But if I cannot help believing that 
 Mr. Reade rates himself far too highly, and announces his opinion far too 
 frankly, neither can I help thinking that English criticism in general fails to 
 do him justice. For a long time he had to struggle hard to obtain a mer 
 recognition. He had during part of his early career the good sense, or thw 
 spirit, or the misfortune, according as people choose to view it, to write in on 
 of the popular weekly journals of London which correspond somewhat with the 
 "New York Ledger." I think Charles Dickens described Reade as the one 
 only man with a genuine literary reputation who at that time had ventured 
 upon such a performance. There are indeed men now of undoubted rank in 
 literature who began their career with work like this ; but they did not put 
 their names to it, and the world was never the wiser. Reade worked boldly 
 and worked his best, and put his own name to it ; and therefore the London 
 press for some time regarded or affected to regfwd him as an author of that 
 class whose genius supplies weekly instalments of sensation and tremendously 
 high life, to delight the servant girls of Islington and the errand boys of the 
 City. Long after the issue of some of the finest novels Reade has written, the 
 annual publication called " Men of the Time " contained no notice of the au- 
 thor. The odd thing about this is that Reade is an author of the very class 
 which English criticisms of the kind I allude to ought to have delighted to 
 encourage. In the reaction against literary Bohemianism, which of late years 
 has grown up in England, and which the " Saturday Review " may be said
 
 194 CHARLES READE. 
 
 to have inaugurated, it became the whim and fashion to believe that only gen- 
 tlemen with university degrees, only " blood and culture," as the cant phrase 
 was, could write anything which gentlemanly persons could find it worth their 
 while to read. The " Saturday Review " for a long time affected to treat Dickens 
 as a good-humored and vulgar buffoon, with a gift of genius to delight the lower 
 classes. It usually regarded Thackeray as a person made for better things, who 
 had forfeited his position as a gentleman and a university man by descend- 
 ing to literature and to lectures. Now Charles Reade is what in the phrase- 
 ology of English caste would be called a gentleman. He is of good English 
 family ; he is a graduate of Magdalen College, Oxford. He is a man of culture 
 and scholarship. His reading, and especially his classical acquirements, I pre- 
 sume to be far wider and deeper than those of Thackeray, who, it need hardly 
 he said, was as Person or Parr when compared with Dickens. Altogether 
 Reade seems to have been the sort of man whom the " Saturday Review," for 
 example, ought to have taken pi'omptly up and patted on the back and loftily 
 patronized. But nothing of the sort occurred. Reade was treated merely as the. 
 clever, audacious concocter of sensational stories. He was hardly dealt 
 with as an artist at all. The reviews only began to come round when they 
 discovered that the public were positively Avith the new and stirring roman- 
 cist. What renders this more curious is the fact that the earlier novels were 
 incomparably more highly finished works of art than their successors. " Peg 
 Woffington " and " Christie Johnstone " the former published so long ago as 
 1852 seem almost perfect in their symmetry and beauty. " The Cloister and 
 the Hearth " might well-nigh have persuaded a reader that a new Walter 
 Scott was about to arise on the horizon of our literature. All the more recent 
 works seem crude and rough by comparison. They ought to have been the 
 vigorous, uncouth, undisciplined efforts of the author's earlier 3 T ears. They 
 ought to have led up to the "Cloister and the Hearth" and " Peg Wofiing- 
 tori," instead of succeeding them. Yet, if I am not greatly mistaken, it was 
 while he was publishing those earlier and finer products of his fresh intellect 
 that Charles Reade was especially depreciated and even despised by what is 
 called high-class English criticism. He never indeed has had much for which 
 to thank the English critics, and he has never been slow to express his pecu- 
 liar sense of obligation; but assuredly they treated with greater respect the 
 works which will be soonest forgotten than those on which he may perhaps rest 
 a claim to a more enduring reputation. 
 
 The general public, however, soon began to find him out. " Peg Woffing- 
 ton " was a decided success. Its dramatic adaptation is still one of the favorite 
 pieces of the English stage. " It is Never Too Late to Mend " set everybody 
 talking. Reade began to devote himself to exposing this or that social and legal 
 grievance calling for reform, and people came to understand that a new branch 
 of the art of novel-writing was in process of development, the special gift of 
 which was to convert a Parliamentary blue-book into a work of fiction. The 
 treatment of criminals in prisons and in far-off penal settlements, the manner 
 in which patients are dealt with in private lunatic asylums, became the main 
 subject and backbone of the new style of novel, instead of the misunderstandings 
 of lovers, the trials of honest poverty, or the struggles for ascendancy in the 
 fashionable circles of Belgravia. Mr. Reade undoubtedly stands supreme and 
 indeed alone in work of this kind. No man but he can make a blue-book live 
 and yet be a blue-book still. When Dickens undertook some special and prac- 
 tical question, we all knew that we had to look for lavish outpouring of humor,
 
 CHARLES READE. 195 
 
 fancy, and eccentricity, for generous pathos, and for a sentimental misapplica- 
 tion or complete elimination of the actual facts. Miss Martineau made dry 
 little stories about political economy ; and Disraeli's " Sibyl " is only a fash- 
 ionable novel and a string of tracts bound up together and called by one name. 
 But Reade takes the hard and naked facts as h finds them in some newspaper 
 or in the report of some Parliamentary commission, and he so fuses them into 
 the other material whereof his romance is to be made up that it would re- 
 quire a chemical analysis to separate the fiction from the reality. You are 
 not conseio-is that you are going through the boiled-down contents of a blue- 
 book. You have no aggrieved sense of being entrapped into the dry de- 
 tails of some harassing social question. The reality reads like romance; 
 the romance carries you along like reality. No author ever indulged in a 
 faii'er piece of seif-glorification than that contained in the last sentence of " Put 
 Yourself in his Place": "I have taken a few undeniable truths out of many, 
 and have labored to make my 1'eaders realize those appalling facts of the day 
 which most men know, but not one in a thousand comprehends, and not one in 
 a hundred thousand realizes, until fiction which, whatever you may have been 
 told to the contrary, is the highest, widest, noblest, and greatest of all the arts 
 comes to his aid, studies, penetrates, digests the hard facts of chronicles and 
 blue-books, and makes their dry bones live." To this object, to this kind of 
 work, Reade seems tS have deliberately purposed to devote himself. It was 
 evidently in accordance with his natural tastes and sympathies. He Is a man 
 of exuberant and irrepressible energy. He must be doing something definite 
 always. He did actually bestir himself in the case of a person whom he be- 
 lieved to be imjustly confined in a lunatic asylum, as energetically as he makes 
 Dr. Sampson do in " Hard Cash," and with equal success. Most of the 
 scenes he desci'ibes, in England at least, have thus in some way fallen in to 
 be part of his own experience. Whatever he undertakes to do he does with a 
 tremendous earnestness. His method of workmanship is, I believe, something 
 like that of Mr. Wilkie Collins, but of course the object is totally different. 
 Wilkie Collins collects all the remarkable police cases and other judicial narra- 
 tives he can find, and makes what Jean Paul Richter called " quarry " of them 
 a vast accumulation of materials in which to go digging for subjects and illus- 
 trations at leisure. Charles Reade does the same with blue-books and the re- 
 ports of official inquiries. The author of the "Dead Secret" is looking for 
 perplexing little mysteries of human crime; the author of "Hard Cash" for 
 stories of legal or social wrong to be redressed. I need hardly say, perhaps, 
 that I rank Chai'les Reade high above Wilkie Collins. The latter can string 
 his dry bones on wires with remarkable ingenuity ; the former can, as he fairly 
 boasts, make the diy bones live. 
 
 Meanwhile, let us follow out the progress of Mr. Charles Reade as a literary 
 influence. He grows to have a distinct place and power in England quite in- 
 dependently of the reviewers, and at last the very storm of controversy which 
 his books awaken compels the reviewers themselves to take him into ac- 
 count. " It is Never Too Late to Mend " raised a clamor among prison dis- 
 ciplinarians. Years after its publication it is brought out as a drama in Lon- 
 don, and its first appearance creates a sort of riot in the Princess's Theatre. 
 Hostile critics rise in the stalls and denounce it; supporters and admirers vehe- 
 mently defend it; speeches are made on either side. Mr. Reade plunges into 
 the arena of controvei'sy a day or two after in the newspapers, assails one of 
 the critics by name, and charges him with having denounced the piece in the 
 theatre, and aoolauded his own denunciation in the journal for which he wrote.
 
 196 CHARLES READE. 
 
 Some friend of the critic replies by the assertion that one of Mr. Readers most 
 enthusiastic literary supporters is Mr. Reade's own nephew. All this sort of 
 thing is dreadfully undignified, but it brings an author at all events into public 
 notice, and it did for Mr. Reade what I am convinced he would have disdained 
 to do consciously it "puffed" his books. An amusing story is told in connec- 
 tion with the production of this drama. An East End manager thought of 
 bringing it out. (The East End, I need hardly say, is the lower and poorer 
 quarter of London.) This manager came and studied the piece as produced at 
 the West End. One of the strong scenes, the sensation scene, was a realistic 
 exhibition of prison discipline. The West End had been duly impressed and 
 thrilled with this scene. But the East End manager shook his head. " It 
 would never do for me," he said despondingly to a friend. " Not like the real 
 thing at all. My gallery would never stand it. Bless you, my fellows know 
 the real thing too well to put up with that." 
 
 In this, as in other cases, Mr. Reade's hot temper, immense self-conceit, 
 and eager love of controversy plunged him into discussions from which an- 
 other man would have shrunk with disgust. He went so far on one occasion 
 as to write to the editor of a London daily paper, threatening that if his books 
 were not more fairly dealt with he would order his publisher to withdraw his 
 advertisements from the offending journal. One can fancy what terror the 
 threat of a loss of a few shillings a month would have had upon the proprie- 
 tors of a flourishing London paper, and the amount of ridicule to which the 
 hare suggestion of such a thing exposed the irritable novelist. But Reade was, 
 and probably is, incurable. He would keep pelting his peppery little notes at 
 the head of any and everybody against whom he fancied that he had a griev- 
 ance. I remember one peculiarly whimsical illustration of this weakness, 
 which found its way into print some years ago in London, but which perhaps 
 will be quite new in the United States, and I cannot resist the temptation 
 to reproduce it. Once upon a time, it would seem from the correspondence, 
 Mr. Reade wrote a play called " Gold," which was produced at Druiy Lane 
 Theatre. Except from this correspondence I own that I never heard of tin; 
 play. Subsequently, Mr. Reade presented himself one night at the stage-door 
 of Drury Lane Theatre, and was refused admittance. Mr. Charles Mathews 
 was then performing at the theatre, and Mr. Reade evidently supposed him to 
 have been the manager and responsible for all the arrangements. Therefore 
 he addressed his complaint to the incomparable light comedian, who is as re- 
 nowned for easy sparkling humor and wit off the stage as for brilliant acting 
 on it. Here is the correspondence; and we shall see how much Mr. Reade 
 took by his motion : 
 
 GARRICK CLUB, COVEXT GARDEN, November 28. 
 
 DEAR SIR : I was stopped the other night at the stage-door of Drury Lane Theatre by 
 people whom I remember to have seen at the Lyceum under your reign. 
 
 This is the first time such an affront was ever put upon me in any theatre where I had 
 produced a play, and is without precedent unless when an affront was intended. As I never 
 forgive an affront, I am not hasty to suppose one intended. It is very possible that this was 
 done inadvertently ; and the present stage-list may have been made out without the older 
 claims being examined. 
 
 Will you be so kind as to let me know at once whether this is so, and if the people who 
 stopped me at the stage-door are yours, will you protect the author of " Gold," etc., from 
 any repetition of such an annoyance ? 
 
 I am, dear sir, yours faithfully, 
 
 CHARLES READE.
 
 CHARLES READE. 107 
 
 To this imperious demand Mr. Reade received next day the following ge 
 
 nial answer: 
 
 T. R., DRURT LANE, November 29. 
 
 DEAR SIR : If ignorance is bliss on general occasions, on the present it certainly would 
 be folly to be wise. I am therefore happy to be able to inform you that I am ignorant of 
 your having produced a play at this theatre ; ignorant that you are the author of " Gold '' ; 
 ignorant of the merits of that play ; ignorant that your name has been erased from the list 
 at the stage-door ; ignorant that it had ever been on it ; ignorant that you had presented 
 yourself for admittance ; ignorant that it had been refused ; ignorant that such a refusal was 
 without precedent ; ignorant that in the man who stopped you you recognized one of the 
 persons lately with me at the Lyceum ; ignorant that the doorkeeper was ever in that thea- 
 tre ; ignorant that you never forgive an affront ; ignorant that any had been offered ; igno- 
 rant of when, how, or by whom the list was made out, and equally so by whom it was al- 
 tered. 
 
 Allow me to add that I am quite incapable of offering any discourtesy to a gentleman I 
 have barely the pleasure of knowing, and moreover have no power whatever to interfere with 
 Mr. Smith's arrangements or. disarrangements ; and, with this wholesale admission of igno- 
 rance, incapacity, and impotence, believe me 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 C. T. MATHEWS. 
 
 CHARLES READE, ESQ. 
 
 The correspondence got into print somehow, and created, I need hardly 
 say, infinite merriment in the literary clubs and circles of London. Not all 
 disputes with Charles Reade ended so humorously, for the British novelist is as 
 fond of actions at law as Fenimore Cooper used to be. Thus more than one 
 critic has had to dread the terrors of an action for damages when he has ven- 
 tured in a rash moment to disparage the literary value of Mr. Reade's teach- 
 ing. Lately, however, in the case of the "Times," and its attack on "A Ter- 
 rible Temptation," Mr. Reade adopted the unexpected tone of mild and even 
 flattering remonstrance. Whether he thought it hopeless to alarm the " Times " 
 by any threat of action, or feared that if he wrote a savage letter the journal 
 would not even give him the comfort of seeing it in print, I do not know. But 
 he certainly took a meek tone and endeavored to propitiate, and got rather 
 coarsely rebuked for his pains. People in London were amused to find that he 
 could be thus mild and gentle. I do remember, however, that on one occasion 
 he wrote a letter of remonstrance, which was probably intended to be a kind 
 of rugged compliment to the " Saturday Review," a paper which likewise cares 
 nothing about actions for damages. Usually, however, his tone of argument 
 with his critics is perfervid, and his estimate of himself is exquisitely candid. 
 In one of his manifestoes he assured the world that he never allowed a publisher 
 to offer any suggestions with regard to his story, but simply sold the manu- 
 script in bulk " c'est a prendre ou a laisser." In another instance he spoke 
 of one of his novels as " floating " the serial publication in which it was making 
 its appearance, and which we were therefore given to understand would have 
 sunk to the bottom but for his cooperation. In sh*ort, it is well known in Lon- 
 don that Mr. Charles Reade's character is disfigured by a self-conceit which 
 amounts to something like mania, and an impatience of criticism which occa- 
 sionally makes him all but a laughing-stock to the public. Rarely, indeed, in 
 literary history have high and genuine talents been united with such a flatu- 
 lence of self-conceit. 
 
 Probably Reade had reached his highest position just after the publication 
 of " Hard C;ish." This remarkable novel, crammed with substance enough to 
 make h;ilf a dozen novels, appeared in the first instance in Dickens's " All the 
 1'ear Round." Dickens himself, if I remember rightly, felt bound to publish a
 
 198 
 
 CHAULES READE. 
 
 note disclaiming any concurrence in or psrsonal responsibility for the attacks 
 on the private madhouse system, and the whole subject aroused a very lively 
 controversy, wherein, I think, Reade certainly was not worsted. The " Grif- 
 fith Gaunt" controversy we all remember. I confess that I have no sympathy 
 whatever with the kind of criticism which treats any of Mr. Reade's works as 
 immoral in tendency, and I think the charge was even more absurd when 
 urged against "Griffith Gaunt" than when pressed against the "Terrible 
 Temptation." To me the clear tendency of Reade's novels seems always 
 healthy, purifying, and bracing, like a fresh, strong breeze. I cannot under- 
 stand how any man or woman could be the worse for reading one of them. 
 They are always novels with a purpose, and I, at least, never could discern 
 any purpose in them which was not honest and sound. I feel inclined to ex- 
 cuse all Reade's vehemence of self-vindication and childish frankness of self- 
 praise when I read some of the attacks against what people try to paint as the 
 immorality of his books. But I need not go into that controversy. Enough to 
 say for my own part that I found " Griffith Gaunt" a grim and dreary book 
 a tiresome book, in fact; but I saw nothing in it which could with any justice 
 be said to have the slightest tendency to demoralize any reader. I have indeed 
 heard people who are in general fair critics condemn " Adam Bede " as im- 
 moral because Hetty is seduced; and I have even heard poor Maggie Tulliver 
 rated as unfit for decent society because she ever allowed even a moment's 
 thought of her cousin's engaged lover to enter her mind. On this principle, 
 doubtless, "Griffith Gaunt" is immoral. There are people in the book who 
 commit sin, and yet are not eaten by lions or bodily carried down below like 
 Don Juan. But if we are to have novels made up only of good people who al- 
 ways 'do right and the one stock villain who always does wrong, I think the 
 novelist's art cannot too soon be delegated to its only fitting province the 
 amusement of the nursery. " Griffith Gaunt," however, I regard as a falling 
 off, because it is a sour, unpleasant, and therefore inartistic book. " Foul 
 Play " was a clever tour de force, a brilliant thing, made to sell, with hardly 
 more character in it than would suffice for a Bowery melodrama. " Put Your- 
 self in his Place " was a wholesome return to the former style, a marrowy, 
 living blue-book, instinct with power and passion. " A Terrible Temptation " 
 I do not admire. I do not think it immoral, but it hardly calls for any delib- 
 erate, criticism. Since "Hard Cash" Mr. Reade has, in my opinion, written 
 only one novel which the literary world will care to preserve, and even that 
 one, "Put Yourself in his Place," can hardly be said to add one cubit to his 
 stature. 
 
 Mr. Reade has, I believe, rather a passion for dramatic enterprise, and a 
 characteristic faith in his power to turn out a good drama. A season or two 
 back he hired, I am told, a London theatre, in order to have the complete su- 
 perintendence of the production of one of his novels turned into a drama. I 
 have been assured that the dramatic version was accomplished entirely by him- 
 self. If so, I am sure no enemy could have more cruelly damaged the original 
 work. All the character was completely sponged out of it. The one really 
 effective and original personage in the novel did not appear in the play. A 
 number of the most antique and conventional melodramatic situations and sur- 
 prises were crammed into the piece. All the silly old stage business about 
 mysterious conspiracies carried on under the very ear of the identical person- 
 age who never ought to have been allowed to hear them arc called in to form 
 an essential feature of the drama. The play, of course, was not successful, al- 
 though the novel had in it naturally all the elements of a stirring and powerful 
 drama. If Charles Reade really with his own hand converted a vigorous and
 
 CHARLES READE. 199 
 
 thrilling story into that limp, languid, and vapid play, it was surely the most 
 awful warning against amateur dramatic enterprise that ever self-eonceit could 
 receive undismayed. 
 
 Of course we won't rank Mr. Reade as one of the most popular novelists 
 now in England. But his popularity is something very different indeed from 
 that of Dickens, or even from that of Thackeray. In Forster's " Life of Dick- 
 ens " there is a letter of the great novelist's in which he complains of having 
 been treated (by Bentley, I think) no better than any author who had sold but 
 fifteen hundred copies. I should think the occasions were very rare when Mr. 
 Reade's circulation in England went much beyond lifteen hundred copies. Th 
 whole system of publishing is so different in England from that which prevails 
 in America, our fictitious prices and the controlling monopoly of our great 
 libraries so restrict and limit the sale, that a New York reader would perhaps 
 hardly believe how small a number constitute a good circulation for an Eng- 
 lish novelist. I assume that, speaking roughly, Reade, Wilkie Collins, and 
 Trollope may be said to have about the same kind of circulation almost im- 
 measurably below Dickens, and below some such abnormal sale as that of 
 " Lothair " or " Lady Audley's Secret," but much above even the best of the 
 younger novelists. I venture to think that not one of these three popular and 
 successful authors may be counted on to reach a circulation of two thousand 
 copies. Probably about eighteen hundred copies would be a decidedly good 
 thing for one of Charles Reade's novels. Of the three, I should say that 
 Wilkie Collins has the most eager readers; that Trollope's novels take the 
 highest place in what is called "society " ; and that Reade's rank the best among 
 men of brains. But there is so wide a difference between the popularity of 
 Dickens and that of Reade that it seems almost absurd to employ the same 
 word to describe two things so utterly unlike. It is, indeed, a remarkable 
 proof of Reade's power and success that, setting out as he always does to tell a 
 story which shall convey information and a purpose of some practical kind, he 
 can get any sort of large circulation at all. For one great charm and excel- 
 lence of our library system is that it creates a huge class of regular, I might 
 almost say professional, novel-readers, who subscribe to Mudie's by the year, 
 want to get all the reading they can out of it, and instinctively shudder at tho 
 thought of any novel that is weighted by solid information and overtaxing 
 thought. This is the class for whom and by whom the circulating libraries 
 exist, and Mr. Reade deserves the full credit of having utterly disregarded 
 them, or rather boldly encountered them, and at least to some extent com- 
 pelled them to read him. 
 
 Mr. Reade's position as a novelist may be adjudged now as safely as ever 
 a novelist's place can be fixed by a contemporary generation. He is nearly 
 sixty years old, and he has written about a dozen novels. It is not likely that 
 he will ever write anything which could greatly enhance the estimate the pub- 
 lic have already formed of him ; and no future failures could affect his past 
 success. I think his career is, therefore, fairly and fully before us. We know 
 how singularly limited his dramatis persona are. He marches them on and 
 off the stage boldly ever so often, and by a change of dresses every now and 
 then he for a while almost succeeds in making us believe that he has a very 
 full company at his command. But we soon get to know every one by sight, 
 and can swear to him or her, no matter by what name or garb disguised. We 
 know the sweet, impulsive, incoherent heroine, who is always contradicting 
 herself and saying what she ought not to say and does not mean to say; who 
 now denounces the hero, and then falls upon his neck and vows that she loves 
 him more than life. This young woman is sometimes Julia and sometimes
 
 L'OO CHARLES REAE5. 
 
 Helen and sometimes Grace; she now is exiled for a while on a lonely island, 
 and even she is carried away by a flood; but in every case she is just the same 
 girl rescued by the same hero. That hero is always a being of wonderful 
 mechanical and scientific knowledge of some kind or other, whether as Cap- 
 fciin Dodd he makes love to Lucy Fountain, or as Henry Little he captivates 
 Grace Garden, or as the gentleman in "Foul Play " he cures the heroine of 
 consumption and builds island huts better than Robinson Crusoe. Then we 
 have the rough, clever, eccentric personage, Dr. Sampson or Dr. Amboyne, 
 whose business principally is to act a part like that of Herr Mittler in Goethe's 
 Hovel, and help the characters of the book through every difficulty. Then we 
 have the white-livered sneak, the villain of the book when he is bad enough 
 for such a part; the Coventry of "Put Yourself in his Place"; I forget what 
 his name is in "Foul Play." These are the puppets which principally make up 
 the show. Very vigorously and cleverly do they dance, and capitally do they 
 imitate life ; but there are so very few of them that we grow a little tired of 
 seeing them over and over again. Indeed, Charles Reade's array of characters 
 sometimes reminds us of the simple system of Plautus, in which we have for 
 every play the same types of people the rather stingy father, the embarrassed 
 lover, the clever comic slave, and so forth. It cannot be said that Reade has 
 added a single character to fiction. He understands human nature, or at least 
 such types of it as he habitually selects, very well, and he draws vigorously his 
 figures and groups; but he has discovered nothing fresh, he has rescued no ex- 
 istence from the commonplace and evanescent realistics of life, to be preserved 
 immortal in a work of art. Not one of his characters is cited in ordinary con- 
 versation or in the writings of journalists. Nobody quotes from him unless in 
 reference to some one of the stirring social topics which he lias illustrated, and 
 even then only as one would quote from a correspondent of the "Times." 
 Every educated man and woman in England is assumed, as a matter of course, 
 to be familiar with the works of George Eliot; but nobody is necessarily as- 
 sumed to have read Charles Reade. That educated people do read him and do 
 admire him is certain; but it is quite a matter of option with them to read him 
 or let him alone so far as society and public opinion are concerned. There are 
 certain tests and evidences of a novelist's having attained a front-rank place in 
 England which are unmistakable. They are purely social, may be only super- 
 ficial, and will neither one way nor the other affect the views of foreign critics 
 or of posterity ; but they are decisive as far as England is concerned. Among 
 them I shall mention two or three. One is the fact that writers in the press 
 allude to some of his characters without feeling bound to explain in whose 
 novel and what novel the characters appear. Another is the fact that artists 
 voluntarily select from his works subjects for paintings to be sent to the Royal 
 Academy's annual exhibition or elsewhere. A third is the fact that articles 
 about him, not formal reviews of a work just published, appear pretty often in 
 the magazines. Now, whatever may be the genius and merits of an author, I 
 think he cannot be said to have attained the front rank in English public 
 opinion unless he can show these evidences of success ; and, so far as I know, 
 Mr. Reade cannot show any of them. For myself, I do not believe that Mr. 
 Reade ever could under any circumstances have become a really great novelist. 
 All the higher gifts of imagination and all the richer veins of humor hare been 
 denied to him. Not one gleam of poetic fancy ever seems to have floated 
 across the nervous Saxon of his style. He is a powerful story-teller, who has 
 a manly purpose in every tale he tells, and that is all. That surely is a great 
 deal. No one tells a story more thrillingly. Once you begin to listen, you
 
 CHARLES READE. 201 
 
 cannot release yourself from the spell of the raconteur until all be clone. A 
 strong, healthy air of honest and high purpose breathes through nearly all thu 
 stoi'ies. An utter absence of cant, affectation, and sham distinguishes them. A 
 surprising variety of descriptive power, at once bold, broad, and realistic, is 
 one of their great merits. Mr. Reade can describe a sea-fight, a storm, tlw 
 forging of a horseshoe, the ravages of an inundation, the trimming of a lady's 
 dress, the tuning of a piano, with equal accuracy and apparent zest. I onoo 
 heard an animated discussion in a literary club as to whether the scrap of mi- 
 nute description was artistic and effective or absurd and ludicrous which makes 
 us acquainted with the fact that when Henry Little dragged Grace Garden out 
 of the raging flood, the force of the water washed away the heroine's stock- 
 ings and garters and left her barefoot. Some irreverent critics would only 
 laugh at the gravity with which the author detailed this important circum- 
 stance. Others, however, insisted that this little touch, so homely, and to the 
 profane mind so exceedingly ridiculous, was necessary and artistic ; that it 
 heightened the effect of the great word-picture previously shown by the force 
 of its practical and circumstantial reality. However this momentous contro- 
 versy may settle itself in the estimation of readers, it cannot be denied that 
 some at least of Reade's success is due to the courage and self-reliance which 
 will brave the risk of being ridiculous for the sake of being real and effective. 
 Indeed, Mr. Reade wants no quality wliich is necessary to make a powerful 
 story-teller, while he is distinguished from all mere story-tellers by the fact 
 that he has some great social object to serve in nearly everything he under- 
 takes to detail. More than this I do not believe he is, nor, despite the evi- 
 dences of something yet higher which were given in " Christie Johnstone " 
 and " The Cloister and the Hearth," do I think he ever could have been. He 
 is a magnificent specimen of the modern special correspondent, endowed with 
 the additional and unique gift of a faculty for throwing his report into the 
 form of a thrilling story. But it requires something more than this, some- 
 thing higher than this, to make a great novelist whom the world will always 
 remember. Mr. Reade is unsurpassed in the second class of English novelists, 
 but he does not belong to the front rank. His success has been great in its 
 way, but it is for an age and not for time.
 
 THE EXILE-WORLD OF LONDON. 
 
 LEICESTER SQUARE and the region that lies around it are convention- 
 ally regarded as the exile quarter of London. The name of Leicester 
 square suggests the idea of an exile, as surely and readily, even to the mind of 
 one who has never looked on the mournful and decaying enclosure, as the name 
 of Billingsgate does that of fish-woman, or the name of the Temple that of a 
 law-student. Yet, if a stranger visiting London thinks he is likely to see any 
 exile of celebrity, while pacing the streets which branch oft" Leicester square, 
 he will be almost as much mistaken as if he were to range Eastcheap in the 
 hope of meeting the wild Prince and Poins. 
 
 Many a conspiracy has had its followers and understrappers in the Leicester 
 square region ; but the great conspirators do not live there any more. The 
 place is falling, falling ; the foreign and distinctive character of the population 
 remains as marked as ever, but the foreigners whom London people would care 
 to see are not to be found there any longer. The exiles who have made part of 
 history, whose names -are on record, do not care for Leicester square. They 
 are to be found in Kensington, in Brompton, in Hampstead and Highgate ; in 
 the Regent's Park district ; a few in Bloomsbury, a few in Mayfair. A marble 
 slab and an inscription now mark the house in King street, St. James's, where 
 Louis Napoleon lodged ; and there is a house in Belgrave square dear to all 
 true Legitimists, where the Count de Chambord (" Henri Cinq") received Ber- 
 ryer and his brother pilgrims. Only poor exiles herd together now in London. 
 Only poverty, I suppose, ever causes nationalities to herd together anywhere. 
 The men who group around Leicester square are the exiles without a fame ; the 
 subterranean workers in politics ; the men who come like shadows, and so de- 
 part ; the men whose names are writ in water, even though their life-paths may 
 have been marked in blood. 
 
 Living in London, I had of late years many opportunities of meeting with the 
 exiles of each class. I know few men more to be pitied than the great majority 
 of those who make up the latter or Leicester square section. On the other 
 hand, I should say that few men, indeed, are more to be envied by any of their 
 fellow-creatures who love to be courted and " lionized," than the political exiles 
 of great name who come to London and do not stay too long there. 
 
 Far away as the days of Thaddeus of Warsaw and the conventional and ro- 
 mantic type of exile now seem, there is still a fervent yearning in British so- 
 ciety toward the representative of any Continental nationality which happens 
 to be oppressed. No man had ever before received such a welcome in London 
 as Kossuth did ; but Kossuth stayed too long, became domesticized and famil- 
 iarized, and society in London likes its lions to be always new and fresh. 
 Moreover, the late Lord Palmerston, a warm patron of exiles when the patronage 
 went no further than an invitation to a dinner or an evening party, set his face 
 against Kossuth from the first ; and polite society soon took the hint. 
 
 The man who most completely conquered all society, even the very highest, 
 in London, during my recollection, was the man who probably cared least about 
 f.t, and who certainly never sought to win the favor of fashion I mean, of course, 
 Garibaldi. To this day I am perfectly unable to understand the demeanor of 
 the British peerage toward Garibaldi, when he visited London for a few days
 
 THE EXILE-WORLD OF LONDON. 203 
 
 some years ago. The thing was utterly unprecedented and inexplicable. The 
 Peerage literally rushed at him. He was beset by dukes, mobbed by count- 
 esses. He could not by any human possibility have so divided his day as to find 
 time for breakfasting and dining with one-fifth of the noble hosts who fought 
 and scrambled for him. It was a perpetual torture to his secretaries and pri- 
 vate friends to decide between the rival claims of a Prime Minister and a Prince 
 of the blood ; an Archbishop and a Duchess ; the Lord Chancellor and the 
 leader of the Opposition. The Tories positively outdid the Whigs in the strug- 
 gle for the society of the simple seaman, the gallant guerilla. The oddest thing 
 about the business was, that three out of every four of these noble personages 
 had always previously spoken of Garibaldi when they did speak of him at all 
 with contempt and dislike, as a buccaneer and a filibuster. 
 
 What did it mean? Was it a little comedy ? Was it their fun ? Was it a politi- 
 cal coup de theatre, to dodge the Radicals and the workingmen out of their favorite 
 hero ? Certainly some- of Garibaldi's friends suspected something of the kind, 
 and were utterly bewildered and confounded by the unexpected rush of aristo- 
 cratic admirers, who beset the hero from the moment he touched the shore of 
 England. 
 
 It was a strange sight, not easily to be forgotten, to see the manner in which 
 Garibaldi sat among the dukes and marchionesses simple, sweet, arrayed in 
 the calm, serene dignity of a manly, noble heart. There was something of 
 Oriental stateliness in the unruffled, imperturbable, bland composure, with which 
 he bore himself amid the throng of demonstrative and titled adulators. I do not 
 think he believed in the sincerity of half of it, any more than I did, but he 
 showed no more sign of distrust or impatience than he did of gratified vanity. 
 
 The thing ended in a quarrel between the Aristocracy and the Democracy, 
 between Belgravia and Clerkenwell, for the custody of the hero, and Garibaldi 
 escaped somehow back to his island during the squabble. But I think Lady 
 Palmerston let the mask fall for a moment, when, growing angry at the assurance 
 of Garibaldi's humbler friends, and perhaps a little tired of the whole business, she 
 told some gentlemen of my acquaintance, that quite too much work had been made 
 about a person who, after all, was only a respectable brigand. This was said 
 (and it was said) at the very meridian of the day of noble homage to the Emanci- 
 pator of Sicily. 
 
 Garibaldi has never since returned to England. Should he ever do so, he 
 will find himself unembarrassed by the attentions of the Windsor uniform and 
 Order of the Garter. The play, however it was got up, or whatever its object, 
 was played out long ago. But the West End is, as a rule, very fond of distin- 
 guished exiles, when they come and go quickly ; and Lord Palmerston's draw- 
 ing-room was seldom without a representative of the class. No man ever did 
 less for any great cause than Lord Palmerston did ; but he liked brilliant exiles, 
 and, perhaps, more particularly the soldierly than the scholarly class. Such 
 a man as the martial, dashing, adventurous General Tiirr, for example, was the 
 kind of refugee that Lord and Lady Palmerston especially favored. 
 
 Many English peers have, indeed, quite a specialite in the way of patronizing 
 exiles ; but, of course, in all such cases the exile must have a name which brings 
 some gratifying distinction to his host. He must be somebody worth pointing 
 out to the other guests. I know that many Continental refugees have chafed at 
 all this, and some have steadily held aloof from it, and declined to be shown off 
 for the admiration of a novelty-hunting crowd. Many, too, have been deceived 
 by it ; have mistaken such idle attention for profound and practical sympathy, and
 
 204 
 
 THE EXILE-WORLD OF LONDON. 
 
 have thought that two or three peers and half a dozen aristocratic petticoats 
 could direct the foreign policy of England. They have swelled with hope and 
 confidence ; have built their plans and based their organizations on the faith that 
 Park Lane meant the British government, and that the politeness of a Cabinet 
 Minister was as good as the assistance of a British fleet ; and have found out what 
 idiots they were in such a belief, and have gone nigh to breaking their hearts 
 accordingly. Indeed, the readiness of all classes in England to rush at any dis- 
 tinguished exile, and become effusive about himself and his cause is very often 
 or, at least, used to be a cruel kindness, sure to be misunderstood and to be- 
 tray a love that killed. 
 
 Nothing could, in its way, have been more unfortunate and calamitous than 
 the outburst of popular enthusiasm in England about the Polish insurrection 
 four years ago. Some of the Polish leaders living in London were com- 
 pletely deceived by it, and finally believed that England was about to take up 
 arms in their cause. An agitation was got up, outside the House of Commons, 
 by an earnest, well-meaning gentleman, who really believed what he said ; and 
 inside the House by a bustling, quickwitted, political adventurer, who certainly 
 ought not to have believed what he said. This latter gentleman actually went out 
 to Cracow, in Austrian Poland, and was leceived there with wild demonstrations 
 of welcome as a representative of the national will of England and the precursor 
 of English intervention. The Polish insurrection went on ; and England wrote 
 a diplomatic note, which Russia resented as a piece of impertinence ; and there 
 England's sympathy ended. " I think," said a great English Liberal to me, 
 "that every Englishman who helped to encourage these poor Poles and give 
 them hope of English help, has Polish blood on his hands." I think so, too. 
 
 I have always thought that Felice Orsini was in some sort a victim to the 
 kind of delusion which English popularity so easily fosters. I met Orsini when 
 he came to England, not very long before the unfortunate and criminal attempt 
 of the Rue Lepelletier ; and I was much taken, as most people who met him 
 were, by the simplicity, sweetness, and soldierly frankness of his demeanor. He 
 delivered some lectures in London, Manchester, Liverpool, and other large 
 towns, on his own personal adventures principally his escape from prison and 
 though he had but a moderate success as a lecturer, he was surrounded every- 
 where by well-meaning and sympathizing groups, the extent of whose influence 
 and the practical value of whose sympathy he probably did not at first quite 
 understand. H* certainly had, at one time, some vague hopes of obtaining for 
 the cause of Italian independence a substantial assistance from England. A 
 short experience cured him of that dream ; and I fancy it was then that he 
 formed the resolution which he afterward attempted so desperately to carry out. 
 I think, from something I heard him say once, that Mazzini had endeavored to 
 enlighten him as to the true state of affairs in England, and the real value of the 
 sort of sympathy which London so readily offers to any interesting exile. But I 
 do not believe Mazzini's advice had much influence over Orsini. Indeed, the lat- 
 ter, at the time I saw him, had but little respect for Mazzini. He spoke with 
 something like contempt of the great conspirator. It would have been well for 
 Orsini if he had, in one thing at least, followed the counsels of Mazzini. People 
 used to say, some years ago, that odious and desperate as Orsini's attempt was, 
 it at least had the merit of frightening Louis Napoleon into active efforts on be- 
 half of Italy. There was so much about Orsini that was worthy and noble that 
 one would be glad to regard him as even in his crime the instrument of good to 
 the country he loved so well. But documentary and other evidence has made it
 
 THE EXILE-WORLD OF LONDON. 205 
 
 clear since Orsini's death that the negotiations which ended in Solferino and 
 Villafranca were begun before Orsini had ever planned his murderous enterprise. 
 The fact is, that, during the Crimean war, Cavour first tried England on the 
 subject, through easy-going and heedless Lord Clarendon who hardly took the 
 trouble to listen to the audacious projects of his friend and then turned to 
 France, where quicker and shrewder ears listened to what he had to say. 
 
 I have spoken of Orsini's contempt for Mazzini. Such a feeling toward such 
 a man seems quite inexplicable. Many men detest Mazzini ; many men distrust 
 him ; many look up to him as a prophet, and adore him as a chief; but I am not 
 able to understand how any one can think of him with mere contempt. For my- 
 self, I find it impossible to contemplate without sadness and without reverence 
 that noble, futile career ; that majestic, melancholy dream. But it must be owned 
 that an atmosphere of illusion sheds itself around Mazzini wherever he goes. I 
 believe the man himself to be the very soul of truth and honor; and yet I pro- 
 test I would not take, on any political question, the unsupported testimony of 
 any devotee of Mazzini to any fact whatsoever. Mazzini's own faith is so sub- 
 limely transcendental, so utterly independent of realities and of experience, 
 that I sincerely believe the visions of the opium-eater are hardly less to be relied 
 on than the oracles and opinions of the great Italian. And yet the force of his 
 character, the commanding nature of his genius, are such that his followers be- 
 come more Mazzinian than Mazzini himself. There is something a good deal 
 provoking about the manner of the minor followers of Mazzini. I mean in 
 England. I do not speak of such men as my friend, Mr. Stansfeld, now a Lord 
 of the Treasury, or my friend, Mr. P. A. Taylor, M. P. These are men ot ability 
 and men of the world, whose enthusiasm and faith, even at their highest, are 
 under the control of practical experience and the discipline of public life. But I 
 speak of the minor and less responsible admirers, the men and women who ac- 
 cept oracle as fact, aspiration as experience, the dream as the reality. The calm, 
 self-satisfied way in which they deal with contemporary history, with geography, 
 with statistics, with possibilities and impossibilities, in the hope of making you 
 believe what they firmly believe that Italy could, if only she had proclaimed 
 herself Republican, have driven the Austrians into the sea in 1859, and the 
 French across the Alps in 1860, while at the same time quietly kicking Pope, 
 Bourbon, and Savoy out of throned existence. The confident and imperturba- 
 ble assurance with which they can do all this and I have never met with any 
 genuine devotee of Mazzini who could not is something to make one bewildered 
 rather than merely impatient. For it is true in politics as in literature or in 
 fashion, the admiring imitator reproduces only the defects, the weaknesses, the 
 mannerisms and mistakes of the original. Mazzini himself is, I need hardly 
 say, a singularly modest and retiring man. While he lived in London, he shrank 
 from all public notice, and was seen only by his friends and followers. He 
 sought out nobody. " Sir," said Mr. Gladstone, addressing the Speaker of the 
 House of Commons, one night, when a fierce and factious attack was made on 
 Mr. Stansfeld as a follower of the great exile, "I never saw Signor Mazzini.' 
 Yet Gladstone was by far the most prominent and influential of all the English 
 sympathizers with the cause of Italian liberty. One would have thought it im- 
 possible for such a man as Mazzini to live for years in the same city with Glad- 
 stone without the two ever chancing to meet. But for the modest seclusion and 
 shrinking way of Mazzini, such a thing would, indeed, have been impossible. 
 
 Louis Blanc is, perhaps, the only Revolutionary exile who, in my time, has 
 oeen everywhere and permanently popular in London society. The fate of a
 
 206 THE EXILE-WORLD OF LONDON. 
 
 political exile in a place like London usually is to be a lion among one clique 
 and a bete noir in another. But Louis Blanc has been accepted and welcomed 
 everywhere, although he has never compromised or concealed one iota of his 
 political opinions. I think one explanation, and, perhaps, the explanation of this 
 somewhat remarkable phenomenon, is to be found in the fact that Louis Blanc 
 never for an hour played the part of a conspirator. He seems to have honora- 
 bly construed his place in English society to be that of one to whom a shelter 
 had been given, and who was bound not to make any use of that shelter which 
 could embarrass his host. In London he ceased to be an active politician. He 
 refused to exhibit himself en victime. He appealed to no public pity. He made 
 no parade of defeat and exile. He went to work steadily as a literary man, and 
 he had the courage to be poor. When he appeared in public it was simply as a 
 literary lecturer. He was not very successful in that capacity. At least, he was 
 not what the secretary of a lyceum would call a success. He gave a series of lec- 
 tures on certain phases of society in Paris before the great Revolution, and they 
 were attended by all the best literary men in London, who were, I think, unani- 
 mous in their admiration of the power, the eloquence, the brilliancy which these 
 pictures of a ghastly past displayed. But the general public cared nothing about 
 the salons where wit, and levity, and wickedness prepared the way for revolu- 
 tion ; and I heard Louis Blanc pour out an apologia (I don't mean an apology) 
 for Jean Jacques Rousseau in language of noble eloquence, and with dramatic 
 effect worthy of a great orator, in a small lecture-room, of which three-fourths 
 of the space was empty. Since that time he has delivered lectures occasionally 
 at the request of mechanics' institutions and such societies ; but he has not es- 
 sayed a course of lectures on his own account. Everyone knows him ; every- 
 one likes him ; everyone admires his manly, modest character and his uncom- 
 promising Republicanism. Lately he has lived more in Brighton than in Lon- 
 don ; but wherever in England he happens to be, he lives always as a simple 
 citizen ; has never been raved about like Kossuth, or denounced like Mazzini ; 
 and has occupied himself wholly with his historical labors and his letters to a 
 Paris newspaper. 
 
 Another exile of distinction who lived for years in London apart from poli- 
 tics and heedless of popular favor was Ferdinand Freiligrath, the German poet. 
 Freiligrath had to leave Prussia because of his political poems and writings. 
 He had undergone one prosecution and escaped conviction, but Prussia was 
 not then (twenty years ago) a country in which to run such risks too often. So 
 Freiligrath went to Amsterdam and thence to London. He lived in London for 
 many years, and acted as manager of a Swiss banking-house. His life was one 
 of entire seclusion from political schemes or agitations. He did not even, like 
 his countryman and friend, Gottfried Kinkel, take any part in public movements 
 among the Germans in London and he certainly never went about society and 
 the newspapers blowing his own trumpet, and keeping his name always promi- 
 nent, like the egotistical and inflated Karl Blind. Indeed, so complete was 
 Freiligrath's retirement that many Englishmen living in London, who delighted 
 in some of his poems his exquisite, fanciful, melodious " Sand Songs " his 
 glowing Desert poems, his dreamy, delightful songs of the sea, and his buining 
 political ballads were quite amazed to find that the poet himself- had been a 
 resident of their own city for nearly half a lifetime. Freiligrath has now at last 
 returned to his own country. His countrymen invited him home, and raised a 
 national tribute to enable him to give up his London engagement and with- 
 draw altogether from a life of mere business. In a letter I lately received frorr.
 
 THE EXILE-WORLD OF LONDON. 207 
 
 Freiligrath's daughter (a young lady of great talent and accomplishments, re- 
 cently married in London), I find it mentioned that Freiligrath expected soon to 
 receive a visit from Longfellow in Germany the first meeting of these two old 
 friends for a period of some five-and-twenty years. 
 
 Alexander Herzen, the famous Russian exile, the wittiest of men, endowed 
 with the sharpest tongue and the best nature, has left us. For many years he 
 lived in London and published his celebrated Kolokol "The Bell," which rang 
 so ominously and jarringly in the ears of Russian autocracy. He has now set up 
 his staff in Geneva, a little London in its attractiveness to exiles ; and his ar- 
 rowy, flashing wit gleams no longer across the foreign world of the English me- 
 tropolis. I do not know how long Herzen had lived in London, but I fancy the 
 difficulties of the English language must have proved insurmountable to him a 
 strange phenomenon in the case of a Russian. Certainly he never, so far as I 
 am aware, either spoke or wrote English. 
 
 The latest exile of great mark whom we had among us in London was Gen- 
 eral Prim. When his attempt at revolution in Spain failed some two years ago, 
 Prim went into Belgium. There some pressure was brought to bear upon him 
 by the Ministry, in consequence, no doubt, of certain pressure brought to bear 
 by France, and Prim left Brussels and came to live in London. He lived very 
 quietly, made no show of himself in any way, and was no doubt hard at work 
 all the time making preparation for what has since come to pass. To all ap- 
 pearance he had an easy and careless sort of life, living out among his private 
 friends, going to the races and going to the opera. But he was incessantly plan- 
 ning and preparing ; and he told many Englishmen candidly what he was pre- 
 paring for. There were many men in London who were looking out for the 
 Spanish Revolution months before it came, on the faith of Prim's earnest as- 
 surances that it was coming. So much 'has of late been written about Prim 
 that his personal appearance and manner must be familiar to most readers of 
 newspapers and magazines. I need only say that there is in private much less 
 of the militaire about him than one who had not actually met him would be in- 
 clined to imagine. He is small, neat, and even elegant in dress, very quiet and 
 perhaps somewhat languid in manner, looking wonderfully young for hrs years, 
 and without the slightest tinge of the Leicester square foreigner about him. He is 
 rather the foreigner of Regent street and the stalls of the opera house any 
 one who knows London will at once understand the difference. Prim impressed 
 me with a much greater respect for his intellect, even from a literary man's 
 point of view, than I had had before meeting and conversing with him. I think 
 those who regard him as a mere sabreur, the ordinary Spanish leader of a suc- 
 cessful military revolution, are mistaken. His animated and epigrammatic con- 
 versation seemed to me to be inspired and guided by an intellectual depth and a 
 power of observation and reflection such as I at least was not prepared to find 
 in the dashing soldier of the Moorish campaign. 
 
 There is one class of the obscure exiles, different from both the favored and 
 the poorest, whose existence has often puzzled me. A political question of mo- 
 ment begins to disturb the European continent. Immediately there turns up in 
 London, and presents himself at your door (supposing you are a journalist with 
 acknowledged sympathies for this or that side of the question) a mysterious 
 and generally shabby-looking personage, who professes to know all about it, and 
 volunteers to supply you with the most authentic information and the most 
 trustworthy "appreciation" of anv events that may transpire. He wants no 
 money ; his information is given for the sake of "the cause." You ask for ere-
 
 208 THE EXILE-WORLD OF LONDON. 
 
 dentials, and he produces recommendations which quite satisfy you that his ob- 
 jects are genuine, although, oddly enough, the persons who recommend him do 
 not seem to have anything whatever to do with the cause he represents. He 
 comes, for example, to talk about the affairs of Roumania, and he brings letters 
 and vouchers from literary friends in Paris. He professes to be an emissary 
 from the Cretans, and his recommendations are from a Manchester cotton-firm. 
 Anyhow, you are satisfied ; you ask no explanations ; you assume that yout 
 Paris or Manchester friends have enlarged the sphere of their sympathies since 
 you saw them last, and you repose confidence in your new acquaintance. You 
 are right. He brings you information, the most rapid, the most surprising, the 
 most accurate. Such a man I knew during the Schleswig-Holstein agitation, 
 which ended in the Danish war of four years since. He was a Prussian a 
 waif of the Berlin rising of 1848. Was he in the confidence of Von Beust, and 
 Bismarck, and Palmerston, and all the rest of them ? I venture to doubt it ; yet 
 if he had been, he could hardly have been more quick and accurate in all the in- 
 formation he brought me. Evening after evening he brought a regular minute 
 of the proceedings of the day at the Conference of London, which was sitting 
 with closed doors, and pledged to profoundest secrecy. Perhaps this was 
 only guesswork ! Here is one illustration. The Conference was held because 
 some of the European Great Powers, England and France especially, desired to 
 save Denmark from a struggle against the immeasurably superior force of Prus- 
 sia and Austria. A certain proposal was to be made to the Conference by Eng- 
 land and France on the part of Denmark. So much we all knew. One evening 
 my friend came to me, and bade me announce to the world that the proposal had 
 been made that day, and indignantly rejected by Denmark ! The story seemed 
 preposterous, but I relied on my friend. Next day I was laughed at ; my news 
 was denounced and repudiated. The day after it was proved to be true and 
 Denmark went to war. 
 
 The last time I saw my friend was in the spring of 1866. He came to tell 
 me that Prussia had resolved at least that Bismarck had resolved on war 
 with Austria. "Stick to that statement," he said, "whatever anybody may say 
 to the contrary unless Bismarck resigns." I took his advice. At this time I 
 am convinced that the English government had not the least idea that a war was 
 really coming. The war came ; but I never saw my friend any more. 
 
 Another of my mysterious acquaintances was an old, white-haired, grave, pla- 
 cid man who turned up in London during the early part of the French occupa- 
 tion of Mexico. He was a passionate Republican and anti-Bonapartist. He 
 was a friend and apparently a confidant of Juarez, and was thoroughly identified 
 with the interests of the Republicans in Mexico, although himself a Frenchman. 
 I doubt whether I have ever met with a finer specimen of the courtly old gentle- 
 man, the class now beginning to disappear even in France, than this mysterious 
 friend of the Mexican Republic. He might have been fresh from the Faubourg 
 St. Germain, such was the grave, dignified, and somewhat melancholy grace of his 
 courtly bearing. Yet he had evidently lived long in Mexico, and he was an 
 ardent Republican of the red tinge ; there was something of the old militaire 
 about him, too, which lent a certain strength to his bland and placid demeanor. 
 I never quite knew what he was doing in London. He was not what is called 
 an "unofficial representative " of Juarez (at this time diplomatic relations be- 
 tween England and Mexico were of course broken off) for he never seemed to 
 go near any of our ministers or diplomatists, and his only object appeared to be 
 to supply accurate information to one or two Liberal journals which he believed
 
 THE EXILE-WORLD OF LONDON. '209 
 
 to be honestly inclined toward the right side of every question. His information 
 was always accurate, his estimate of a critical situation was always justified by 
 further knowledge and the progress of events, his predictions always came true. 
 He looked like a poor man, indeed, like a needy man ; yet he never seemed to 
 want for money, and he neither sought nor would have any compensation for the 
 constant and valuable information he afforded. His knowledge of European 
 and American politics was profound ; and though he spoke not one word of Eng- 
 lish he seemed to understand all the daily details of our English political life. 
 He was a constant visitor to me (always at night and late) during the progress 
 of the Mexican struggle. When the Mexican Empire was nearly played out he 
 came and told me the end was very, very near, and that in the event of Maxi- 
 milian's being captured it would be impossible for Juarez to spare his life. He 
 did not tell me that he was at once returning to Mexico, but I presume that he 
 did immediately return, for that was the last I saw or heard of him. 
 
 During the quarrels between the Prussian Representative Chamber and 
 Count von Bismarck (before the triumph of Sadowa had condoned for the of- 
 fences of the great despotic Minister), I had a visit, one night, from a mysterious, 
 seedy, snuffy old German. He came, he said, to develop a grand plan for the 
 extinction of the Junker or Feudal party. Why he came to develop it to me I 
 do not know, as it will presently be seen that I could hardly render it any prac- 
 tical assistance. It was, like all grand schemes, remarkably simple in its na- 
 ture. Indeed, it was literally and strictly Captain Bobadil's immortal plan ; 
 although my German visitor indignantly repudiated the supposition that he had 
 borrowed it, and declared, I believe, with perfect truth, that he had never heard 
 of Captain Bobadil before. The plan was simply that a society should be 
 formed of young and devoted Germans who should occupy themselves in chal- 
 lenging and killing off, one by one, the whole Junker party. My friend made his 
 calculations very calmly, and he did not foolishly or arrogantly assume that the 
 swordsmanship of his party must needs be always superior to that of their adver- 
 saries. No ; he counted that there would be a certain number of victims amonj 
 his Liberal heroes, and made, indeed, a large allowance, left a broad margin for 
 such losses. But this, in no wise affected the success of his plan. The Liber- 
 als, were many, the Junkers few. It would simply be a matter of time and calcu- 
 lation. Numbers must tell in the end. A day must come when the last Junker 
 would fall to earth and then Astrea would return. Now the man who talked 
 in this way was no lunatic. He had nothing about him, except his plan, which 
 denoted mental aberration. His scheme apart, he was as steady and prosy an 
 old German as you could meet under the lindens of Berlin or on the Luther- 
 platz of Konigsberg. He was, moreover, as earnest, argumentative, and pro- 
 foundly wearisome over his project as if he were expounding to an admiring 
 class of students the relations of the Ego and Non-Ego. I need hardly add 
 that one single beam, even the faintest, of a sense of the ridiculous, never shone 
 in upon him during his long and eloquent exposition of the patriotic virtue, the 
 completeness and the mathematical certainty of his ingenious project. 
 
 Let me close my random reminiscences with one recollection of a sadder 
 nature. Some three or four years ago there came to London from Naples an 
 Italian of high education and character a lawyer by profession ; a passionate 
 devotee of Italian unity, and filled naturally with a hatred of the expelled Bour- 
 bons. This gentleman had discovered in one of the Neapolitan prisons a num- 
 ber of instruments of torture rusty, hideous old iron chairs, and racks, and 
 screws, and " cages of silence," and such other contrivances. He became the
 
 210 THE EXILE-WORLD OF LONDON. 
 
 possessor of these, and he obtained from the new government a certificate of the 
 genuineness of his treasure-trove that is to say, a certificate that the things 
 were actually found in the place where the owner professed to have found them. 
 The Italian authorities, of course, could say nothing as to whether they had or 
 had not been used as instruments of torture in any modern reign. They may 
 have lain rusting there since hideous old days when the Inquisition was a fash- 
 ionable institution ; they may have been used public opinion and Mr. Gladstone 
 said things as horrible had been done in the blessed reign of good King Bom- 
 ba. The Neapolitan lawyer firmly believed that they had been so used ; and he 
 became inspired with the idea that to take these instruments, first to London 
 and then to the United States, and exhibit them, and lecture on them, would 
 arouse such a tempest of righteous indignation among all peoples, free or en- 
 slaved, as must sweep kingcraft and priestcraft off the earth. This idea became 
 a faith with him. He brought his treasure of rusty iron to London, and pro- 
 posed to take a great hall and begin the work of his mission. I endeavored to 
 dissuade him (he had brought some introductions to me). I told him frankly 
 that, just at that time, public opinion in London was utterly indifferent to the 
 Bourbons. The fervor of interest about the Neapolitan Revolution had gone 
 by ; people were tired of Italy, and wanted something new; the Polish insurrec- 
 tion was going on ; the great American Civil War was occupying public atten- 
 tion ; London audiences cared no more about the crimes of the Bourbons than 
 about the crimes of the Borgias. He was not to be dissuaded. He really be- 
 lieved at first that he could induce some great English orator, Gladstone or 
 Bright, to deliver lectures on those instruments and the guilt of the system 
 which employed them. Then he became more moderate, and applied to this and 
 that professional lecturer in vain. No one would have anything to do with a 
 project so obviously doomed to failure he himself spoke no English. At last 
 he induced a lady who was somewhat ambitious of a public career, to lecture for 
 him ; and he took a great hall for a series of nights, and advertised largely, and 
 went to great expense. I believe he staked all he had in money or credit on the 
 success of the enterprise; and the making of money was not his object; he 
 would have cheerfully given all he had to create a flame of public indignation 
 against despotism. Need I say what a failure the enterprise was ? The Lon- 
 don public never manifested the slightest interest in the exhibition. The lec- 
 ture-hall was empty. I believe the poor Neapolitan tried again and again. The 
 public would not come, or look, or listen. He spent his money in vain ; he got 
 into debt in vain. His instruments of torture must have inflicted on their owner 
 afonies enough to have satisfied Maniscalco or Carafa. At last he could bear 
 
 O " 
 
 it no longer. He wrote a few short letters to some friends (I have still tha; 
 which I received a melancholy memorial), simply thanking them for what efforts 
 they had made to assist him in his object, acknowledging that he had been over 
 sanguine, and intimating that he had now given up the enterprise. Nothing 
 more was said or hinted. A day or two after, he locked himself up in his room. 
 c >omebody heard an explosion, but took no particular notice. The lady who had 
 endeavored to give voice to my poor friend's scheme came, later in the day, to 
 see him. The door was broken open and the poor Neapolitan lav dead, a pis- 
 tol still in his hand, a pistol bullet in his brain.
 
 THE REraREND CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 IWOXDER how many of the rising generation in America or in England 
 have read " Alton Locke " ? Many years have passed since I read or 
 even saw it. I do not care to read it any more, for I fear that it would not 
 now sustain the effect of the impression it once produced on me, and I do not 
 desire to destroy or even to weaken that impression. I know the book is not 
 a great work of art. I know that three-fourths of its value consists in its blind 
 and earnest feeling; that the story is heavily constructed, that many of the 
 details are extravagant exaggerations, and that the author after all was not in 
 the least a democrat or a believer in human equality. I have not forgotten 
 that even then, when he braved respectable public opinion by taking a tailor 
 for his hero, he took good care that the tailor should have genteel relations. 
 Still I retain the impression which the book once produced, and I do not care 
 to have it disturbed. Therefore I do not read or criticise "Alton Locke " any 
 more ; I remember it only as it struck me long ago as a generous protest 
 against the brutal indifference, literary and political, which left the London 
 artisan so long to toil and suffer and sicken, to run into debt, to drink and fight 
 and pine and die, in the darkness. Is it necessary perhaps it is to explain 
 to some of my readers the story of " Alton Locke " ? It is the story of a young 
 London tailor-boy who has instincts and aspirations far above his class ; who 
 yearns to be a poet and a patriot ; who loves and struggles in vain ; who is 
 supposed to sum up in his own weakly body all the best emotions, the vainest 
 pin ings, the wildest wishes, the most righteous protests of his fellows; who 
 joins with the Chartist movement for lack of a better way to the great end, and 
 sees its failure, and himself utterly broken down goes out to America to seek a 
 new life there, and only beholds the shore of the promised land to die. Here 
 at least was a grand idea. Here was the motive of a prose epic that ought to have 
 been more thrilling to modern ears than the song of Tasso. The efiect of the 
 work at the time was strengthened by the fact that the author was a clergyman 
 of the Church of England, who was believed to be a man of aristocratic family 
 and connections. The book was undoubtedly a great success in its day. The 
 strong idea which was in the heart of it carried it along. The Rev. Charles 
 Kingsley became suddenly famous. 
 
 " Alton Locke " was published more than twenty years ago. Then Charles 
 Kingsley was to most boys in Great Britain who read books at all a sort of liv- 
 ing embodiment of chivalry, liberty, and a revolt against the established order 
 of baseness and class-oppression in so many spheres of our society. The au- 
 thor of " Alton Locke" about the same time delivered a sermon in the country 
 church where he officiated, so full of warm and passionate protest against the 
 wrongs done to the poor by existing systems, that his spiritual chief, the rector 
 or dean or some other dignitary, arose in the church itself morally and physi- 
 cally arose, as Mrs. Gamp did and denounced the preacher. Need it be said 
 that the report of so unusual and extraordinary a scene as this excited our 
 youthful enthusiasm into a perfect flame for the minister of the State Church 
 who had braved the public censure of his superior in the cause of human right? 
 For a long time Charles Kingsley was our chosen hero I am speaking now 
 of young men with the youthful spirit of revolt in them, with dreams of repub-
 
 212 THE REVEREND CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 lies and ideas about the equality of man. If I were to be asked to describe 
 Charles Kingsley now, having regard to the tendency of his writings and his 
 public attitude, how should I speak of him ? First, as about the most perverse 
 and wrong-headed supporter of every political abuse, the most dogmatic 
 champion of every wrong cause in domestic and foreign politics, that even a 
 State Church has for many years produced. I hardly remember, in my prac- 
 tical observation of politics, a great public question but Charles Kingsley was 
 at the wrong side of it. The vulgar glorification of mere strength and power, 
 such a disgraceful characteristic of modern public opinion, never had a louder- 
 tongued votary than he. The apostle of liberty and equality, as he seemed to me 
 in my early days, has of late only shown himself to my mind as the champion 
 of slave-systems of oppression and the h'on reign of mere force. Is this a para- 
 dox? Has the man undergone a wonderful change of opinions? It is not a 
 paradox, and I think Charles Kingsley has not changed his views. Perhaps a 
 short sketch of the man and his work may reconcile these seeming antago- 
 nisms and make the reality coherent and clear. 
 
 I was present at a meeting not long since where Mr. Kingsley was one of 
 the principal speakers. The meeting was held in London, the audience was a 
 peculiarly Cockney audience, and Charles Kingsley is personally little known 
 to the public of the metropolis. Therefore when he began to speak there was 
 quite a little thrill of wonder and something like incredulity through the lis- 
 tening benches. Could that, people near me asked, really be Charles Kings- 
 ley, the novelist, the poet, the scholar, the aristocrat, the gentleman, the pul- 
 pit-orator, the " soldier- priest," the apostle of muscular Christianity? Yes, 
 that was indeed he. Rather tall, very angular, surprisingly awkward, with 
 thin, staggering legs, a hatchet face adorned with scraggy gray whiskers, a 
 faculty for falling into the most ungainly attitudes, and making the most 
 hideous contortions of visage and frame; with a rough provincial accent and 
 an uncouth way of speaking, which would be set down for absurd caricature 
 on the boards of a comic theatre; such was the appearance which the author 
 of "Glaucus" and "Hypatia" presented to his startled audience. Since 
 Brougham's time nothing so ungainly, odd, and ludicrous had been displayed 
 upon an English platform. Needless to say, Charles Kingsley has not the 
 eloquence of Brougham. But he has a robust and energetic plain-speaking 
 which soon struck home to the heart of the meeting. He conquered his au- 
 dience. Those who at first could hardly keep from laughing; those who, not 
 knowing the speaker, wondered whether he was not mad or in liquor; those 
 \\ r ho heartily disliked his general principles and his public attitude, were alike 
 won over, long before he had finished, by his bluff and blunt earnestness and 
 his transparent sincerity. The subject was one which concerned the social suf- 
 fering of the poor. Mr. Kingsley approached it broadly and boldly, talking 
 with a grand disregard for logic and political economy, sometimes startling 
 the more squeamish of his audience by the Biblical frankness of his descrip- 
 tions and his language, but, I think, convincing every one that he was sound 
 at heart, and explaining unconsciously to many how it happened that one en- 
 dowed with sympathies so humane and liberal should so often have distinguished 
 himself as the champion of the stupidest systems and the harshest oppres- 
 sions. Anybody could see that the strong impelling force of the speaker's 
 character was an emotional one; that sympathy and not reason, feeling rather 
 than logic, instinct rather than observation, would govern his utterances. 
 There are men in whom, no matter how robust and masculine their personal 
 character, a disproportionate amount of the feminine element seems to have
 
 THE REVEREND CHARLES KINGSLEY. 21 3 
 
 somehow found a place. These men will usually see things not as they really 
 are, but as they are reflected through some personal prejudice or emotion. 
 They will generall}- spring to conclusions, obey sudden impulses and instincts, 
 ignore evidence and be very "thorough" and sweeping in all their judgment*-. 
 When they are right they are like the young lady in the song very, very good ; 
 but like her, too, when they happen to be wrong they are " horrid." Of these 
 men the author of "Alton Locke" is a remarkable illustration. It seems odd 
 to describe the expounder of the creed of Muscular Christianity as one endowed 
 with too much of the feminine element. But for all his vigor of speech and 
 his rough voice, Mr. Charles Kingsley is as surely feminine in his way of rea- 
 soning, his likes and dislikes, his impulses and his prejudices, as Harriet Mar- 
 tineau is masculine in her intellect and George Sand in her emotions. 
 
 Mr. Charles Kingsley is a man of ancient English family, very proud of his 
 descent, and full of the conviction so ostentatiously paraded by many English- 
 men, that good blood carries with it a warrant for bravery, justice, and truth. 
 The Kingsleys are a Cheshire family; I believe they date from before the 
 Conquest it does not much' matter. I shall not apply to them John Bright's 
 epigram about families which came over with William the Conqueror and 
 never did anything else; for the Kingsleys seem to have been always an ac- 
 tive race. They took an energetic part in the civil war during Charles the 
 First's time, and stood by the Parliament. I am told that the family have still 
 in their possession a commission to raise a troop of horse, given to a Kingsley 
 and signed by Oliver Cromwell. One of the family emigrated to the New 
 World with the Pilgrim Fathers, and I believe the Kingsley line still flourishes 
 there like a bay-tree. Irrepressible energy, so far as I know, seems to have 
 always been a characteristic of the household. Charles Kingsley was born 
 near Dartmouth, in Devonshire ; every one who has read his books must know 
 how he revels in descriptions of the lovely scenery of Devon. He was for a 
 while a pupil of the Rev. Derwent Coleridge, son of the poet, and he finally 
 studied at Magdalene College, Cambridge. Mr. Kingsley was originally in- 
 tended for the legal profession, but he changed his mind and went into the church. 
 He was first curate and soon after rector of the Hampshire parish of Eversley, 
 the name of which has since been so constantly kept in association with his 
 own. I may mention that Mr. Kingsley married one of a trio of sisters the 
 Misses Grenfell a second of whom was afterwards married to Mr. Froude, and 
 is since dead, while the third became the wife of one of the foremost English 
 journalists. Passing away from these merely personal facts, barely worth a 
 brief note, we shall find that Kingsley's real existence, if I may use such a 
 phrase, began and developed under the guidance of a remarkable man and 
 under the inspiration of a strange movement. The man to whose leadership 
 and teaching Mr. Kingsley owed so much was the Rev. Frederick Denison 
 Maurice, who died in the first week of last April. 
 
 It would not be easy to explain to an American reader the meaning and 
 the extent of the influence which this eminent man exercised over a large field 
 of English society. The life of Mr. Maurice contains nothing worthy of note 
 as to facts and dates ; but its spirit infused new soul and sense into a whole 
 generation. He was not a great speaker or a great thinker; he was not a 
 bold reformer; he had not a very subtle intellect; I doubt whether his writ- 
 ings will be much read in coming time. He was simply a great character, a 
 grand influence. He sent a new life into the languid and decaying frame of 
 the State Church of England. He quickened it with a fresh sense of <hity. 
 Ilia hope and purpose were to bring that church into affectionate and living
 
 214 THE REVEREND CHARLES KINGSLLl. 
 
 brotherhood with modern thought, work, and society. An early friend and 
 companion of John Sterling (the two friends married two sisters), Maurice 
 had all the sweetness and purity of Carlyle's hero, with a far greater intellec- 
 tual strength. Mr. Maurice set himself to make the English Church a prac- 
 tical influence in modern thought and society. He did not believe in a religion 
 sitting apart on the cold Olympian heights of dogmatic theology, and looking 
 down with dignified disdain upon the common life and the vulgar toils of hu- 
 manity. He held that a church, if it is good for anything, ought to be able to 
 meet fair and square the challenge of the skeptic and the infidel, and that it 
 ought to concern itself about all that concerns men arid women. One of the 
 fruits of his long and valuable labor is the Workinginen's College in Red Lion 
 Square, London, an institution of which he became the principal and to which 
 he devoted much of his time and attention. Only a few weeks before his 
 death he presided at one of the public meetings of this his favorite institution. 
 lie was the parent of the scheme of " Christian socialism," which sprang into 
 existence more than twenty years ago and is bearing fruit still a scheme to 
 set on foot cooperative associations among working men on. sound and progres- 
 sive principles; to help the working men by advances of capital, in order that 
 they might thus be enabled to help themselves. One of Mr. Maurice's earliest 
 and most ardent pupils was Charles Kingsley; another was Thomas Hughes. 
 In helping Mr. Maurice to carry out these schemes Kingsley was brought into 
 frequent intercourse with some of the London Chartists, and especially with 
 the working tailors, who have nearly all a strong radical tendency. Kingsley's 
 impulsive sympathies took fire, and flamed out with the novel" Alton Locke, 
 Tailor and Poet." 
 
 That extraordinary Chartist movement, so long in preparation and so sud- 
 denly extinguished, how completely a thing of the past it seems to have be- 
 come! Only twenty-four years have passed since its collapse. Men under 
 forty can recall, as if it were yesterday, all its incidents and its principal fig- 
 ures. People in the United States know that my friend Henry Vincent is still 
 only in his prime ; he was one of its earliest and foremost leaders. But it seems 
 as old and dead as a peasant- war of ihe Middle Ages. It was a strange jumble 
 of politics and social complaints. It was partly the blind, passionate protest of 
 working men who knew that they had no right to starve and suffer in a pros- 
 perous country, but who hardly knew where the real grievance lay. It was 
 partly the protest of untaught and eager intelligence against the brutal .apathy 
 of government which would do nothing for national education. Its political 
 demands were very modest. Some of them have since been quietly carried 
 into law; some of them have been quietly dismissed into the realm of anach- 
 ronisms. Chartism was indeed rather a wild cry, a passionate yearning of 
 lonely men for combination, than any definite political enterprise. One looks 
 back now with a positive wonder upon the- savage stupidity of the ruling 
 classes which so nearly converted it into a rebellion. Of course it was in some 
 instances seized hold of by selfish and scheming politicians, who played with 
 it for their own purposes. Of course it had its evil counsellors, its false friends, 
 its cowards, and its traitors. But on the whole there was a noble spirit of 
 manly honesty pervading the movement, which to my mind fills it with a roman- 
 tic interest and ought to secure for it an honorable memory. It found leaders 
 in many cases outside its own classes. There was, for example, "Tom Dun- 
 combe," a sort of Alcibiades of English Radicalism; a brilliant talker in Par- 
 liament, a gay man of fashion, steeped deep in reckless debt and sparkling dis- 
 sipation ; hand and glove with the fast young noblemen of the West End gam-
 
 THE REVEREND CHARLES KINGSLEY 215 
 
 bling houses, and the ardent Chartist working men of Shoreditch and Clerkon- 
 well. There was Feargus O'Connor huge, boistering, fearless a burlesque 
 Mirabeau with red hair; a splendid mob-speaker, who could fight his way by 
 sheer strength of muscle and fist through a hostile crowd ; vain of his half- 
 mythical descent from Irish kings, even when he delighted in being hail fellow 
 well met with tailors and hod-carriers; revelling in the fiercest struggles of 
 politics and the wildest freaks of prolonged debauchery. O'Connor tried to 
 crowd half a dozen lives into one, and the natural result was that he prema- 
 turely broke down. For a long time before his death he was a mere lunatic. 
 A strange fact was that as his manners were always eccentric and boisterous, 
 he had become an actual madman for months before those around him were 
 fully aware of the change. In the House of Commons the freaks of the poor 
 lunatic were for along time supposed to be only more marked eccentricities, or, 
 as some thought, insolent affectations of eccentricity. He would rise while 
 Lord Palmerston was addressing the House, walk up to the great minister, and 
 give him a tremendous" slap on the back. One night he actually assaulted a 
 member of the House, and the Speaker ordered his arrest. Feargus sauntered 
 coolly out into the lobbies. The sergeant-at-arms was bidden to go forth and 
 arrest the offender. Lord Charles Russell (brother of Earl Russell), then and 
 now sergeaut-at-arms, is a thin, little, feeble man. I have been told by some 
 who witnessed it that the scene in the lobbies became highly amusing. Lord 
 Charles went with reluctant steps about his awful task. By this time every- 
 body was beginning to suspect that O'Connor was really a madman. Anyhow, 
 lie was a giant, and at his sanest moments perfectly reckless. Now it is not :t 
 pleasant task for a weak and little man to be sent to arrest even a sane giant; 
 but only think of laying hands on a giant who appeal's to be out of his senses! 
 The dignity of his office, however, had to be upheld, and Lord Charles trotted 
 quietly after his huge quarry. He cast imploring looks at member after mem- 
 ber, but it was none of their business to interfere, and they had no inclination 
 to volunteer. Some of them indeed were deeply engrossed in speculations as 
 to what would happen if Feargus were suddenly to turn round. Would the ser- 
 geant-at-arms put his dignitj" in his pocket and actually run ? Or, if he stood his 
 ground, what would be the result? Happily, however, just as Feargus and his 
 unwilling pursuer reached Westminster Hall, the eager eye of Lord Charles 
 Russell descried a little knot of policemen; he hailed them; they came up, and 
 the sergeant-at-arms did his duty and the capture was effected. I can well 
 remember seeing O'Connor, somewhere about this time, sauntering through 
 Covent Garden market, with rolling, restless gait; his hair, that once was fiery 
 red, all snowy white ; his eye gleaming with the peculiar, quick, shallow, ever- 
 changing glitter of madness. The poor fellow rambled from fruit-stall to 
 fruit-stall, talking all the while to himself, sometimes taking up a fruit as if he 
 meant to buy it, and then putting it down with a vacant laugh and walking on. 
 It was a pitiable spectacle. His light of reason soon flickered out altogether, 
 and death came to his relief. 
 
 I must not omit to mention, when speaking of the Chartist leaders, the 
 brave, disinterested, and highly-gifted Ernest Jones, who sacrificed such bright 
 worldly prospects for the cause of the People's Charter. Long after the Charter 
 and its agitation were dead, Jones emerged into public life again, still com- 
 paratively a young man, and he seemed about to enter on a career both bril- 
 liant and valuable. An immature and unexpected death interposed. 
 
 However, I have wandered away from the subject of my paper. Charlea 
 Kingsley came to know the principal working men among the Chartists, and
 
 216 THE REVEREND CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 his impulsive nature was greatly influenced by their words and their lives. 
 Most of their leaders drawn from other classes, O'Connor especially, he dis- 
 trusted and disliked. But the rank and tile of the movement, the working 
 men, the sufferers, the " proletaires " as they would be called nowadays, at- 
 tracted his kindly heart. Chartism had fallen. It collapsed suddenly in 18-iS; 
 died amid Homeric laughter of the public. It fell mainly because it had come 
 to occupy a false position altogether. Partly by ignorance, partly by the self- 
 ish folly of some of its leaders, and partly by the severity of the govern- 
 rnent measures, the movement had been driven into a dilemma which it 
 never originally contemplated. It must either go into open rebellion or sur- 
 render. It was jammed up like MacMahon at Sedan. Chartism had no real 
 wish to rebel, although of course the flame of the recent revolution in Paris 
 had glared over it and made it wild; and it had no means of carrying on a re- 
 volt for a single day. So it could only surrender; and the surrender took 
 place under conditions which made it seem utterly ridiculous. Kingsley was 
 seized with the idea of crystallizing all this into a romance. He had as a fur- 
 ther stimulant and guide the work which Henry Mayhevv was then publishing, 
 ' London Labor and the London Poor," a serial which by its painful and 
 startling revelations was working a profound impression on England. May- 
 hew's narratives were often inaccurate, for he could not conduct the whole 
 enterprise himself, and had sometimes to call in the aid of careless and un- 
 trustworthy associates, who occasionally found it easier to throw off a bit of 
 sentimental or sensational romance than to pursue a patient inquiry. But the 
 general effect of the publication was healthful and practical, and it became the 
 parent of nearly all the efforts that followed to lay bare and ameliorate the 
 condition of the London poor. There can be no doubt that it had a great in- 
 fluence on the impressionable mind of Charles Kingsley. He wrote " Alton 
 Locke," and the book became a great success. The Tailor and Poet was the 
 hero of the hour. "Blackwood" at once christened Alton Locke "Young 
 Remnants ;" but Young Remnants survived the jpke. The novel is full of 
 nonsense and extravagance ; and with all its sympathy for tailors, it has a great 
 deal of Kingsley's characteristic affection for rank and birth. But it had a 
 really great idea at its heart, and struck out one or two new characters es- 
 pecially that of the old Scotch bookseller and it made its mark. The peculiar- 
 ity, however, to which I wish now especially to direct attention is its utter absence 
 of practical thinking-power. Nowhere can you find any proof that the author 
 is able to think about anything. An idea strikes him; he seizes it, and, to use 
 Hawthorne's expression, " wields it like a flail." Then he throws it down and 
 lakes up something else, to employ it in the same wild and incoherent fashion. 
 This is Kingsley all out, and always. He is not content with developing his 
 one only gift of any literary value the capacity to paint big, striking pictures 
 with a strong glare or glow on them. He firmly believes himself a profound 
 philosopher and social reformer, and he will insist on obtruding before the 
 world on all occasions his absolute incapacity for any manner of reasoning on 
 any subject whatsoever. Wild with intellectual egotism, and blind to all 
 teaching from without, Kingsley rushes at great and difficult subjects head 
 downwards like a bull. Thus he tackled Chartism, and society, and competi- 
 tion, and political economy, and what not, in his "Alton Locke"; and thus he 
 has gone on ever since and will to the end of his chapter, always singling out 
 for the display of his powers the very subjects whereof he knows least, and is 
 by the whole constitution of his intellect and temperament least qualified to 
 judge.
 
 THE REVEREND CHARLES KIXGSLEY. 217 
 
 I am writing now rather about Kingsley himself than about his books, with 
 which the readers of " The Galaxy " are of course well acquainted. I there- 
 fore pass over the many books he produced between " Alton Locke " and " West- 
 ward Ho!" and I dwell upon the latter only because it illustrates the next 
 great idea which got hold of the author after the little fever about Chartism 
 had passed away. I suppose "Westward Ho!" may be regarded as the first 
 appearance of the school of Muscular Christianity. Mr. Kingsley started for 
 our benefit the huge British hero who could do anything in the way of fighting 
 and walking, and propagated the doctrines of the English Church. To read the 
 Bible and to kill the Spaniards was the whole duty of the ideal Briton of Eliza- 
 beth's time, according to this authority. The notion was a success. In a mo- 
 ment our literature became flooded with pious athletes who knocked their ene- 
 mies down with texts from the Scriptures and left-handers from the shoulder. 
 All these heroes were of necessity " gentlemen." One of the principal articles 
 of the new gospel according to Kingsley was that truth, valor, muscle, and 
 theological fervor were only possessed in their fulness by the scions of good 
 old English county families. Other nations seldom had such qualities at all ; 
 never had them to perfection; and even favored Britain only saw them proper- 
 ly illustrated in country gentlemen of long descent. Of course this sort of 
 thing, which was for the moment a sincere idea Avith Kingsley, became a mere 
 affectation among his followers and admirers. The fighting-parson pattern of 
 hero was for a while as great a bore as the rough and ugly hero after Jane 
 Eyre's "Rochester," or the colossal and corrupt guardsman whom "Guy Liv- 
 ingstone " sent abroad on the world. Certainly Kingsley's hero was a better 
 style of man than Guy Livingstone's, for at the worst he was only an egotistical 
 savage, and not a profligate. But I think he did a good deal of harm in his daj-. 
 He helped to encourage and inflate that feeling of national self-conceit which 
 makes people such nuisances to their neighbors, and he fostered that odious 
 reverence for mere force and power which Carlyle had already made fashion- 
 able. Kingsley himself appears to have become " possessed " by his own idea 
 as if by some unmanageable spirit. It banished all his chartism and democ- 
 racy and liberalism, and the rest of it. Under its influence Kingsley out-Cai-- 
 lyled Carlyle in the worship of strong despotisms and force of any kind. He 
 went out of his way to excuse slavery in the Southern States. He became the 
 fervent panegyrist of Governor Eyre of Jamaica. When two sides were possi- 
 ble to any question of human politics, he was sure to take the wrong one. 
 Nothing for long years, I think, has been more repulsive, and in its way more 
 mischievous, than the cant about " strength " which Kingsley did so much to 
 diffuse and to glorify. 
 
 Meanwhile his irrepressible energy was always driving him into new fields 
 of work. It never allowed him time to think. The moment any sort of idea 
 struck him, he rushed at it and crushed it into the shape of a book or an essay. 
 He wrote historical .novels, philosophical novels, and theological novels. He 
 wrote poetry yards of poetry volumes of poetry. There really is a great 
 deal of the spirit of poetry in him, and he has done better things with the hex- 
 ameter verse than better poets have done. There was for a long time a fervid 
 school of followers who swore by him, and would have it that he was to be the 
 great English poet of the century. He published essays, tracts, lectures, and 
 sermons without number. He seems to have made up his mind to publish in 
 book form somehow everything that he had spoken or written anywhere. He 
 inundated the leading newspapers with letters on this, that, and the other sub- 
 ject. He was appointed professor of modern historj* at the University of Cam-
 
 218 THE REVEREND CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 bridge on the death of Sir James Stephen, and he launched at once into a se- 
 ries of lectures, which were almost immediately published in book form. Why 
 he published them it was hard for even vanity itself to explain, because with 
 characteristic bluntness he began his course with the acknowledgment that he 
 really knew nothing in particular about the subjects whereon he had under- 
 taken to instruct the University and the world, lie made up in courage, how- 
 ever, for anything he may have lacked in knowledge. He went bravely in for 
 an onslaught on the positive theory of history on Comte, Mill, Buckle, Dar- 
 win, and everybody else. He made it perfectly clear very soon that he did 
 not know even what these authors profess to teach. He flatly denied that 
 there is any such thing as an inexorable law in nature. He proved that even 
 the supposed law of gravitation is not by any means the rigid and universal 
 sort of thing that Newton and sueh-like persons have supposed. How, it may 
 be asked, did he prove this? In the following words: "If I choose to catch a 
 stone, I can hold it in my hands; it has not fallen to the ground, and will not 
 (ill I let it. So much for the inevitable action of the laws of gravity." This 
 way of dealing with the question may seem to many readers nothing better 
 than downright buffoonery. But Kiugsley was as grave as a church and as ear- 
 nest as an owl. He fully believed that he was refuting the pedants who be- 
 lieve in the inevitable action of the law of gravitation, when he talked of hold- 
 ing a stone in his hand. That an impulsive, illogical man should on the spur 
 of the moment talk this kind of nonsense, even from a professor's chair, is not 
 perhaps wonderful; but it does seem a little surprising that he should see it in 
 print, revise it, and publish it, without ever becoming aware of its absurdity. 
 
 In the same headlong spirit Mr. Kingsley rushed into his famous controver- 
 sy with Dr. John Henry Newman. I have already, when writing of Dr. New- 
 man, alluded to this controversy, which for a time excited the greatest inter- 
 est and indeed the greatest amusement in England. I only refer to it now as 
 an illustration of the surprising hotheadedness and lack of thinking power 
 which characterize the author of "Alton Locke." Dr. Newman preached a 
 sermon on " Wisdom and Innocence." Mr. Kingsley went out of his way to 
 discourse and comment on this sermon, and publicly declared that its doctrine 
 was an exhortation to disregard truth. " Dr. Newman informs us that truth 
 need not and on the whole ought not to be a virtue for its own sake." Of 
 course this was as grave a charge as could possibly be made against a great re- 
 ligious teacher,. It was doubly odious and offensive to Dr. Newman because 
 it was the revival of an old and familiar charge against the church he had 
 lately entered. It was made by Kingsley in an oft-hand, careless sort of way, 
 is if it were something acknowledged and indisputable as if some one were to 
 #ay, " Horace Greeley informs us that a protective tariff is often useful," or 
 "Henry Ward Beecher is in favor of early rising." Newman wrote with a 
 cold civility to ask in what passage of his writings* any such doctrine was to be 
 found. Of course nothing of the kind was to be found. If it were possible to 
 conceive of any divine in our days holding such a doctrine, we may be perfect- 
 ly certain that he would never put it into print. Newman was known to all 
 the world as the purest and most austere devotee of what he believed to be the 
 truth. He had sacrificed the most brilliant career in the Church of England 
 for his convictions, and, strange to say, had yet retained the admiration and the 
 affection of those whose religious fellowship he had renounced. Kingsley had 
 but one course in fairness and common sense open to him. He ought to have 
 franklj' apologized. He ought to have owned that he had spoken without 
 thinking; that he had blurted out the words without observing the gravity of
 
 THE REVEREND CHARLES KINGSLEY. 219 
 
 the charge they c mtained ; and that he was sorry for it. But he did not do 
 this. lie published a letter, in which he said that Dr. Newman having denied 
 that his doctrine bore the meaning Mr. Kingsley had put upon it, he (Kings 
 If y) could only express his regret at having mistaKeu mm. This was nearly 
 as bud as the first charge. It distinctly conveyed the idea that but for Dr. 
 Newman's subsequent explanation and denial, certain words of his might fairly 
 have been understood to bear the odious meaning ascribed to them. Dr. New- 
 man returned to the charge, still with a chill urbanity which I cannot help 
 thinking Kingsley mistook for weakness or fear. He pointed out that he hail 
 never denied anything ; that there was nothing for him to den}' ; that Mr. 
 Kingsley had charged him with teaching a certain odious doctrine, and he 
 therefore asked Mr. Kingsley to point to the passage containing the doctrine, 
 or frankly own that there was no such passage in existence. Kingsley there- 
 upon took the worst, the most unfair, and as it proved the most foolish course 
 a man could possibly have pursued. He went to work to fasten on Newman 
 by a constructive argument, drawn from the general tendency of his teaching, 
 a belief in the doctrine of which he was unable to find any specific statement. 
 Then opened out that controversy, which was quite an event in its time, and 
 set everybody talking. Newman's was an intellect which must be described 
 as the peer of Stuart Mill's or Herbert Spencer's. He was a perfect master of 
 polemical science. He could write, when he thought fit, with a vitriolic keen- 
 ness of sarcasm. \Vhn he had allowed Kingsley to entangle himself suffi- 
 ciently, Ne \vman fairly opened fire, and the rest of the debate was like a duel 
 between some blundering, wrong-headed cudgel-player from a village green, 
 and some accomplished professor of the science of the rapier from Paris or Vi- 
 enna. Not the least amusing thing about the controversy was the manner in 
 which it put Kingsley into open antagonism with his own teaching. He en- 
 deavored gratuitously and absurdly to convict Dr. Newman of a disregard for 
 the truth, because Newman believed in the miracles of the saints. For, he ar- 
 gued, a man of Newman's intellect could not believe in such things if he in- 
 quired into them. But he did not inquire into them ; he taught that they were 
 not to be questioned but accepted as orthodox. Thereby he showed that he 
 preferred orthodoxy to truth "truth, the capital virtue, the virtue of vir- 
 tues, without which all others are rotten.'' Now, that sounds very well, and 
 we all agree in what Kingsley says of the truth. But Kingsley had not long 
 before been assailing Bishop Colenso for his infidelity. Kingsley declared him- 
 self shocked at the publication of a work like Dr. Colenso's, which claimed and 
 exercised a license of inquiry that seemed to him " anything but reverent." 
 He distinctl}' laid it down that the liberty of religious criticism must be "rev- 
 erent/' and " within the limits of orthodoxy ! " Now, I am not challenging Mr. 
 Kingsley's doctrine as to the limit of religious inquiry. That forms no part of 
 my purpose. But it is perfectly obvious that if to limit inquiry within the 
 bounds of orthodoxy shows a disregard for truth in John Henry Newman, the 
 same practice must be evidence of a similar disregard in Charles Kingsley. 
 Of coarse Kingsley never thought of this never thought about the matter at 
 all. He disliked Colenso's teaching on the one hand and Newman's on the 
 other. He said the first thing that came into his mind against each in turn, 
 and never heeded the fact that the reproach he employed in the former case 
 was utterly inconsistent with that which he uttered in the other. I do not be- 
 lieve, however, that the controversy did Kingsley any harm. Nobody ever e'x- 
 pected consistency or rational argument from him. People were amused, and 
 laughed, and perhaps wondered why Dr. Newman should have taken any
 
 220 THE REVEREND CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
 
 trouble in the matter at all. But Kingsley remained in popular estimation just 
 the same as before blundering, hot-headed, boisterous, but full of brilliant im- 
 agination, and thoroughly sound at heart. 
 
 Thus Charles Kingsley is always at work. Lately he has been describing 
 some of the scenery of the West Indies, and proclaiming the virtues of Austra- 
 lian potted meats. He has thrown his whole soul into the Australian meat 
 question. The papers have run over with letters from him intended to prove 
 t<> the world how good and cheap it is to eat the mutton and beef brought in 
 tin cans from Australia. I believe Mr. Kingsley acknowledges that all his en- 
 ergy and eloquence have been unequal to the task of persuading his servants 
 to eat the excellent food which he is hiinself willing to have at his table. lie 
 has also been lecturing on temperance, and delivering a philippic against Dar- 
 win. He has also written a paper condemning and deprecating the modern 
 critical spirit. There is one rule, he insists, " by which we should judge all 
 human opinions, endeavors, characters." That is, "Are they trying to lessen 
 the sum of human misery, of human ignorance? Are they trying, however 
 clumsily, to cure physical suffering, weakness, deformity, disease, and to make 
 human bodies what God would have them ? . . . If so, let us judge them no 
 further. Let them pass out of the pale of our criticism. Let their creed seem 
 to us defective, their opinions fantastic, their means irrational. God must 
 judge of that, not we. They are trying to do good; then they are children of 
 the light." This is not, perhaps, the spirit in which Kingsley himself criticised 
 Newman or Colenso. But if we judge him according to the principle which 
 he recommends, he would assuredly take high rank; for I never heard any 
 one question his sincerity and his honest purpose to do good. Of course he is 
 often terribly provoking. His feminine and almost hysterical impulsiveness, 
 and his antiquated, feudal devotion to rank, are difficult to bear always without 
 strong language. His utter absence of sympathy with political emancipation 
 is a lamentable weakness. His self-conceit and egotism often make him a lu- 
 dicrous object. Still, he has an honest heart, and he tries to do the work of a 
 man ; and he is one of those who would, if they could, make the English State 
 Church still a living, an active, and an all-pervading influence. As a preacher 
 and a pastor he often reminds me of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. Of course 
 he is far below Mr. Beecher in all oratorical gifts as well as in political en- 
 lightenment; but he has the same prefervid and illogical nature, the same 
 vigorous, self-sufficient temperament, the same tendency to "slop over," the 
 same generous energy in any cause that seems to him good. 
 
 It will be inferred that I do not rate Mr. Kingsley very highly as an author, 
 He can describe glowing scenery admirably, and he can vigorously ring the 
 changes on his one or two ideas the muscular Englishman, the glory of the 
 Elizabethan discoverers, and so on. He is a scholar, and he has written verses 
 which sometimes one is on the point of mistaking for poetry, so much of the 
 poet's feelings have they about them. He can do a great many things very 
 cleverly. He belongs to a clever family. His brother, Henry Kingsley, is a 
 spirited and dashing novelist, whom the critics sneer at a good deal, but whose 
 books always command a large circulation, and have made a distinctive mark. 
 Perhaps if Charles Kingsley had done- less he might have done better. Hu- 
 man capacity is limited. It is not given to mortal to be a great preacher, a 
 great philosopher, a great scholar, a great poet, a great historian, a great nov- 
 elist, an indefatigable country parson, and a successful man in fashionable so- 
 ciety. Mr. Kingsley seems never to have quite made up his mind for winch 
 of these callings to go in especially, and being with all his versatility not at all
 
 THE REVEREND CHARLES KIXGSLEY. 221 
 
 many-sided, but strictly one-sided, and almost one-ideaed, the result of course 
 has been that, touching success at many points, he has absolutely mastered it at 
 none. His place in letters has been settled this long time. Since " Westward 
 Ho! " at the latest, he has never added half a cubit to his stature. The " Char- 
 tist Parson " has, on the other hand, been growing more and more aristocratic, 
 illiberal, and even servile in politics. His discourse on the recovery of the 
 Prince of Wales was the very hyperbole of the most old-fashioned loyalty a 
 discourse worthy of Filmer, and utterly out of place in the present century. 
 Muscular Christianity has shrunk and withered long since. The professorship 
 of modern history was a failure, and has been given up. Darwin is flourishing, 
 and I am not certain about the success of Australian beef. All this acknowl- 
 edged, however, it must still be owned that, failing in this, that, and the other 
 attempt, and never probably achieving any real and enduring success, Charles 
 Kingfeley has been an influence and a name of mark in the Victorian age. I can- 
 not, indeed, well imagine that age without him, although his presence is some- 
 times only associated with it as that of Malvolio with the court of the fail' lady 
 in " Twelfth Night." Men of far greater intellect have made their presence 
 less strongly felt, and imprinted their image much less clearly on the minds of 
 their contemporaries. He is an example of how much may be done by ener- 
 getic temper, fearless faith in self, an absence of all sense of the ridiculous, a 
 passionate sympathy, and a wealth of half-poetic descriptive power. If ever 
 we have a woman's parliament in England, Charles Kingsley ought to be its 
 chaplain; for I know of no clever man whose mind and temper more aptly il- 
 lustrate the illogical impulsiveness, the rapid emotional changes, the generous, 
 often wrong-headed vehemence, the copious flow of fervid words, the vivid 
 freshness of description without analysis, and the various other peculiarities 
 which, justly or unjustly, the world has generally agreed to regard as the spe- 
 cial characteristics of woman.
 
 MR. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 MR. FROUDE, I perceive, is about to visit the United States. Reddas in- 
 columem ! He is a man of mark with whatever faults, a great Eng- 
 lishman. It will not take the citizens of New York and Boston long to become 
 quite as familiar with his handsome, thoughtful face as the people of London. 
 Mr. Fronde rarely makes his appearance at any public meeting or demonstra- 
 tion of any kind. He delivers a series of lectures now and then to one of the 
 great solemn literary institutions. He is a member of some of our literary and 
 scientific societies. He used at one time occasionally to attend the meetings of 
 the Newspaper Press Fund Committee, where his retiring ways and grave, 
 meditative demeanor reminded me, I cannot tell why, of Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
 He has many friends, and mingles freely in private society, but to the average 
 public he is only a name; to a large proportion of that average public he is not 
 even so much. I presume he might walk the Strand every day and no head 
 turn round to look after him. I presume it would not be difficult to get to- 
 gether a large public meeting of respectable and intelligent London rate-payers 
 of whom not one could tell who Mr. Froude was, or would be aroused to the 
 slightest interest by the mention of his name. Who, indeed, is generally 
 known or cared about in London? I do not say universally known, for nobody 
 enjoys that proud distinction, not even the Prince of Wales nay, not even the 
 Tichborne claimant. But who is ever generally known? Gladstone and Dis- 
 raeli are ; and Bright is. Dickens was, and, to a certain extent, Thackeray. 
 Archbishop Manning and Mr. Spurgeon are, perhaps ; and I cannot remember 
 anybody else just now. Palmerston, in his day, was better known than any of 
 these; and the Duke of Wellington was by far the most widely known of all. 
 The Dnke of Wellington was the only man who during my time was nearly 
 as well known in London as Mr. Greeley is in New York. " How can you, 
 you know?' 1 as Mr. Pecksniff asks. We have four millions of people crowded 
 into one city. It takes a giant of popularity indeed to be seen and recognized 
 above that crowd. As for your Brownings and Spencers and Froudes and the 
 rest, your mere men of genius well, they have their literary celebrity and they 
 will doubtless have their fame. But average London knows and cares no more 
 about them than it does about you or me. 
 
 Therefore, let not any American reader, when I describe Mr. Froude as a 
 man of mark and a great Englishman, assume that he is a man of mark with 
 the crowd. Let no American visitor to London be astonished if, finding him-
 
 .MR. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 223 
 
 self in the neighborhood of Mr. Froude's residence, and stepping into half a 
 dozen shops in succession to ask for the exact address of the historian, he should 
 hear that nobody there knew anything about him. Nobody but scholars and 
 literary people knew anything about the late George Grote, one of the few 
 great philosophic historians of the modern world. Compared with the influ- 
 ence of Mr. Grote upon average London, that of Mr. Froude may almost be 
 described as sensational; for Froude has stirred up literary and religious 
 controversy, and has been denounced and has personally defended himself, an 1 
 in that way must have attracted some attention. At all events, when New York 
 has seen and heard Mr. Froude, she Avill have seen and heard one of the men 
 of our time in the true sense ; one of the men who have toiled out a channel for 
 a fresh current of literature to run in, and whose name can hereafter be omitted 
 from no list of celebrities, however select, which pretends to illustrate the char- 
 acteristics of the Victorian age in England. 
 
 Mr. Froude is a Devonshire man, son of a Protestant archdeacon. He was 
 educated in Westminster School, and afterward at the famous Oriel College, 
 Oxford. He is now some lifty-four or fifty-five years of age, but seems, 
 and I hope is, only in his prime. Froude is a waif of that marvellous Oxford 
 movement which began some forty years ago, and of which the strange, di- 
 versely operating influence still radiates through English thought and society. 
 That movement was a peculiar theological renaissance, which partly converted 
 itself into a reaction and partly into a revolt. It began with the saintly and 
 earnest Keble ; its master spirits were John Henry Newman and Dr. Pusey. 
 It proposed to vindicate for the Protestant Church the true place of spiritual 
 heir to the apostles and universal teacher of the Christian world. Newman, 
 Pusey, and others worked in the production of the celebrated " Tracts for the 
 Times." The results were extraordinary. The impulse of inquiry thus set 
 going seemed to shake all foundations of agreement. It was an explosion 
 which blew people various ways, they could hardly tell why or how. It made 
 one man a ritualist, another an Ultramontane Roman Catholic, a third a skep- 
 tic. Like the two women grinding at the mill in the Scripture, two devoted 
 companions, brothers perhaps, were seized by that impulse and flung different 
 ways. Before the wave had subsided it tossed Mr. Froude, then a young man 
 of five or six and twenty, clear out of his intended career as a clergyman of 
 the Church of England. He had taken deacon's orders before the change came 
 on him, which drove him forth as the two Newmans had been driven; but his 
 course was more like that of Francis Newman than of John Henry. He 
 seemed, indeed, at one time likely to pass away altogether into the ranks of the 
 skeptics. Skepticism is in London attended with no small degree of social dis- 
 advantage. To be in " society," you must believe as people of good position 
 do. Dissent of any kind is unfashionable. A shrewd friend of mine says a 
 d'ssenter can never enter London. Dissent never gets any further than Hack- 
 ney or Clapham, a northern and a southern suburb. Allowance being made 
 for a touch of satirical exaggeration, the saying is very expressive, and even in- 
 structive. Probably, however, the odds are more heavily against mere dissent 
 than a bold, intellectual skepticism, which may have a piquant and alluring 
 tlavor about it, and make a man a sort of curiosity and lion, so that " society " 
 would tolerate him as it does a poet. There was, however, nothing in exclu- 
 sion from fashionable society to frighten a man like Froude, who, so far as I 
 know, has never troubled himself about the favor of the West End. His first 
 work of any note (for I pass over "The Shadows of tlu: Clouds," a novel, I be-
 
 o 2 4 MR. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 lieve, which I hare nerer read nor seen) was "The Nemesis of Faith." This 
 work was published in 1848, and is chiefly to be valued now as an illustration 
 of one stage of development through which the intellect of the author and tl>e 
 tolerance of his age were passing. " The Nemesis of Faith '* was declared a 
 skeptical and even an infidel book. It was sternly censured and condemned 
 by the authorities of the university to which Mr. Froude had belonged. He 
 had won a fellowship in Exeter College, Oxford; the college authorities pun- 
 ished him for his opinions by depriving him of it. " The Nemesis of Faith " 
 created a sensation, an excitement and alarm, which surely were extravagant 
 even then and would be impossible now. Its doubts and complaints would 
 seem wild enough to-day. Men of any freshness and originality so commonly 
 begin or about that time did begin their career with a little outburst of skep- 
 ticism, that the thing seems almost as natural as it seemed to Major Pendennis 
 for a young peer to start in public life as a professed republican. Besides, we 
 must remember that " The Nemesis of Faith " was published 'in what the late 
 Lord Derby once called the pre-scientific age. It was the time when skepti- 
 cism dealt only in the metaphysical, or the emotional, and had not congealed 
 into the far more enduring and corroding form of physical science. As well as 
 I can remember, " The Nemesis of Faith " which I have not seen for years 
 was full of life and genius, but not particularly dangerous to settled beliefs. 
 However, a storm raged around it, and around the author; and finally Mr. 
 Froude himself seems to have reconsidered his opinions, for he subsequently 
 withdrew the book from circulation. Its literary success, however, must have 
 shown him clearly what his career was to be. He was at this time drifting 
 about the world in search of occupation; for he found himself cut off from the 
 profession of the Church, on which he had intended to enter, and yet he had, 
 if I am not mistaken, passed far enough within its threshold to disqualify him 
 for admission to one of the other professions. He began to write for the 
 " Westminster Review," which at that time was in the zenith of its intellectual 
 celebrity, and for " Eraser's Magazine." His studies led him especially into 
 the history of the Tudor reigns, and most of his early contributions to " Fra- 
 ser " were explorations in that field. Out of these studies grew the " History 
 of England," on which the fame of the author is destined to rest. Mr. Froude 
 himself tells us that he began his task with a strong inclination toward Avhat 
 may be called the conventional and orthodox opinions of the character of 
 Henry VIII. ; but he found as he studied the actual records and state pa- 
 pers that a different sort of character began to grow up under his eyes. I 
 can easily imagine how his emotional and artistic nature gradually bore him 
 away further and further in the direction thus suddenly opened up, until at last 
 he had created an entirely new Henry for himself. Of course the old tradi- 
 tional notion of Henry, the simple idea which set him down as a monster of 
 lust and cruelty, would soon expose its irrationality to a mind like that of 
 Froude. But, like the writers who, in revolt against the picture of Tiberius 
 given by Tacitus, or that of the French Revolution woven by Burke, have 
 painted the Roman Emperor as an archangel, and the Revolution as a stain- 
 less triumph of liberty, so Mr. Froude seems to have been driven into a posi- 
 tive affection and veneration for the subject of his study. In 1856 the first and 
 second volumes appeared of the " History of England from the Fall of Wolscy 
 to the Death of Elizabeth." There has hardly been in our time so fierce a lit- 
 erary controversy as that which sprang up around these two volumes. Per- 
 haps the war of words over Buckle's first volume or Darwin's " Origin of Spe-
 
 MR. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 225 
 
 eies could alone be compared with it. Mr. Froude became famous in a mo- 
 ment. The " Edinburgh Review " came out with a fierce, almost a savage at- 
 tack, to which Mr. Froude replied in an article which he published in " Fra- 
 ser " and to which he affixed his own signature. Mr. Froude, indeed, has dur- 
 ing his career fought several battles in this open, personal manner a thing 
 very uncommon in England. He has had many enemies. The "Saturday 
 Review" has been unswerving in its passionate hostility to him, and has even 
 gone so far as to arraign his personal integrity as a chronicler. Rumor in Lon- 
 don ascribes some of the bitterest of the "Saturday Review " articles to the pen 
 of Mr. Edward A. Freeman, author of "The History of Federal Government," 
 " The History of the Norman Conquest of England," and many historical es- 
 says a prolific writer in reviews and journals. Then as the successive voi- 
 umes of Fronde's work began to appear, and the historian brought out his fa- 
 mous portraiture of Elizabeth and Mary, it was but natural that controversy 
 should thicken and deepen around him. The temper of parties in Great Brit- 
 ain is still nearly as hot as ever it was on the characters of Mary and Eliza- 
 beth. Not many years ago Thackeray was hissed in Edinburgh, because in one 
 of his lectures he said something which was supposed to be disparaging to the 
 moral character of Mary of Scotland. Then the whole question of Saxoi, 
 against Celt comes up again in Mr. Froude's account of English rule in Ire- 
 land. Everybody knows what a storm of controversy broke around the histo- 
 rian's head. He was accused not merely of setting up his own personal preju- 
 dices as law and history, but even of misrepresenting facts and actually mis- 
 quoting documents in order to suit his purpose. I do not mean to enter into 
 the discussion, for I am not writing a criticism of Mr. Froude's history, but 
 only a chapter about Mr. Froude himself. But I confess I can quite under- 
 stand why so many readers, not blind partisans of any cause, become impatient 
 with some of the passages of his works. He coolly and deliberately commends 
 as virtue in one person or one race the very qualities, the very deeds which he 
 stigmatizes as the blackest and basest guilt in others. " Show me the man, and 
 I will show you the law," used to be an old English proverb, illustrating the 
 depth which judicial partisanship and corruption had reached. " Show me tha 
 person, and I will show you the moral law," might well be the motto of Mr. 
 Fronde's history. But I believe Mr. Froude to be utterly incapable of any 
 misrepresentation or distortion of facts, any conscious coloring of the truth. 
 Indeed, I am rather impressed by the extraordinary boldness with which he 
 often gives the naked facts, and still calmly upholds a theory which to ordinary 
 minds would seem absolutely incompatible with their existence. It appears to 
 be enough if he once makes up his mind to dislike, a personage or a race. Let 
 the facts be as they may, Mr. Fronde will still explain them to the discredit of 
 the object of his antipathy. His mode of dealing with the characters and ;ic- 
 tions of those he detests, might remind one of the manner in which the discon- 
 tented subjects of the perplexed prince in "Rabagas" explain every act of 
 their good-natured ruler : "Je donne un bal luxe effrene ! Pas de bal quelle 
 avarice! Je passe une revue intimidation militaire! Je n'en passe pas je 
 crains r esprit des troupes! Des petards a ma fete 1'argent du peuple en fu- 
 mce! Pas de petards rien pour les plaisirs du peuple! Je me porte bien 
 1'oisivite! Je me porte mal la debauche! Je batis gaspillage! Je ne hiltis 
 pas et le proletaire ? " 
 
 However that may be, it is certain that the " History " placed Mr. Froude 
 in the veiy front rank of English authors. He had made a path for himself.
 
 226 MR. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDK 
 
 He refused to accept the thought of what is commonly called a science of his- 
 tory, although his own method of evolving his narrative is very often in faith- 
 ful conformity with the principles of that science. He nad written about polit- 
 ical economy, in the very opening of his first volume, in a manner which, if it 
 did not imply an actual contempt for the doctrines of that science, yet certainly 
 showed an impatience of its rule which aroused the anger of the economists. ' He 
 claimed a reversal of the universal decision of modern history as to the char- 
 acter of Henry VIII. He assailed one of the English Protestant's articles 
 of faith when he denied the virtue of Anne Boleyn. He made mistakes and 
 confessed them, and went to work again. The opening of the Spanish archives 
 in the castle of Simancas flooded him with new lights and required a recon- 
 struction of much that he had done. The progress of his work became one of 
 the literary phenomena of the age. All eyes were on it. The rich romantic 
 splendor of the style, the singular power and impressiveness of the historical 
 portraits, fascinated everybody. Orthodox Protestants looked on him as a sort 
 of infidel or pagan, despite his admiration for Queen Bess, because, with all his 
 admiration, lie exposed her meannesses and her falsehoods with unsparing 
 hand. Catholics insisted on regarding him as a mere bigot of Protestantism, 
 although he condemned Anne Boleyn. Mr. Froude has always shown a re- 
 markable freedom from prejudice and bigotry. Some of his closest friends are 
 Catholics and Irishmen. I remember a little personal instance of liberality on 
 his part which is perhaps worth mentioning. There was an official in the 
 Record or State Paper Office of England who had become a Roman Catholic, 
 and was, like most English Catholics, especially if converts, rather bigoted and 
 zealous. This gentleman, Mr. Turnbull, happened to be employed some years 
 ago in arranging, copying, and calendaring the Elizabethan State papers. 
 The Evangelical Alliance Society got up a cry against him. They insisted 
 that to employ a Roman Catholic in such a task was only to place in his hands 
 the means of falsifying a most important period of English history, and they 
 argued that the temptation would be too strong for :*ry man like Mr. Turnbull 
 to resist. There sprang up one of those painful and ignoble disputations which 
 are even still only too common in England when religious bigotry gets a chance 
 of raising an alarm. I am sorry to say that so influential a journal as the 
 " Athenseum " joined in the clamor for the dismissal of Mr. Turnbull, who was 
 not accused of having done anything wrong, but only of being placed in a po- 
 sition which might perhaps tempt some base creatures to do wrong. Mr. 
 Turnbull was a gentleman of the highest honor, and, unfortunately for himself, 
 an enthusiast in the very work which then occupied him. Mr. Froude was 
 then engaged in studying the period of history which employed Mr. Turnbuirs 
 labors. The opinions of the two men were utterly at variance. Mr. Turn- 
 bull must have thought Froude's work in the rehabilitation of Henry ^ III., 
 and the glorification of Elizabeth positively detestable. But Mr. Froude bore 
 public testimony to the honor and integrity of Mr. Turnbull. " Mr. Turn- 
 bull," Froude wrote, "could have felt no sympathy with the work in which I 
 was engaged; but he spared no pains to be of use to me, and in admitting me 
 to a share of his private room enabled me to witness the ability and integrity 
 with which he discharged his own duties. 1 ' Bigotry prevailed, however. 
 Mr. Turnbull was removed from his place, and died soon after, disappointed 
 and embittered. But Froude the man is not Froude the author. The man is 
 free from dislikes and prejudices; the author can hardly take a pen in his hand 
 without being -suffused ^y preju-1 5 33 an-3 dislikes. Take for example his
 
 MR. JAMES AXTIIOXY FROUDE. 227 
 
 way of dealing with Irish questions, not merely in his history, but ii? his mis- 
 cellaneous writings. Mr. Froude has some little property in the wesc of Ire- 
 land, and resides there for a short time every year. He has occasionally de- 
 tailed his experiences, and commented on them, in the pages of " Fraser." I 
 shall not give my own view of his apparent sentiments toward Ireland, be- 
 cause I am obviously not an impartial judge; but I shall take the opinion of 
 the London " Spectator," which is. The " Spectator " declares that "it may 
 be not unfairly said that Mr. Froude simply loathes the Irish people; not con- 
 sciously perhaps, for he professes the reverse. But a certain bitter grudge 
 breaks out despite his will now and then. It colors all his tropes. It adds a 
 sting to the casual allusions of his language. When he wants a figure of 
 speech to express the relation between the two islands, he compares the Irish 
 to a kennel of fox-hounds, and the English to their master, and declares that 
 what the Irish want is a master who knows that he is a master and means to 
 continue master." In his occasional studies of contemporary Ireland from the 
 window of his shooting lodge in Kerry, Mr. Froude exhibits the same strange 
 mixture of candor as to fact and blind prejudice as to conclusion which 
 so oddly characterizes his history. He recounts deliberately the most detest- 
 able projects he himself calls them " detestable; " the word is his, not mine 
 avowed to him by the agents of great Irish landlords, and yet his sympathy is 
 wholly with the agents and against the occupiers. He tells in one instance, 
 with perfect delight, of a mean and vulgar exhibition of triumphant malice 
 which he says an agent, a friend of his, paraded for the humiliation of an 
 evicted and contumacious tenant. The " Spectator " asks in wonder whether 
 it can be possible that "Mr. Froude, an English gentleman by birth and edu- 
 cation, an Oxford fellow, is not ashamed to relate this act as an heroic feat? " 
 Indeed, Mr. Froude seems to associate in Ireland only with the "agent" class, 
 and to take all his views of things from them. His testimony is therefore 
 about as valuable as that of a foreigner who twelve or fifteen years ago should 
 have taken his opinions as to slavery in the South from the judgment and con- 
 versation of the plantation overseers. The " Spectator " observed, with calm se- 
 verity, that Mr. Froude's unlucky accounts of his Irish experiences were " a 
 comical example of the way in which an acute and profound mind can become 
 dull to the sense of what is manly, just, and generous, by the mere atmosphere 
 of association." Let me say that I am convinced, however, that all this blind 
 and unmanly prejudice is purely literary ; that it is taken up and laid aside 
 with the pen. As I have already said, some of Mr. Froude's closest friends are 
 Irishmen men who are incapable of associating with any one, however emi- 
 nent, who really felt the coarse and bitter hatred to their country which Mr. 
 Froude in his wilder moments allows his too fluent pen to express. In fact 
 Mr. Froude is nothing of a philosopher. He settles every question easily and 
 off hand by reference to what Stuart Mill well calls the resource of the lazy 
 the theory of race. Celts are all wrong and Anglo-Saxons are all right, and 
 there is an end of it. If he has any philosophy and science of history, it is this. 
 It explains everything and reconciles all seeming contradictions. Nothing can 
 be at once more comprehensive and more simple. But there is still some- 
 thing to be added to this story of Mr. Froude's Irish experiences; and I men- 
 tion the whole thing only to illustrate the peculiar character of Mr. Froude'a 
 emotional temperament, which so often renders him untrustworthy as a his- 
 torian. In the particular instance on which the "Spectator" commented, it 
 turned out that Mr. Froude was entirely mistaken. He had misunderstood
 
 228 MR. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 from beginning to end what his friend the agent told him. The agent, the 
 landlord (a peer of the realm), and others hastened to contradict the historian 
 There never had been any such eviction or any such offensive display. Mr 
 Fronde himself wrote to acknowledge publicly that he had been entirely mis- 
 taken. He seemed indeed to have always had some doubt of the story he was 
 publishing; for he sent a proof of the page to the agent " to be corrected in ca,se 
 L had misunderstood him." But the agent's alterations, " unluckily, did not 
 reach me in time; " and as Mr. Fronde could not wait for the truth, he published 
 the error. Thus indeed is history written ! This was Mr. Fronde's published 
 %-ersion of a statement made viva voce to himself; and his version was wrong 
 in every particular in fact, in substance, in detail, in purport, in everything ! 
 I venture to think that this little incident is eminently characteristic, and 
 throws a strong light on some of the errors of the "History of England." 
 
 Mr. Froude has taken little or no active part in English politics. I do not 
 remember his having made any sign of personal sympathy one way or the other 
 with any of the great domestic movements which have stirred England in my 
 time. I presume that he is what would be generally called a Liberal ; at least 
 it is simply impossible that he could be a Tory. But I doubt if he could 
 very distinctly " place himself," as the American phrase is, with regard to 
 most of the political contentions of the time. I cannot call Mr. Froude a 
 philosophical Radical; for the idea which that suggests is of a school of 
 thought and a system of training quite different from his, even if his tenden- 
 cies could possibly be called Radical. It is rather a pity that so much of the 
 best and clearest literary intellect of England should be so entirely withdrawn 
 from the practical study of contemporary politics. No sensible person could 
 ask a man like Mr. Froude to neglect his special work, that for which he has a 
 vocation and genius, for the business of political life. But perhaps a better at- 
 tompt might be made by him and others of our leading authors to fulfil the 
 conditions of the German proverb which recommends that the one thing shall 
 be done and the other not left undone. Mr. Froude has taken a more marked 
 interest in the quasi-political question lately raised touching the connection be- 
 tween England and her colonies. Of recent years a party lias been growing 
 up in England who advocate emphatically the doctrine that the business of 
 this country is to educate her colonies for emancipation. These men believe 
 that as time goes on it will become more and more difficult to retain even a 
 nominal connection between distant colonies and the parent country. The Do- 
 minion of Canada and the Australian colonies, both separated by oceans from 
 England, are now practically independent. They have their own parl'ameiiLs 
 and make their own laws; but England sends out a governor, and the gov- 
 ernor has still a nominal control indeed, which in some rare cases ho stil! ex- 
 ercises. Now wjiat is to be the tendency of the future? Will this practical 
 independence tend to bind the colonial system more strongly up into that of 
 the central empire, as the practical independence of the American or the Swiss 
 States keeps them together? Or is the time inevitable when the slight bond 
 must be severed altogether and the great colonies at last declare their indepen- 
 dence? Would it, for example, be possible always to maintain the American 
 Union if several thousand miles of ocean divided California in one direction 
 from Washington, and several thousand miles of another ocean lay between 
 Washington and the South? This is the sort of question political parties m 
 England have lately been asking themselves. One party, mainly under an im- 
 pulse once given by a chance alliance between the Manchester school and (Jold- 
 win Smith, affirm boldly that ultimate separation is inevitable, and that we ought
 
 MR. JAMES AXTHOXY FROUDE. 22C 
 
 to begin to prepare ourselves and the colonies for it. This party made great 
 way for awhile. They said loudly, they announced as a principle, that which 
 had been growing vaguely up in many minds, and which one or two states- 
 men had long before put into actual form. More than twelve years ago Mi- 
 Gladstone delivered a lecture on our colonial system which plainly pointed to 
 this ultimate severance and bade us prepare for it. Mr. Lowe, the present 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, himself an old colonist, had talked somewhat 
 cynically in the same way. Mr. Bright was well known to favor the idea; so 
 was Mr. Mill. With the sudden and direct impulse given by Mr. Goldwin 
 Smith, the thought seemed to be catching fire. England had voluntarily given 
 up the Ionian Islands to Greece; there was talk of her restoring Gibraltar to 
 Spain. Mr. Lowe had spoken in the House of Commons with utter contempt 
 of those who thought it would be possible to hold Canada in the event of a war 
 Avith the United States, Governors of colonies actually began to warn their 
 population that the preparation for independence had better begin. Suddenly 
 a reaction set in. A class of writers and speakers came up to the front who 
 argued that the colonies were part of England's very life system ; that they 
 were her friends, and might be her strength; that it was only her fault if she 
 had neglected them ; and that the natural tendency was to cohesion rather than 
 dissolution. This party roused at once the sympathy of that large class of peo- 
 ple Avho, knowing and caring nothing about the political and philosophical 
 aspects of the question, thought it somehow a degradation to England, a token 
 of decay, a confession of decrepitude, that there should be any talk of the sev- 
 erance of her colonies. Between the two, the tide of separatist feeling has 
 decidedly been rolled back for the present. The humor of the present day is 
 to devise means schemes of federation or federative representation for ex- 
 ample whereby the colonies may still be kept in cohesion with England. 
 Now, among the men of intellect who have stimulated and fostered this reac- 
 tionary movement, if it be so at all events, this movement toward the retention 
 of the colonies Mr. Fronde has been a leading influence. He has advocated 
 such a policy himself, and he has instilled it into the minds of others. He has 
 formed silently a little school who take their doctrines from him and expand them. 
 The colonial question has become popular and powerful. We have every now 
 and then colonial conferences held in London, at which even-body who has any 
 manner of suggestion to make, or crotchet to air, touching the improvement or 
 development of our colonial system, goes and delivers his speech independently 
 of everybody else. In the House of Commons the party is not yet very strong; 
 but if it had a leader there, it would undoubtedly be powerful. There is even 
 already a visible anxiety on the part of cabinet ministers to drop all allusion 
 to the fact that they once talked of preparing the colonies for independence. 
 We now find that it is regarded as unpatriotic, un-English, jmgrateful, and I 
 know not what, to say a word about a possible severance, at any time, between 
 tlu parent country and her colonies. In one of Mr. Disraeli's novels a politi 
 en. party, hard up for a captivating and popular watchword, is thrown into 
 ecstasies when somebody invents the cry of " Our young Queen and our old 
 Constitution." I think the cry of " Our young colonies and our old Consti- 
 tution" would be almost as taking now. It is curious, however, to note how 
 both the movement and the reaction came from scholars and literary men not 
 from politicians or journalists. Many eminent men had talked of gradually 
 preparing the colonies for independence ; but the talk never became an impulse 
 and a political movement until it came from Mr. Goldwin Smith. On the 
 other hand, countless vociferous persons had always been bawling out that
 
 230 MR. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 England must never part with a rock on which her flag had waved ; but all 
 this sort of thing nad no effect until Mr. Froiule and his school inaugurated 
 the definite movement of reaction. Mr. Goldwin Smith sent the ball flying so 
 far in one direction, that it seemed almost certain to reach the limit of the 
 field. Mr. Fronde suddenly caught it and sent it flying back the way it had 
 come, and beyond the hand which had originally driven it forth. It is not 
 often that the ideas of " literary " men have so much of positive influence over 
 practical controversy in England. 
 
 For a long time Mr. Fronde has been the editor of " Fraser's Magazine," a 
 periodical which I need not say holds a high position, and to which the editor 
 has contributed some of trie finest of his shorter writings. He is assisted in 
 the work of editing by Mr. William Alliugham, who is best known as a 
 young poet of great promise, and who is probably the closest personal friend 
 of Alfred Tennyson. " Fraser's " is always ready to open its columns to merit 
 of any kind, and is willing to put before the public bold and original views of 
 many political questions which other periodicals would shrink from admitting. 
 As a rule English magazines, even when they acknowledge a dasli of the 
 philosophic in them, are very reluctant to give a place to opinions, however 
 honestly entertained, which differ in any marked degree from those of society 
 at large. The "Fortnightly Review" may be almost regarded as unique in its 
 principle of admitting any expression of opinion which has genuineness and 
 value in it, without regard to its accordance with public sentiment, or even 
 to its inherent soundness. "Fraser," of course, makes no pretension to such 
 deliberate boldness. But " Fraser " will now and then venture to put in an 
 article, even from an uninfluential hand, which goes directly in the teetli of 
 accepted and orthodox political opinion. For example, it is not many months 
 since it published an article written by an English working man (" The Jour- 
 neyman Engineer," a sort of celebrity in his way) to prove that republicanism 
 is becoming the creed of the English artisan. Now, in any English magazine 
 which professes to be respectable, it is almost as hazardous a thing to speak of 
 republicanism in England as to speak of something indecent or blasphemous. 
 " Fraser " also made itself conspicuous some years ago as a bold and perse- 
 vering advocate of army reform, and ventured to press certain schemes of 
 change which then seemed either revolutionary or impossible, but which since 
 then have been quietly realized. 
 
 I think I have given a tolerably accurate estimate of Mr. Fronde's public 
 work in England. I have never heard him make a speech or deliver a lecture, 
 and therefore cannot conjecture how far he is likely to impress an audience 
 with the manner of his discourse ; but the matter can hardly fail to be sug- 
 gestive, original, and striking. I can foi'esee sharp controversy and broad 
 differences of opinion arising out of his lectures in the United States. I cannot 
 imagine their being received with indifference, or failing to hold the atten- 
 tion of the public. Mr. Froude is a great literary man, if not strictly a great 
 historian. Of course every one must rate Fronde's intellect very highly. He has 
 imagination ; he has that sympathetic and dramatic instinct which enables a man 
 to enter into the emotions and motives, the likings and dislikings of the people 
 of a past age. His style is penetrating and thrilling; his language often rises tc 
 the dignity of a poetic eloquence. The figures he conjures up are always the 
 semblances of real men and women. They are never wax- work, or lay figures, 
 or skeletons clothed in words, or purple rags of description stuffed out with 
 straw into an awkward likeness to the human form. The one distinct im- 
 pression we carry away from Froudft's history id that of the living reality of
 
 MR. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 231 
 
 his figures. In Marlowe's " Faustus " the Doctor conjures up for the amuse- 
 ment of the Emperor a procession of stately and beautiful shadows to represent 
 the great ones of the past. When the shadows of Alexander the Great and his 
 favorite pass by, the Emperor can hardly restrain himself from rushing to 
 clasp the hero in his arms, and has to be reminded by the wizard that " these 
 are but shadows not substantial." Even then the Emperor can scarcely get 
 over his impression of their reality, for he cries : 
 
 I have heard it said 
 
 That this fair lady, whilst she lived on earth, 
 Had on her neck a little wart or mole; 
 
 and lo! there is the mark on the neck of the beautiful form which floats 
 across his field of vision. Mr Froude's shadows are like this : so deceptive, 
 so seemingly vital and real ; with the beauty and the blot alike conspicuous ; 
 with the pride and passion of the hero, and the heroine's white necK and the 
 wart on it. Mr. Froude's whole soul, in fact, is in the human beings whom he 
 meets as he unfolds his narrative. He is not an historical romancist, as some 
 of his critics have called him. He is a romantic or heroic portrait painter. 
 He lias painted pictures on his pages which may almost compare with those 
 of Titian. Their glances follow you and haunt you like the wonderful eyes 
 of Cresar Borgia or the soul-piercing resignation of Beatrice Cenci. But is 
 Mr. Froude a great historian? Despite this splendid faculty, nay, perhaps, 
 because of this, he wants the one great and essential quality of the true histo- 
 rian, accuracy. He wants altogether the cold, patient, stern quality which 
 clings to facts the scientific faculty. His narrative never stands out in that 
 "dry light" which Bacon so commends, the light of undistorted and clear 
 Truth. The temptations to the man with a gift of heroic portrait-painting are 
 too great for Mr. Froude's resistance. His genius carries him away and be- 
 comes his master. When Titian was painting his Caesar Borgia, is it not con- 
 ceivable that his imagination may have been positively inflamed by the contrast 
 between the physical beauty and the moral guilt of the man, and have uncon- 
 sciously heightened the contrast by making the pride and passion lower more 
 darkly, the superb brilliancy of the eyes burn more radiantly than might 
 have been seen in real life? The world would take little account even if it 
 were to know that some of the portraits it admires were thus idealized by the 
 genius of the painter; but the historian who is thus led away is open to a 
 graver charge. It seems to me impossible to doubt that Mr. Froude has more 
 than once been thus ensnared by his own special gift. What is there in liter- 
 ature more powerful, more picturesque, more complete and dramatic than 
 Froude's portrait of Mary Queen of Scots? It stands out and glows and dark- 
 ens with all the glare and gloom of a living form, that now appears in sun and 
 now in shadow. It is almost as perfect and as impressive as any Titian. But 
 t-an any reasonable person doubt that the picture on the whole is a dramatic 
 and not an historical study? Without going into any controversy as to disputed 
 facts nay, admitting for the sake of argument that Mary was as guilty as 
 Mr. Froude would make her as guilty, I mean, in act and deed yet it is 
 impossible to contend with any show of reason that the being he has painted 
 for us is the Mary of history and of life. To us his Mary now is a reality. We 
 are distinctly acquainted with her ; we see her and can follow her movements. 
 But she is a fable and might be an impossibility for all that. The poets hav 
 made many physical impossibilities real for us and familiar to us. The form 
 and being of a mermaid are not one whit less clear and distinct to us than the 
 form and being of a living woman. If any of us were to see a paint Jug of a
 
 232 MR. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 mermaid with scales upon her neck, or with feet, he would resent it or laugh 
 rtt it as an inaccuracy, just as if he saw some gross anatomical blunder in a 
 picture of an ordinary man or woman. Mr. Froude has created a Mary Queen 
 of Scots as the poets and painters have created a mermaid. He has made her 
 one of the most imposing figures in our modern literature, to which indeed 
 she is an important addition. So of his Queen Elizabeth; so, to a lesser extent, 
 of his Henry VIII., because, although there he may have gone even further 
 away from history, yet I think he was misled rather by his anxiety to prove a 
 theory than by the fascination of a picture growing under his own hands. 
 Everything becomes for the hour subordinate to this passion for the picturesque 
 in good or evil. Mr. Froude's personal integrity and candor are constantly 
 coming into contradiction with this artistic temptation; but the portrait goes 
 on all the same, lie is too honest and candid to conceal or pervert any fact 
 that he knows. He tells everything frankly, but continues his portrait. It may 
 be that the very vices Avhich constitute the gloom and horror of this portrait 
 suddenly prove their existence in the character of the person who was chosen 
 to illustrate the brightness and glory of human nature. Mr. Froude is not 
 abashed. He frankly states the facts; shoAvs how, in this or that instance, Truth 
 did tell shocking lies, Mercy ordered several massacres, and Virtue fell into the 
 ways of Messalina. But the portraits of Truth, Mercy, and Virtue remain as 
 radiant as ever. A lover of art, according to a story in the memoirs of Canova, 
 was so struck with admiration of that sculptor's Venus that he begged to be 
 allowed to see the model. The artist gratified him ; but so far from beholding 
 a rery goddess of beauty in the flesh, he only saw a well-made, rather coarse- 
 looking woman. The sculptor, seeing his disappointment, explained to him 
 that the hand and eye of the artist, as they work, can gradually and almost 
 imperceptibly change the model from that which it is in the flesh to that which 
 it ought to be in the marble. This is the process which is always going on with 
 Mr. Froude whenever he is at work upon some model in which for love or 
 hate he takes unusual interest. Therefore the historian is constantly involving 
 himself in a welter of inconsistencies and errors which atfect the arrfst in no- 
 wise. Henry is a hero on one page, although he does the very thing which 
 somebody else on the next page is a villain for even attempting. Elizabeth 
 remains a prodigy of wisdom and honesty, Mary a marvel of genius, lust, 
 cruelty, and falsehood, although in every other chapter the author frankly 
 accumulates instances which show that now and then the parts seem to have 
 been exchanged; and it often becomes as hard to know, by any tangible evi- 
 dence, which is truth and which falsehood, which patriotism and which selfish- 
 ness, as it was to distinguish the true Florimel from the magical counterfeit 
 in Spenser's " Faery Queen." 
 
 This is a grave and a great fault; and unhappily it is one with which Mr. 
 Froude seems to have been thoroughly inoculated. It goes far to justify the dull 
 and literal old historians of the school of Dryasdust, who, if they never quick- 
 ened an event into life, never on the other hand deluded the mind with phan- 
 toms. The chroniclers of mere facts and dates, the old almanac-makers, are 
 weary creatures; but one finds it hard to condemn them to mere contempt 
 when he sees how the vivid genius of a man like Froude can lead him astray. 
 Mr. Froude's finest gift is his greatest defect for the special work he undertakes 
 fo do. A scholar, a thinker, a man of high imagination, a man likewise of 
 patient labor, he is above all things a romantic portrait painter; and the spell 
 hy which his works allure us is therefore the spell of the magician, not the 
 power of the calm and sober teacher.
 
 SCIENCE AND ORTHODOXY IN ENGLAND. 
 
 ^T^HE old God is dead above, and the old Devil is dead below ! " 
 
 So sang Heinrich Heine in one of his peculiarly cheerful moods ; 
 and I do not know that any words could paint a more complete picture of the 
 utter collapse and ruin of old theologies and time-honored faiths and supersii- 
 tions. Irreverent and even impious as the words will perhaps appear to most 
 minds, it is probable that not a few of those who would be most likely to 
 shudder at their audacity are beginning to think with horror that the condition ot 
 things described by the cynical poet is being rapidly brought about by the doings 
 of modern science. Many an English country clergyman, many an earnest and 
 pious Dissenter, must have felt that a new and awful era had arrived that a 
 modern war of Titans against Heaven was going on, when such discourses as 
 Professor Huxley's famous Protoplasm lecture could be delivered by a man of 
 the highest reputation, and could be received by nearly all the world with, at 
 least, a respectful consideration. In fact, the delivery of such discourses does 
 indicate a quite new ordeal for old-fashioned orthodoxy, and an ordeal which 
 seems to me far severer than any through which it has yet passed. It would be 
 impossible to exaggerate the importance of the struggle which is now openly 
 carried on between Science and Orthodox Theology. I need hardly say pet- 
 haps that I utterly repudiate the use of any such absurd and unmeaning lan- 
 guage as that which speaks of a controversy between science and religion. 
 One might as well talk of a conflict between fact and truth ; or between truth 
 and virtue. But orthodox theology in England, whether it be right or wrong, is 
 certainly a very different thing from religion. Were it wholly and eternally true 
 it could still only bear the same relation to religion that geography bears to the 
 earth, astronomy to the sidereal system, the words describing to the thing de- 
 scribed. I may therefore hope not to be at once set down as an irreligious person, 
 merely because I venture to describe the war indirectly waged against orthodox 
 theology, by a new school of English scientific men, as the severest trial that 
 system has ever yet had to encounter, and one through which it can hardly by 
 any possibility pass wholly unscathed. 
 
 In describing briefly and generally this new school of English science, and 
 some of its leading scholars, I should say that I do so merely from the outside. 
 I am not a scientific man professionally ; and, even as an amateur, can only pre- 
 tend to very slight attainment. But 1 have been on the scene of controversy, 
 have looked over the field, and studied the bearing of the leading combatants. 
 When Cressida had seen the chiefs of the Trojan army pass before her and 
 had each pointed out to her and described, she could probably have told 
 a stranger something worth his listening to, although she knew nothing of the 
 great art of war. Only on something of the same ground do I venture to ask 
 for any attention from American readers, when I say something about the class 
 of scientific men who have recently sprung up in England, and of whom one of 
 the most distinguished and one of the most aggressive has just been elected 
 President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. 
 
 This school is peculiarly English. So far as I know, it owes nothing directly 
 and distinctly to the intellectual initiative of any other country. Both in meta- 
 physical and in practical science there has been a sudden and powerful awaken-
 
 2C4 SCIENCE AND ORTHODOXY IN ENGLAND. 
 
 ing, or perhaps I should say renaissance, in England lately. Three or four years 
 ago Stuart Mill wrote that the sceptre of psychology had again passed over to 
 England ; and it seems to me not too much to say that England now likewise 
 holds the sceptre of natural science. It is evident to every one that the leaders 
 of this new school stand in antagonism which is decided, if not direct, to the 
 teachings of orthodox theology. 
 
 The recent election of Professor Huxley as President of the British Associa- 
 tion was accepted universally as a triumph over the orthodox party. Professor 
 Owen, who undoubtedly possesses one of the broadest and keenest scientific in- 
 tellects of the age, has lately been pushed aside and has fallen into something like 
 comparative obscurity because he could not, or would not, see his way into the 
 dangerous fields opened up by his younger and bolder rivals. Professor Owen held 
 on as long as ever he could to orthodoxy. He made heavy intellectual sacrifices at 
 its altar. I do not quite know whether in the end it was he who first gave the cold 
 shoulder to orthodoxy, or orthodoxy which first repudiated him. But it is cer- 
 tain that he no longer stands out conspicuous and ardent as the great opponent 
 of Darwin and Huxley. He has, in fact, receded so much from his old ground 
 that one finds it difficult now to know where to place him ; and perhaps it will be 
 better to regard him as out of the controversy altogether. If he had done less 
 for orthodoxy, where his labors were vain, he might have done much more for sci- 
 ence, where his toil would always have been fruitful. Undoubtedly, he is one of 
 the greatest naturalists since Cuvier ; his contributions toward the facts and 
 data of science have been valuable beyond all estimation ; his practical labors in 
 the British Museum would alone earn for him the gratitude of all students. Owen 
 is, or was, to my mind, the very perfection of a scientific lecturer. The easy 
 flow of simple, expressive language, the luminous arrangement and style which 
 made the profoundest exposition intelligible, the captivating variety of illustration, 
 the clear, well-modulated voice, the self-possessed and graceful manner all these 
 were attributes which made Owen a delightful lecturer, although he put forward 
 no pretensions to rhetorical skill or to eloquence of any very high order. But 
 while there can hardly have been any recent falling off in Owen's intellectual 
 powers, yet it is certain that he was more thought of, that he occupied a higher 
 place in the public esteem, some half dozen years ago than he now does. I think 
 there has been a general impression of late years that in the controversy between 
 theology and science, Owen was not to be relied upon implicitly. People 
 thought that he was trying to sit on the two stools ; to run with the theological 
 hare, and hold with the scientific hounds. Indeed, Owen is eminently a respect- 
 able, a courtly savant. He does not love to run tilt against the prevailing opin- 
 ion of the influential classes, or to forfeit the confidence and esteem of " society.' 
 He loves so people say the company of the titled and the great, and prefers, per- 
 haps, to walk with Sir Duke than with humble Sir Scholar. All things considered, 
 we may regard him as out of the present controversy, and, perhaps, as left be- 
 hind by it and by the opinions which have created it. The orthodox do not seem 
 much beholden to him. Only two or three years ago an orthodox association 
 for which Owen had delivered a scientific lecture, refused on theological grounds 
 to print the discourse in their regular volume. On the other hand, the younger 
 and more ardent savans and scholars sneer at him, and refuse to give him credit 
 for sincerity at the expense of his intelligence. They believe that if he chose to 
 speak out, if he had the courage of his opinions, he would say as they do. He 
 has ceased to be their opponent, but he is not upon their side ; he is no longer 
 the champion of pure orthodoxy, but he has never pronounced openly against it.
 
 SCIENCE AND ORTHODOXY IN ENGLAND. -So 
 
 Flippant people allude to him as an old fogy; let us say more decently thai 
 Richard Owen already belongs to the past. 
 
 " Free-thinking" has never been in England a very formidable rival of ortho- 
 dox theology. Perhaps there is something in the practical nature of the average 
 English mind which makes it indifferent and apathetic to mere speculation. 
 The ordinary Englishmen understands being a Churchman or a Dissenter, a 
 Roman Catholic or a no-Popery man ; but he hardly understands how people can 
 be got to concern themselves with mere sceptical speculation. Writings like 
 those of Rousseau, for example, never could have produced in England anything 
 like the effect they wrought in France. Of late years the effects of "free-think- 
 ing "(I am using the phrase merely in the vulgar sense) have been poor, feeble 
 and uninfluential wholly indeed without influence over the educated classes of 
 society. A certain limited and transient influence was once maintained over a 
 small surface of society by the speeches and the writings of George Jacob Holy- 
 oake. Holyoake avowed himself an Atheist, conducted a paper called (I think) 
 " The Reasoner," was prosecuted under the terms of a foolish and discreditable 
 act of Parliament, and had for a time something of notoriety and popular power. 
 But Holyoake, a man of pure character and gentle manners, is devoid of anything 
 like commanding ability, has no gleam of oratorical power, and is intellectually un- 
 reliable and vacillating. Under no conceivable circumstances could he exercise 
 any strong or permanent control over the mind or the heart of an age : and he 
 has of late somewhat modified his opinions, and has greatly altered his sphere of 
 action, preferring to be a political and social reformer in a small and modest 
 way to the barren task of endeavoring to uproot religious belief by arguments 
 evolved from the depth of the moral consciousness. Holyoake, the Atheist, 
 may therefore be said to have faded away. 
 
 His old place has lately been taken by a noisier, more egotistic and robust sort 
 of person, a young man named Bradlaugh, who at onetime dubbed himself 
 " Iconoclast," and, bearing that ambitious title, used to harangue knots of working 
 men in the North of England with the most audacious of free-thinking rhetoric. 
 Bradlaugh has a certain kind of brassy, stentorian eloquence and a degree of 
 reckless self conceit which almost amount to a conquering quality. But he has 
 no intellectual capacity sufficient to make a deep mark on the mind of any sec- 
 tion of society and he never attempts, so far as I knbw, any other than the old, 
 time-worn arguments against orthodoxy with which the world has been wearily 
 familiar since the days of Voltaire. Indeed, a man who gravely undertakes to prove 
 by argument that there is no God, places himself at once in so anomalous, para- 
 doxical and ridiculous a position that it is a marvel the absurdity of the situa- 
 tion does not strike his own mind. A man who starts with the reasonable as- 
 sumption that belief is a matter of evidence and then goes on to argue that a 
 Being does not exist of whose non-existence he can upon his own ground and 
 pleading know absolutely nothing, is not likely to be very formidable to any of 
 his antagonists. Orthodox theologians, therefore, are little concerned about men 
 like Bradlaugh very often perhaps are ignorant of the existence of any such. 
 
 I only mention Holyoake and Bradlaugh at all because they are the only prom- 
 inent agitators of this kind who have appeared in England during my time. I do 
 not mean to speak disparagingly of either man. Both have considerable ab li- 
 ties ; both are, I am sure, sincere and honest. I have never heard anything to 
 the disparagement of Bradlauglrs character. Holyoake I know personally, and 
 esteem highly. But their influence has been insignificant, and cannot have any 
 long duration. I only speak of it here to show how feeble has been the head made
 
 236 SCIENCE AND ORTHODOXY IN ENGLAND. 
 
 against orthodoxy in England by professed infidelity in our time. There was, in- 
 deed, a book written some years ago by a man of higher culture than Holyoake 
 or Bradlaugh, and which made a bubble or two of sensation at the time. I mean 
 " The Creed of Christendom," by William Rathbone Greg, a well-known political 
 and philosophical essayist, who wrote largely for the "Edinburgh Review" and the 
 "Westminster Review" and more lately for the " Pall Mall Gazette," and has now a 
 comfortable place under government. But the " Creed of Christendom, " though 
 a clever book in its way, made no abiding mark. It was read and liked by those 
 whose opinions it expressed, but I question if it ever made one single convert or 
 suggested a doubt to a truly orthodox mind. I mention it because it was the 
 only work of what is called a directly infidel character, not pretending to a scien- 
 tific basis, which was contributed to the literature of English philosophy by a 
 man of high culture and literary reputation during my memory. It will be un- 
 derstood that I am speaking now of works modeled after the old fashion of scep- 
 tical controversy, in which the authors make it tliear avowed and main purpose to 
 assail the logical coherence and reasonableness of the Christian faith by argu- 
 ments which, sound or unsound, can be brought to no practical test and settled 
 by no possible decision. Such works may be influential among nations which 
 are addicted to or tolerant of mere religious speculation ; it is only a calling 
 aloud to solitude to address them to the English public. Even books of a very 
 high intellectual class, such for example as Strauss's " Life of Jesus," are trans- 
 lated into English in vain. They are read and admired by those already pre- 
 pared to admire and eager to read them the general public takes no heed of 
 them. 
 
 I have ventured into this digression in order to show the more clearly how 
 important must be the influence of that new school of science which has aroused 
 such a commotion among the devotees of English orthodoxy. There is not, so 
 far as I know, among the leading scientific men of the new school one single pro- 
 fessed infidel in the old fashioned sense. The fundamental difference between 
 them and the orthodox is that they insist upon regarding all subjects coming 
 within the scope of human knowledge as open to inquiry and to be settled only 
 upon evidence. I suppose a day will come when people will wonder that a scien- 
 tific man, living in the England of the nineteenth century, could have been de- 
 nounced from pulpits because he claimed the right and the duty to follow out 
 his scientific investigations whithersoever they should lead him. Yet I am not 
 aware that anything more desperately infidel than this has ever been urged by 
 our modern English savans. 
 
 Michel Chevalier tells a story of a French iconoclast of our own time who 
 devoted himself to a perpetual war against what he considered the two worst su- 
 perstitions of the age belief in God and dislike of spiders. This aggressive 
 sage always carried about with him a golden box filled with the pretty and favor- 
 ite insects I have mentioned ; and whenever he happened to be introduced to any 
 new acquaintance he invariably plunged at once into the questions " Do you 
 believe in a God, and are you afraid of spiders ? " and without waiting for an an- 
 swer, he instantly demonstrated his own superiority to at least one conventional 
 weakness by opening his box, taking out a spider, and swallowing it. I think a 
 good deal of the old-fashioned warfare against orthodoxy had something of this 
 spider-bolting aggressiveness about it. It assailed men's dearest beliefs in the 
 coarsest manner, and it had commonly only horror and disgust for its reward. 
 There is nothing of this spirit among the leaders of English scientific philosophy 
 to-day. Not merely are the practically scientific men free from it, but even the
 
 SCIENCE AND ORTHODOXY IN ENGLAND. ^ 
 
 men who are called in a sort of a contemptuous tone "philosophers" are not to 
 be accused of it. Mill and Herbert Spencer have as little of it as Huxley and 
 Grove. Indeed the scientific men are nothing more or less than earnest, patient, 
 devoted inquirers, seeking out the truth fearlessly, and resolute to follow wher- 
 ever she invites. Whenever they have come into open conflict with orthodoxy, 
 it may be safely assumed that orthodoxy threw the first stone. For orthodoxy, 
 with a keen and just instinct, detests these scientific men. The Low Church 
 party, the great mass of the Dissenting body (excluding, of course, Unitarians) 
 have been their uncompromising opponents. The High Church party, which, 
 with all its mediaeval weaknesses and its spiritual reaction, does assuredly boast 
 among its leaders some high and noble intellects, and among all its classes ear- 
 nest, courageous minds, has, on the contrary, given, for the most part, its confi- 
 dence and its attention to the teachings of the savans. We have the testimony 
 of Professor Huxley himself to the fact that the leading minds of the Roman 
 Catholic Church do at least take care that the teachings of the sa-vans shall be 
 understood, and that they shall be combated, if at all, on scientific and not on 
 theological grounds. 
 
 No man is more disliked and dreaded by the orthodox than Thomas Huxley. 
 Darwin, who is really the fans et origo of the present agitation, is hardly more 
 than a name to the outer world. He has written a book, and that is all the pub- 
 lic know about him. He never descends into the arena of open controversy ; 
 we never read of him in the newspapers. I know of no instance of a book so 
 famous with an author so little known. Even curiosity does not seem to concern 
 itself about the individuality of Darwin, whose book opened up a new era of 
 controversy, spreading all over the world, and was the sensation in England ot 
 many successive seasons. Herbert Spencer, indeed, has lived for a long time 
 liardlv noticed or known by the average English public. But then none of Spen- 
 cer's books ever created the slightest sensation among that public, and three out 
 of every four Englishmen never heard of the man or the books. Herbert Spen- 
 cer is infinitely better known in the United States than he is in England, although 
 I am far from admitting that he is better appreciated even here than by those of 
 his countrymen who are at all acquainted with his masterly, his unsurpassed, 
 contributions to the philosophy of the world. The singular fact about Darwin 
 is that his book was absolutely the rage in England ; everybody was bound to 
 read it or at least to talk about it and pretend to have understood it. More ex- 
 citement was aroused by it than even by Buckle's " History of Civilization ; " it 
 fluttered the petticoats in the drawing-room as much as the surplices in the pul- 
 pit ; it occupied alike the attention of the scholar and the fribble, the divine and 
 the schoolgirl. Yet the author kept himself in complete seclusion, and, for some 
 mysterious reason or other, public curiosity never seemed disposed to persecute 
 him. Therefore the theologians seem to have regarded him as the poet does the 
 cuckoo, rather as a voice in the air than as a living creature ; and they have not 
 poured out much of their anger upon him personally. But Huxley comes down 
 into the arena of public controversy and is a familiar and formidable figure there 
 Wherever there is strife there is Huxley. Years ago he came into the field al 
 most unknown like the Disinherited Knight in Scott's immortal romance ; and, 
 while the good-natured spectators were urging him to turn the blunt end of the 
 lance against the shield of the least formidable opponent, he dashed with splendid 
 recklessness, and with spearpoint forward, against the buckler of Richard Owen 
 himself, the most renowned of the naturalists of England. Indeed Huxley has 
 the soul and spirit of i gallant controversialist. He has many times warned the
 
 238 SCIENCE AND ORTHODOXY IN ENGLAND 
 
 orthodox champions that if they play at bowls they must expect rubbers ; and 
 once in the fight he never spares. He has a happy gift of shrewd sense and 
 sarcasm combined ; and, indeed, I know no man who can exhibit a sophism as a 
 sophism and hold it up to contempt and laughter more clearly and effectively in 
 a single sentence of exhaustive satire. 
 
 It would be wrong to regard Huxley merely as a scientific man. He is like- 
 wise a literary man, a writer. What he writes would be worth reading for its 
 style and its expression alone, w-ere it of no scientific authority ; whereas we all 
 know perfectly well that scientific men generally are read only for the sake of 
 what they teach, and not at all because of their manner of teaching it rather in- 
 deed despite of their manner of teaching it. Huxley is a fascinating writer, and 
 has a happy way of pressing continually into the service of strictly scientific ex- 
 position illustrations caught from literature and art even from popular and 
 light literature. He has a gift in this way which somewhat resembles that pos- 
 sessed by a very different man belonging to a very different class I mean 
 Robert Lowe, the present English Chancellor of the Exchequer, who owes the 
 greater part of his rhetorical success to the prodigality of varied illustration with 
 which he illumines his speeches, and which catches, at this pointer that, the atten- 
 tion of every kind of listener. Huxley seems to understand clearly that you can 
 never make scientific doctrines really powerful while you are content with the 
 ear of strictly scientific men. He cultivates, therefore, sedulously arid success- 
 fully, the literary art of expression. A London friend of mine, who has had long 
 experience in the editing of high-class periodicals, is in the habit of affirming 
 humorously that the teachers of the public are divided into two classes : those 
 who know something and cannot write, and those who know nothing and can 
 write. Every literary man, especially every editor, will cordially agree with me 
 that at the heart of this humorous extravagance is a solid kernel of truth. Now, 
 scientific men very often belong to the class of those who know something, but 
 cannot write. No one, however, could possibly confound Thomas Huxley with 
 the band of those to whom the gift of expression is denied. He is a vivid, forci- 
 ble, fascinating writer. His style as a lecturer is one which, for me at least, has 
 a special charm. It is, indeed, devoid of any effort at rhetorical eloquence ; but 
 it has all the eloquence which is born of the union of profound thought with 
 simple expression and luminous diction. There is not much of the poetic, cer- 
 tainly, about him ; only the occasional dramatic vividness of his illustrations sug- 
 gests the existence in him of any of the higher imaginative qualities. I think 
 there was something like a gleam of the poetic in the half melancholy half humor- 
 ous introduction of Balzac's famous " Peau de Chagrin," into the Protoplasm 
 lecture. But Huxley as a rule treads only the firm earth, and deliberately, per- 
 haps scornfuily, rejects any attempts and aspirings after the clouds. His mind is 
 in this way far more rigidly practical than that even of Richard Owen. He is 
 never eloquent in the sense in which Humboldt for example was so often elo- 
 quent. Being a politician, I may be excused for borrowing an illustration from 
 the political arena, and saying that Huxley's eloquence is like that of Cobden ; 
 it is eloquence only because it is so simply and tersely truthful. The whole tone 
 of his mind, the whole tendency of his philosophy, may be observed to have this 
 character of quiet, fearless, and practical truthfulness. No seeker after truth 
 could be more earnest, more patient, more disinterested. " Dry light," as Bacon 
 calls it light uncolored by prejudice, undimmed by illusion, undistorted by inter- 
 posing obstacle is all that Huxley desires to have. He puts no bound to the 
 range of human inquiry. Wherever man may look, there let him look earnestly
 
 SCIENCE AND ORTHODOXY IN ENGLAND. 239 
 
 and without fear. Truth is always naked and not ashamed. The modest, self- 
 denying profession of Lessing that he wanted not the whole truth, and only asked 
 to be allowed the pleasing toil of investigation, must be almost unintelligible to 
 a student like Huxley ; and indeed is only to be understood by any active in- 
 quirer, on condition that he bears in mind the healthy and racy delight which the 
 mere labor of intellectual research gave to Lessing's vigorous and elastic mind. 
 No subject is sacred to Huxley; because with him truth is more sacred than 
 any sphere of inquiry. I suppose the true and pure knight would have fearlessly 
 penetrated any shrine in his quest of the Holy Grail. 
 
 Professor Huxley's nature seems to me to have been cast in a finer mould than 
 that of Professor TyndaU, for example. Decidedly, Tyndall is a man of great 
 ability and earnestness. He has done, perhaps, more practical work in science 
 than Huxley has ; he has written more ; he sometimes writes more eloquently. 
 But he wants, to my thinking, that pure and colorless impartiality of inquiry and 
 judgment which is Huxley's distinguishing characteristic. There is a certain 
 coarseness of materialism about Tyndall ; there is a vehement and almost an 
 arrogant aggressiveness in him which must interfere with the clearness of his 
 views. He assails the orthodox with the temper of a Hot Gospeller. Perhaps 
 his Irish nature is partly accountable for this warm and eager combatiy;ness : 
 perhaps his having sat so devotedly at the feet of his friend, the great apostle 
 of force, Thomas Carlyle, may help to explain the unsparing vigor of his contro- 
 versial style. However that may be, Tyndall is assuredly one of the most im- 
 patient of sages, one of the most intolerant of philosophers. If I have compared 
 Huxley to the pure devoted knight riding patiently in search of the Holy Grail, 
 1 may, perhaps, liken Tyndall to the ardent champion who ranges th: world, 
 fiercely defying to mortal combat any and every one who will not instantly admit 
 that the warrior's lady-love is the most beautiful and perfect of created beings. 
 His temper does unquestionably tend to weaken Tyndall's authority. You may 
 trust him implicitly where it is only a question of a glacial theory or an atmos- 
 pheric condition ; but you must follow the Carlylean philosopher very cautiously 
 indeed where he undertakes to instruct you on the subject of races. The negro, 
 for example, conquers Tyndall altogether. The philosopher loses his temper 
 and forgets his science the moment he comes to examine poor black Sambo's 
 woolly skull, and remembers that there are sane and educated white people who 
 maintain that the owner of the skull is a man and a brother. In debates which 
 cannot be settled by dry science, Huxley's sympathies almost invariably guide 
 him right : Tyndall's almost invariably set him wrong. During the American Civil 
 war, Huxley, like Sir Charles Lyell and some other eminent scientific men, sympa- 
 thized with the cause of the North : Tyndall, on the ether hand, was an eager 
 partisan of the South. A still more decisive test severed the two men more 
 widely apart. The story of the Jamaica massacre divided all England into two 
 fierce and hostile camps. I am not going to weary my readers with any repeti- 
 tion of this often-told and horrible story. Enough to say that the whole question 
 at issue in England in relation to the Jamaica tragedies was whether the belief 
 that a negro insurrection is impending justifies white residents in flogging and 
 hanging as many negro men and women, unarmed and unresisting, as they can 
 find time to flog and hang, without any ceremony of trial, evidence, or even in- 
 quiry. I do not exaggerate or misstate. The ground taken by the advocates of 
 the Jamaica military measures was that although no insurrection was going on 
 yet there was reasonable ground to believe an insurrection impending; and 
 that therefore the white residents were justified in anticipating and crushing the
 
 240 SCIENCE AND ORTHODOXY IN ENGLAND. 
 
 movement by the putting to death of every person, man or woman, who could be 
 supposed likely to have any part in it. Of course I need hardly tell the student 
 of history that this is exactly the ground which was taken up, and with far great- 
 er plausibility and better excuse, by the promoters of the massacre of Saint Bar- 
 tholomew. They said : " We have evidence, and are convinced, that these Hugue- 
 nots are plotting against us. If we do not put them down, they will put us down. 
 Let us be first at the work and crush them." The Jamaica question then raised a 
 bitter controversy in England. Naturally, John Bright and Stuart Mill and Gold- 
 win Smith took one side of it : Thomas Carlyle and Charles Kingsley and John 
 Ruskin the other. That was to be expected : any one could have told it before- 
 hand. But the occasion brought out men who had -never taken part in political 
 controversy before : and then you saw at once what kind of hearts and sympathies 
 these new agitators had. Herbert Spencer emerged for the first time in his life, 
 so far as I know, from the rigid seclusion of a silent student's career, and ap- 
 peared in public as an active, hard-working member of a political organization- 
 The American Civil War had drawn Mill for the first time into the public arena 
 of politics ; the Jamaica massacre made a political agitator of Herbert Spencer. 
 The noble human sympathies of Spencer, his austere and uncompromising love 
 of justice, his instinctive detestation of brute, blind, despotic force, compelled him 
 to come out from his seclusion and join those who protested against the lawless 
 and senseless massacre of the wretched blacks of Jamaica. So, too, with Huxley, 
 \vho, if he did not take part in a political organization, yet lent the weight of his in- 
 fluence and the vigor of his pen to add to the force of the protest. During the whole 
 ot that prolonged season of incessant and active controversy, wjth the keenest 
 intellects and the sharpest tongues in England employing themselves eagerly on 
 either side, I can recall to mind nothing which, for justice, sound sense, high prin- 
 ciple, and exquisite briefness of pungent sarcasm, equaled one of Huxley's let- 
 ters on the subject to the " Pall Mall Gazette." The mind which was not 
 louched by the force of that incomparable mixture of satire and sense would 
 sorely have remained untouched though one rose from the dead. The deli- 
 cious gravity with which Huxley accepted all the positions of his opponents, as- 
 sumed the propositions about the high character of the Jamaica governor and 
 the white residents, and the immorality of poor Gordon and the negroes, and then 
 reduced the case of the advocates of the massacre to " the right of all virtu- 
 ous persons, as such, to put to death all vicious persons, as such," was almost 
 worthy of Swift himself. 
 
 On the other hand, Professor Tyndall plunged eagerly into the controversy 
 as a defender of the policy and the people by whose authority the massacre was 
 carried on. I do not suppose he made any inquiry into the facts nothing of his 
 that I read or heard of led me to suppose that he had ; but he went off on his 
 Carlylean theory about governing minds, and superior races, and the right of 
 strong men, and all the rest of the nonsense which Carlyle once made fasci- 
 nating, and his imitators have lately made vulgar. I think I am not doing Tyn- 
 dall an injustice when I regard him as a less austere and trustworthy follower of 
 the pure truth than Huxley. In fact Tyndall is a born controversialist. Some 
 orthodox person once extracted from Huxley, or from some of his writings, the 
 admission that "the truth of the miracles was all a question of evidence," and 
 seemed to think he had got hold of a great concession therein. Possibly the ad- 
 mission was made in the spirit of sarcasm, but it none the less expressed a be- 
 lief and illustrated a temper profoundly characteristic of Thomas Huxley. With 
 him everything is a question of evidence ; nothing is to be settled by faith or by
 
 SCIENCE AND ORTHODOXY IN ENGLAND. 241 
 
 preliminary assumption. I am convinced that if you could prove by sufficient 
 evidence the truth of every miracle recorded in Butler's " Lives of the Saints,'' 
 Professor Huxley would bow resignedly, and accept the truth wanting only the 
 truth, whatever it might be. But I think Tyndall would rage and chafe a great 
 deal, and I suspect that he would use a good many hard words against his oppo- 
 nents before he submitted to acknowledge aloud the defeat which his inner con- 
 sciousness already admitted. And yet I think it would be at least as difficult to 
 convince Huxley as it would be to convince Tyndall that Saint Denis walked 
 with his head under his arm, or that Saint Januarius (was it not he ?) crossed the 
 sea on his cloak for a raft 
 
 I do not know whether it comes strictly within the scope of this essay to say 
 much about Herbert Spencer, who is rather what people call a philosopher than 
 a professionally scientific man. But assuredly no living thinker has done more 
 to undermine orthodoxy than the author of " First Principles." I have already 
 said that Spencer is much more widely known in this country than in England. 
 During the first few weeks of my sojourn in the United States I heard more in- 
 quiries and more talk about Spencer than about almost any other Englishman 
 living. Spencer's whole life, his pure, rigorous, anchorjte-like devotion to knowl- 
 edge, is indeed a wonderful phenomenon in an age like the present. He has la- 
 bored for the love of labor and for the good it does to the world, almost absolutely 
 without reward. I presume that as paying speculations Herbert Spencer's works 
 would be hopeless failures ; and yet they have influenced the thought of the 
 whole thinking world, and will probably grow and grow in power as the years go 
 on. It is, I suppose, no new or unseemly revelation to say that Spencer has lived 
 fbr the most part a life of poverty as well as of seclusion. He is a sensitive, si- 
 lent, self-reliant man, endowed with a pure passion for knowledge, and the quick- 
 est, keenest love of justice and right. There is something indeed quite Quixotic, 
 in the better sense, about the utterly disinterested and self-forgetting eagerness 
 with which Herbert Spencer will set himself to see right done, even in the most 
 trivial of cases. Little, commonplace, trifling instances of unfairness or injustice, 
 such as most of us may observe every day, and which even the most benevolent 
 of us will think himself warranted in passing by, on his way to his own work, 
 without interference, will summon into activity into positively unresting eager- 
 ness all the sympathies and energies of Herbert Spencer, nor will the great stu- 
 dent of life's ultimate principles return to his own high pursuits until he has ob- 
 tained for the poor sempstress restitution of the over-fare exacted by the extor- 
 tionate omnibus-conductor, or seen that the policeman on duty is not too rough 
 in his entreatment of the little captured pickpocket. As one man has an unap- 
 peasable passion for pictures, and another for horses, so Herbert Spencer has a 
 passion for justice. All this does not appear on first, or casual, acquaintance ; 
 but I have heard many striking, and some very whimsical, illustrations of it given 
 by friends who know Spencer far better than I do. Indeed I should say that 
 there are few men of great intellect and character who reveal themselves so lit- 
 tle to the ordinary observer as Herbert Spencer does. His face is, above all 
 things, commonplace. There is nothing whatever remarkable, nothing attractive, 
 nothing repelling, nothing particularly unattractive, about him. Honest, home- 
 spun, prosaic respectability seems to be his principal characteristic. In casual 
 and ordinary conversation he does not impress one in the least. Almost all men 
 of well-earned distinction seem to have, above all things, a strongly-marked in- 
 dividuality. You meet a man of this class casually ; you have no idea who he 
 is ; perhaps you do not even discover, have not an opportunity of discovering,
 
 242 SCIENCE AND ORTHODOXY IN ENGLAND. 
 
 that he is a man of genius or intellect ; but you do almost invariably find yourself 
 impressed with a strong individual influence the man seems to be somebody 
 he is not just like any other man. To take illustrations familiar to most of us 
 observe what a strongly-marked individuality Charles Dickens, John Bright, 
 Disraeli, Carlyle, Lord Ellenborough, Lord Salisbury have ; what a strongly- 
 marked individuality Nathaniel Hawthorne had, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sum- 
 ner, William Cullen Bryant, Horace Greeley have. Now, Herbert Spencer is the 
 very opposite of all this. All that Dr. Johnson said of Burke might be conven- 
 iently reversed in the case of Spencer. The person sheltering under the hedge, 
 the ostler in the yard, might talk long enough with him and never feel tempted 
 to say when he had gone, " There has been a remarkable man here." A London 
 litterateur, who had long been- a devotee of Herbert Spencer, was induced some 
 year or two back to go to a large dinner-party by the assurance that Spencer was 
 to be there and was actually to have the chair next to his own at table. Our friend 
 went, was a little late, and found himself disappointed. Next to him on one side 
 was a man vjiom he knew and did not care about ; on the other side, a humdrum, 
 elderly, respectable, commonplace personage. With this latter, for want of a 
 better, he talked. It was dull, commonplace, conventional talk, good for noth- 
 ing, meaning nothing. The dinner was nearly over when our friend heard some 
 one address his right-hand neighbor as " Spencer." Amazed out of all decorum, 
 he turned to the commonplace, dull-looking individual, and broke out with the 
 words " Why, you don't mean to say that you are Herbert Spencer ? " " Oh, 
 yes," the other replied, as quietly as ever, " I am Herbert Spencer." 
 ? I have wandered a little from my path ; let me return to it. My object is to 
 illustrate the remarkable and fundamental difference between the nature of the 
 'antagonism which old-fashioned orthodoxy has to encounter to-day, and that 
 which used to be its principal assailant. The sceptic, the metaphysician, the 
 " infidel " have given way to tbe professional savant. Nobody now-a-days would 
 trouble himself to read Tom Paine ; hardly could even the scepticism of Hume 
 or Gibbon attract much public attention. Auguste Comte has been an influence 
 because he endeavored to construct as well as to destroy. I cannot speak of 
 Comte without saying that Professor Huxley seems to me grievously, and al- 
 most perversely, to underrate the value of what Comte has done. Huxley has 
 not, I fancy, given much attention to historical study, and is therefore not so 
 well qualified to appreciate Comte as a much inferior man of a different school 
 might be. Moreover, Huxley appears to have a certain professional, and I had 
 almost said pedantic, contempt for anything calling itself science which cannot 
 be rated and registered in the regular and practical way. To me Comte's one 
 grand theory or discovery, call it what you will, seems, whether true or untrue, 
 as strictly a question of science as anything coming under Huxley's own pro- 
 fessional cognizance. But I have already intimated that the character of Hux- 
 ley's intellect seems to me acute and penetrating, rather than broad and compre- 
 hensive. Perhaps he is all the better fitted for the work he and his compeers 
 have undertaken to do. They have taken, in this regard, the place of the 
 Rousseaus and Diderots ; of the much smaller Paines and Carliles (please don't 
 suppose I am alluding to Thomas Carlyle) ; of the yet smaller Holyoakes and 
 Bradlaughs. Those only attempted to destroy : these seek to construct. Hux- 
 ley and his brethren follow the advice which is the moral and the sum ot 
 Goethe's "Faust" they "grasp into the present," and refuse to "send their 
 thoughts wandering over eternities." They honestly and fearlessly seek the 
 pure truth, which surely must be always saving. Let me say something more.
 
 SCIENCE AND ORTHODOXY IN ENGLAND. 2J3 
 
 This advance-guard of scientific scholars alone express the common opinion ot 
 the educated and free Englishmen of to-day. The English journals, I wish dis- 
 tinctly to say, do not express it. They do not venture to express it. There is 
 a tacit understanding that although it would be too much to expect an intelli- 
 gent journalist to write up old-fashioned orthodoxy, yet at least he is never to be 
 allowed to write it down. It is not very long since one of the most popular, 
 successful and influential of London journals sneered at the Parliamentary can- 
 didature of my friend, Professor Fawcett, M. P., on the ground that he was a man 
 who, as an advocate of the Darwinian theory, admitted that his great-grand- 
 father was a frog. Yet I know that the journal which indulged in this vapid and 
 vulgar buffoonery is written for by scholars and men of ability. Now, this is in- 
 deed an extreme and unusual instance of journalism, well cognizant of better 
 things, condescending to pander to the lowest and stupidest prejudices. But the 
 same kind of thing, although not the same thing, is done by London journals 
 every day. You cannot hope to get at the religious views of cultivated and 
 liberal-minded Englishmen through the London papers. "The right sort of 
 thing to say," is what the journalists commit to print, whatever they may think, 
 or know, or say as individuals and in private. But the scientific men speak out. 
 They, and I might almost say they alone, have the courage of their opinions. 
 What educated people venture to believe, they venture to express. Nor do 
 they keep themselves to audiences of savans and professors and the British As- 
 sociation. Huxley delivers lectures to the working men of Southwark ; Car- 
 penter undertook Sunday evening discourses in Bloomsbury ; Tyndall, with all 
 the pugnacity of his country, is ready for a controversy anywhere. Sometimes 
 the duty and honor of maintaining the right of free speech have been claimed by 
 the journalists alone ; sometimes, when even the journals were silent, by the pul- 
 pit, by the bar, or by the stage. In England to-day all men say aloud what they 
 think on all great subjects save one and on that neither pulpit, press, bar nor 
 stage cares to speak the whole truth. The scientific men alone are bold enough 
 to declare it, as they are resolute to seek it. I think history will hereafter con- 
 template this moral triumph as no less admirable, and no less remarkable, than 
 any of their mere material conquests.
 
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