not a vanishing type but a constant and contemporary influence.'

So with the other postulate of Liberalism. Speaking of George Eliot in a letter to that same fortunate recipient of all his best thoughts-Lady Blennerhassett-he observes that

'the idea which she used so much because it goes down so well with British Christians, the certainty of earthly retribution, is one which no historical-minded person can accept. She herself was aware that virtue is not much happier than crime; and she never filled up this tremendous gap.'

Lord Morley's teaching runs in the same groove with George Eliot's; and something ethical-some force that makes for righteousness-is throughout tacitly assumed to exist in the nature of things. Other fires, hotter than the pale sun of Mill, which, as he somewhere tells us, had replaced the setting star of Newman in the academic sky of his Oxford life, have warmed his style and fed the flame of those noble moralities which are the 'life-blood of greater things than style can ever be.' He is, at bottom, as was cleverly said, an 'inverted theologian.'

Of the Oxford of Mill the 'Recollections' contain a vivid sketch. Slight though it is, it might yet bear comparison with the picture of the Oxford of the 'forties left by Dean Church. Wilberforce then occupied, if he did not fill, the place which earlier had been Newman's, which later was to be Liddon's, and later still Gore's; and to his sermons the young undergraduate, having, as he tells us, an irresistible weakness' for 'the taking gift of unction,' resorted. Overton and T. H. Green were other influences driving roughly in the same direction; Mark Pattison looked the other way. Greater pains have been taken with the portrait of Cotter Morison, an original and striking figure than which Oxford had had few, if any, more engaging since the days of Hurrell Froude. Morison wrote St Bernard's Life as well as Gibbon's, but his intellect ran on Gibbon's lines and not St Bernard's. 'He longed. . . for the historian to arise who, as he used to say, would depict with sweeping brush the Decline and Fall of Theological as did Gibbon of Imperial Rome.' Doubtless he was unacquainted with the dictum of Sir William Harcourt, recorded in due course in the

'Recollections,' that there are two things which can neither be ended nor mended-the House of Lords and the Pope of Rome.

From Oxford the young man plunged into the great world of letters. How great its rulers were Lord Morley does well to remind a generation which takes an easy pride in the merely clever. Darwin and Spencer, Mill and Huxley, Carlyle and Ruskin, George Eliot and Matthew Arnold, Victor Hugo and Mazzini were such company as a man might find, and as he himself did find. A deeper friendship, which gives occasion for one of the great chapters of the book, sprang up with George Meredith. Here is part of the portrait of the great pagan:

'I once commended to him Goethe's well-known and ever noble psalm of life, "Das Göttliche." He wrote me that he had read it once more with a feeling of new strength, which is like conception in the brain: "This is the very spirit of Goethe, I have many times come in contact with it and been ennobled. Fault of mine if not more. This high discernment, this noblest of unconsidered utterance, this is the Hymn for men; this is to be really prophet-like." He worked and slept up in his little chalet on Box Hill. "Anything grander," he said, "than the days and nights at my porch you will not find away from the Alps, for the dark line of my hill runs up to the stars, the valley below is a soundless gulf. There I pace like a shipman before turning in. In the day with a S.W. blowing, I have a brilliant universe rolling up to me; after midnight I sat and thought of Goethe and of the sage in him and the youth." This is Meredith as he lived and at his best.'

In close juxtaposition though strange contrast with this breezy figure is that of the 'saint of rationalism.' Saints sometimes have hidden tempers, and Mill was apparently in this class:

'Fitzjames Stephen . . . said he was cold as ice, a walking book. On the contrary he was a man of extreme sensibility and vital heat in things worth waxing hot about. In truth he sometimes let sensibility carry him too far. One notable afternoon in European history, I saw him in an instant blaze into uncontrollable anger. It was July 14, 1870. He was sitting in his garden, and I brought him the news that France had declared war on Prussia. He violently struck his chair

and broke out in a passionate exclamation, “What a pity the bombs of Orsini missed their mark and left the crime-stained usurper alive!""

It is an incident which may well be commended to the notice of such reckless persons as are tempted to take upon them an apostleship of vengeance!

Thus, then, the book runs on with its sketches of life and character, drawn without seeming effort and framed in philosophic musings. Gradually, as the delightful table-talk proceeds, political portraits replace those of men of letters. Chamberlain and Parnell are full-length figures here. The first-named is the subject of a singularly striking piece of portraiture. All Lord Morley's estimates are generous; this is the most generous of all. For here is a study in two conflicting temperaments and two rival policies. In the light of all that has happened since Chamberlain's death, the chapter will be found to repay a close attention.

Admiral Maxse, who made the two men acquainted, declared they were meant for one another; and, since personal friendship survived the hard test of political antagonism, his discrimination cannot be said to have been wholly at fault. But, if their qualities were complementary, their principles were at war. Chamberlain embodied the whole doctrine of power-was swift, daring, resolute and, in spite of Lord Morley's description of him as 'verus, integer, apertus,' was not so scrupulous as all that. His affinities were the caucus, imperialism, protection and the Union; and it is interesting to find that in the late seventies his leanings in these directions were already visible to his friend. Lord Morley, on the other hand, had the truer sense of the currents of worldopinion which were bearing England out of her isolation, splendid or not as we please, into that vast sea of troubles, where the water has been turned to deepest crimson by a young man's fancies and an old man's fears. Subconsciously, perhaps, both British statesmen knew that they were approaching one of the great climacterics in world-history. Chamberlain would have fought Germany, if fight it was to be and not alliance, on the German model, not of course of atrocity, but of system and method. Lord Morley's instinct was the more

sure.

The England he had in mind was one in closer sympathy with American ideals-cosmopolitan, democratic and federal. In such an orientation of policy Ireland was the vital point. I felt,' he tells us, 'that Chamberlain was slow to realise the scale, the proportions, the prodigious magnitude and complexity of the Irish problem, not only in Ireland but wherever Irishmen were gathered and could make trouble for us.' So, in the end, the two men parted, as other Englishmen parted afterwards at a time when broad and steady thought might have saved a continent from a catastrophe.

Parnell was, of course, the great personal factor in the schism. The pen of Tacitus, or Sallust, or de Retz would,' Lord Morley tells us, 'be required to do full justice to a character so remarkable.' And he quotes Mr Gladstone as affirming that Parnell was 'a political genius-a genius-a genius of most uncommon order.' Here are one or two glimpses:

'For myself, in our protracted dealings for some four or five years, I found him uniformly considerate, unaffectedly courteous, not ungenial, compliant rather than otherwise. In ordinary conversation he was pleasant without much play of mind; temperament made him the least discursive of the human race. . . He was one of the men with whom it was impossible to be familiar. In affairs he proved himself an excellent ally; he was perfectly ready to make allowance for difficult circumstances; he never slurred them over, nor tried to pretend that rough ground was smooth, nor marched like the foolish kind of optimist spoiling his sight by blinkers.... His sympathy with the misery of the Irish peasantry was real and it was constant, though he was too hard-headed and too disdainful to make a political trade of this sympathy or to say much about it. A general liking for his species he neither had nor professed. Of merely personal ambition, whether in its noble or its vulgar sense, he had, I think, little share or none. . . . I have been at his side before and after more than one triumphal occasion, and discovered no sign of quickened pulse. His politics were a vehement battle, not a game, no affair of a career.'

Beside one other portrait we may fitly stand a moment in silence before we leave the gallery:

'May 19 (1911).-Yesterday I sat next to the German Emperor at luncheon at Haldane's (Lord Kitchener on the other

side of him), and it may interest you to know that H.M. opened our talk with vivacious thanks for the kindness that his son had received in India. He was loud in particular recognition of the quality of the officer who attended him. I don't think I ever met a man so full of the zest of life, and so eager to show it and share it with other people.... He talked to me about some recent book of Bishop Boyd Carpenter, which he liked so much that he had it translated into German, and in the evening often read pieces aloud to his ladies while they sat stitching and knitting. I said something of Harnack and of his negative effects. "Not at all so negative," he answered, "since I got him to Berlin." How much of his undoubted attractiveness is due to the fact of his being the most important man in Europe, who can tell?'

And now, as on a wishing-carpet, we are borne away to fields and pastures new-to a delightful holiday-time in Norfolk, with neither shooting nor sailing nor golf for diversion, but with the Classics-Greek, Latin, French, Italian, English-lying open about the tables, and Mr Gladstone working hard by at Lowestoft. Then a fresh wave of the magician's wand, and Paris appears with Jusserand, Taine, Renan, Pailleron, Vogüé at command. After that the Durdans, and a summer night which surprises us suddenly in a land where it would seem to be always afternoon; then Carlton Gardens with a Cabinet in process of construction; then Newcastle on the day of the declaration of the poll; then the Lodge at Phoenix Park with Mr Asquith for a guest. Here we may pause a moment to catch a snatch of conversation :

'Oct. 23, 1893.

A great discussion whether evolution as a doctrine would make men more merciful or less. I said more, A. said less. In the relations of states it looks as if Asquith were right. Compare 16th century with 19th. Luther held by Revelation, Grace, Justification by Faith. The fervid apostle of evolution believes in Justification by Success, and the dispensation of the God of Battles.'

Only for a moment must we pause. The magician still has much to show us of the remote parts of Ireland and of remoter India. He might have had the Indian Secretariate in 1892, but the Irish plough was exacting, and it was not until 1906 that he set his face towards the East. There followed a correspondence with Lord