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CHAPTER XVI.

THE THREE NEWMANS

IN one of the last conversations I had the pleasure to hold with Mr. Gladstone, I referred to the "three Newmans" and their divergent careers.  He said he never knew there were "three."  He knew John Henry, the Cardinal (as he afterwards became), at Oxford.  He knew Francis William there, who had repute for great attainments, retirement of manner, and high character; but had never heard there was a third brother, and was much interested in what I had to tell him.  The articles of Charles Newman I published in the Reasoner, and their republication by the late J. W. Wheeler, were little known to the general public, who will probably hear of them now for the first time.

    Though I name "three Newmans," this chapter relates chiefly to the one I best knew, Francis William, known as Professor Newman.  The eldest of the three was John Henry, the famous Cardinal.  The third brother, Charles, was a propagandist of insurgent opinion.  Francis was a pure Theist, John was a Roman Catholic, and Charles a Naturist, and nothing besides; he would be classed as an Agnostic now.  Francis William was the handsomest.  He had classical features, a placid, clear, and confident voice, and an impressive smile which lighted up all his face.  John Henry manifested in his youth the dominancy of the ecclesiastic, and lived in a priestly world of his own creation, in which this life was overshadowed by the terrors of another unknown.  Francis believed in one sole God—not the head of a firm.  His Theism was of such intense, unquestioning devotion, of such passionate confidence, as was seen in Mazzini and Theodore Parker, of America.  Voltaire and Thomas Paine were not more determined Theists.  In all else, Francis was human.  Charles believed in Nature and nothing more.  In sending me papers to print in the Reasoner on "Causation in the Universe," he would at times say, "My mind is leaving me, and when it returns a few months hence, I will send you a further paper."  Like Charles Lamb's poor sister, Mary, who used to put her strait waistcoat in her basket and go herself to the asylum, when she knew the days of her aberration were approaching, Charles Newman had premonition of a like kind.  He had the thoroughness of thought of his family.  The two brothers—the Cardinal and the Professor united to supply Charles with an income sufficient for his needs.  The Cardinal, though he knew Charles' opinions, readily joined.

    When some questioning remark on Professor Newman was made incidentally in the House of Commons, in consequence of his uncompromising views, the Cardinal wrote saying that "for his brother's purity he would die," which, considering their extreme divergence of opinion, was very noble in the Cardinal.

    Professor Newman, I believe, wrote more books, having regard to their variety and quality, than any other scholar of his time.  Science, history, poetry, theology, political economy, mathematics, travel, translations—the Iliad of Homer—among them a Sanscrit dictionary.  He wrote many pamphlets and spoke for the humblest societies, regardless of the amazement of his eminent contemporaries and associates.  On questions relating to marital morality, he did not hesitate to publish leaflets.  I published a series of letters for him in the Reasoner—now some fifty years ago, so we were long acquainted.  These earlier communications came to me at a time when the authorities of University College in London, where he was Professor of Latin, were being called upon to consider whether his intellectual Liberalism might deter parents from sending their sons there.  But it was bravely held that the University had no cognisance of the personal opinions of any professor.  Like Professor Key, Mr. Newman took an open interest in public affairs.  Though variedly learned, Professor Newman's style of speech, to whomever addressed by tongue or pen, was fresh, direct, precise, and lucid.

    Mr. Newman's quarto volume on Theism, written in metre, is the greatest compendium of Theistical argument published in my time, and until Darwin wrote, no entirely conclusive answer was possible.

    Francis Newman had a travelling mind.  From the time when I published his "Personal Narrative" of his early missionary experience at Aleppo, he grew, year by year, more rationalistic in his religious judgment.  In one of his papers, written in the year of his death, he said: "It may be asked, 'Is Mr. Newman a disciple of Jesus?'  I answer, 'Of all nations that I know, that have a religion established by law, I have never seen the equal to what is attributed to Jesus himself.  But much is attributed to Him—I disapprove of.'  On the whole, if I am asked, 'Do you call yourself a Christian?' I say, in contrast to other religions, 'Yes!  I do,' and so far I must call myself a Christian.  But if you put upon me the words Disciple of Jesus, meaning the believing all Jesus teaches to be light and truth I cannot say it, and I think His words variously unprovable.  Now all disciples, when they come to full age, ought to seek to surpass their masters.  Therefore, if Jesus had faults, we, after more than two thousand years' experience, ought to expect to surpass Him, especially when an immense routine of science has been elaborately built up, with a thousand confirmations all beyond the thought of Jesus."

    What a progressive order of thought would exist now in the Christian world had Mr. Newman's conception of discipleship prevailed in the Churches!

    Mr. Newman's words about myself, occurring in his work on "The Soul," I remember with pride.  They were written at a time when I had an ominous reputation among theologians.  When residing at Clifton as a professor, Mr. Newman came down to Broadmead Rooms at Bristol, and took the chair at one of my lectures, and spoke words on my behalf which only he could frame.  But he was as fearless in his friendship as he was intrepid in his faith.  He wrote to me, April 30, 1897, saying: "I appeal to your compassion when I say, that the mere change of opinion on a doubtful fact has perhaps cost me the regard of all who do not know me intimately."  The "fact" related to the probability of annihilation at death.  He regretted the loss of friendship, but never varied in his lofty fidelity to conscience.  Whatever might be his interest in a future life, if it were the will of God not to concede it, he held it to be the duty of one who placed his trust in Him to acquiesce.  The spirit of piety never seemed to me nobler, than in this unusual expression of unmurmuring, unpresuming resignation.

    His first wife, who was of the persuasion of the Plymouth Brethren, had little sympathy with his boldness and fecundity of thought.  Once, when he lived at Park Village, Regent's Park, his friend, Dr. James Martineau, came into the room; she opened the window and stepped out on to the lawn, rather than meet him.  Mr. Newman was very tender as to her scruples, but stood by his own.  When I visited him, he asked me, from regard to her, to give the name of "Mr. Jacobs"—the name I used when a teacher in Worcester in 1840, where I lectured under my own name and taught under another.

    On February 12, 1897, Mr. Newman wrote:—"MY DEAR HOLYOAKE,—I am not coming round to you, though many will think I am.  On the contrary, I hope you are half coming round to me, but I have no time to talk on these matters."  He then asked my advice as to his rights over his own publications, then in the hands of Mr. Frowde, printer, of Oxford; but with such care for the rights of others, such faultless circumspection as to the consequences to others in all he wished done, as to cause me agreeable surprise at the unfailing perspicacity of his mind, his unchanging, scrupulous, and instinctive sense of justice.

    He regarded death with the calmness of a philosopher.  He wrote to me April 30, 1897: "Only those near me know how I daily realise the near approach of my own death (he was then ninety-three).  I grudge every day wasted by things unfinished which remain for me to do."  No apprehension, no fear, and he wished I could "appear before him, with a document drawn up," by which he could consign to me the custody of all the works under his control.  At the time, as he said, he might "easily be in his grave" before I could accomplish his wishes.  He says in another letter that his "wife, like himself, abhorred indebtedness."  He provided for the probable cost of everything he wished done.  His sense of honour remained as keen as his sense of faith.  He was a gentleman first and a Christian afterwards.

    Mr. Gladstone told me he was under the impression that he had, in some way unknown to himself, lost the friendship of Mr. Newman, from whom he had not heard for several years; and Mr. Newman was under an impression that Mr. Gladstone's silence was occasioned by disapproval of his published views of the "Errors of Jesus"—an error of assumption respecting Mr. Gladstone into which Mr. Newman might naturally, but not excusably, fall; for Mr. Newman should have known that Mr. Gladstone had a noble tolerance equal to his own, or should personally have tested it, by letter or otherwise, before nurturing an adverse conjecture.  I mentioned the matter to Mr. Gladstone, and found Mr. Newman's surmise groundless.  At the same time I gave him a copy of Mr. Francis Newman's "Secret Songs" (as one copy given to me was called) which revealed to Mr. Gladstone a devotional spirit he did not, as he said, imagine could co-exist in one whose faith was so divergent to his own.

    The following letter, which has autobiographical value, may interest the reader:—

"NORWOOD VILLA, 15, ARUNDEL CRESCENT,
 "WESTON-SUPER-MARE.
March 22, 1890.

    "DEAR MR. GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE,—I had no idea of writing to Mr. Gladstone, yet am glad to hear that you gave him my 'Secret Hymns.'  Probably my contrast to my brother, the late Cardinal, always puzzled him.  That we were in painful opposition ever since 1820 had never entered his mind, much less that this opposition made it impossible to me to endure living in Oxford, which also would have been my obvious course.

    "I did send my 'Paul of Tarsus' to Mr. Gladstone, which partially opened his eyes.  For my brother's first pretentious religious book was against the Arians, which I think I read at latest in 1832.  Mr. Gladstone has written that my brother's secession to Rome was the greatest loss that the English Church ever suffered.  Of what kind was the loss my little book on 'Paul' indirectly states, in pointing out that, as our English New Testament shows, Paul in his own epistle plainly originated the doctrine, three centuries later called Arianism, and held by all the Western Church until young Athanasius introduced his new and therefore 'false' doctrine.  My brother, with Paul's epistle open before him, condemned the doctrine of Arian, and did not know that it was the invention of Paul, and thereby prevailed in the whole Western Church.  Moreover, I read what I cannot imagine met Mr. Gladstone's eyes, that 'it is not safe to quote any Pre-Athanasian doctrines concerning the Trinity, since the Church had not yet taught them how to express themselves.'  After this, could Mr. Gladstone, as a decent scholar, mourn over my brother's loss to the Church?  I hope Mr. Gladstone can now afford time to read something of the really early Christianity.  He will find the Jerusalem Christianity perishing after the Roman revolt, and supplanted by Pauline fancies (not Christian at all) and by Pauline morality, often better than Christian.  To me our modern problem is to eschew Pauline fancies and further to improve on Pauline wisdom.

    "But since I have reached the point of being unable to take Human Immortality as a Church axiom, I cannot believe that the problem is above fully stated, or that Christianity deserves to become coetaneous with man's body.

    "Perhaps I ought to thank you more, yet I may have said too much.—Yours truly,

"F. W. NEWMAN,"

    One day as Mr. Newman was leaving my room in Woburn Buildings, he looked round and said: "I did not think there were rooms so large in this place"; and then descending the stairs, as though the familiarity of the remark was more than an impulse, he said: "Do you think you could join with me in teaching the great truth of Theism?"  Alas! I had to express my regret that my belief did not lie that way.  Highly as I should think, and much as I should value public association with Mr. Newman, I had to decline the opportunity.  If the will could create conviction, I should also have accepted Mazzini's invitation—elsewhere referred to—for Theism never seemed so enchanting in my eyes as it appeared in the lives of those two distinguished thinkers who were inspired by it.

 
CHAPTER XVII.

MAZZINI IN ENGLAND-INCIDENTS IN HIS CAREER

GIUSEPPE MAZZINI, whom Englishmen know as Joseph Mazzini, was born in Genoa, June 22, 1805, and died in Pisa, March 10, 1872.  He spent the greater part of forty years of his marvellous life in London. [30]  Some incidents of his English career, known to me, may increase or confirm the public impression of him.

    Never strong from youth, abstemious, oft from privation, and always from principle, he was as thin as Dumas describes Richelieu.  Arbitrary imprisonment, which twice befel him, and many years of voluntary confinement, imposed upon himself by necessity of concealment—living and working in a small room, whence it was dangerous for him to emerge by day or by night—were inevitably enervating.  When he first came to London in 1837 he brought with him three exiles, who depended upon his earnings for subsistence.  The slender income supplied him by his mother might have sufficed for his few wants, [31] but aid for others and the ceaseless cost of the propaganda of Italian independence, to which he devoted himself, had to be provided by writing for reviews.  At times cherished souvenirs had to be pledged, and visits to money-lenders had to be made.

    It was the knowledge all his countrymen had that he sought nothing for himself, never spared himself in toil or peril, that was the source of his influence.  He wrote: "We follow a path strewn with sacrifices and with sorrows."  But all the tragedies of his experience we never knew until years after his death, when his incomparable "Love Letters" were published in the Nineteenth Century, No. 219, May, 1895.

    He appeared to others to have "the complexion of a student," the air of one who waited and listened.  As Meredith said, it was not "until you meet his large, penetrating, dark eyes, that you were drawn suddenly among a thousand whirring wheels of a capacious, keen, and vigorous intellect."

    When anything had to be done, in my power to do, I was at his command.  I had numerous letters from him.  His errorless manuscript had the appearance of Greek writing.  Two letters "t" and "s," such as no other man formed, were the signs of his hand and interpreters of his words.  Of all the communications I ever received from him or saw, none had date or address, save one letter which had both.  Many sought for conversation, if by chance they were near him, or by letter, or interview—for ends of their own.  But no one elicited any information he did not intend to give.  His mind was a fortress into which no man could enter, unless he opened the door.

    Kossuth astonished us by his knowledge of English, but he knew little of the English people.  Louis Blanc knew much; but Mazzini knew more than any foreigner I have conversed with.  Mazzini made no mistake about us.  He understood the English better than they understood themselves—their frankness, truth, courage, impulse, pride, passions, prejudice, inconsistency, and limitation of view.  Mazzini knew them all.

    His address to the Republicans of the United States (November, 1855) is an example of his knowledge of nations, whose characteristics were as familiar to him as those of individuals are to their associates, or as parties are known to politicians in their own country.  There may be seen his wise way of looking all round an argument in stating it.  No man of a nature so intense had so vigilant an outside mind.

    He knew theories as he knew men, and he saw the theories as they would be in action.  There was no analysis so masterly of the popular schools—political and socialist—as that which Mazzini contributed to the People's Journal.  His criticisms of the writings of Carlyle, published in the Westminster Review, explained the excellencies and the pernicious tendencies—political and moral—of Carlyle's writing, which no other critic ever did.  But Mazzini wrote upon art, music, literature, poetry, and the drama.  To this day the public think of him merely as a political writer—a sort of Italian Cobbett with a genius for conspiracy.

    The list of his works fills nearly ten pages of the catalogue of the British Museum.

    Under other circumstances his pen would have brought him ample subsistence, if not affluence.  Much was written without payment, as a means of obtaining attention to Italy.  It was thus he won his first friends in England.

    No one could say of Mazzini that he was a foreigner and did not understand us, or that the case he put was defective through not understanding our language.  The Saturday Review, which agreed with nobody, said, on reading Mazzini's "Letter to Louis Napoleon," which was written in English, "The man can write."  The finest State papers seen in Europe for generations were those which Mazzini, when a Triumvir in Rome, wrote—notably those to De Tocqueville.  De Tocqueville had a great name for political literature, but his icy mystifications melted away under Mazzini's fiery pen of principle, passion, and truth.  This wandering, homeless, penniless, obscure refugee was a match for kings.

    Some day a publisher of insight will bring out a cheap edition of the five volumes of his works, issued by S. King and Co., 1867, and "dedicated to the working classes" by P. A. Taylor, which cost him £500, few then caring for them.  Mrs. Emilie Ashurst Venturi was the translator of the five volumes, which were all revised by Mazzini.  The reader therefore can trust the text.

    Mazzini did me the honour of presenting to me his volume on the "Duties of Man," with this inscription of reserve: "To my friend, G. J. Holyoake, with a very faint hope."  Words delicate, self-respecting and suggestive.  It was hard for me, with my convictions, to accept his great formula, "God and the People."  It was a great regret to me that I could not use the words.  They were honest on the lips of Mazzini.  But I had seen that in human danger Providence procrastinates.  No peril stirs it, no prayer quickens its action.  Men perish as they supplicate.  In danger the people must trust in themselves.  Thinking as I did, I could not say or pretend otherwise.

    Mazzini one day said to me, "A public man is often bound by his past.  His repute for opinions he has maintained act as a restraint upon avowing others of a converse nature."  This feeling never had influence over me.  Any one who has convictions ought to maintain a consistency between what he believes, and what he says and does.  But to maintain to-day the opinions of former years, when you have ceased to feel them true, is a false, foolish, even a criminal consistency.  To conceal the change, if it concerns others to know it, is dishonest if it is misleading any persons you may have influenced.  The test, to me, of the truth of any view I hold, is that, I can state it and dare the judgment of others to confute it.  Had I new views—theistical or otherwise—that I could avow with this confidence, I should have the same pleasure in stating them as I ever had in stating my former ones.  When I look back, upon opinions I published long years ago, I am surprised at the continuity of conviction which, without care or thought on my part, has remained with me.  In stating my opinions I have made many changes.  Schiller truly says that "Toleration is only possible to men of large information."  As I came to know more I have been more considerate towards the views, or errors, or mistakes of others, and have striven to be more accurate in my own statement of them, and more fair towards adversaries.  That is all.  Mazzini understood this, and did not regard as perversity the prohibition of conscience.

    In his letter to Daniel Manin, which I published in 1856, Mazzini described as a "quibble " the use of the word "unification" instead of "unity."  "Unification" is not a bad thing in itself, though very different from unity.  To put forth unification as a substitute for unity was forsaking unity.  It was a change of front, but not "quibbling."  The Government of Italy were advised to contrive local amelioration, as a means of impeding, if not undermining, claims for national freedom.  Mazzini condemned Manin for concurring in this.  All English insurgent parties have shown similar animosity against amelioration of evil, lest it diverted attention from absolute redress.  Yet it is a great responsibility to continue the full evil in all its sharpness and obstructiveness, on the grounds that its abatement is an impediment to larger relief.  Every argument for amelioration is a confession that those who object to injustice are right.  What is to prevent reformers continuing their demand for all that is necessary, when some of the evil is admitted and abated?  Paramount among agitators as I think Mazzini, it is a duty to admit that he was not errorless.  High example renders an error serious.

    The press being free in England, there needed no conspiracy here.  An engraved card, still hanging in a little frame in many a weaver's and miner's house in the North of England, was issued at a shilling each on behalf of funds for European freedom, signed by Mazzini for Italy, Kossuth for Hungary, and Worcell for Poland.  When editing the Reasoner I received one morning a letter from Mazzini, dated 15, Radnor Street, King's Road, Chelsea, June 12, 1852.  This was the only one of Mazzini's letters bearing an address and date I ever saw, as I have said.  It began:—

"MY DEAR SIR,—You have once, for the Taxes on Knowledge question, collected a very large sum by dint of sixpences.  Could you not do the same, if your conscience approved the scheme, for the Shilling Subscription [then proposed for European freedom]?  I have never made any appeal for material help to the English public, but once the scheme is started, I cannot conceal that I feel a great interest in its success.  A supreme struggle will take place between Right and Might, and any additional strength imparted to militant Democracy at this time is not to be despised.  Still, the moral motive is even more powerful with me.  The scheme is known in Italy, and will be known in Hungary, and it would be extremely important for me to be able to tell my countrymen that it has not proved a failure.
                       "Ever faithfully yours,
                                                    "JOSEPH MAZZINI."

    I explained to the readers of the Reasoner the great service they might render to European freedom at that time by a shilling subscription from each. Very soon we received 4,000 shillings.  Later (August 3, 1852) Mazzini, writing from Chelsea, said:—

"MY DEAR SIR,—I have still to thank you for the noble appeal you have inserted in the Reasoner in favour of the Shilling Subscription in aid of European freedom.  My friend Giovanni Peggotti, fearing that physical and moral torture might weaken his determination and extort from him some revelations, has hung himself in his dungeon at Milan, with his own cravat.  State trials are about being initiated by military commissions, and General Benedek, the man who directed the wholesale Gallician butcheries, is to preside over them.  At Forli, under Popish rule, enforced by Austrian bayonets, four working men have been shot as guilty of having defended themselves against the aggression of some Government agents.  The town was fined in a heavy sum, because on that mournful day many of the inhabitants left it, and the theatres were empty in the evening.
                                                                                        "Faithfully yours,
                                                                                                            "JOSEPH MAZZINI."

    People of England have mostly forgotten now what Italians had to suffer when their necks were under the ferocious heel of Austria.

    In a short time I collected a further 5,000 shillings, making 9,000 in all, and I had the pleasure of sending to Mazzini a cheque for £450. [32]

    A shilling subscription had been previously proposed mainly at the instigation of W. J. Linton, which bore the names of Joseph Cowen, George Dawson, Dr. Frederic Lees, George Serle Phillips, C. D. Collet, T. S. Duncombe, M.P., Viscount Goderich, M.P. (now Marquis of Ripon), S. M. Hawks, Austin Holyoake, G. J. Holyoake, Thornton Hunt, Douglas Jerrold, David Masson, Edward Miall, M.P., Professor Newman, James Stansfeld, M.P.  Some of these names are interesting to recall now.  But it was not until Mazzini asked me to make an appeal in the Reasoner that response came.  Its success then was owing to the influence of Mazzini's great name.  Workmen in mill and mine gave because he wished it.

    I published Weill's "Great War of the Peasants," the first and only English translation, in aid of the war in Italy.  The object was to create confidence in the struggle of the Italian peasantry to free their country, and to give reasons for subscriptions from English working men to aid their Italian brethren.  Madame Venturi made the translation, on Mazzini's suggestion, for the Secular World, in which I Published it.

    In 1855, wishing to publish certain papers of Mazzini's, I wrote asking him to permit me to do so, when he replied in the most remarkable letter I received from him:

    "DEAR SIR,—You are welcome to any writing or fragment of mine which you may wish to reprint in the Reasoner.  Thought, according to me, is, as soon as publicly uttered, the property of all, not an individual one.  In this special case, it is with true pleasure that I give the consentment you ask for.  The deep esteem I entertain for your personal character, for your sincere love of truth, perseverance, and nobly tolerant habits, makes me wish to do more; and time and events allowing, I shall.

    "We pursue the same end—progressive improvement, association, transformation of the corrupted medium in which we are now living, overthrow of all idolatries, shams, lies, and conventionalities.  We both want man to be not the poor, passive, cowardly, phantasmagoric unreality of the actual time, thinking in one way and acting in another; bending to power which he hates and despises, carrying empty Popish, or thirty-nine article formulas on his brow and none within; but a fragment of the living truth, a real individual being linked to collective humanity, the bold seeker of things to come; the gentle, mild, loving, yet firm, uncompromising, inexorable apostle of all that is just and heroic—the Priest, the Poet, and the Prophet.  We widely differ as to the how and why.

    "I do dimly believe that all we are now struggling, hoping, discussing, and fighting for, is a religious question.  We want a new intellect of life; we long to tear off one more veil from the ideal, and to realise as much as we can of it; we thirst after a deeper knowledge of what we are and of the why we are.  We want a new heaven and a new earth.  We may not all be now conscious of this, but the whole history of mankind bears witness to the inseparable union of these terms.  The clouds which are now floating between our heads and God's sky will soon vanish and a bright sun shine on high.  We may have to pull down the despot, the arbitrary dispenser of grace and damnation, but it will only be to make room for the Father and Educator.
                                                                            "Ever faithfully yours,
                                                                                                             "JOSEPH MAZZINI."

    Another incident has instruction in it, still necessary and worth remembering in the political world.  In 1872 I found in the Boston Globe, then edited by Edin Ballou, a circumstantial story by the Constitutional of that day, setting forth that Sir James Hudson, our Minister at Turin, begged Cavour to accord an interview to an English gentleman.  When Cavour received him, he was surprised by the boldness, lucidity, depth, and perspicacity of his English visitor, and told him that if he (Cavour) had a countryman of like quality, he would resign the Presidency of the Council in favour of him whereupon the "Englishman" handed Cavour his card bearing the name of Joseph Mazzini, much to his astonishment.

    There are seven things fatal to the truth of this story received and circulated throughout Europe without question:—
    1.    Sir James Hudson could never have introduced to the Italian Minister a person as an Englishman, whom Sir James knew to be an Italian.
    2.    Nor was Mazzini a man who would be a party to such an artifice.
    3.    Cavour would have known Mazzini the moment he saw him.
    4.    Mazzini's Italian was such as only an Italian could speak, and Cavour would know it.
    5.    Mazzini's Republican and Propagandist plans were as well known to Cavour as Cobden's were to Peel; and Mazzini's strategy of conspiracy was so repugnant to Cavour, that he must have considered his visitor a wild idealist, and must have become mad himself to be willing to resign his position in Mazzini's favour.
    6.    Cavour could not have procured his visitor's appointment in his place if he had resigned.
    7.    Mazzini could not have offered Cavour his card, for the reason that he never carried one.  As in Turin he would be in hourly danger of arrest, he was not likely to carry about with him an engraved identification of himself.

    Nevertheless, the Pall Mall Gazette of that day (in whose hands it was then I forget) published this crass fiction without questioning it.

    The reader will rightly think that these are the incredible fictions of a bygone time, but he will conclude wrongly if he thinks they have ceased.

    Lately, not a nameless but a known and responsible person, one Sir Edward Hertslet, K.C.B., a Foreign Office official, published a volume in which he related that in 1848 (the 10th of April year, when no political historian was sane) a stranger called at the Foreign Office to inquire for letters for him from abroad.  A colleague of Sir Edward's suggested that he should inquire at the Home Office.  The strange gentleman replied indignantly, "I will not go to the Home Office.  My name is Mazzini."  This answer Sir Edward put in quotation marks, as though it was really said.  Sir Edward has been in the Diplomatic service.  He has been a Foreign Office librarian, and is a K.C.B., yet for more than fifty years he has kept this astounding story by him, reserved it, cherished it, never suspected it, nor inquired into its truth.

    Mazzini was not a man to give his name to a youth (as Sir Edward was then) at the Foreign Office.  He never went there.  It is doubtful whether any letter ever came to England bearing his name.  He was known among his friends as Mr. Flower or Mr. Silva.  When the late William Rathbone Greg wished to see him, he neither knew his name nor where he resided, and his son Percy—who was then writing for a journal of which I was editor—was asked to obtain from me an introduction, and it was only to oblige me that Mazzini consented to see Mr. W. R. Greg.  Sir James Graham never opened any letter addressed to Mazzini, for none ever came.  He opened letters of other persons, as every Foreign Secretary before him and since has done, in which might be enclosed a communication for Mazzini.  Was it conceivable that the Foreign Office, then known to secretly open Mazzini's letters, would be chosen by the Italian exile as a receiving house for his letters, and have communications sent to its care, and addressed in his name?  Was it conceivable that Mazzini would go there and announce himself when the Foreign Office was acting as a spy upon his proceedings in the interest of foreign Governments?  This authenticated Foreign Office story would be too extravagant for a "penny dreadful," yet not too extravagant, in Sir Edward Hertslet's mind, to be believable by the official world now, and was sent or found its way to Foreign Embassies and Legations for their delectation and information.  Yet Sir Edward was not known as a writer of romance, or novels, or theological works, nor a poet, or other dealer in imaginary matters.  His book was widely reviewed in England, and nowhere questioned save in the Sun during my term of editorship in 1902.

    Mazzini preached the doctrine of Association in England when it had no other teacher.  Much more may be said of him—but Sir James Stansfeld is dead, and Madame Venturi and Peter Alfred Taylor.  Only Jessie White Mario and Professor Masson remain who knew Mazzini well.  But this chapter may give the public a better conception than has prevailed of Mazzini's career in England.

 
CHAPTER XVIII.

MAZZINI THE CONSPIRATOR

THERE have been many conspirators, but Mazzini appears to have been the greatest of them all.  In one sense, every leader of a forlorn hope is a conspirator.  Prevision, calculation of resources, plans of campaign—mostly of an underground kind—are necessary to conspiracy.  The struggles of Garrison and Wendell Phillips for the rescue and sustentation of fugitive slaves are well-known instances of underground conspiracy.  There the violence of the slave-owner made conspiracy inevitable.  In despotic countries, without a free platform and a free press, the choice lies between secret conspiracy and slavery.  When Mazzini began to seek the deliverance of Italy he had to confront 600,000 Austrian bayonets.  How else could he do it than by conspiracy?

    Those are very much mistaken who think that the occupation of promoting or taking part in a forlorn hope is a pastime to which persons disinclined to business or honest industry, betake themselves.  The spy, for instance, who is a well known instrument in war, takes the heroism out of it.  The sinister activity of the spy turns the soldier into a sneak.  Honourable men do, indeed, persuade themselves that if by deceit they can obtain knowledge of facts which may save the lives of many on their own side, it is right.  At the same time they also betray to death many on the other side, including some who have trusted the spy in his disguise.  But whatever success may attend the deceit of the spy, he can never divest himself of the character of being a fraud; and a fraud in war is only a little less base than a fraud in business.  But it is the perils of even the patriotic spy, which are so often under-estimated.  If discovered by the enemy, he is sure to be shot; and he runs the risk of being killed on suspicion by friends on his own side—too indignant to inquire into the nature of the suspicions they entertain.  The spy dare not communicate the business he is upon to his friends.  Somehow it would get out; then the spy would surely walk the plank, or hang from the gallows as André did.  The spy's own friends being ignorant of the secret duty he has undertaken, observe him making the acquaintance of the enemy—hear of him being seen in communication with them—and he becomes distrusted and disowned by those whom he perils his life to serve.  Mazzini detested the Cabinets, or the Generals, who employed spies.  He made war by secrecy—open war being impossible to him—but never by treachery.  Some who had suffered and were incensed by personal outrage or maddening oppression, would act as spies in revenge.  Because these were done on the side of Italian independence Mazzini was accused of inspiring them and employing them.

    Mazzini had another difficulty.  Like Cromwell, he sought his combatants among men of faith.  Mazzini was, as has been said, a Theist, like Thomas Paine, or Theodore Parker, or Francis William Newman, he was that and nothing more; and, as with them, his belief was passionate.  He did not believe that political enthusiasm could be created or sustained without belief in God.  He seemed unable to conceive that a sense of duty could exist separately from that belief.  Hence his motto always was "God and the People," which limited his adherents largely to Theists; and implied a propaganda to convert persons to a belief in Deity, before they could, in his opinion, be counted upon to fight for Italian independence.  Yet there were contradictions; but contradictions seldom disturb passionate convictions, and Mazzini himself could not deny that he had often been faithfully served by men who were not at all sure that God would fight on their side, if disaster overtook them.  One night at a crowded Fulham party Mazzini was contending, as was his wont, that an Atheist could not have a sense of duty.  Garibaldi, who was present, at once asked, "What do you say to me?  I am an Atheist.  Do I lack the sense of duty?"  "Ah," said Mazzini, playfully, "you imbibed duty with your mother's milk"—which was not an answer, but a good-natured evasion.  Garibaldi was not a philosophical Atheist, but he was a fierce sentimental one, from resentment at the cruelties and tyrannies of priests who professed to represent God.  To disbelieve unwillingly from lack of evidence, and to disbelieve from natural indignation is a very different thing.

    All the many years Mazzini was in London, Madame Venturi was constantly in communication with him, and was present at more conversations than any one else.  Had she possessed the genius of Boswell, and put down day by day criticisms she heard expressed, the narratives of his extraordinary adventures, and such as came to her knowledge from correspondence, now no longer recoverable, we might have had as wonderful a volume of political and ethical judgment as was Boswell's "Johnson."  Sometimes I expressed a hope that she was doing this.  Nevertheless, we are indebted to her for the best biography of him that appeared in her time.  I add a few sayings of his which show the quality of his table talk:—

"Falsehood is the art of cowards.  Credulity without examination is the practice of idiots."

"Any order of things established through violence, even though in itself superior to the old, is still a tyranny."

"Blind distrust, like blind confidence, is death to all great enterprises."

"In morals, thought and action should be in. separable. Thought without action is selfishness action without thought is rashness."

"The curse of Cain is upon him who does not regard himself as the guardian of his brother."

"Education is the bread of the soul."

"Art does not imitate, it interprets."

    Only those who were in the agitation for Italian freedom can understand the exhausting amount of labour performed by those who were adherents or sympathisers.  How much greater was the labour of the commander of the movement, who had to create the departments he administered, to provide the funds for them, to win and inspire its adherents, and correspond incessantly with agents scattered over Europe and America, and to vindicate himself against false accusations rained upon him by a hostile, ubiquitous European press.

   Orsini was a man of invincible courage, and could be trusted to execute any commission given him.  No danger deterred him, but in enterprises requiring prevision of contingencies, he was inadequate.  Mazzini thought so; and Orsini secretly contrived to plot against the French usurper, to extort from Mazzini the confession that he (Orsini) could carry out an in dependent enterprise.  All the same, the adversaries of Italian freedom made Mazzini responsible for it.

    A writer in the press, who did not give his name (and when a writer does not do that, he can say anything), published, in editorial type, this passage: "By the way, I remember that Orsini, the day before he left England to make his attempt upon the life of Napoleon Ill., had a solemn discussion with Joseph Cowen and Mazzini, as to the justice of tyrannicide."  Mazzini being then dead, I sent the paragraph to Mr. Cowen and asked him if there was any truth in it, who replied:—

"BLAYDON-ON-TYNE, March 2, 1891.

"MY DEAR HOLYOAKE,— I have no idea where the writer of the enclosed paragraph gets his information.  I cannot speak as to Orsini having a conversation with Mazzini, but I should think it is in the highest sense improbable, because long before Orsini went to France, Mazzini and he had not been in friendly intercourse.  There was a difference between them which kept them apart.  I had repeated conversations with Orsini about tyrannicide—a matter in which he seemed interested—but I did not see him for some weeks before he went to France.   "Yours truly,
                                                                                         "JOSEPH COWEN."

Mazzini always repudiated the dagger as a Political weapon.  It answered the purpose of his adversaries in his day and since, to accuse him of advocating it.  He pointed out that calumny was a dagger used to assassinate character, but to that form of assassination few politicians made objection.  Sometimes partisans of Mazzini would supply a colourable presumption of the truth of this accusation.

    A circumstantial story appeared in the "Life of Charles Bradlaugh " (vol. i. p. 69), signed W. E, Adams, as follows:—

"The year 1858 was the year of Felice Orsini's attempt on the life of Louis Napoleon.  I was at that time, and had been for years previously, a member of the Republican Association, which was formed to propagate the principles of Mazzini.  When the press, from one end of the country to the other, joined in a chorus of condemnation of Orsini, I put down on paper some of the arguments and considerations which I thought told on Orsini's side.  The essay thus was read at a meeting of one of our branches; the members assembled earnestly urged me to get the piece printed.  It occurred to me also that the publication might be of service, if only to show that there were two sides to the question of 'Tyrannicide.'  So I went to Mr. G. J. Holyoake, then carrying on business as a publisher of advanced literature.  Mr. Holyoake not being on the premises, his brother, Austin, asked me to leave my manuscript and call again.  When I called again Mr. Holyoake returned me the paper, giving, among other reasons for declining to publish it, that he was already in negotiation with Mazzini for a pamphlet on the same subject.  'Very well,' said I, 'all I want is that something should be said on Orsini's side.  If Mazzini does this, I shall be quite content to throw my production into the fire.' "

    It is true that the pamphlet was brought to me by Mr. Adams, entitled, "Tyrannicide: A Justification."  What really took place on my part, as I distinctly remember, was this.  I said: "I was unwilling to publish a pamphlet of that nature which did not bear the name of the writer, which the MS. did not.  The author answered that "a name added no force to an argument; besides, his name was unimportant, if put on the title-page," which was reasonably and modestly said.  My reply was, "That in an affair of murder, 'justification' was a recommendation, and that any one acting on his perilous suggestion ought to know who was his authority."  Nothing more was said by me.  The writer made no offer to add his name to his MS., nor to meet my objection by a less assertive title.  As any prosecution for publishing it would be against me, and not against him, I thought I had a right to an opinion as to the title and authorship of the work I might have to defend.  It was afterwards issued by Mr. Truelove, a bookseller of courage and public spirit, but who suggested the very changes I had indicated to the author; and by Mr. Truelove's desire the author not only gave his name, but changed the title into "Tyrannicide: Is it Justifiable?" which was quite another matter.  It asked the question; it no longer decided it.

    As to Mazzini, it is impossible I could have said what is imputed to me.  I was not "in negotiation with Mazzini" to write anything upon the Orsini affair.  I knew he would not do so.  Orsini, as I have said, concealed his plot from Mazzini, who never incited it, never approved it, never justified it—he deplored it.  Only enemies of Mazzini sought to connect him with it.  If I left this story uncontradicted, it might creep into history that, in spite of the disclaimers of Mazzini's friends, he actually "entered into negotiation" to write in defence of Orsini's attempt, which must imply concurrence with the deplorable method Orsini unhappily took; and, moreover, that a publisher, regarded as being in Mazzini's confidence, had, in an open, unqualified way, told a writer on assassination of it.  The publisher was speedily arrested on the issue of the pamphlet, as I should have been, but that would not have deterred me from publishing it in a reasonable and responsible form.

    Soon after I printed and published a worse pamphlet by Felix Pyat, which was signed by "A Revolutionary Committee."  The Pyat pamphlet was under prosecution at the time I voluntarily published it.  As what I did I did openly—I wrote to the Government apprising them of what I was doing.

    Besides, I commenced to issue serial "Tyrannicide Literature," commencing with pamphlets written by Royalist advocates of assassination.  Because I did not publish the Adams Tyrannicide pamphlet right off without inquiry or suggestion, I was freely charged with refusing to do it from fear.  No one seems to have been informed of the reasons I gave for declining.  No one inquired into the facts.  Adversaries of those days did not take the trouble.  But, as I had to take the consequences of what I did, I thought I had a right to take my own mode of incurring them.

    On the last night of Orsini's life, Mazzini and a small group of the friends both of Orsini and himself, of which I was one, kept vigil until the morning, at which hour the axe in La Roquette would fall.

    The favourite charge of the press against the great conspirator was that he advised others to incur danger, and kept out of it himself.  This was entirely untrue—but it did not prevent it being said.  The principle these critics go upon is, that whoever is capable of advising and directing others, should do all he can to get himself shot—a doctrine which would rid the army of all its generals, and the offices of all newspapers of their editors.  Upon Mazzini's life the success of twenty small cohorts of patriots depended, ready to give their lives for Italy.  Mazzini was not only the commander of the army of Liberation, but, as has been indicated, the provider of its reserves, its commissariat and recruits.  His life was also of priceless value to other struggling peoples.  He was the one statesman in Europe who had a European mind—who knew the peoples of the Continent, whose knowledge was intimate, and whose word could be trusted.  So far from avoiding danger, he was never out of it.  With a price set upon his head in three countries, hunted by seven Governments, with spies always following him and by assassins lying in ambush, his life for forty years passed in more peril than any other public man of his time.  Yet it was fashionable to charge him with want of courage whose whole "life," to use his own phrase, "was a battle and a march."

    Could there be a doubt of the intrepidity of a man who, with the slender forces of insurgent patriots, confronted Austria with its 600,000 bayonets.  No sooner was Garibaldi in Rome than Mazzini was there in the streets inspiring its defenders.  What dangers he passed through to reach Rome, knowing well that his arrest meant death!

    Rome was not a safe place for Mazzini, neither was London.  His life was never safe.  I have been asked by his host to walk home with him at night from a London suburban villa where he dined, because a Royalist assassin was known to be in London waiting to kill him.

    Mazzini died at Pisa, March 10, 1872, from chill by walking over the Alps in inclement weather, intending to visit his English friends once more. A few of his English colleagues protested against his embalmment.  I was not one.  Gorini, the greatest of his profession, undertook to transform the body into marble, and for him Mazzini had friendship.  Dr. Bertani, Mazzini's favourite physician, approved embalming.  It could not be done by more reverent hands.  How could England—who disembowelled Nelson and sent his body home in a cask of rum; who embalmed Jeremy Bentham, and took out O'Connell's heart, sent it to one city, and his mutilated remains to another—reproach Italy for observing the national rites of their illustrious dead?

    The personal character of Mazzini never needed defence.  In private life and state affairs, honour was to him an instinct.  He saw the path of right with clear eyes.  No advantage induced him to deviate from it.  No danger prevented his walking in it.

    Carlyle, whom few satisfied, said he "found in him a man of clear intelligence and noble virtues.  True as steel, the word, the thought of him pure and limpid as water."

    It may be by experience that a nation is governed, but it is by rightness alone that it is kept noble.  It was to promote this that Mazzini walked for forty years on the dreary highway between exile and the scaffold.  It was from belief in his heroic and unfaltering integrity that men went out at his word, to encounter the dungeon, torture, and death, and that families led all their days alarmed lives, and gave up husbands and sons to enterprises in which they could only triumph by dying.

    No one save Byron has depicted the self-denial incidental to Mazzini's career, which involved the abnegation of all that makes life worth living to other men.

    Mazzini left a name which has become one of the landmarks, or rather mindmarks, of public thought, and, though a bygone name, there is instruction and inspiration in it yet.

 
CHAPTER XIX.

GARIBALDI—THE SOLDIER OF LIBERTY

    DINING one day (June 29, 1896) at Mr. Herbert Spencer's, thirty years after Garibaldi left England, Professor Masson, who was a guest of Mr. Spencer, told me that Garibaldi said to Sir James Stansfeld that "the person whom he was most interested in seeing in England was myself."  This Garibaldi said at a reception given by Mr. Stansfeld to meet the General—as we had then begun to call him.  I was one of the party; but Mr. Stansfeld did not mention the remark to me, and I never heard of it until Professor Masson told me.  Of course I should have been gratified to know it.  We had met before, but it was years earlier, and Garibaldi had forgotten it.  The vicissitudes and battles of his tumultuous career may well have effaced the circumstance from his mind.

    The first occasion of my meeting Garibaldi was at an evening party at the Swan Brewery, Fulham, when I was asked to accompany him to Regent Street, where he was then residing.  My name would be given to him at the time, which he might not distinctly hear, as is often the case when an unfamiliar name is heard by a foreign ear, as occurs when a foreign name is mentioned to an English ear.  On our way he asked me "how it was that the English people had accorded such enthusiastic receptions to Kossuth, and yet they appeared to have done nothing on behalf of Hungary?"  I explained to him that "our Foreign Office was controlled by a few aristocratic families who had little sympathy with and less respect for the voteless voices of the splendid crowds who greeted Kossuth with generous acclaim.  That was why large and enthusiastic concourses of people in the streets produced so little effect upon the English Government."  The great Nizzard insurgent had been mystified by the impotence of popular enthusiasm.  In such plain, brief and abrupt sentences as I thought would be intelligible, I explained that "he must distinguish between popular sympathy and popular power.  He might find himself the subject of the generous enthusiasm of the streets, but he must take it as the voice of the people, not the voice of the Government."  Kossuth, who had a better knowledge of English literature and the English press, never made the distinction, which led him into mistakes and caused him needlessly to suffer disappointments.  To this day the House of Lords is an alien power in England.

    It was at the party which we left that night that I was first struck with the natural intrepidity of Garibaldi.  His square shoulders and tapering body I had somehow come to associate with military impassableness, and the easy, self-possessed way in which he moved through the crowd in the room confirmed my impression.  I was told afterwards by one of his fellow combatants that unconscious courage was his characteristic on the field.  Calmness and imperturbable modesty were attributes of his mind, as seen in his heroic acts, deemed utterly impossible save in romance.  He had received the triumphal acclamation of people he freed, whose forefathers had only dreamed of liberation.

    Since the time of that casual acquaintanceship, Garibaldi had heard of me from Mazzini, from Mr. Cowen, and as acting secretary of the Committee who sent out the British Legion to him.  We had collected a considerable sum of money for him, which was lying in unfriendly hands, but which his treasurer had been unable to obtain.  I had sent him other help, when help was sorely needed by his troops.  Besides, I had defended him and his cause under the names of "Landor Praed," "Disque," and my own name, in the press.  Garibaldi sent me one of the first photographs taken of himself after his victorious entry into Naples, on which he had written the words, "Garibaldi, to his friend, J. G. Holyoke."  He had got name and initials transposed in those eventful days.  After the affair of Micheldever, [34] he charged his son Menotti to show me personal and public attention on his visit to the House of Commons.  To the end of his life he saw every visitor who came to him with a note from me.

    When Menotti Garibaldi died, the family wished that the flag which the "Thousand" carried when they made their celebrated invasion of the Neapolitan kingdom, should be borne at the funeral.  They therefore telegraphed to the mayor of Marsala, who was supposed to be the guardian of the relic.  The mayor replied that he had not got it, but that it was at Palermo; so the mayor of Palermo was telegraphed to.  He also replied that he had not got it, and said it was in the possession of Signor Antonio Pellegrini, but that its authenticity was very doubtful.  General Canzio, one of the survivors of the expedition, says that the flag possessed by Signor Pellegrini is nothing like the real one, which was merely a tricolor of three pieces of cotton nailed to a staff.  At the battle of Calatafimi the standard-bearer was shot and the flag lost.  It was said to have been captured by a Neapolitan sub-lieutenant, but all traces of it have now disappeared.  The wonder is not that the flag has disappeared, but that so many official persons should declare it to exist elsewhere, of which they had no knowledge.  The flag of the Washington would have been lost had it not been taken possession of by De Rohan.  The last flag carried by the Mazzinians, which was shot through, would have been lost also had not Mr. J. D. Hodge sought for it before it was too late.  Both flags are in my possession.

    Walter Savage Landor sent me (August 20, 1 860) these fine lines on Garibaldi's conquest of the Sicilies:—

    How often did I hear it said, in his great days of action, that had Garibaldi known the perils he encountered in his enterprises, he would never have attempted them.  No one seemed able to account for his success, save by saying he was "an inspired madman."  His heroism was not born of insanity, but knowledge.  His wonderful march of conquest through Italy was made possible by Mazzini.  In every town there was a small band, mostly of young heroic men, who were inspired by Mazzini's teaching, who, like the brothers Bandiera, led forlorn hopes, or who were ready to act when occasion arose.  I well remember when seeking assistance for Mazzini, how friends declined to contribute lest they became accessory to the fruitless sacrifice of brave men.  There was no other way by which Italy could be freed, than by incurring this risk.  Mazzini knew it, and the men knew it, as Mazzini did not conceal it from those he inspired.

    The following letter to me by one of the combatants was published at the time in the Daily Telegraph.  It is a forgotten vignette of the war, drawn by a soldier on the battlefield who had been wounded five times before, fighting under Garibaldi:—

    "DEAR SIR,—Just time to say that we are in full possession, after streams of blood have flowed.  Fights 'twixt brothers are deadly.

    "We want money; we want, as I told you, a British steamer chartered, with revolving rifles and pistols of Colt's (17, Pall Mall), also some cannon rayé; but for the sake of humanity and liberty do hurry up the subscriptions.  The sooner we are strong the less the chance of more fighting.  We muster now some 30,000 all told, though not all armed.  We want arms and ammunition, and caps—Minié rifles.  Or the rifle corps pattern the General would as soon have.  He is well and radiant with joy and hope, though sighing over the necessity to shed blood.  Oh! will the world never learn to value the really great men of the earth until the grave has closed over them?  Garibaldi has written only one or two of all the things published over his name.  The rest are the inventions of enemies or over-zealous friends.

    "Messina must capitulate.  If the King grant a constitution, all will be lost.  The Bourbons must be driven from Italy, for it will never be quiet without.  Warn the papers against trusting the so-called letters, etc., from Garibaldi.  He writes little or none, and dislikes to be made prominent.

    "Do try and urge on the subscriptions.  The English admiral here has behaved bravely, and Lord John Russell's praises are in every one's mouth; but he must not falter or hesitate,

    "The Royal Palace was burned down, and the fighting was desperate indeed.

    "Of all the defeats imputed to the 'insurgents, ' not one has really taken place.  The General was at times obliged to sacrifice some lives for strategical purposes.

    "Now, pray use your influence for England not to allow Naples to patch up a peace, for I tell you it is useless.  Garibaldi and his friends will never consent to anything short of 'Italy for the Italians.'

    "You may communicate this as 'official' if you wish to the Times or News, reserving my name Yours truly, in great haste, "———

    "G. J. Holyoake, Esq.

    "P.S.—I need hardly say this will have to take its chance of getting to you.  I trust it to a captain whom I have given the money to pay the postage in Genoa, where he is going.  Will you let me hear from you?"

    He did hear from me.  Whether it is good to die "in vain," as George Eliot held, I do not stay to determine.  Certainly, to die when you know it to be your duty, whether "in vain" or not, implies a high order of nature.  Sir Alfred Lyall has sung the praise of those English soldiers captured in India, who, when offered their lives if they would merely pronounce the name of the Prophet, refused.  It was only a word they had to patter, and Sir Alfred exclaims, "God Almighty, what could it matter?"  But the brave Englishmen died rather than be counted on the side of a faith they did not hold.  Dying for honour is not dying in vain, and I thought the Italians entitled to help in their holy war for manhood and independence.

    When Garibaldi was at Brooke House, Isle of Wight, I was deputed by the Society of the Friends of Italy to accompany Mazzini to meet Garibaldi.  Herzen, the Russian, who kept the "Kolokol" ringing in the dominions of the Czar, met us at Southampton.  The meeting with Garibaldi took place at the residence of Madame Nathan.  The two heroes had not met in London when the General was a guest of the Duke of Sutherland.  As soon as Garibaldi saw Mazzini, he greeted him in the old patois of the lagoons of Genoa.  It affected Mazzini, to whom it brought back scenes of their early career, when the inspiration of Italian freedom first began.

    Mrs. Nathan, wife of the Italian banker of Cornhill, was an intrepid lady, true to the freedom of her country, who had assisted Garibaldi and Mazzini in many a perilous enterprise.  After the interview at her house, she had occasion to consult Garibaldi on matters of moment.  Misled or deterred by aspersion, which every lady had to suffer, suspected of patriotic complicity, Mrs. Nathan was not invited to Brooke House.  Under these circumstances she could not go alone to see the General, and she asked me to take her.  Offering her my arm, we walked through the courtyard and along the corridors of the house to Garibaldi's rooms.  Going and returning from her interview, I was much struck by the queenly grace and self-possession of Mrs. Nathan's manner.  There was neither disquietude nor consciousness in her demeanour of the disrespect of not being invited to Brooke House, though her residence was known.

    On the night of Garibaldi's arrival at Brooke House, Mr. Seely, the honoured host of the General, invited me to join the dinner party, where I heard things said on some matters, which the speakers could not possibly know to be true.  Garibaldi showed no traces of excitement, which had dazed so many at Southampton that afternoon.  The vessel which brought him there was immediately boarded by a tumultuous crowd of visitors.  All the reporters of the London and provincial press were waiting for the vessel to be sighted, and they were foremost in the throng on the ship.  Before them all was Mrs. Colonel Chambers, with her beseeching eyes, large, luminous and expressive, and difficult to resist.  Garibaldi gave instant audience to Joseph Cowen, whose voice alone, or chiefly, influenced him.  Years before, when Garibaldi was unknown, friendless, and penniless, he turned his bark up the Tyne to visit Mr. Cowen, the only Englishman from whom he would ask help.  Garibaldi's first day at Southampton was more boisterous than a battle.  Everybody wanted him to go everywhere.  Houses where his name had never been heard were now open to him.  Mr. Seely was known to be his friend.  The Isle of Wight was near.  Brooke House lay out of the way of the "madding crowd," and there his friends would have time to arrange things for him.  The end of his visit to England was sudden, unforeseen, inexplicable both to friend and foe, at the time and for long after.

    He had accepted engagements to appear in various towns in England, where people would as wildly greet him as the people of London had done.  When it was announced that he had left England, it was believed that the Emperor of the French had incited the Government to prevail upon Garibaldi to leave the country.  Others conjectured that Mr. Gladstone had whispered something to him which had caused the Italian hero to depart.  I asked about it from one who knew everything that took place—Sir James Stansfeld—and from him I learned that no foreign suggestion had been made, that nothing whatever had been said to Garibaldi.  His leaving was entirely his own act.  He had reason to believe that Louis Napoleon was capable of anything; but with all his heroism, Garibaldi was imaginative and proud.  He fancied his presence in England was an embarrassment to the Government.  He being the guest of the nation, they would never own to it or say it.  But his departure might be a relief to them, nevertheless.  And therefore he went.  His sensitiveness of honour shrank from his being a constructive inconvenience to a nation to whom he owed so much and for whom he cared so much.  It was an instance of the disappointment imagination may cause in politics. [35]

    But Garibaldi was a poet as well as a soldier.  Like the author of the "Marseillaise," Korner and Petöfe, he could write inspiring verse, as witness his "Political Poem" in reply to one Victor Hugo wrote upon him, which Sir Edwin Arnold, the "Oxford Graduate" of that day, translated in 1868.  Those do not understand Garibaldi who fail to recognise that he had poetic as well as martial fire. [36]

 
CHAPTER XX.

THE STORY OF THE BRITISH LEGION—NEVER BEFORE TOLD

GENERAL DE LACY EVANS is no longer with us, or he might give us an instructive account of the uncertainty and difficulty of discipline in a patriotic legion which volunteers its services without intelligently intending obedience.  When I became Acting Secretary for sending out the British Legion to Garibaldi, I found no one with any relevant experience who knew what to expect or what to advise.  Those likely to be in command were ready to exercise authority, but those who were to serve under them expected to do it more or less in their own way.  The greatest merit in a volunteer legion is that they agree in the object of the war they engage in.  They do not blindly adopt the vocation of murder—for that is what military service means.  It means the undertaking to kill at the direction of others—without knowledge or conviction as to the right and justice of the conflict they take part in.

    General De Lacy Evans being a military man of repute, and marching with his Spanish Legion had disciplinary influence over them.  Two of my colleagues in other enterprises of danger were among the Spanish volunteers, but they were not at hand—one being in America and the other in New Zealand —otherwise I might have had the benefit of their experience.

    The project of sending out to Garibaldi a British Legion came in the air.  It was probably a suggestion of De Rohan's, who had gathered in Italy that British volunteers would influence Italian opinion; be an encouragement in the field; and, if sent out in time, they might be of military service.  Be this as it may, the Garibaldi Committee found themselves, without premeditation, engaged in enlisting men, at least by proxy.  It was a new business, in which none of us were experts.  We knew that men of generous motive and enterprise would come forward.  At the same time, we were opening a door to many of whom we could not know enough to refuse, or to trust.  However, the army of every country is largely recruited from the class of dubious persons, over whom officers have the power to compel order—which we had not.

    As I was the Acting Secretary, my publishing house, 147, Fleet Street, was crowded with inquirers when the project of the Legion became known.  Many gave their names there.  For convenience of enrolment, a house was taken at No. 8, Salisbury Street, Strand, where the volunteers, honest and otherwise, soon appeared—the otherwise being more obtrusive and seemingly more zealous.  Among them appeared a young man, wearing the uniform of a Garibaldian soldier, of specious manners, and who called himself "Captain Styles"—a harmless rustic name, but he was not at all rustic in mind.  Being early in the field, volunteers who came later took it for granted he had an official position.  It was assumed that he had been in Italy and in some army, which was more than we knew.  His influence grew by not being questioned.  Without our knowledge and without any authority, he invented and secretly sold commissions, retaining the proceeds for his own use.  To avoid obtruding our military objects on public attention, I drew up a notice, after the manner of Dr. Lunn's tourist agency, as follows:—

    The Committee caused, on my suggestion, applicants to receive notice of two things:—

(1) That each man should remember that he goes out to represent the sacred cause of Liberty, and that the cause will be judged by his conduct.  His behaviour will be as important as his bravery.

(2) Those in command will respect the high feeling by which the humblest man is animated—but no man must make his equal patriotism a pretext for refusing implicit obedience to orders, upon which his safety and usefulness depend.  There no doubt will be precariousness and privation for a time, which every man must be prepared to share and bear.

    Further, I wrote an address to the "Excursionists" and had a copy placed in the hands of every one of them.  It was to the following effect:—

    Before leaving Faro, Garibaldi issued an address to his army, in which he said:—

"Among the qualities which ought to predominate among the officers of an Italian army, besides bravery, is the amiability which secures the affection of soldiers—discipline, subordination, and firmness necessary in long campaigns.  Severe discipline may be obtained by harshness, but it is better obtained by kindness.  This secret the numerous spies of the enemy will not discover.  It brought us from Parco to Gibil-Rosa, and thence to Palermo.  The honourable behaviour of our soldiery towards the inhabitants did the rest.  Of bravery, I am sure!" exclaims the General.  "What I want is the discipline of ancient Rome, invariable harmony one with another—the due respect for property, and above all for that of the poor, who suffer so much to gain the scanty bread of their families.  By these means we shall lessen the sacrifice of blood and win the lasting independence of Italy."

To this address was added the following paragraph:—

"In these words the volunteer will learn the quality of companionship he will meet with in the field, and the spirit which prevails among the soldiers of Italian independence."

    When we had collected the Legion, the thing was to get it out of the country—international law not being on the side of our proceedings. As many as a thousand names [37] were entered on the roll of British volunteers for Italy.  The Great Eastern Railway was very animated.

    When they were about to set out at a late hour for Harwich, a "Private and Confidential" note was sent to each saying:—

"As the arrangements for the departure of the detachment of Excursionists are now complete, I have to request your attendance at Caldwell's Assembly Rooms, Dean Street, Oxford Street, at three o'clock precisely, on Wednesday, the 26th instant (September, 1860 ), when you will receive information as to the time and place of departure which will be speedy.
                                                            "(Signed)                            E. STYLES, Major."

    By this times the "Captain" had blossomed into a "Major."  Owing to urgency the Committee had to acquiesce in many things.  Garibaldi being in the field, and often no one knew where, it was futile to ask questions and impossible to get them answered.

    The Government no doubt knew all about the expedition.  Captain De Rohan, or, as he styled himself, "Admiral De Rohan," was in command of the "Excursionists."  He marched up and down the platform, wearing a ponderous admiral's sword, which was entirely indiscreet, but he was proud of the parade.  By this time he had assumed the title of "Rear" Admiral.  De Rohan was not his name, but he was, it was said, paternally related, in an unrecognised way, to Admiral Dalgren, of American fame.  Of De Rohan it ought to be said, that though he had the American tendency to self-inflation, he was a sincere friend of Italy.  Honest, disinterested, generous towards others—and the devoted and trusted agent of Garibaldi, ready to go to the ends of the earth in his service.  When the English Committee finally closed, and they had a balance of £1,000 left in their hands, they were so sensible of the services and integrity of De Rohan that they gave it to him, and on my introduction he deposited it in the Westminster Bank.  He was one of those men for whom some permanent provision ought to be made, as he took more delight in serving others than serving himself.  In after years, vicissitude came to him, in which I and members of the Garibaldi Committee befriended him.

    As our Legion was going out to make war on a power in friendly relation to Great Britain, Lord John Russell was in a position to stop it.  The vessel (the Melazzo) lay two days in the Harwich waters before sailing.  There were not wanting persons who attempted to call Lord John's attention to what was going on, but happily without recognition of their efforts.  No one was better able than Lord John to congeal illicit enthusiasm.

    Mr. E. H. J. Craufurd, M.P., chairman of the Committee, myself, my brother Austin,—who was unceasing in his service to the Committee and the Legion—W. J. Linton, and other members of the Committee, travelled by night with the Legion to Harwich.  Mr. George Francis Train went down with us and explained to me vivaciously his theory, that to obtain recognition by the world was to make a good recognition of yourself.  Train did this, but all it gave him was notoriety, under which was hidden from public respect his great natural ability and personal kindness of heart.  When I last met him, I found him—as was his custom—sitting on the public seat in a New York square, interesting himself in children, but ready to pour, in an eloquent torrent, the story of his projects into the ear of any passer-by who had time to listen to him.

    It was early morning when we arrived at Harwich.  As the ship lay some distance out, it took some time to embark the men, and it was the second day before she set sail.  To our disappointment De Rohan did not go with the troops, which we thought it was his duty to do, but suddenly left, saying he would meet them at Palermo.  He alone had real influence over the men.  No one being in authority over them, feuds and suspicions were added to their lack of discipline.

    The vessel was well provisioned, even to the pleasures of the table.  There was that satisfaction.

    It may interest readers who have never sailed in a troopship to read the regulations enforced:—

1. The men will be allotted berths and divided into messes, regularly by companies, and their packs are to be hung up near their berths.

2. With a view to the general health and accommodation of the men, they will be divided into three watches, one of which is to be constantly on deck.

3. A guard, the strength of which is to be regulated by the sentries required, is to mount every morning at nine o'clock.

4. The men of each watch are to be appointed to stations.

5. The men not belonging to the watch are to be ordered below, when required by the master of the ship, in order that they may not impede the working of the vessel.

6. In fine weather every man is to be on deck the whole day.

7. The whole watch is to be constantly on deck, except when the rain obliges them to go down for shelter.

8. Great attention is to be paid to the cleanliness of the privies.  Buckets of water are to be thrown down frequently.

9. The bedding is to be brought on deck every morning, if the weather will permit, by eight o'clock, and to be well aired.

10. The men are to wash, comb, and brush their heads every morning.

11. At sunset the bedding is to be brought down, and at any time during the day on the appearance of bad weather.

12. At ten o'clock in the evening, every man is to be in his berth, except the men on guard and of the watch.

13. The chief of the watch is to be careful that no man interferes with the windsails, so as to prevent the air from being communicated.

14. The men are strictly forbidden sleeping on deck, which they are apt to do, and which is generally productive of fevers and flushes.

With a view to preventing accidents from fire, a sentry will be constantly placed at the cooking place or caboose, or one on each side, with orders not to allow fire of or any kind to be taken taken without leave.

1. No lights are to be permitted amongst the men except in lanterns.  All are to be extinguished at ten o'clock at night, except those over which there may be sentries.

2. No smoking on any account to be permitted, except on upper deck.

3. No lucifer or patent matches to be allowed.

4. The officers are strictly charged to trace when going their rounds between decks, and to report instantly any man who shall presume either to smoke there, or to use any lights except in lanterns.

Every possible precaution is to be taken to prevent liquor being brought on board ship.

Regularity and decency of conduct are peculiarly required on board ship.  It is the duty of those in command to repress, by the most decided and summary measures, any tendency to insubordination, to check every species of immorality and vice, and to discountenance to the utmost of their power whatever may disturb the comfort of others, or interrupt the harmony and good understanding which should subsist on board.

    We had trouble in London.  One day at a Committee, held at my house, an applicant, who was contracting to supply 900 rifles, attended to show certificates of their efficiency.  The legal eye of the chairman (Mr. Craufurd, M.P., one of the prosecuting counsel of the Mint), detected them to be forgeries.  On his saying so, the applicant snatched them from his hand.  The chairman at once seized the knave, when a struggle ensued to obtain the false credentials.  As it was not prudent in us to prosecute the presenter and have our proceedings before a court, we let him go.

    There being no legal power to enforce order was the cardinal weakness of the British Legion.  A competent commander should at least have been appointed, and an agreement of honour entered into by each volunteer, to obey his authority and that of those under him, on penalty of dismissal, and a certain forfeiture of money.  These conditions, though not of legal force, would be binding on men of honour, and place the turbulent without honour at a disadvantage.

    At the Queenwood community, in Robert Owen's day, no contract of this kind was thought of, and any one who declined to leave could defy the governor, until he was ejected by force—a process which did not harmonise with "Harmony Hall."

    De Rohan met the Excursionists at Palermo on their disembarkation.  "Captain Styles" was prudently absent, and no more was heard of him.  The spurious commissions could not be recognised, and commotion naturally arose among those who had been defrauded.  Captain Sarsfield, Colonel Peard known as "Garibaldi's Englishman," De Rohan, Captain Scott, and others on the spot, with colourable pretensions to authority, took different views of the situation.  Appeals were made to the Committee in London, on whose minutes stormy telegrams are recorded.  Mr. Craufurd, though he had the prudent reticence of his race, would sometimes fall into impetuous expressions.  Yet the second statement of his first thought would be faultless.  This quality was so conspicuous that it interested me.

    The first man of the Legion killed was young Mr. Bontems, only son of a well-known tradesman in the City of London—a fine, ingenuous fellow.  He was shot by the recklessness of a medical student of the London University, as Bontems stood in a mess-room at Palermo.  It was said not to be the first death caused by the criminal thoughtlessness of the same person.  Mr. Southall, another London volunteer like young Bontems, was a man of genuine enthusiasm, character, and promise.  He became an orderly officer to Garibaldi, by whom he was trusted and to whom he gave the black silk cravat he wore on entering Naples. [38]

    When Garibaldi retired to his island home, he sent to England the following testimony of the services and character of the Excursionists:—

    Allowing for Garibaldi's generosity in estimating the services of the Legion, it remains true that the majority deserved this praise.  Many were of fine character.  Many were young men of ingenuousness and bright enthusiasm, prompt to condone lack of military knowledge by noble intrepidity in the field.

    The Legion cost the Italian Government some expense.  Claims were recognised liberally.  The men were sent back to England overland, and each one had a provision order given him to present at every refreshment station at which the trains stopped.  Count Cavour was a better friend of Italian freedom than even Mazzini knew.  It was only known after Cavour's death, how he had secretly laboured to drag his country from under the heel of Austria.  Cavour had the friendly foresight to give orders that the members of the English Legion were to be supplied on their journey home with double rations, as Englishmen ate more than Italians.  The Cavourian distinction was much appreciated.

    The sums due to the men until their arrival in England were paid by the Sardinian Consul (whose office was in the Old Jewry), on a certificate from me that the applicant was one of the Legion.

    A request came to me from Italy for a circumstantial history of the Legion and such suggestions as experience had furnished.  The story made quite a book, which I sent to Dr. Bertani.  When after his death I was in Milan, I learned from a member of his family that no one knew what had become of it.  And so I briefly tell the story again, as there is no one else to tell it.  Bertani was the confidant and favourite physician of Mazzini and Garibaldi.  No one knew so well or so much as he who were the makers of Italian Unity.  What has become of his papers?

    Among friends of Italy who appeared at our council in London was Captain Sarsfield, the son of the Duke of Somerset.  Pallid, with an expression of restrained energy, handsome beyond any face I had seen, it might have been carved by a Grecian sculptor.  His high breeding struck me before I knew who he was.  He took out for me an important letter to Garibaldi, who had then no postal address.  On Sarsfield's return home, he took, as was his delight, a furious ride in a high wind.  Washington did the same, and it killed him, as it did Captain Sarsfield.  Difficulty of breathing ensued, and it was necessary that Dr. Williams should be called in to perform an operation—all in vain.  The Duchess of Somerset lay all night on the carpet-floor by the dead body of her son, for whom she grieved exceedingly.  In her distress she said Dr. Williams had been wanting in promptness or in skill.  His great reputation could not be affected by an accusation made in agony, and his own explanation would vindicate him.  But he took the brutal course of dragging the distressed and distracted mother into the law courts.  In consequence of remarks I published upon this unfeeling and egotistic outrage, the Duchess sent me a letter of thanks, and requested me to call at her residence.

    So much for the two men who mainly made Italy a nation.  What Castelar said to the Italian patriots in general, he might have addressed to Garibaldi and Mazzini individually:—

"That which Julius II. could not effect with his cannon, nor Leo X. with his arts, that which Savonarola could not make a reality by giving himself to God, nor Machiavelli by giving himself to the Devil, has been done by you.  You have made Italy one, you have made Italy free, you have made Italy independent."

 
CHAPTER XXI.

JOHN STUART MILL, TEACHER OF THE PEOPLE

ONE reason for commencing with the remark that John Stuart Mill was born on May 20, 1806, at No. 13, Rodney Street, Islington, London, is to notify the coincidence that Gladstone, another man of contemporaneous distinction, was born in Rodney Street, Liverpool, three years later.  Rodney Street, London, where Mill was born, was a small, narrow, second-rate, odd, out-of-the-way suburban thoroughfare.  But in those days Islington had the characteristics of a rural retreat.  A little above this Rodney Street, in what is now known as the Pentonville Road, stood the "Angel," a favourite hostelry, where Thomas Paine wrote part of one of his famous books, near the period of Mill's birth.

   The familiar books concerning J. S. Mill, [39] treat mainly of his eminence as a thinker.  I concern myself with those personal characteristics which won for him the regard and honour of the insurgent industrial classes—insurgent, not in the sense of physical rebellion against authority, but of intellectual rebellion against error, social inferiority and insufficiency of means.  Mill regarded the press as the fortress of freedom.  All his life he gave money to establish such defences, and left the copyright of his works to Mr. John Morley, to be applied in aid of publications open to the expression of all reasoned opinion, having articles signed by the names of the writers.  Mr. Mill was the first who made provision for the expression of unfriended truth.  It would be a surprising biography which recorded the causes he aided and the persons whom he helped.  He was not one of those philosophers, "selfish, cold and wise," who, fortunate and satisfied with their own emancipation from error, leave others to perish in their ignorance.  Mill helped them, [40] as did Place, Bentham, Grote, Roebuck, Molesworth, and other leaders of the great Utilitarian party.  For ten years I knew Mr. Mill to receive and write letters of suggestion from the India House.  He would see any one, at any hour, interested in the progress of the people.  As Mr. John Morley has said in the Fortnightly Review, "It was easier for a workman than for a princess to obtain access to him."

    A pamphlet by me on the "Liberal Situation" in 1865 [41] being sent to Mr. Mill, he wrote me the following letter:—

    One night when a great Reform League meeting was held in the Agricultural Hall, Islington, I accompanied him from the House of Commons to it.  There were rumours of danger in attending it.  This did not deter him.  The meeting itself was ill spoken of by the press—still he went.  The crowd about the place made it perilous for one so fragile-looking as he, to force a way in.  He never hesitated to try it.  When we arrived on the thronged platform, it was a struggle to get to the front.  The vast amphitheatre, with its distant lights and dense crowds—the horsepit presenting a valley of faces, the higher ground hills of men, the iron rafters overhead were alive with hearers who had climbed there—was a strange Miltonic scene.  No sooner did the stout voice of Manton—which alone all could hear—announce the arrival of Mr. Mill than every man was silent; though few would catch the low, wise, brave words he uttered.  Afterwards I returned to the House of Commons with him, he being interested in an expected division.

    The Islington meeting that night had been denounced as illegal.  He went to justify the right of public meeting by his presence, and to share the responsibility of those who convened it.  What man eminent as a thinker, save he, or Mr. John Morley, would incur the odium, peril, and discomfort of attending, for such a purpose, a workman's meeting such as that?

    The first time he made a speech at a public meeting was at the Whittington Club, before a gathering of co-operators.  I asked him to address them.  I was as glad as surprised when he consented.  Had it not been for the presence of women taking interest in co-operative economy, he probably had not spoken then.  In a sentence he defined the higher co-operation.  He never spoke in vain.

    When in business in Fleet Street I signed bills for the convenience of a city friend, who, like William Ellis—Mill's early associate—was a munificent supporter of progressive endeavour.  By putting my name on his bills I incurred a liability beyond my means of meeting.  My more than imprudence was indefensible because it involved the business in which the money of others was invested.  Learning that my resources fell short by £70 of the amount for which I was answerable, Mr. Mill sent me the £70 from himself and a friend.  When the bills were repaid me from the estate of him for whom I had signed them, I sent the £70 to Mr. Mill, who returned me half as a gift, on the condition that I did not sign another bill, which I never did unless I was able to pay it if my friend did not, and I was willing to pay it if he could not.

    Mr. Mill had quoted portions of my "History of the Rochdale Pioneers," in his "Political Economy," which was a great advantage to a cause whose success I much desired.  In many ways I was much indebted to his friendship, and have never changed in my regard for him.  Yet this did not involve spontaneous acquiescence in all his views.  Upon the ballot I dissented from him.  It seemed to me a just condition that the people should be, for one minute in seven years, free to vote for their political masters (as members of Parliament are) without control, intimidation, or fear of resentment.  Mr. Bright himself and Mr. Berkeley were impressed by my view as stated to a meeting of the Reform League.  Mill thought it conduced to manliness that the elector should withstand adverse influences at whatever peril—which assumed the universal existence of a heroic spirit of self-sacrifice.  Since the elector by his vote subjects his fellow-citizens, it may be, to perilous mastership, Mill inferred every man had a right to know from whose hand came the blessing or the blow.  There is still force in Mill's view which commands respect.  On the other hand, secret voting is not without its disadvantages.  The citizen may be surrounded by disguised adversaries.  The fair-seeming dissembler he trusts may stab him at the poll.  The independence given by the ballot may betray the State, and the traitors be shielded from responsibility.  The secret vote also rests on a vast assumption—that of the universal paramountcy of conscience and honesty in electors—which paramountcy is as scarce as political heroism.  Those who so trust the people incur the greater and ceaseless responsibility of educating them in political honour.  They who have shown their trust in the people, alone have the right of claiming their fidelity.  Mr. Mill was foremost in teaching the duty of independent thought, and, to do him justice, my dissent from a principle he had come to hold strongly, made no difference in his friendship.  He was once a believer in the ballot himself.

    Mr. Mill was an instance which shows that even the virtues of a philosopher need, as in lesser men, good sense to take care of them, lest the operation of lofty qualities compromise others.  His unguarded intrepidity in defence of the right cost him his seat for Westminster.  Things were going well for him, on his second candidature, when one morning it appeared in the newspapers that he had sent £10 to promote the election of Mr. Bradlaugh.  That £10 was worth £10,000 to his Tory opponent, and cost Mill's own committee the loss of £3,000, which was contributed to promote his election.  When I was a candidate in the Tower Hamlets, Mr. Mill sent a similar sum to promote my election; but I prohibited the publication of an intrepid act of generosity, which might prove costly to Mr. Mill.  At his first election Dean Stanley nobly urged Christian electors to vote for Mr. Mill; but at the second election, when it became known that Mr. Mill was subscribing to bring an Atheist into Parliament, most Christians were persuaded Mr. Mill was himself an Atheist, and only the nobler sort would vote for him again.  It was right and honourable in Mr. Mill to stand by his opinion, that an Atheist had as much right as a Christian to be in Parliament, and that ecclesiastical heresy was no disqualification for public or Parliamentary service.  To maintain your opinions at your own cost is one thing, but to proclaim them at the cost of others, without regard to time, consent or circumstance, is quite a different matter.

    Mr. Mill had refused on principle to contribute to the expense of his own election, on the ground that a candidate should not be called upon to pay for his own election to a place of public service, though it was perfectly consistent that he should contribute to the election of others.  But his committee could not convert the electorate to this view.  There is nothing so difficult as the election of a philosopher.  Mr. Mill was in favour of the civil equality of all opinions, but it did not follow that he shared all opinions himself.  But the electors could not be made to see this after the £10 sent to Northampton became known, and England saw the most famous borough in the land handed over for unknown years to a Tory bookseller, without personal distinction of his own, and a book writer of the highest order rejected by the electors in favour of a mere bookseller.

    Mr. Mill's father, openly advocating the limitation of families in the interest of the poor, bequeathed to his son a heritage of disadvantage—of liability to frenzied imputation.  No man is to be held responsible save for what he himself says and what he himself does.  No man is answerable, or ought to be held answerable, for the construction others put upon his conduct, or for their inference as to his opinions.  No writer ever guarded his words and conduct more assiduously than J. S. Mill.  Yet few have been more misrepresented by theological and Conservative writers.  Upon the question of "limitation of families," Mr. Mill never wrote other or more than this:—

    "No prudent man contracts matrimony before he is in a condition which gives him an assured means of living, and no married man has a greater number of children than he can properly bring up.  Whenever this family has been formed, justice and humanity require that he should impose on himself the same restraint which is submitted to by the unmarried." [42]

    Further instruction of the people upon this subject J. S. Mill might not deprecate, but he never gave it.  He never went so far as Jowett, who wrote, "That the most important influences on human life should be wholly left to chance, or shrouded in mystery, and instead of being disciplined or under- stood, should be required to conform to an external standard of propriety, cannot be regarded by the philosopher as a safe or satisfactory condition of human things." [43]

    Mill's views, or supposed views, naturally excited the attention of wits.  Moore's amusing exaggeration, which, like American humour, was devoid of truth, yet had no malice in it, was:—

    The way in which opinions were invented for Mill is shown in the instance of the London Debating Club (1826—1830), which was attended by a set of young men who professed ultra opinions.  Mr. J. A. Roebuck was one.  It was rumoured that at a meeting at which Mr. Mill was present, a pamphlet was discussed entitled, "What is Love?" attributed to a man of some note in his day, and of unimpeachable character in private life.  Mr. Mill might have been present without knowledge of the subject to be brought forward, and may have been a listener without choice.

    But in those days (and down to a much later period) the conventional fallacy was in full vogue—that civility to an opponent implied a secret similarity of opinion.  Courtesy was regarded as complicity with the beliefs of those to whom it was shown.  He who was present at an unconventional assembly was held to assent to what took place there—though neither a member, nor speaker, nor partisan.

 
CHAPTER XXII.

JOHN STUART MILL, TEACHER OF THE PEOPLE
(continued)

MILL was so entirely serious in his pursuit of truth, and entirely convinced of the advantages of its publicity, that he readily risked conventional consequences on that account.  He held it to be desirable that those who had important convictions, should be free to make them known, and even be encouraged to do so.  In thinking this he was in no way compromised by, nor had he any complicity with, the convictions of others.  But this did not prevent him being made answerable for them, as in the case of the distribution of papers sent to him by friends in his company.  A copy of it came into my possession which assuredly he did not write, and the terms of which he could never have approved, had they been submitted to him.  On one occasion he sent to me a passionate repudiation of concurrence or recommendation in any form, of methods imputed to him.  These eccentricities of imputation, supposed to have died by time, were found to be alive at Mill's death.

    The chief resurrectionist was one Abraham Hayward, known as a teller of salacious stories at the Athenæum.  He was a man of many gifts, who wrote with a bright, but by no means fastidious, pen.  In some unexplained, inconsistent, and inexplicable way, Mr. Gladstone was on friendly terms with him.  No sooner was Mill dead, and illustrious appreciators of the great thinker were meditating some memorial to his honour, than Mr. Hayward sent an article to the Times, suggesting intrinsic immorality in his opinions.  He also sent out letters privately to deter eminent friends of Mill from giving their names to the memorial committee.  He sent one to Mr. Stopford Brooke, upon whom it had no influence.  He sent one to Mr. Gladstone, upon whom it had, and who, in consequence, declined to join the committee.

    Hayward was, in his day, the Iago of literature, and abused the confiding nature of our noble Moor. [44]  Yet, when Mr. Mill lost his seat for Westminster, Mr. Gladstone had written these great words: "We all know Mr. Mill's intellectual eminence before he entered Parliament.  What his conduct principally disclosed to me was his singular moral elevation.  Of all the motives, stings and stimulants that reach men through their egotism in Parliament, no part could move or even touch him.  His conduct and his language were in this respect a sermon.  For the sake of the House of Commons, I rejoiced in his advent and deplored his disappearance.  He did us all good, and in whatever party, in whatever form of opinion, I sorrowfully confess that such men are rare."

    There was no tongue in the House of Commons more bitter, venomous, or disparaging of the people than that of Lord Robert Cecil, afterwards Lord Salisbury; yet I record to his honour he subscribed £50 towards the memorial to Mr. Mill.  One of the three first persons who gave £50 was Mr. Walter Morrison.  The Duke of Argyll, the Earl of Derby, the Duke of Devonshire, Sir Charles and Lady Dilke, Mr. and Mrs. P. A. Taylor were also among the subscribers of £50 each.  Among those who gave large but lesser sums were Mr. Herbert Spencer, Stopford Brooke, Leonard H. Courtney, Frederic Harrison, G. H. Lewes, W. E. H. Lecky, Sir John Lubbock, G. Croome Robertson, Lord Rosebery, Earl Russell, Professor Tyndall, and Professor Huxley.  So Mr. Mill had his monument with honour.  It stands on the Thames Embankment, and allures more pilgrims of thought than any other there.

    Purity and honour, there is reason to believe, were never absent from Mill's mind or conduct; but trusting to his own personal integrity, he assumed others would recognise it.  His admiration of Mrs. Taylor, whom he frequently visited, and subsequently married, was misconstrued—though not by Mr. Taylor, who had full confidence in Mr. Mill's honour.  No expression to the contrary on Mr. Taylor's part ever transpired.  It might be due to society that Mr. Mill should have been reserved in his regard.  But assured of his own rectitude, he trusted to the proud resenting maxim, "Evil be to him who evil thinks," and he resented imputation—whether it came from his relatives or his friends.  Any reflection upon him in this respect he treated as an affront to himself, and an imputation upon Mrs. Taylor, which he never forgave.  A relative told me after his death, that he never communicated with any of them again who made any remark which bore a sinister interpretation.  If ever there was a philosopher who should be counted stainless, it was John Stuart Mill.

    In the minds of the Bentham School, population was a province of politics.  It would seem incredible to another generation—as it seems to many in this—that a philosopher should incur odium for being of Jowett's opinion, that the most vital information upon the conduct of life should not be withheld from the people.  To give it is to incur conventional reprehension; as though it were not a greater crime to be silent while a feeble, half-fed, and ignorant progeny infest the land, to find their way to the hospital, the poor house, or the gaol, than to protest against this recklessness, which establishes penury and slavery in the workman's home.  Yet a brutal delicacy and a criminal fastidiousness, calling itself public propriety, is far less reputable than the ethical preference for reasonable foresight and a manlier race.

    Mr. Mill's success in Parliament was greater than that of any philosopher who has entered in our time.  Unfortunately, very few philosophers go there.  The author of "Mark Rutherford" (W. Hale White) writing to me lately, exclaimed: "Oh for one session with Mill and Bright and Cobden in the House!  What would you not give to hear Mill's calm voice again?  What would you not give to see him apply the plummet of justice and Reason to the crooked iniquities of the Front Benches?  He stands before me now, just against the gangway on the Opposition side, hesitating, pausing even for some seconds occasionally, and yet holding everybody in the House with a kind of grip; for even the most foolish understood more or less dimly that they were listening to something strange, something exalted, spoken from another sphere than that of the professional politician."

    Mr. Christie relates that in the London Debating Society, of which Mill was a member when a young man, it used to be said of him in argument, "He passed over his adversary like a ploughshare over a mouse."  Certainly many mice arguers heard in Parliament, who made the public think a mountain was in labour, ended their existence with a squeak when Mr. Mill took notice of them.

    The operation of the suffrage and the ballot, questions on which Mill expressed judgment, are in the minds of politicians to this day, and many reformers who dissented from him do not conceal their misgivings as to the wisdom of their course.  "Misgivings" is a word that may be taken to mean regret, whereas it merely signifies occasion for consideration.  The extension of the franchise and the endowment of the ballot have caused misgivings in many who were foremost in demanding them.  The wider suffrage has not prevented an odious war in South Africa, and the ballot has sent to the House of Commons a dangerous majority of retrograde members.  John Bright distrusted the vote of the residuum.  John Stuart Mill equally dreaded the result of withdrawing the vote of the elector from public scrutiny.  I agreed with their apprehensions, but it seemed to me a necessity of progress that the risk should be run.  While the Ballot Act was before the House of Lords, I wrote to the Times and other papers, as I have elsewhere related, to say that the Ballot Act would probably give us a Tory government for ten years—which it did.  I thought that the elector who had two hundred years of transmitted subjection or intimidation or bribery in his bones, would for some time go on voting as he had done—for others, not for the State.  He would not all at once understand that he was free and answerable to the State for his vote.  New electors, who had never known the responsibility of voting, would not soon acquire the sense of it.  Mr. Mill thought it conduced to manliness for an elector to act in despite of his interest or resentment of his neighbours, his employer, his landlord, or his priest, when his vote became known.  At every election there were martyrs on both sides; and it was too much to expect that a mass of voters, politically ignorant, and who had been kept in ignorance, would generally manifest a high spirit, which maintains independence in the face of social peril, which philosophers are not always equal to.  No doubt the secrecy of the vote is an immunity to knaves, but it is the sole chance of independence for the average honest man.  The danger of committing the fortune of the State to the unchecked votes of the unintelligent was an argument of great power against a secret suffrage.  Lord Macaulay, though a Whig of the Whigs, gave an effective answer when he brought forward his famous fool, who declared "he would never go into the water until he had learnt to swim."  The people must plunge into the sea of liberty before they can learn to swim in it.  They have now been in that sea many years, and not many have learned the art yet.  Then was found the truth of Temple Leader's words, that "if the sheep had votes, they would give them all to the butcher."  Then when reformers found that the new electors voted largely for those who had always refused them the franchise, the advocates of it often expressed to me their misgivings as to its wisdom.  Lord Sherbrooke (then Robert Lowe) saw clearly that if liberty was to be maintained and extended, the State must educate its masters.

    But has this been done?  Has not education been impeded?  Have not electoral facilities been hampered?  Has not the franchise been restricted by onerous conditions, which keep great numbers from having any vote at all?  Has not the dual vote been kept up, which enables the wealthy to multiply their votes at will?  Before reformers have misgivings concerning the extension of liberty to the masses, they must see that the poor have the same opportunity of reaching the poll as the rich have.  George Eliot, who had the Positivist reluctance to see the people act for themselves, wrote: "Ignorant power comes in the end to the same thing as wicked power." [45]  But there is this difference in their nature.  "Ignorant power" can be instructed, and experience may teach it; but "wicked power" has an evil purpose, intelligently fixed and implacably determined.

    Does any reflecting person suppose, that when the vote was given to the mass of the people, they would be at once transmuted into intelligent, calculating, and patient politicians—that their passions would be tamed, and their vices extinguished—that they would forthwith act reasonably?  Much of this was true of the thoughtful working men.  But for a long time the multitude must remain unchanged until intelligence extends.  We have had renewed experience that—

    But the reformer has one new advantage now.  He is no longer scandalised by the excesses of ignorance, nor the perversities of selfishness.  Giving the vote has, if we may paraphrase the words of Shakespeare; put into

    It is no mean thing to have done this.  There is no reason for misgiving here.  If the people misuse or neglect to use their power, the fault is their own.  There is no one to reproach but themselves.

    Abolitionists of slavery may, if supine, feel misgivings at having liberated the negroes from their masters, where they were certain of shelter, subsistence, and protection from assault of others, and exposed them to the malice of their former owners, to be maltreated, murdered at will, lynched with torture on imaginary or uninvestigated accusations.  Those who aided the emancipation of the slaves are bound to ceaseless vigilance in defending them.  But despite the calamities of liberty, freedom has added an elastic race (who learn the arts of order and of wealth) to the family of mankind, and misgivings are obsolete among those who have achieved the triumphs and share the vigils and duties of progress.

    Mr. Mill was essentially a teacher, of the people.  He wished them to think on their own account—for themselves, and not as others directed them.  He did not wish them to disregard the thoughts of those wiser than themselves, but to verify new ideas as far as they could, before assenting to them.  He wished them not to take authority for truth, but truth for authority.  To this end he taught the people principles which were pathways to the future.  He who kept on such paths knew where he was.  Herbert Spencer said he had no wrinkles on his brow because he had discovered the thoroughfares of nature, and was never puzzled as to where they led.  Mr. Mill was a chartmaker in logic, in social economy, and in politics.  None before him did what he did, and no successor has exceeded him.  By his protest against the "subjection of women," he brought half the human race into the province of politics and progress.  They have not all appeared there as yet—but they are on the way.

 
CHAPTER XXIII.

ABOUT MR. GLADSTONE

    MR. GLADSTONE'S career will be the wonder of other generations, as it has been the astonishment of this.  Mr. Morley's monumental "Life" of him will long be remembered as the greatest of all contributions to the education of the British politician.  It is a life of Parliament as well as of a person.  Those who remember how Carpenter's "Political Text Book" was welcomed will know how much more this will be valued.

    Never before was a biography founded on material so colossal.  Only one man was thought capable of dealing with a subject so vast and complicated.  Great expectations were entertained, and were fulfilled in a measure which exceeded every anticipation.  The task demanded a vaster range of knowledge than was ever before required of a biographer.   Classic passages, not capable of being construed by the general reader, are translated, so that interest is never diverted nor baffled by flashes of learned darkness.  When cardinal and unusual terms are used, which might be dubiously interpreted, definitions are given which have both delight and instruction.  He who collects them from Mr. Morley's pages would possess a little dictionary of priceless guidance.  A noble action or a just idea is recognised, whoever may manifest it.  Some persons, as Mr. Gladstone said of Kinglake's famous book, "were too bad to live and too good to die."  Nevertheless, their excellence, where discernible, has its place in this biographical mosaic.  Thus unexpected pieces of human thought emerge in the careers of the historic figures who pass before the reader, by which he becomes richer as he proceeds from page to page.  Illuminating similes abound which do not leave the memory—such fitness is there in them.  Historic questions which interested those who lived through them, are made clear, by facts unknown or unregarded then.  Men whom many readers detested in their day are discovered to have some noble feature of character, unrevealed to the public before.  Mr. Morley is a master of character—a creator of fame by his discernment, discrimination, impartiality, and generosity to adversaries, from which the reader learns charity and wisdom as he goes along.  Knowledge of public life, law, and government, come as part of the charm of the incidents related.  Memorable phrases, unexpected terms of expression, like flashes of radium, gleam in every chapter.  The narrative is as interesting as the adventures of Gil Blas—so full is it of wisdom, wonder, and variety.  From all the highways, byways, and broadways of the great subject, the reader never loses sight of Mr. Gladstone.  All paths lead to him.  Like Bunyan's Pilgrim, the biographer goes on his shining way, guiding the reader to the shrine of the hero of the marvellous story.  Mr. Gladstone moves through Mr. Morley's pages as a king—as he did among men.  He sometimes fell into errors, as noble men have done in every age, but there was never any error in his purpose.  He always meant justly, and did not hesitate to give us new and ennobling estimates of hated men.  His sense of justice diffused, as it were, a halo around him.  Mr. Morley's pages give us the natural history of a political mind of unusual range and power which was without a compeer.  As Mr. Gladstone began, he advanced, listening to everybody, to use one of Mr. Morley's commanding lines: "He was flexible, persistent, clear, practical, fervid, unconquerable."

    In "Vivian Grey," Disraeli foreshadowed his bright and vengeful career.  In the same way, Mr. Gladstone wrote the whole spirit of his life in his first address to the electors of Newark.  His career is in that manifesto, which has never been reprinted.  The reader will be interested in seeing it.  Here it is:—

TO THE WORTHY AND INDEPENDENT ELECTORS OF THE BOROUGH OF NEWARK.

"GENTLEMEN,—Having now completed my canvass, I think it my duty as well to remind you of the principles on which I have solicited your votes as freely to assure my friends that its result has placed my success beyond a doubt.  I have not requested your favour on the ground of adherence to the opinions of any man or party, further than such adherence can be fairly understood from the conviction that I have not hesitated to avow that we must watch and resist that uninquiring and undiscriminating desire for change amongst us, which threatens to produce, along with partial good, a melancholy preponderance of mischief, which I am persuaded would aggravate beyond computation the deep-seated evils of our social state, and the heavy burthens of our industrial classes; which, by disturbing our peace, destroys confidence and strikes at the root of prosperity.  This it has done already, and this we must, therefore, believe it will do.  "For a mitigation of these evils we must, I think, look not only to particular measures, but to the restoration of sounder general principles—I mean especially that principle on which alone the incorporation of Religion with the State in our constitution can be defended; that the duties of governors are strictly and peculiarly religious, and that legislatures, like individuals, are bound to carry throughout their acts the spirit of the high truths they have acknowledged.  Principles are now arrayed against our institutions, and not by truckling nor by temporising, not by oppression nor corruption, but by principles they must be met.  Among their first results should be sedulous and especial attention to the interests of the poor, founded upon the rule that those who are the least able to take care of themselves ought to be most regarded by others.  Particularly it is a duty to endeavour by every means that labour may receive adequate remuneration, which unhappily, among several classes of our fellow-countrymen, is not now the case.  Whatever measures, therefore, whether by the correction of the Poor Laws, allotment of cottage grounds, or otherwise, tend to promote this object, I deem entitled to the warmest support, with all such as are calculated to secure sound moral conduct in any class of society.

    "I proceed to the momentous question of slavery, which I have found entertained among you in that candid and temperate spirit which alone befits its nature, or promises to remove its difficulties.  If I have not recognised the right of an irresponsible Society to interpose between me and the electors, it has not been from any disrespect to its members, nor from any unwillingness to answer their or any other questions on which the electors may desire to know my views.  To the esteemed secretary of the Society I submitted my reasons for silence, and I made a point of stating those views to him in his character of a voter.

    "As regards the abstract lawfulness of slavery, I acknowledge it simply as importing the right of one man to the labour of another; and I rest upon the fact that Scripture—paramount authority on such a point—gives directions to persons standing in the relation of master to slave for their conduct in that relation; whereas, were the matter absolutely and necessarily sinful, it would not regulate the manner.  Assuming sin is the cause of degradation, it strives, and strives most effectually, to cure the latter by extirpating the former.  We are agreed that both the physical and moral bondage of the slave are to be abolished.  The question is as to the order and the order only; now Scripture attacks the moral evil before the temporal one, and the temporal through the moral one, and I am content with the order which Scripture has established.

    "To this end I desire to see immediately set on foot, by impartial and sovereign authority, an universal and efficient system of Christian instruction, not intended to resist designs of individual piety and wisdom for the religious improvement of the negroes, but to do thoroughly what they can only do partially.  As regards immediate emancipation, whether with or without compensation, there are several minor reasons against it, but that which weighs most with me is, that it would, I much fear, exchange the evils now affecting the negro for others which are weightier—for a relapse into deeper debasement, if not for bloodshed and internal war. [46]  Let fitness be made the condition of emancipation, and let us strive to bring him to that fitness by the shortest possible course.  Let him enjoy the means of earning his freedom through honest and industrious habits, thus the same instruments which attain his liberty shall likewise render him competent to use it; and thus, I earnestly trust, without risk of blood, without violation of property, with unimpaired benefit to the negro and with the utmost speed which prudence will admit, we shall arrive at the exceedingly desirable consummation, the utter extinction of slavery.

    "And now, gentlemen, as regards the enthusiasm with which you have rallied round your ancient flag, and welcomed the humble representative of those principles whose emblem it is, I trust that neither the lapse of time nor the seductions of prosperity can ever efface it from my memory.  To my opponents my acknowledgments are due for the good humour and kindness with which they have received me, and while I would thank my friends for their zealous and unwearied exertions in my favour, I briefly but emphatically assure them that if promises be an adequate foundation of confidence, or experience a reasonable ground of calculation, our victory is sure.  I have the honour to be, gentlemen, your obliged and obedient servant,

" W. E. GLADSTONE.

"Clinton Arms, Newark, Tuesday, Oct. 9, 1832."

    The sincerity, the intrepidity, the sympathy with those who labour, the candour of statement, the openness of mind, the sentiments of piety and freedom (so rarely combined) of his life, are all there.  His whole career is but a magnificent enlargement of that address.  I have lingered before the hotel in the market-place, where he stayed and from which he made speeches to the electors.  There is no one living in Newark now who heard them.  Byron lived in the same hotel when he came to Newark with his early poems, which he had printed at a shop still standing in the market-place.  The township is enlarged, but otherwise unchanged as the Conservatism he then represented.  I have thrice walked through all the streets along which he passed, for he visited the house of every elector.  What a splendid canvasser he must have been, with his handsome face, his courtesy, his deference, his charm of speech, and infinite readiness of explanation!

    I first saw him in the old House of Commons in 1842.  Mr. Roebuck had presented a petition from me that sitting, and I remained to witness subsequent proceedings.  I only remember one figure, seemingly a young-looking man, tall, pallid-faced, with dark hair, who stood well out in the mid-space between the Ministerial benches and the table, and spoke with the fluency and freedom of a master of his subject.  Every one appeared to pay him attention.  I was told the speaker was Mr. Gladstone.

    When he visited the Tyne in 1862, I did not need to be told his name.  At that time I was connected with the Newcastle Chronicle, and it fell to me to write the leaders on Mr. Gladstone.  The miners were told, when they came up from the pits on that day, they would see a sight new in England, which they might not soon see again—a Chancellor of the Exchequer who was known to have a conscience.  Other holders of the same office may have had that commodity about them, but not employing it in public affairs, its existence had not been observed.  The penny paper which gave the miners that information, we told them would not exist but for Mr. Gladstone.  Thousands of miners came up from the pits of Durham and Northumberland, and great numbers succeeded in shaking hands with Mr. Gladstone as he approached the Harry Clasper, named after the well-known oarsman of the Tyne, who was on the river with Bob Chambers, who had won a hundred contests.  Clasper and Chambers were always named together.  Men swam before Mr. Gladstone's vessel a considerable distance, as though they were the water gods of the Tyne, preparing the way for their distinguished and unwonted visitor.  And what a journey it was!  Twenty-two miles of banks, counting both sides, were lined with people.  The works upon the Tyneside, with their grim piles high in the air, crowned with clouds of blackest smoke, out of which forks of sulphurous flames darted, revealing hundreds of persons surmounting roofs and pinnacles, cheering in ringing tones, above, while cannon boomed at their feet below.  Amid it all you could see everywhere women holding up their children to see the great Chancellor of the Exchequer go by.  The Tyne has seen no other sight like this.

    It was of this visit that I first wrote to Mr. Gladstone.  The arrangements for his wonderful reception were the work of Mr. Joseph Cowen, jun.  His father was Chief Commissioner for the Tyne—in person taller than Mr. Gladstone, with a gift of speech which sincerity made eloquent.  His son, who had organised the reception, never came in sight of Mr. Gladstone from first to last.  As I knew Mr. Gladstone liked to know what was below the surface as well as upon it, I sent him two informing notes.

    "Going to and fro in the land"—not with inquisitive malice as a certain sojourner mentioned in Job is reputed to have done—on lecturing purpose bent, sometimes on political missions, I knew the state and nature of opinion in many places.  The soul and Liberalism of the country was Nonconformist and religious.  Many in Parliament thought that London newspapers, published mainly for sale, and which furnished ideas for music-hall politicians—represented English opinion at large.  At times I wrote to members of Parliament that this was not so.  Mr. Walter James (since Lord Northbourne) was one who showed my reports to Mr. Gladstone.

    One day in 1877 Mr. Gladstone sent me a postcard, inviting me to breakfast with him.  He was as open in his friendship as in his politics.  In all things he was prepared to dare the judgment of adversaries.  Incidentally I mentioned the invitation to two persons only, but next day a passage appeared in a newspaper—much read in the House of Commons at that time—to the effect that Mr. Gladstone was inviting unusual persons to his house, who might be useful to him in his campaign on the Eastern question, so anxious was he to obtain partisan support in the agitation in which he was engaged.  There was no truth whatever in this, as Mr. Gladstone never referred to the subject, nor any of his guests.  But I took care at that time not to mention again an invitation lest it should occasion inconvenience to my host.  The visit to the Tyne had some picturesque incidents.  By happy accident, or it might be from thoughtful design, Mrs. Gladstone wore an Indian shawl having a circle in the centre, by which she was distinguishable.  Every person whom thousands come out to see, should have some individual mark of dress, and should never be surrounded by friends, when recognition is impossible and disappointing to the crowd.

    At Middlesboro', Mrs. Gladstone was taken to see molten metal poured into moulds.  I knew the ways of a foundry, and that if the mould happened to be damp, a shower of the liquid iron would fall upon those near.  The gentlemen around her seemed to think it an act of freedom to warn her of her danger, so I stepped up to her and told her of the risk she ran.  She said in after years, that if I did not save her life, I saved her from great possible discomfort.

    Middlesboro' was then in a state of volcanic chaos.  Mr. Gladstone predicted that it would become what it is now, a splendid town.  It was in the grey of a murky evening, when blast furnaces were flaming around him, that Mr. Gladstone began in a small office—the only place available—a wonderful comparison between Oxford and the scene outside.  Alas! the dull-minded town clerk stopped him, saying that they wished him to make his speech in the evening—not knowing that Mr. Gladstone had twenty speeches in him at any time.  The evening came, but the great inspiration returned no more.

    The night before he had spoken in Newcastle, when he made the long-remembered declaration on the war then raging in America, the reporter of the Electric Telegraph Company had fallen ill, and Mr. Cowen asked me to take his place.  It is easier to report Mr. Gladstone verbatim than to summarise his speech as he proceeded on his rapid, animated, and unhesitating way.  So I condensed the famous passage in these words: "Jefferson Davis had not only made a navy, he had made a nation (Sensation)."  The word was too strong.  There was no "sensation;" there was only a general movement as of unexpectedness, and "surprise" would have been a more appropriate word; but it did not come to me at the moment, and there was no time to wait for it, and the "sensational" sentence was all over London before the speech was ended.  The next night he recurred to the subject at Middlesboro' with qualifications, but the Press took no notice of them.  The "sensation" appended to the sentence had set political commentators on fire.

    A notable speech was made by the Mayor of Middlesboro'.  In presenting addresses to Mr. Gladstone, local magnates complimented him upon his distinction in Greek, which none of them were competent to appraise. The Mayor of Middlesboro', an honest, stalwart gentleman, said simply, "Mr. Gladstone, if I could speak as well as you can speak, I should be able to tell you how proud we are to have you among us."  No speech made to him was more effective or relevant, or pleased him more.

    By the courtesy of Mr. Bright, who procured me a seat in the Speaker's gallery when there was only one to be had, I heard Mr. Gladstone deliver, at midnight, his famous peroration, when, with uplifted hand, he said," Time is on our side."

    I remember the night well.  The Duke of Argyll came into the gallery, where he stood four or five hours.  I would gladly have given him my seat, but if I did so I must relinquish hearing the debate, as I must have left the gallery, as no stranger is permitted to stand.  So I thought it prudent to respect the privileges of the peerage—and keep my seat.

    In the years when I was constantly in the House of Commons, I was one day walking through the tunnel-like passage which leads from Downing Street into the Park, I saw a pair of gleaming eyes approaching me.  The passage was so dark I saw nothing else.  As the figure passed me I saw it was Mr. Gladstone.  On returning to "The House," as Parliament is familiarly called, I mentioned what I had seen to Mr. Vargus, who had sat at the Treasury door for fifty years.  "Yes," he answered, "there have been no eyes enter this House like Mr. Gladstone's since the days of Canning."

    Yet those eyes of meteoric intensity so lacked quick perception that he would pass by members of his party in the Lobby of Parliament without accosting them, fearing to do so when he desired it, lest he should mistake their identity and set up party misconceptions.  Mr. Gladstone ignored persons because he did not see them.  It should not have been left to Sir E. Hamilton to make this known after Mr. Gladstone's death.  The fact should have been disclosed fifty years before.

    To disappointed members with whom I came in contact, I used to explain that Mr. Gladstone's apparent slightingness was owing to preoccupation.  He would often enter the House absorbed by an impending speech—which was true—and thought more of serving his country than of conciliating partisans.  Lord Palmerston was wiser in his generation, who knew his followers would forgive him betraying public interest, if he paid attention to them.

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NOTES.

 
30.   First in Devonshire Street, Queen Square; in Chelsea; in Brompton; in earlier years in penury. Where he had command of a sitting-room, birds were flying about. Uncaged freedom was to Mazzini the emblem of Liberty.
 
31.   Of Mazzini's great abstemiousness it was written later in life:

Mr. Bolton King has published a notable book on the great Italian, containing more incidents in his career than any other English writer has collected. I confine myself mainly to those within my knowledge.
 
32.   The expenses of collection I defrayed myself.
 
33.   "Marino Faliero."
 
34.   See "Sixty Years," chap. lxxix.
 
35.   Some who read Mr. Morley's account of "Garibaldi's Departure" in his "Life of Gladstone" will think that Garibaldi did not require much imagination to see that he was not wanted to stay in England.  He heard, even from Mr. Gladstone, words of solicitude for his health, if he visited the many towns he had promised—and not one suggestion that he should limit the number, which could do him no harm.  There could be but one inference from this and Garibaldi drew it.
 
36.   Both poems, the one by Hugo and Garibaldi's in reply, were published with a preface by the present writer.
 
37.   I have preserved all letters of application for curiosity and conjecture. They might be of interest in the future. Some joined personally.
 
38.   Southall forwarded it to me. A revolver and case was sent me by request of a soldier who died on the field.
 
39.   Notably those of Professor A. Bain and Mr. Courtney.
 
40.   Like Samuel Morley, he took trouble to aid honest endeavour, often irrespective of agreement with it.
 
41.   It was in the form of a letter addressed to Joseph Cowen, jun.
 
42.  "Principles of Political Economy," Book ii.
 
43.   "Dialogues of Plato."  Introduction to "Republic," vol. ii.
 
44.   My little book, "John Stuart Mill, as the Working Classes Knew Him," was written to show Mr. Gladstone the answer that could be given to Hayward.
 
45.   "Felix Holt," p. 265.   Blackwood's stereotyped edition.
 
46.   Isaiah could not have prophesied more definitely.  Friends of the slaves stoutly denied that the Scriptures sanctioned their bondage.  They were afraid the fact would go against Christianity.  It was true nevertheless, and the American preachers pleaded this for their opposition and supineness towards abolition.