myself to chamber practice. He, for his part, after hearing the forebodings of the medical Cassandra, had judged it necessary to earn a competence as soon as possible. He therefore betook himself at once to the Australian bar; where, there being much less competition, he was very successful. His professional income, I think he said, at last rose from 1,000l. to 2,000l. a year.

He explained that his abnormal eyesight was dazzled by lateral rays; so that, in order to see comfortably, he had to keep his eyes almost closed. But he preferred wearing a pair of metal spectacles with a hole in the middle of each. Such spectacles are suggestive. A distinguished living clergyman told me that most of his clerical brethren seem to him to have blinkers on; they can see straight before them, but have no side-lights. Something analogous to the metal spectacles would seem to be needed by a class of men of a quite opposite character, by the class of widely analytical thinkers, such as Pattison, as Renan, and, indeed, as Mr. Lowe himself-thinkers who through their very catholicity of vision are oppressed by side-lights, and who find it hard to isolate the moral phenomenon they are examining; whose sense of sin tends to lose itself in a sense of the hereditary and incurable weakness of human nature, and whose pity for a single drop, so to speak, of human suffering tends to lose itself in pity for the limitless ocean of human, or rather of animal, suffering. Such philosophers have a high, perhaps the very highest, function to fulfil. But they must not be condemned if they have the défauts de leurs qualités. They are by nature 'dark with excess of light; or, if they seek to correct this natural tendency-if they, as it were, put on metal spectacles-they still cannot see as others see. In fact, their point of view is unintelligible to the rest of the world; and, the more honestly they try to explain that point of view, the more certain they are to be misconstrued. They furnish a clue to Bacon's dark saying: The man that never dissembles, deceives as much as the

dissembler; for the majority either does not understand, or does not believe him.'

Charles Austin, whose somewhat original views on democracy I have detailed in Safe Studies, once said to me, 'I agree with Lowe that the extension of the franchise will do no good in administration or legislation; but, unlike him, I think it dangerous to stand still.' Wishing to confront Mr. Lowe with such criticisms as the above, I was glad of the opportunity offered by a walk which I had with him (I think in 1867). He began by asking me whether I thought of entering Parliament, and, on my answering that my poverty and not my will prevented me, he exclaimed, Nous avons changé tout cela. Thereupon I ventured to express surprise at a statement made by him in a recent speech, that the belief in the inevitable triumph of democracy was the fundamental error of De Tocqueville. If you will show that I am wrong,' he said, I am quite willing to retract.'

I observed that, from time immemorial, things had been working in the democratic direction. He seemed unwilling to confine himself to this issue, but enlarged on the dangers of democracy, and quoted more fluently than distinctly some Greek verses bearing on the subject. I suppose they were from the Knights of Aristophanes; but I could not well follow them at the time, and certainly cannot recall them. At last he pointed to an omnibus and said, 'The Radical theory is as if the passengers in that omnibus were to turn the coachman off the box, and were all to begin tugging at the reins.'

It may not be without interest to contrast this view with the very opposite view of Bentham, whose plea for universal suffrage was reported to me by Mr. George Norman, the last survivor of the early Benthamites. All political ills, said Bentham, spring either from the want of will to do right or from the want of ability. The majority will not do wrong wilfully; for their interest is the standard of right, and they will not willingly go against that interest. Nor are they likely

to go wrong through ignorance. Most men, though they know little or nothing about medicine, have discernment enough to choose a good doctor; and in like manner most men, though they know little or nothing about politics, will have discernment enough to choose a good representative. Mr. Norman said that, when young, he thought this position irrefragable. But he owned that, with advancing years, he had grown more Conservative and less sanguine.

Mr. Lowe showed, both in his speeches and in his conversation, a complete and ready command of the classics. Great, therefore, was the surprise which he excited when, in mature life, he, as was thought, undervalued classical education. In consequence of this real or supposed disparagement of a source of his own influence and distinction, he was wittily satirized as the Philippe Égalité of classical culture; and such was his sense of humour that he was probably himself amused by the comparison. Occasions, however, there were when his sense of humour and his critical sense seem to have been in some measure warped by his principles. According to my father, he felt nothing but repugnance for the admonitory forebodings of that clever squib, The Battle of Dorking.

An incident illustrative of the view taken by Mr. Lowe on verse-composition at public schools has been related to me, so to say, by an ear-witness. One Harrow speech-day, many years ago, when the question of classics versus modern studies was under discussion, Lord Lyttelton, in returning thanks at the Head Master's luncheon, had spoken on the side of classics. Mr. Lowe had to return thanks for the visitors, and gave the following as an instance of the ordinary method of versemaking at public schools. When at Winchester, W. G. Ward had to compose some verses on the Hebrides. He was at his wits' end what to write; so, after a pause, he began (Cardwell, Lowe, and other schoolfellows standing round) :—

There are some islands in the Northern Seas,
At least I've heard so, called the Hebrides.

A dead stop ensued. Looking into a gazetteer, he found the islands were without trees. So he went on :—

The people there have very little wood-

Another pause; then he went on again,

Lowe broke in

Therefore they can't build ships,

They wish they could.

Can these verses have been serious? 1

1

For the two following anecdotes I am indebted to an accomplished scholar and divine who, without guaranteeing their verbal accuracy, has kindly sent them to me:

Michell was in the Common-room of St. Mary Hall, when a batch of Australian papers was brought to him. He looked through them, and suddenly exclaimed, Well, here is a startling proof of Lowe's memory. He quotes a passage from notes on Aristotle by a French writer, which I showed him three years ago, and which he cannot have seen since; I am satisfied that there is no copy in Australia; the book is too rare.' He then called the Common-room scout, and told him to fetch the book from his library. When Michell saw it he said: There's the very mark I put in it for Lowe, and I have not opened the book since.' The company compared the passage, more than half a page long, with Lowe's speech, and it was a literal rendering into English. Michell was sure that Lowe had not taken a copy. He also told of one of his pupils, whom I understood to be Lowe, that, when reading Thucydides, he found the man had not read a word of Herodotus. On Michell expressing indignant surprise, the pupil went away, sat up all night, and without leaving his rooms read through the whole of Herodotus at a sitting, and stood Michell's cross-examination in it the next day.

In illustration of the opposite view of school verse-making, I am tempted to contrast with the above doggerels, two typical lines which, in my Oxford days, were quoted as a very juvenile effusion of one who has since achieved high literary distinction. In order to show how wide may be the influence even of an insignificant person, he wrote (as reported):—

There's not a pebble tumbling on the beach

But shakes Orion and the Pleiades.

These lines especially (indirectly suggestive of Thy yŷv kwhow) strike me as having the exact ring of the composition of a very clever schoolboy. They are pretentious; but they have the note of promise.

Lori Acer lace has favoured me with very interestins par Menara acout Love, some of which have a betinet les

That has been already mentioned.

Accommodation le vise for Ministers in the Ex Commora wa care. He, as Chancellor of the Ezibeyzer. Home Semetary, wared the same mal room. My atter lane the sittings of the House was necessarily much more proing-d n ́a, and he kept a email efllection of books to while away the They were mostly clavics. I remember one lay finding him a book in his hand which he showed me, and talked of with h approbation. It was the work attributed to Tacitus, De C Oratoribus.

Once at a dinner party somebody referred to Pope's well-know Lines on Sir R. Walpole in private life

Seen him I have, but in his happier hour
Of social pleasure, ill exchanged for power;
been him uncumber'd with the venal tribe,
Smile without art, and win without a bribe.
Would he oblige me? Let me only find
He does not think me what he thinks mankind.'

He asked me if I could repeat them, which I did. Ah!' he said, after listening to them with intense enjoyment, 'we have no one now who can write like that.' I understood him to mean that not only was Pope unrivalled in his way, but that he was a greater poot than any living one.

In fact, Lowe, like Grote and Charles Austin, shared Byron's preference

Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope.

Is it not probable that towards this preference many scholars, and most orators, whatever may be the critical fashion of their time, have a conscious or unconscious bias?

I would call ospecial attention to these lines because nothing gives us a truer insight into Lowo's inner self than to see before us the poetry he so much admired, and likewise, perhaps, because to me it seems that the last couplet, if not also the first, has (mutato nomine) a more special application than at first sight appears.