would permanently occupy the place of anything better. It is entirely unnecessary, since there is ample reason for believing that London is now perfectly capable of supporting such an establishment as that desired as an ordinary commercial undertaking, and that private enterprise may be safely trusted to provide this in due course.

HUGH ARTHUR SCOTT.

LORD ACTON'S LETTERS

In this book, which has been long anxiously expected, Mr. Gladstone's daughter has told us a great deal about one of the most interesting of our contemporaries-quite the most remarkable man-who followed, with devoted loyalty, all the chances and changes of her father's fortunes, when many, who were at least as devoted during his first great Administration, found themselves utterly unable to acquiesce in his new departure.

The letters which she has given to the world extend from 1879 to 1885, and cover accordingly a period marked by many great events, such as the Midlothian campaigns, the struggle with Parnell, the Egyptian and Soudan expeditions, and the surrender to Home Rule. During the greater part of that period I was absent in India, and was not in correspondence with Acton, but at no period, even when we thought alike about many things, had I anything remotely approaching the opportunities of knowing what he was thinking that fell to the lot of the lady to whom we owe this full revelation of the working of the mind of one of the most learned Englishmen who ever drew breath.

I gather from a perusal of this volume, and from an excellent letter, quoted in the Introduction, from Mr. Jackson of Trinity, Cambridge, that alike with Mrs. Drew and with his Cambridge friends, Acton was much more communicative than with his political or social allies in London. I knew him, as well as most people not connected with him by religious sympathy or relationship, from 1860 till his death, but he very seldom talked either to me, or to any of the persons in whose society we most frequently met, about passing events or Parliamentary struggles.

While sincerely grateful for so much new light thrown upon a career which has always had, since first Montalembert talked to me about him at Paris forty-four years ago, a kind of fascination for me, I must notice an oversight which I regret. One of Acton's characteristics was a kind of playful cynicism which by no means spared himself, and with which he was apt to treat many things and persons he very highly esteemed. That was far from being a defect in his conversation, and gave harmless pleasure to most people who en

countered it, not least to those who were for the moment the object of his animadversion. Sharp sayings of this kind are quite in place in letters to an intimate friend, but they change their aspect when they are printed and pass into the hands of persons who never set eyes on the author, conveying thus a totally wrong impression of his views upon many subjects.

I could wish that Mrs. Drew, who has told us so much which it is pleasant and interesting to know, had struck her pen across a few passages which those who knew Acton will appraise at their exact value, but which those who did not know him will inevitably misunderstand.

The following passage on p. 41 will, I trust, be remembered when the next edition is called for:

Please do not destroy the ease and serenity and confidence of my letters, which are chatted and whispered more than written, by wanting to show them -even to Morley, in whom I have great reliance. I should write quite differently, as you rightly say, if I was not writing to the most chosen of correspondents.

Of course the case is a good deal altered when the writer is no more. Well-thought-out opinions may then often be properly published, and sometimes what a judge once called 'riding opinions'— that is to say, opinions formed on the spur of the moment, without much study. What I object to are semi-jocular pronouncements which are not really opinions at all.

Before I come to the Letters themselves it is only right to give a word of praise to the excellent memoir prefixed to them by Mr. Herbert Paul, which tells the reader all he need want to know before beginning them, and contrasts most agreeably with the plethoric two-volume life under which he so frequently suffers.

The first letter in the collection was dated at Mentone on October 31, 1879, and is chiefly interesting from its notices of various prominent persons whom its writer had seen while passing through Paris or elsewhere. He speaks, both in it and in a later letter, kindly and justly of M. Waddington—far more kindly than did Disraeli, who said: 'Oh, I hope they will not kill poor Waddington. It would make assassination ridiculous.' He has a good word too for Scherer, of whose Essays he always spoke highly, and for Taine, who, he remarked, had almost the solidity of Scherer and more than his brilliancy.

There is a strange judgment in his next letter, dated in the spring of 1880, in which he says that his correspondent would think Burke's Bristol speeches poor by comparison with some which her father had been delivering, but he goes on to add: Charles Sumner once said to me," Mr. Burke legislated from those hustings," ››› which is profoundly true.

In the same letter occurs a very weighty passage about Seeley,

whom he afterwards succeeded at Cambridge, in which he complains that that historian did not go straight at the 'impersonal forces' which rule the world, such as Predestination, Equality, Divine Right, and so forth.

It is clear from a letter of the 1st of June that Acton was one of those who wished Mr. Gladstone, and not Lord Hartington, to take the helm in 1880. If that matter had been otherwise settled, it would, I think, have prevented many troubles, and Mr. Gladstone would have passed into private life in a blaze of glory; but it was out of the question; the popular vote would have gone overwhelmingly the other way.

Some remarks on Sir Bartle Frere introduce the observation (p. 17) that Indians are not generally a healthy element in the body politic, and he has the constant vice of Indians-Belief in Force.'

Every sensible man who has ruled in India or elsewhere must believe in force as a last resort. The symbol of our rule in that country, and indeed in all places where we really rule, must be the sword crossed with the scroll. That is only an adumbration of the truth that Government must have two pillars for its support, of which one is policy and the other the power of compulsion. Even Parnell, unscrupulous demagogue as he was, scoffed at the idea of governing Ireland without coercion, whether that country had or had not Home Pule. And in India the absence of coercion would inaugurate a devil's delight, such as that from which we rescued her when the Pindaree was still in the land, and many a bold brigand might say, with the hero of Sir Alfred Lyall's admirable poem :

I rode with Nawab Amir Khan in the old Mahratta War

From the Deccan to the Himalay-five hundred of one clan.

We asked no leave of Prince or Chief as we swept through Hindusthan.

I am glad to observe that Acton pays a tribute to Sir Bartle Frere's 'breadth of mind,' which was so great a pleasure to me during the years I passed at the India Office in constant communication with him. But Acton was not at his best when speaking of India. He knew less about it than he did about most things, resembling in that his political leader, in the three volumes of whose life, in spite of Mr. Morley's all-embracing research, India is barely mentioned.

On p. 19 Mr. Morley is spoken of as a bald Cobdenite.' Acton never fully understood Cobden. I remember his meeting him at my house, and being evidently more struck by his bourgeois way of looking at things than by anything else about him. That was not surprising. Almost all of us felt the same while Cobden lived, but Acton, who saw so much of Sir Louis Mallet at Cannes during the period when these letters were written, ought to have learnt more about him from Cobden's most intelligent disciple, for Mallet's article in the North British Review on the 'Political Opinions of Richard Cobden,'

afterwards republished by the Cobden Club, threw more light on the views and aims of that remarkable man than did anything that he himself either wrote or spoke.

A little later (p. 22) we come on some friendly remarks about Lord Reay and a judgment on Morier, true enough as far as it goes, that he was exceedingly able, resolute, and energetic. If he had always remembered that douceur goes further than violence he would have been the best of our diplomatists at that period. As it was I think he came next to Odo Russell.

Speaking of Sir Henry Maine, Acton says (p. 26): 'I may say that I esteem him, with Mr. Gladstone, Newman, and Paget, the finest intellect in England.'

On p. 31 there is a curious statement to the effect that Lord Arthur Russell had almost only one fault, a too great fondness for secrets. Lord Arthur Russell had what Renan called 'la grande curiosité' in a very high degree. It was one of his many merits; but I never detected in him the slightest desire to pry into anything which could legitimately be held to be a secret. Acton never realised that he himself was a walking problem to all his acquaintances, and it is impossible for intelligent men to live with a walking problem without desiring to comprehend it. I dare say a hedgehog thinks that every dog it meets is too anxious to pry into secrets. The fault, however, if there be any, is not in the dog, but in the strange enigmatic creature which excites his wonder. The power of exciting that kind of wonder is a doubtful blessing. Unless the interest is sustained by strong personal regard, it is apt to degenerate into the kind of feeling which Browning had for Carlyle. 'I never see him,' he once remarked to me, 'without being reminded of a leopard in the Zoological Gardens, at which one looks and says to oneself, "You're a fine spotted creature, you are.'

Excellent are most of the remarks on St.-Hilaire (p. 37 and the following pages), though requiring to be a little modified by some caveats rather further on. I knew him from 1860 until the end, and agree with all the praise, but I agree with the censure also, for in conversation during the month of April 1881 he certainly conveyed to my mind a wrong impression as to his policy about Tunis. I dare say the Legitimist Marquis was not far wrong when he said: 'C'est un honnête homme, qui nous coupera la tête de la manière la plus honnête du monde."

At p. 40 we find the remark: 'Remembering Macaulay, Circourt and Rémusat, I do not care to believe that Cousin or Radowitz was far superior to them in talk.' I never knew Macaulay, but it would certainly have been difficult to beat Circourt in a particular kind of talk. Rémusat I knew, but less. As for Cousin, I am quite willing to believe in his greatness as a talker, though I was much more struck with his petulance; but both Renan and Littré thought I was wrong in