occasional, and remarkable, and admirable exceptions, but as a body we have received no service on all the great measures of change and improvement which have so blessed this country during the last half century. (Hear, hear.) ****

"I do not recommend this meeting or any constituency that they should pledge their candidates to vote for the abolition of the Established Church. I do not in the least degree recommend or approve of any body of men who complain that a party or party leader is chosen who has not formed the same opinion that I have upon this question. This is a question which has not come near that point yet. It is one of the gravest questions which a people has ever had to consider. It is far more important, and far more difficult than the question of the extension of the suffrage or of the redistribution of seats. (Hear, hear.) It is a question that goes down deep into the hearts of hundreds of thousands of good men and women in this country, and you cannot by a wrench make a great disturbance of this kind. What you have to do is to discuss it like intelligent and Christian men, with fairness to its ministers, with the sole object of doing what you believe to be good to your country and to the religion which the country professes. (Applause.) ****

"Now, Sir, in conclusion, I say I am not asking you or your constituencies, or any party or section of a party, to plunge into a violent agitation for the overthrow of the Established Church of England. I think it would be a great calamity, indeed, that a great change like that should come of violent hatred and discussion, and that it should be accomplished in a tempest which is almost like the turmoil of a great revolution. I ask you only to consider it, and I appeal not only to you who may be Nonconformists, but I appeal to those who do care about it, who do care, as they say they do, about Protestantism and religion. It is not for me to join in any crusade against the Church. I have offered to you to-night my humble contribution to the discussion of the greatest question of our time. (Oh!') If I am able to form any just judgment upon it, I should say that will be a great day for freedom in this country, and for Protestantism and Christianity, which shall witness the full enfranchisement of the Church within the realm of England. (Loud cheers.)"

IV.

EARL RUSSELL.

HE name of Earl Russell-or the far more familiar name of Lord John Russell-is to most Ameri

cans indelibly associated with the pages of Punch. For myself, at least, I had always seen him in imagination as an alert little page in buttons, called before Queen Victoria as a candidate for office, and standing in visible eagerness to run, fetch, and carry for his future mistress; while she sits and looks doubtfully at him with the anxious remark, "I'm afraid you're not strong enough for the place, John!" With this vivid picture in my mind, it was hard to substitute for that image the little old man who entered the House of Lords amid a hush of silence, during the exciting debate on the Alabama claims, and who was announced to me in a whisper as Earl Russell.

Next to the pictures in Punch, a single sentence of Sydney Smith's has probably done most to characterize this statesman for American readers. It occurs in his second letter addressed to Archdeacon Singleton:

“There is not a better man in England than Lord John Russell; but his worst failure is, that he is utterly ignorant of all moral fear; there is nothing he would not undertake. I believe he would perform the operation for the stone, build St. Peter's, or assume (with or without ten minutes' notice) the command of the Channel fleet; and no one would discover by his manner that the patient had died, the church tumbled down, and the Channel fleet been knocked to atoms. I believe his motives are always pure, and his measures often able; but they are endless, and never done with that pedetentous pace and that pedetentous mind in which it behooves the wise and virtuous improver to walk. He alarms the wise Liberals; and it is impossible to sleep soundly while he has the command of the watch.”

In his late volume of "Recollections and Suggestions," Lord Russell takes pains to plead not guilty" to this indictment. And as, in general, autobiography is the most interesting form of biography-and as this book is far more attractive for its particular passages than as a whole —I shall extract liberally from its pages, in illustration of certain special aspects of Earl Russell's career.

EARL RUSSELL AS DESCRIBED BY HIMSELF.

Lord Russell thus describes his early education. He was born, it must be remembered, August 19, 1792 :

"It may interest some persons to learn what education I had received before I entered Parliament. That educa* This word is adapted by Sydney Smith from Cicero's word pedetentim, meaning step-by-step, cautiously or gradually.

tion was in part broken and disturbed. After being at a private school at Sunbury, I went to Westminster, but was so ill there that, by the care and affection of my stepmother, the Duchess of Bedford, my father was persuaded to remove me, and I was sent with several young men of riper age to receive private tuition from the Rev. Mr. Smith, of Woodnesbury, in Kent. There I formed relations of friendship with the Earl of Clare, the late Duke of Leinster, his brother, Lord William Fitzgerald, and others. But I had not remained there long, when Lord and Lady Holland proposed that I should accompany them on a journey to Spain, in the troubled year 1808. When I returned from Spain, in 1810, I asked my father to allow me to go to the University of Cambridge. But he told me that, in his opinion, there was nothing to be learnt at English Universities, and procured for me admission to the house of Professor Playfair, at Edinburgh.

"There I had my studies directed and my character devoloped by one of the best and the noblest, the most upright, the most benevolent, and the most liberal of all philosophers.

66

Some years afterwards I traveled again in Spain with my cousin, the late Earl of Bradford, and Robert Clive, the son of Lord Powis. In the course of these travels I became acquainted with the Duke of Wellington, and had occasion to admire the calmness, the directness, and the patriotism which distinguished his character.

I

"But I need not follow this narrative any further. was about to accompany my companions to Constantinople, and return home by way of Moscow and St. Petersburg, when I was informed by a letter from my father

that his old friend, the acute and witty Fitzpatrick, was dead, and that he intended to propose me as candidate for Tavistock. Thus I became a member of Parliament before I was of age, and from that time my political life begins." Of these travels in Spain, and of his early initiation into the great contests of Europe, he has left this vivid picture:

"In the autumn of 1808, when only sixteen years of age, I accompanied Lord and Lady Holland to Corunna, and afterwards to Lisbon, Seville, and Cadiz, returning by Lisbon to England in the summer of 1809. They were eager for the success of the Spanish cause, and I joined to sympathy for Spain a boyish hatred of Napoleon, who had treacherously obtained possession of an independent country by force and fraud-force of immense armies-fraud of the lowest kind.

"In 1810, I went on a visit to my brother, Lord William Russell, at the Isla de Leon. He then served on the staff of Sir Thomas Graham, who was gallantly defending Cadiz against two French divisions.

"When my visit was over, Colonel James Stanhope, who likewise was on the staff of Sir Thomas Graham, proposed to me to go with him and Colonel Walpole to the head-quarters of Lord Wellington, who had just occupied with his army the lines of Torres Vedras.

"This offer I joyfully accepted, and, after a voyage to Faro, and a pleasant journey by Almodovar, we arrived at the quarters of General Hill.

"The next morning we rode with General Hill through

* "Recollections and Suggestions,” 1817-1873, by John Earl Rus sell. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1875. P. 4.