Chapter 4 FROM REPORTER TO EDITOR.

First Visit to London-The Capital in 1862-Acquaintance with

Sothern-Bursting of the Bradfield Reservoir-Attendance at Public

Executions and at Floggings-Assuming the Editorship of the Preston

Guardian-Political and Literary Influences-Great Speeches by

Gladstone and Bright-Bright's Contempt for Palmerston-Robertson

Gladstone Defends his Brother-Death of Abraham Lincoln-Meeting with his

Granddaughter.

My first visit to London was on the occasion of the opening of the International Exhibition of 1862. The abominable system of Parliamentary trains, which made it necessary that the third-class passenger should rise in the middle of the night if he had to make a journey of any length, was then in force. I had, therefore, to start at five o'clock in the morning in order that I might reach London in the evening. I can still recall some of the emotions of that journey. London was to me the city of all cities-the one great goal of the journalist's ambition. I took short views of life even then, but my secret hope, ever present to my mind, was that I might some day attain a post in connection with the London Press. As the crawling train came into the southern counties-farther south than I had ever been in my life before-I remember counting the milestones on the road, and suffering all the emotions of the youth in "Locksley Hall" as he draws nearer to the world's central point.

My first impression, when I found myself in the cab that was to carry me to the Brompton Road, where lodgings had been engaged for me, was one of bewilderment at the length of the streets. I had studied a plan of London, and thought from it that I could, in case of need, find my way easily on foot from King's Cross to Brompton. Now I discovered, to my dismay, that streets which had seemed no longer than those with which I was familiar at Newcastle stretched to a length that was apparently interminable; whilst instead of one unbroken thoroughfare I was rattled in my cab through squares and streets innumerable, the names of none of which had I been able to read upon my plan. My next impression was one of delight at the fidelity with which little bits of street scenery had been portrayed by John Leech in Punch. In Newcastle we knew nothing of the kitchen area and the portico. I was filled with joy when, in passing through the Bloomsbury squares, I recognised, as I thought, the very houses, porticoes, and areas that Leech had made the background for his magnificent flunkeys and neat parlour-maids.

The streets of London were a good deal dingier and dirtier in 1862 than they are to-day, and they were certainly vastly noisier. The wooden pavement was unknown, and the roar of traffic in crowded thoroughfares was positively deafening. The window-boxes filled with the flowers that are now so common and so pretty a feature of the London summer were rare, as also were the coloured awnings and outside blinds now almost universal in the better-class of thoroughfares. Hyde Park was untidy and neglected, flower-beds being practically unknown. The fine open space at Hyde Park Corner did not exist, and Piccadilly Circus was a circus really, and one of very narrow extent. But though far from possessing the magnificence of which it can now boast, London forty years ago had certain advantages over the city of to-day. There were no enormous piles of flats shutting out air and light from the streets, where both are so much needed. Few of the houses were more than four storeys in height, and the irregular architecture which then prevailed in Piccadilly-that most delightful of all the streets of the world-added to its attractiveness. But I must not be led into a digression upon London, a city so great and wonderful that a volume might easily be filled with the story of the associations it holds in my memory.

On the day after my arrival in town I was present at the State Opening of the Great Exhibition of 1862, the second-and apparently the last-of the international exhibitions held in London. Its interest was sensibly diminished by the fact that, in consequence of the death of the Prince Consort, neither the Queen nor any member of her family was present. The Duke of Cambridge, then in the prime of his manhood, took the leading part in the ceremony, and he had as his supporters Prince Frederick of Prussia, afterwards the Emperor Frederick, and the Prince of Hesse. We were not so clever in those days at arranging spectacles as we have since become, and, shortly before the hour fixed for the opening ceremony, a good deal of confusion still reigned upon the da?s set apart for the official notabilities. I was amused to see Lord Granville, who was, if I remember aright, chairman of the Royal Commissioners, broom in hand, vigorously sweeping the carpet in front of the State chairs only a few moments before he had to rush off to receive the Duke of Cambridge. My most vivid recollection of the opening ceremony is the singing of Tennyson's fine ode, composed for the occasion. I can still recall the cadence of the first lines as they fell upon my ears.

A visit to the House of Commons, where I remember hearing speeches from Lord Palmerston and Sir George Cornewall Lewis, and where I gazed with longing eyes upon the occupants of the reporters' gallery, fills up my memories of this first sight of London. I might, indeed, have included in them some reference to Sothern, the actor, who was then at the height of his glory in the famous part of Lord Dundreary. But it was at Newcastle, not in London, that I actually made Sothern's acquaintance. No actor ever made a single character so famous as this part of Dundreary was made by Sothern. When he came to Newcastle on his first provincial tour I met him, and spent some pleasant evenings with him after the play. He was a man of refined speech and good social gifts. His besetting weakness, as I learned even then, was that addiction to practical jokes which, on more than one occasion in his subsequent career, involved him in unpleasant situations. One of his favourite tricks was to select some portly and self-important gentleman whom he saw passing along Piccadilly or Oxford Street, and, rushing up to him, to claim him as his dearly loved but long-lost uncle. The more strenuously the victim denied the relationship, the more eloquently pathetic and indignant became Sothern. A crowd always collected quickly, and more than once the police were summoned to relieve the putative uncle from the presence of his unwelcome nephew.

Sothern told me that he was driven nearly mad during the long run of Lord Dundreary-or, rather, Our American Cousin, as the play was named-at the Haymarket. He found it almost impossible to repeat his own jokes before a house in which he invariably recognised many familiar faces. He was constantly driven to vary his "gag," in order to amuse these veterans of the theatre, and it was in a large measure to escape from them that he made his provincial tour. In one of his conversations on the stage with the fair Georgina, who was endeavouring to entrap him into marriage, he used sometimes, at the moment when the lady thought that he was about to propose, to put a question of a very different kind: "Can you wag your left ear?" I asked him one day what had made him invent so ridiculous a question as this. "Because I can wag my left ear," was his prompt response, and straightway I saw the organ in question flapping about like a sail in a breeze. The Theatre Royal at Newcastle in those days was under the management of Mr. E. D. Davis, a well-known figure in the provincial theatrical world. It was before the days of touring companies, and Mr. Davis was supported by an excellent body of artists, including his brother and his son Alfred, as well as his niece Emily Cross. I went to the theatre in the dignified capacity of dramatic critic; but neither then, nor at any subsequent period of my life, did I fall a victim to that passion for the drama to which so many Pressmen succumb. Indeed, I have a lively recollection of incurring the well-merited reproof of pretty Miss Cross for having engaged in one of the stage boxes in a hot political discussion with another Newcastle journalist, Mr. Joseph Cowen to wit. Yet it was at Newcastle that I had my first and last association with dramatic authorship. One of the Davises had written a play which he had called Wild Flowers. He asked me to read the manuscript, and when I had done so I suggested that it should be entitled The Marriage Contract, an emendation which the author duly accepted.

My term of service on the Newcastle Press came to an end sooner than I had anticipated. The chief feature of my reporting experiences in 1863 was the meeting of the British Association in my native town. There was keen rivalry between the Journal and the Chronicle-Mr. Cowen's newspaper-with regard to the reporting of all local matters. Unfortunately for me, the Chronicle was a wealthy paper, and the Journal a very poor one. I had, therefore, to wage an unequal war with my richer rival. A British Association meeting throws a heavy strain upon the newspapers of the town in which it takes place. Half-a-dozen sections meet every day, and all must be reported; whilst there are, in addition, evening meetings and social functions, the story of which must be told from day to day. Sir William Armstrong, then just coming into fame as a maker of guns, though long known to Newcastle as a great mechanical engineer and the inventor of the hydraulic crane, was the president of the meeting. This added to the pride which the people of Newcastle felt in the fact that their town had been chosen for the scene of so distinguished a gathering. In those days local patriotism ran very high in the old town. We were intensely provincial, and our favourite belief was that Newcastle stood unrivalled among the cities of the earth. When any distinguished stranger came amongst us-as, for example, Mr. Gladstone, on the occasion to which I have already referred-we washed our face, and put on our best clothes in order to impress the visitor. We had something of the perfervid nature of the Scot in our characters, and rose to extraordinary heights of enthusiasm on very indifferent pretexts. It followed that when we had so distinguished a body as the British Association to receive as our guests, and when we had furnished in one of our own citizens the president of the meeting, we almost went out of our minds in our exultant delight. I do not know if Newcastle is still capable of these transports of enthusiasm. I rather think that the local patriotism which distinguished so many of our cities fifty years ago is now, in these days of incessant intercommunication, merged in the larger patriotism of the nation. Be this as it may, I must explain that my dissertation on the manner in which Newcastle received the British Association in 1863 is merely intended to account for the fact that, as a result of that meeting, I suffered from a serious illness, brought on by anxiety and overwork. I found that reporting, when you had to compete with a formidable rival possessing a staff three times as large as your own, was laborious, as well as exciting; and having a desire to attempt literary work upon a higher level, I gave up my position as a reporter, and adopted instead the vocation of a leader-writer.

My last bit of work as a reporter for the Newcastle Journal was in describing the accident which happened at Bradfield, near Sheffield, in the spring of 1864. The dam of the great reservoir from which Sheffield drew its water supply burst, and a torrent of water, many feet in depth, and nearly a quarter of a mile in width, suddenly rushed down a narrow valley, and flooded the lower part of Sheffield. The tragic occurrence was subsequently described by Charles Reade in his novel, "Put Yourself in His Place." Reade was not an eye-witness of the scene that was presented after the flood had spent its force, but I can bear testimony to the fact that he described it accurately. Certainly it was a wonderful and terrible sight that was presented when I visited the place a few hours after the bursting of the dam. The streets of Sheffield were ploughed up to the depth of many feet; lamp-posts were twisted like wire, and many houses either stood tottering with one of their sides clean swept away, or lay a mere heap of ruins. Hundreds of lives were lost. A great battle could not have dealt death more freely than did this flood. Most of the victims were drowned in their beds, and it was a terrible sight to see the long rows of corpses, clad in night-dresses, that were laid out in the public building that had been hastily turned into a mortuary. I think, indeed, the horror of that spectacle surpassed even that of the scene at Hartley New Pit, when the victims of the accident there were disinterred.

The newspaper reporter has still, in the discharge of his duty, to see many strange and painful things, but he is now spared some of the most trying sights to which he was exposed in my reporting days. Among these, none was so painful and so revolting as a public execution. I attended several executions during my connection with the Newcastle Press, and I was a witness in 1868 of the last public execution in England-that of Barrett, the Fenian, of whom I shall have more to say by-and-by. I am thankful to know that the necessity of attendance at these dreadful scenes is no longer imposed upon the journalist, and I feel a profound pity for those officials who are compelled by an imperative duty to be present at the private strangling of their fellow-creatures. It is true, however, that use hardens the heart and deadens the nerves. I remember how, on the first occasion of witnessing an execution, as I stood trembling at the foot of the scaffold on which the victim was about to appear, I noticed an old reporter, for whom I entertained a great personal respect, pacing up and down beside me, reading the New Testament. In the passion of horror and pity that filled my young heart, I concluded that my friend was seeking spiritual comfort in view of the event in which we were about to take part as spectators and recorders. I said something to him about the horror of the act we were shortly to witness. He looked up with a placid smile from his reading, and said gently-for he was essentially a gentle man-"Yes, very sad, very sad; but let us be thankful it isn't raining." And then he calmly returned to his daily reading of the Word. If even gentle hearts can thus grow callous, what must be the "moral effect" of an execution upon those who are already brutalised?

Another unpleasant sight which reporters are now spared is the flogging of garrotters. When the Act authorising this punishment was passed, provision was made that the representatives of the Press should be present when it was inflicted. More than once I have had to witness these floggings in the course of my ordinary duty. I confess that they did not affect me as they seemed to affect most of my colleagues. An execution, with the violent thrusting of a human soul into the unknown, moved me deeply; but the physical punishment of a ruffian who had himself inflicted atrocious suffering upon some innocent person seemed to be such well-deserved retribution that even the coward's shrieks for mercy made no impression upon my nerves; and yet I have seen reporters who could laugh and joke at an execution faint at the flogging of a garrotter. So differently are human beings constituted!

At the end of June, 1864, I left my native town, and went to Preston to undertake editorial duties in connection with the Preston Guardian-the leading Liberal paper in North Lancashire. It was a custom amongst journalists in those days always to give a farewell entertainment to a brother of the Press when he quitted a town where he had been engaged for any length of time. I was entertained at the usual complimentary dinner, and was made the recipient of a very handsome testimonial. I felt most unfeignedly that I had not deserved it, yet the possession of the gold watch and collection of standard books subscribed for out of the scanty earnings of my colleagues was a real comfort to me when, with a sad heart, I left the sacred shelter of my home and quitted the town in which the whole of my life up to that moment had been spent. I reached Preston one summer evening as homesick as any lad could have been. I did not know the name of a single person in the town except that of the proprietor of the Guardian, Mr. Toulmin. I did not even know the name of an hotel at which to stay for the night. A porter at the railway station told me the name of the chief inn, and thither I repaired with my belongings.

An amusing experience befell me here, which, as it relates to a state of things that is now obsolete, I may recount. On the day after my arrival, having introduced myself at the Guardian office, and taken formal possession of my new post, I returned to my hotel in time for the daily dinner which the waitress had informed me was served at one o'clock. The coffee-room, when I entered it, was filled by commercial travellers, all hovering with hungry looks around the table that had been laid for dinner. They seemed relieved when I, as shy a youth as could anywhere be found, entered the room, and instantly seated themselves at the table. I looked round for some corner in which I might hide myself from what seemed to me to be their almost ferocious gaze, and was filled with alarm when I found that the only seat left vacant was that at the head of the table. Instinctively I shrank from so conspicuous a place, and as I moved away the hungry company seemed to glare at me more fiercely than ever. A waitress approached me, and saying, "You are president of the day, sir," motioned me to the vacant seat at the head of the board. I do not think I was ever more miserable or more frightened in my life than when, under her imperious direction, I took my seat and met the gaze of a dozen hungry men: on the sideboard stood the soup tureens, the waiting-maids beside them, but not a cover was lifted or a motion made, and dead silence filled the room. I sat in blushing bewilderment, waiting for the dinner to be served. Suddenly, from the other end of the table, a harsh voice issued from the lips of a burly, red-faced man. "Mr. President, if you are a Christian, you'll perhaps be good enough to say grace, and let us get to our dinner, which we want very badly." I managed to stammer forth the formula of my childhood, and thought the worst was over. Not a bit of it. No sooner had the soup been audibly consumed than the hated voice from the foot of the table again assailed me. "Mr. President, I really don't know what you mean by neglecting your duties in this way, but let me tell you that this is not a company of teetotallers." "Ask them what wine they would like," whispered the waitress behind me, who saw my plight, and who evidently pitied it, for she added, "Don't let that nasty man at the other end of the table bully you." But I was incapable of maintaining the deception in which I had been innocently involved, and, taking my courage in both hands, I frankly told the company that I was not a commercial traveller, had never in my life dined at a commercial table, and, as I knew nothing of the usages of such a place, would beg the gentleman at the other end of the table to take upon himself the duties of president. There was a burst of laughter from the majority of the diners, and good-humour was instantly restored. My vis-à-vis, who was addressed as "Mr. Vice," was, indeed, somewhat grumpy; but I had won the goodwill of the others, and was allowed to look on, a silent spectator, whilst the many mystic rites and usages which distinguished the "commercial table" of that epoch were duly celebrated. Strange to say, that was not only my first but my last experience of the kind, and now I imagine that the old customs of the road-the wine-drinking, the speech-making, the toasts, and the graces before and after meat-are all things of the past.

My editorial career at Preston began with a somewhat painful and even dramatic episode. I had returned to the office, after my dinner with the commercial travellers, in order to attend to my duties for the day. The Guardian was published twice a week-on Wednesday and Saturday. This was Tuesday afternoon. The proprietor had informed me that he was already provided with a leading article for Wednesday's publication, and my duties were therefore confined to the sub-editing of the news and the writing of a few editorial paragraphs. Suddenly Mr. Toulmin entered my room, and, without uttering a word, placed a telegram on the desk before me. It consisted of these words, still imprinted on my memory: "Washington Wilkes died suddenly last night while addressing a public meeting." I knew Mr. Wilkes by name as a Radical journalist of considerable ability, who wrote regularly for the Morning Star. Accordingly I expressed my regret on hearing of his death. "Yes," said Mr. Toulmin, bluntly; "that's all very well, but now you'll have to write the leader for to-morrow, for Wilkes was to have written it." Under these startling circumstances I penned my first leading article for the Preston Guardian. Though I thus stepped into the shoes of a dead man, I fear that I can hardly have filled them; but this was, on the whole, not to be wondered at.

Mr. Toulmin, my new employer, was a man of marked character. Long before my business connection with him ceased, I learned to regard him with genuine respect and liking, and these feelings I entertained for him to the day of his death. But his somewhat rough exterior was not altogether prepossessing, and when I came to him first as a raw lad, shy, sensitive, and intolerant of manners that were foreign to my own, I must frankly confess that I felt repelled by him. Besides, I quickly discovered that I should have to fight my own battles if I wished to preserve my professional rights and dignity. I had been engaged as editor and sub-editor of the Guardian, and as it was my first editorship, it need hardly be said that I valued my position highly. Mr. Toulmin, I subsequently found, had a reputation for getting all he could out of the members of his staff without much regard to the customs of journalism. Thus, I had scarcely finished the article which would have been written by Washington Wilkes but for his sudden death, when Mr. Toulmin, coming into my room, expressed his warm satisfaction at the quickness with which I had turned out my work; then, with an almost paternal smile upon his face, he laid before me some pages of manuscript, and in an insinuating voice said: "Would you mind keeping your eye upon this whilst I run over this proof?" In an instant I grasped his meaning. I had been engaged as editor, and he proposed to fill up my spare time by employing me as a proof-reader. For a moment I was almost apoplectic with indignation at what I regarded as an outrage upon my dignity. To this day I am thankful that I controlled my temper, but I am not less thankful that I had the courage-and it required some courage-to say to him, with a smile as insinuating as his own: "I should have been delighted, but unfortunately I have an engagement out of doors." And thereupon I left the room, triumphant.

Never again did Mr. Toulmin invite me to assist him in reading a proof, and long afterwards he made frank admission to me of the fact that this incident proved that I was "not going to be put upon." Very soon I found that he was not only a kind-hearted but a very able man. He had begun life, at the age of six, in a cotton factory. The statement to-day is hardly credible, but such is the fact. In those cruel times, when no Lord Ashley had as yet arisen to open the door of the workman's prison-house and set the children free, this poor child had been shut up from six in the morning till six at night in the fetid atmosphere of a cotton-mill. God knows what the economic value of such a weakling's labour may have been! One would think that a South Carolina planter would have been wiser than to work his "stock" at such an age. Be this as it may, my friend had passed through this terrible apprenticeship to toil-always hungry, always tired; and had not only survived it, but emerged from it a man. When I knew him he could talk calmly of the horrors of his childhood, but there was an undercurrent of bitterness in his reference to those times which one could understand and respect. He was an ardent and convinced Liberal, and I think that I owe more to his teaching for the character of my own political views than I owe to anybody else.

When I went to Lancashire in 1864 the terrible effects of the cotton famine were everywhere to be seen. History has done justice to the noble fortitude with which the operatives of Lancashire "clemmed" (starved) in silence during that awful time. Never shall I forget the pale, pinched faces of the men and women as they walked to and from their daily labour. The worst of the struggle was over, but hundreds of great mills were still closed, and those which were open only ran half-time. The working classes in Lancashire, as in most places, were on the side of the North in the American Civil War, and not even the sufferings which that war caused them, made them abate their opposition to the slave-holding South. But in Lancashire, as elsewhere, the upper classes-with the exception of the few who followed the noble leadership of John Bright-were enthusiasts on the side of the South, and, if they had dared, would have urged English intervention on behalf of the Confederate States. There was thus a strong and marked difference of opinion between the upper and the lower classes in Lancashire, as elsewhere. The great question in domestic politics was that of Parliamentary reform. Advanced Liberals believed that if only the franchise was enlarged, and the working-man admitted within the pale, Liberal principles and ideas would henceforward triumph permanently in our national politics, and they were, consequently, eager to bring about this great constitutional change. Tories also believed that this would be the effect of the enlargement of the franchise, and they naturally opposed it vehemently. Neither party foresaw that the elements common to human nature everywhere would influence the course of politics just as fully after the working men had been admitted within the pale of the Constitution as before, and that we should find even amongst the lower orders the same differences between Liberals and Conservatives as prevailed in the middle class.

The sober Whiggish turn of mind which I had inherited from my father influenced me greatly in those days. Like the rest of the world, I believed that to admit the working classes to the franchise would be to give democracy a free rein, and to bring about changes, both social and political, of an extreme kind. Many of the changes then suggested did not seem to me to be wise. For this reason I could not enter as heartily as I might otherwise have done into the demand for Parliamentary reform. To go slowly, I thought, would be to go safely. From this Laodicean frame of mind I was rescued by Mr. Toulmin. It was not only that he could speak of the dark days at the beginning of the century, and of the inequality and injustice which then prevailed under Tory rule in England; he was able also to point out the contrast between the unselfish and heroic conduct of the Lancashire operatives with regard to the American Civil War, and that of their superiors, in whose hands the political destinies of the country rested. He was in the habit of enforcing his broad and sensible arguments on the subject of Parliamentary reform by means of a quaint little diagram, which he was continually presenting to those with whom he engaged in argument. "Look at this," he would say, pointing to an inverted pyramid, "that is the British constitution as it is at present. Does it not strike you as being rather top-heavy, and not unlikely to topple over in a storm? Now look at this," and he placed the pyramid on its proper base. "That is what I want to see, and you'll agree with me it's a great deal safer than the other way." I thought of Tennyson's words: "Broad-based upon her people's will," and felt that there was more in the rude little diagram than in many subtle and learned arguments.

It was not only from my intercourse with Mr. Toulmin that I derived mental profit in those days. I was always a rapid worker, and I speedily found that two days and a half in each week sufficed to enable me to discharge my duties at the Guardian office. The ample leisure which I thus enjoyed I devoted to reading, and in my lonely lodgings I spent hours each day in study. As I look back upon that time I feel again stealing over me like a vivifying flood the influence of Carlyle, under the spell of whose teaching and inspiration I then practically came for the first time. The companions of my solitude in those days were at least not ignoble ones. Carlyle, Browning-not yet the victim of the Browning Society-Thackeray, and most of our great historians, were always by my side, and my mind gradually expanded as it absorbed their words and thoughts. In one respect Preston has always seemed to me to be unique among English towns. The centre of the town, if I may commit a bull, lay at a point on its circumference. The Town Hall, the parish church, the leading business thoroughfare, the railway station, and the Guardian office were all close to the river Ribble, separated from it only by the beautiful Avenham Park, where the residences of the local aristocracy were to be found. All the industrial part of the town, and the houses of the operatives, lay farther away from the river. Across the river there was nothing but open country. My modest lodgings in Regent Street were at the same time within three minutes' walk of the Guardian office and of the old wooden bridge that crossed the Ribble. Thus I could escape almost directly from the town into the open country, and many were the hours I spent in delightful solitary rambles through the lanes and fields of rural Lancashire. It is a good thing for a young man to have time for solitary thinking, and no one who is worth his salt can enjoy the kind of solitude which fell to my lot at Preston without gaining by it. If I went there a boy, I left the place, after my eighteen months of editorship, a man.

Of my newspaper experiences at Preston there is not much to record. Two notable speeches that I heard and reported-although I would not read proofs I was quite willing to oblige Mr. Toulmin by keeping up my practice as a shorthand writer-recur to me. One was a speech made in 1865 by Mr. Gladstone at Manchester. The chief memory it has left with me is of the touching and stately eloquence with which he told his audience that he felt that his own life's work was drawing to a close. Of the men with whom he had entered upon public life, he declared the majority had passed away, and that fact reminded him that he could not reasonably expect that his own time could be much further prolonged. No one who heard him could have imagined that thirty years of public service still lay before the speaker. The other speech was still more notable, for it introduced me for the first time to the greatest of all the orators of the nineteenth century, John Bright. Mr. Bright's speech, which was delivered at Blackburn, promised to be of peculiar interest, inasmuch as he made it only a few days after the death of Lord Palmerston, in October, 1865. Everybody was curious to know what the great Liberal would say of the man whose policy he had so often opposed, and with whom he had so often crossed swords on the floor of Parliament. I went to Blackburn as curious as anybody else. Bright made a long speech, and from beginning to end he never mentioned the name of Palmerston. Years afterwards, in a spirit, I fear, slightly tinged with malice, I would sometimes supply that notable omission by naming Palmerston to Mr. Bright. The effect was always the same, and always electrical. "Palmerston!" he would cry. "The man who involved us in the crime of the Crimean War!" And then he would break off with an angry toss of his leonine head; but the accents of immeasurable scorn filled the hiatus in his speech.

In after years I became what I still remain-an enthusiastic admirer of Mr. Bright's oratory. I hope to say something on a later page on this subject. Here I need only note the fact that his first speech disappointed me. Indeed, men were usually disappointed when they heard him for the first time. They went expecting to hear an orator full of sound and fury. They were amazed by the reserve-one might almost say the repose-of his style. Of gesture he made absolutely no use. He never let his magnificent voice rise above a certain pitch; he never poured out his words in a tumultuous torrent; he was always deliberate and measured in his utterances, and it was only as you grew accustomed to him that you noted those wonderful inflections of the voice which expressed so clearly the emotions of the orator.

In 1865 the country was much agitated on the question of the cattle plague. It was a question that particularly affected Cheshire and the rural parts of Lancashire. The action taken by the Government, of which Mr. Gladstone was a prominent member, was strongly opposed by the representatives of the agricultural interest. A county meeting was held at Preston to consider the subject and to denounce the Ministry. If I remember aright, the Earl of Derby, the famous "Rupert of debate," was in the chair, and he was surrounded by half the magnates of Lancashire. It was a notable and imposing gathering. One titled speaker after another got up and abused Ministers, and it was notable that Mr. Gladstone fell in for the hottest measure of abuse. When some resolution was about to be put a man seated in the body of the hall got up and asked if he might say a few words. He was a tall, thick-set person, and his dress was so plain that most of us took him for a farmer, if not a farm-labourer. The meeting, which was enjoying the eloquence of earls and aristocrats of every degree, turned with anger upon the unknown intruder, and shouted "Name, name!" with all its might. "My name is Gladstone," said the stranger, in a clear and powerful voice. Everybody burst into a roar of laughter. It seemed so curious that immediately after listening to unmeasured vituperation of the Gladstone, this humble person who had obtruded himself unexpectedly upon the scene should happen to be of the same name. But before the laughter had subsided Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth, who was on the platform, shouted out the explanation of the mystery. "Mr. Robertson Gladstone, of Liverpool." It was the brother of the much-hated Chancellor of the Exchequer. He had gone to the meeting to defend his illustrious relative; and defend him he did, with so much force and eloquence that he not only made some of the noble speakers look rather foolish, but convinced one, at least, who heard him that if he had adopted a Parliamentary career, he too might have been one of the great figures of the House of Commons.

As I look back upon my editorial experiences during the year and a half that I spent at Preston, the salient questions which stand out in my recollection are the war between Denmark and the Austro-Prussian allies, in which this country was so nearly involved, and the concluding struggles in the American Civil War, which may be said to have had their culmination in the tragical assassination of Lincoln. It may seem a strange thing to say, and yet I believe that Lincoln's cruel death did more to hasten the return of peace and goodwill, not only in the United States, but all over the world, after the close of the war, than anything else could have done. It is certain that it produced a remarkable effect in England. The "classes" in England were, as I have said, almost unanimously opposed to the North, and there was no single person engaged in the great struggle whom they more persistently misunderstood and misrepresented than Abraham Lincoln. Even now I feel a sense of shame as I recall the abuse which was showered upon that great man at the time when he was leading his country through the most terrible crisis in her history. But his death, coming as it did in the moment of victory, and also at the moment when he had shown that he knew how to be moderate and magnanimous in victory, opened the eyes of the world, and showed him, even to those Englishmen who had hated him, in his true colours-one of the wisest and noblest men of our time.

This revelation of the blunder which "the classes" had committed in their estimate of Lincoln had an even greater effect in softening the asperities which the war left behind it than had the exposure of the egregious miscalculations of English statesmen as to the comparative military strength of North and South. One must not blame Englishmen too severely, however, for their lack of appreciation of Lincoln. It is doubtful if even now he is appreciated at his true worth by Americans themselves. Some years ago I had the privilege of taking in to dinner a charming young lady who was Lincoln's direct descendant. I said to her, "You can hardly understand how pleased I am to have met you. There is scarcely any man whose name is familiar to me whom I honour as I honour the memory of your grandfather." The young lady opened her eyes in innocent amazement, and confessed subsequently that she had been very much surprised by my little speech. "At home they never say anything about grandpapa." Lowell, however, has said something about him which will live for ever in the elegiac poetry of the world.

My stay at Preston came to an end in January, 1866. I had become engaged whilst staying there, and, feeling stronger in health, was anxious to obtain a more active position than the editorship of a newspaper published only twice a week. My wishes were realised when I received an offer from the proprietors of the Leeds Mercury of a position on that journal, which had long been one of the most important of provincial newspapers. I accepted the offer, and left Preston at the beginning of 1866 with feelings of nothing but goodwill and respect for my old chief, Mr. Toulmin.