Sidney Lee

“ The mighty outburst of enthusiasm which greeted the queen, as loudly in the colonies and India as in the United Kingdom, gave new strength to the monarchy. Thenceforth the sovereign was definitely regarded as the living embodiment of the unity not merely of the British nation but of the British empire. ”

“ Northumberland's dissatisfaction with Elizabeth's government now reached a crisis. Simple-minded by nature, he had no political ambitions, but he was devoted to the religion of his fathers, and had inherited a strong sense of his own and his family's importance in the border country. Had no efforts been made to thwart the peaceful exercise of his family's traditional authority, he would doubtless have spent his life in the sports of hunting and hawking, which he loved, and in exchanging hospitalities with his neighbours. ”

“ A wave of somewhat reckless gambling had lately enveloped English society, and the prince had occasionally yielded to the perilous fascination. Cards had always formed some part of his recreation. From early youth he had played whist for moderate stakes, and he impressed Gladstone in a homely rubber at Sandringham with his ‘whist memory.’ On his tours abroad at Cannes and Homburg he had at times indulged in high play, usually with fortunate results. The revelations in the Tranby Croft case shocked middle-class opinion in England, and there was a loud outburst of censure. ”

“ It would not be accurate to describe him as a man of great imagination, or one possessed of literary or artistic scholarship; but it is bare truth to assert that his masculine mind and temper were coloured by an intuitive sympathy with the workings of the imagination in others; by a gift for distinguishing almost at a glance a good piece of literature or art from a bad; by an innate respect for those who pursued intellectual and imaginative ideals rather than mere worldly prosperity. ”

“ Throughout the early period of the reign the nation's political horizon was clouded. Not only was the war in South Africa still in progress, but the alienation of foreign public opinion, which was a fruit of the conflict, continued to embarrass England's foreign relations. Neither in France nor Germany had scurrilous caricature of the king ceased. The king had always shown the liveliest sympathy with the British army in the field, and he did not conceal his resentment at the attacks made in England by members of the liberal party during 1901 on the methods of the military operations. ”

“ To his brother Ernest, Prince Albert wrote without reserve : 'And now the year closes with the happy circumstance for us, that the man who embittered our whole life, by continually placing before us the shameful alternative of either sanctioning his misdeeds throughout Europe, and rearing up the radical party here to a power under his leadership, or bringing about an open conflict with the crown, and thus plunging the only country where liberty, order, and lawfulness exist together into the general chaos that this man has, as it were, cut his own throat. ”

“ Herbert's religious doctrine starts with the assumption that religion, which is common to the human race, consists merely of the five innate ideas or axioms, that there is a God, that He ought to be worshipped, that virtue and piety are essential to worship, that man ought to repent of his sins, and that there are rewards and punishments in a future life. Herbert shows that all religions, Christian and pagan, are resolvable into these elements, and his method undoubtedly pointed the way to the science of comparative religion. ”

“ He had watched more closely the course of foreign politics. His constant habit of travel, his careful maintenance of good relations with his large foreign kindred, his passion for making the personal acquaintance of interesting men and women on the continent, gave him much knowledge of foreign affairs both political and social. Yet the diplomatic details of foreign policy lay outside his range of study. While he was desirous of full information from his ministers, he soon came to view them as responsible experts whose procedure was rarely matter for much personal comment. ”

“ It looked probable that an empire of Germany would come into being under the headship of the emperor of Austria, that Prussia would be excluded from it, and would be ruined in its helpless isolation. The jealousy with which not only Austria, but the smaller German states, regarded Prussia seemed to the queen to render imminent its decay and fall. Domestic instincts spurred her to exert all her personal influence in Germany to set the future of Prussia and her daughter's fortunes on a securer basis. Her brother-in-law, Duke Ernest, was attending the German diet of sovereigns at Frankfort. ”

“ Vain of the influence he exercised over most women, and misled by the personal attentions paid him by the queen, he sought to rule her and thus to vanquish his rivals. For a time she played with him, as though he were a jealous lover; but she despised his political advice. On foreign affairs he imbibed ideas from the Bacons; but he formulated no policy, except one of active aggression against Spain, and of offensive alliances with the protestant powers of Europe. Physically brave, even to recklessness, he was no military tactician, and could not support a general's responsibilities. ”

“ Smith's independence of temper was always strong, and he was inspirited by the knowledge that he was in a position to pursue single-handed an aim in behalf of which government organisation had elsewhere been enlisted. It would be difficult in the history of publishing to match the magnanimity of a publisher who made up his mind to produce that kind of book for which he had a personal liking, to involve himself in vast expense, for the sake of an idea, in what he held to be the public interest, without heeding considerations of profit or loss. ”

“ Queen Victoria for the greater part of her reign was a widow and a recluse, who divided all her thought with unremitting application between politics and family affairs. The new king had wider interests, Without his mother's power of concentration or her tenacity of purpose, he distributed his energies over a more extended field. ”

“ On the day following O'Connor's senseless act the queen addressed a second letter to the public, acknowledging the fervent demonstrations of loyalty which welcomed her and her son on the occasion of the public thanksgiving.
That celebration, combined with its anxious cause, strengthened immensely the bonds of sentiment that united the crown and the people. There was need of strengthening these bonds. Every year increased the feeling that the queen's reluctance to resume her old place in public life was diminishing the dignity of the crown. ”

“ In the spring there reached Unton's ears the report that the young Duke of Guise had spoken of Queen Elizabeth ‘impudently, lightly, and overboldly.’ He thereupon sent a challenge to the duke, proposing to meet him with whatever arms he should choose, on horseback or on foot. ‘Nor would I have you to think,’ he wrote, ‘any inequality of person between us, I being issued of as great a race and noble house every way as yourself. ”

“ All current politics and society came under the satirists' lash. But the burden of the indictment, phrased in various keys of scurrility, was that the prince's conduct was unfitting him for succession to the throne. The recrudescence of Queen Victoria's popularity and the manifest good-nature and public spirit of the prince soon dissipated for the most part the satiric censure. Yet an undercurrent of resentment against reputed indulgences of the prince's private life never wholly disappeared. ”

“ He was well read in modern literature, and was no mean classical scholar. His friend W. R., who prefixed a commendatory epistle to the 1620 edition of the 'Seneca,' is justified in his praise of his principle of translation, which prevented him, 'parrot-like,' from losing 'himself literally in a Latin Echo,' while it enabled him to express the 'meaning in our proper English elegancies and phrase.' In his 'Romances' his prose is very ornate, but its graces are of a languid order, and the modern reader finds it tedious. It is as a lyric poet that Lodge is best deserving of remembrance. ”

“ Since the public were slow to appreciate the 'Pall Mall' of an afternoon, he, for three weeks in the second month of its existence, supplied a morning edition. But buyers and advertisers proved almost shyer of a morning than of an evening, and the morning issue was promptly suspended. Smith's spirits often drooped in the face of the obduracy of the public, and he contemplated abandoning the enterprise. His sanguine temperament never prevented him from frankly acknowledging defeat when cool judgment could set no other interpretation on the position of affairs. ”

“ Furnivall deemed Maurice and the college council to be not only unduly conservative in their religious views but imdemocratic in refusing working men admission to the council. Fumivall's activity in the affairs of the college ceased only with his life. He never lost his early tone of impatience with those colleagues whose religious or political views differed from his own. But he retained to the last the ardent devotion of the students, and the social development of the institution stood deeply indebted to him. ”

“ He drew up an elaborate paper, in which he pointed out the evils attending facility of divorce; he declared that ‘in the greatest breaches between man and wife, reconciliation is the best; and the worthiest pains that can be spared is to bring that about.’ But on such arguments as these, and on the insufficiency of evidence, Abbot, with strange perversity, did not, at the critical moment, lay any decided emphasis. He sent to the king a statement of his views, supported by numberless irrelevant quotations from theologians of the reformation era, which only served to exasperate James. ”

“ Lord John and his chief at once avowed a resolve to serve the interests of Italy at the expense of Austria, and won, in the inner circle of the court, the sobriquet of 'the old Italian masters.' At the same time the course of the negotiations between Napoleon and the emperor of Austria was perplexing alike to the queen and to her ministers. Napoleon had at Villafranca arranged mysterious terms with the emperor of Austria which seemed to the friends of Italy far too favourable to Austria, although they gave France no advantage. Austria was to lose Lombardy, but was to retain Venetia. ”

“ Disraeli on the platform had already sneered at him as an 'itinerant spouter of stale sedition' and as a ’wild man of the cloister going about the country maligning men and things.' In 1870 the statesman published his 'Lothair,' and there he rancorously introduced an unnamed Oxford professor 'of advanced opinions on all subjects, religious, social and political, of a restless vanity and overflowing conceit, gifted with a great command of words and talent for sarcasm, who was not satisfied with his home career but was about to settle in the New World. ”

“ But she was under no illusion as to Gladstone's resolve and power to pass the bill through parliament. She frankly admitted that the House of Commons had been 'chosen expressly to speak the feeling of the country on the question,' and she believed that if a second appeal were made to the electorate it would produce the same result. Common sense taught her that the quicker the inevitable pill was swallowed the better for the country's peace. But she saw that a fruitless and perilous resistance was threatened by the House of Lords. ”

“ Love of display and self-indulgence are Leicester's most striking personal characteristics. By his extravagant dress, his gluttony, and his cruel treatment of women he was best known to his contemporaries. That he was also an accomplished poisoner has been repeatedly urged against him, but the evidence is inconclusive in all the charges of murder brought against him. In politics his aim was to control and (at first) marry the queen, whose early infatuation for him decreased but never died. ”

“ The prince was no party politician, and he cherished no rigid political principles. His interest lay in men rather than in measures, and his native tact enabled him to main-tain the best personal terms with statesmen whose policy he viewed with indifference or disapproval. Gladstone's considerate treatment of him conciliated his self-esteem without affecting materially his political opinions. The personal tie between the political leader and the heir-apparent was involuntarily strengthened, too, by the comprehensive differences which separated Queen Victoria from the liberal statesman. ”

“ As soon as he perceived himself worsted in the struggle for the control of the queen, he proved his intellectual helplessness, and, placing himself in the hands of reckless advisers, was rapidly hurried into crime. His generosity to his friends is the best trait in his character, although beside it must be set his habitual extravagance. Sir Henry Wotton describes Essex as tall and able-bodied, stooping a little from the shoulders, and with very delicate hands. In later life he was always thoughtful and reserved, especially at meal times, and grew indifferent to matters of dress and diet. ”