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The lustre which Lord Acton's name reflected upon Cambridge was not felt more deeply, or more sincerely, than the higher standard of learning which he introduced into a learned professoriate. He was the one man in England, if not in Europe, who could have brought with him from the outside an equal knowledge of books and of the world. Cambridge saw his weak side quickly enough. The keen-witted men who enjoyed and appreciated his talk, or watched him listening with an attention that nothing escaped, could understand why Döllinger predicted that if he did not write a great book before he was forty he would never write one at all. As a matter of fact he did not write a book of any kind, small or great. He did not even, as he once thought of doing, republish his Essays. His contemplated Life of Döllinger dwindled into an article of forty pages on Döllinger's Historical Work for the English Historical Review.

But the article, which appeared in October 1890, shows Lord Acton at his best. His affectionate reverence for his great master gives a colour and animation to his style, which it often lacked. This is by far the most readable of all his essays, and by no means the least instructive. Döllinger was in some respects like himself. "Everybody felt that he knew too much to write," and the best part of his erudition was given to his pupils at Munich. In tracing the course of Döllinger's studies, and of his mental development, Lord Acton wrote the best, because the most characteristic, biography of the Old Catholic leader. Besides the interest of the subject itself, Lord Acton contrived to bring into this wonderful summary a number of judgments on other things and persons as vivid as they are acute. Freeman rather horrified him by preferring printed books to manuscripts as material for history. But then he "mixed his colours with brains." Lord Acton was inclined to think Stahl, the philosophical and Conservative statesman of Prussia, "the greatest man born of a Jewish mother since Titus." Döllinger, however, considered that this was unjust to Disraeli, and most Englishmen will probably agree with him in opinion.

Whether Lord Acton ought to have left the Church of Rome when Döllinger was excommunicated, or when the Vatican decrees were pronounced, is a question which it would not become a Protestant to ask, much less to answer. He did not shrink from the risk of speaking out, and it was not his fault that he escaped. No earthly reward or peril would have induced him to say what he did not think, or to profess what he did not believe. The truths which all Christians hold in common, and the moral principles to which Sophocles ascribes an unknown antiquity, guided him in history as in life. His emphatic statement that he had never felt any doubt about any Roman doctrine was made some years before 1870, and the secession of the Old Catholics, which failed for want of an Episcopate. In 1878 Pio Nono died, and was succeeded by a more liberal Pontiff. Manning lost his influence at Rome, Newman was made a cardinal, and the Broad Churchmen in the Roman communion were tolerated, if not encouraged. Even Lord Acton's old enemy, Manning, turned from theological controversy to movements of social philanthropy, to Irish politics, in which he agreed with Acton, and to good works among the poor. The strictest of Roman Catholics were not sorry to think that the most learned Prelates of the Anglican Church were less learned than a Catholic layman. The more a man knew, the larger was his idea of Lord Acton's knowledge. But for the years between 1895 and 1900 that knowledge would have been comparatively wasted. It would have profited only a few readers here and there beyond the circle of Lord Acton's friends. At Cambridge, the Professor of History was in perpetual contact with fresh minds eager to know, and to transmit what they acquired. He did not altogether understand the Greek mind, for he told Mr. Gladstone that it was unscientific. But he had this much in common with Socrates, the father of science, that he required the clash of dialectic to bring out his full force. When ignorant people laid down the law, Lord Acton smiled, and, it is to be feared, enjoyed himself in an almost sinful degree. When scholars and philosophers conversed with him, they found him often indeed more inclined to listen than to talk, but always appreciative, suggestive, and awakening. To genuine students he was a mine of information, and would give what was asked tenfold. Nobody ever entrapped him into a path which for good reasons he was disposed to avoid. Attempt to draw him into controversy, and he became cautious, subtle, enigmatic. But every one who came to him, as his Cambridge pupils came, for assistance and instruction, went away not merely satisfied and enlightened, but moved and touched by the profundity of his knowledge, the generosity of his temper, and the humility of his soul.

LETTERS OF LORD ACTON

Mentone Oct. 31, 1879

You were threatened with a long letter from me, about people at Paris, but I could not finish it, … and so I lost the only days on which Paris information could be of any use. After a week of care, varied by pleasant visits from Lacaita, F. Leveson, and H. Cowper, we started, and rested at Milan and Genoa, and yet were nearly the first arrivals here. We expect to have the Granvilles for neighbours at Cannes, as well as Westminsters.

Let me first of all transcribe a passage from my unsent letter: "If you see Madame Waddington you will find her a very pleasant specimen of American womanhood. Her husband wants the qualities that charm and win at first, and I suppose he will not hold his own long. He has no dash, no entrain, no personal ascendency, like the men who succeed in France; but there is not a deeper scholar, or a more sincere and straightforward Christian in the country." I see from your letter that the unfavourable part of my remarks came true more than the praise. Something may be due to awkwardness connected with the Ferry[⁵] Bill. The interview with Scherer consoles me. He is a man of the first order as far as that can be without showy gifts. But he is guarded, cold, unsympathising, and the intellectual crisis by which he came to repudiate the Christian faith was so conspicuous that he is embarrassed with people who are notable for religious conviction.

I wanted to say so much about Mignet, who was celebrated before your father went up to college; of St. Hilaire, the best Grecian and earliest Republican in France; of Dufaure and Simon, the leaders of the Left Centre, who hold the fate of the Ministry in their hands; of Laboulaye, the political oracle of Waddington, who solves every problem by American principles; of Vielcastel, the most sensible and experienced of Conservatives, and the only surviving Doctrinaire; of Broglie,[⁶] who has all but ruined the Republic, in order to expiate his former ecclesiastical Liberalism; of Pasquier, who possesses the good qualities in which Broglie is deficient; of Taine, who has almost the solidity of Scherer, and more than his brilliancy. But it is all too late now.

You describe the Professor[⁷] most justly. Serenity has grown on him with years, although they were years of conflict and of the great grief that men who do not live for themselves can feel for the cause they have lived for. Strength, too, though in less degree, by reason of a vice which besets another great man. From a sense of dignity and of charity he refuses to see all the evil there is in men; and in order that his judgments may be always charitable, generous, and leaning to the safer side, he is not always exact in definitions or rigorous in applying principles. He looks for the root of differences in speculative systems, in defect of knowledge, in everything but moral causes, and if you had remained with us longer you would have found out that this is a matter on which I am divided from him by a gulf almost too wide for sympathy.

Boutney I never saw. But he is a sound and useful man, who makes it his business to spread political knowledge among those classes that govern France. A cousin of ours lectures, under his auspices, to half-educated Parisians.

"Le Gendre de M. Poirier" at the Français is one of the greatest treats imaginable. Your stay at Paris must have been full of new impressions and experiences, even in its levity.

And now, after a short interval of Victor Hugo at Keble, I fancy you will start for the Midlothian campaign. You were very wrong to suppress that second sheet of your letter, and I hope you will make up for it by letting me know how things go on, and bearing in mind that one learns nothing at Mentone, except the bare outside of public events.

Mentone March 15, 1880

There is so much to ask and say that I have not the courage to begin. I am afraid you will forgive the length neither of my letter nor of my silence, and will be as much bored by the silver of the one as by the golden of the other. But when all the world has its rendezvous in Harley Street, admit me, perdu in the crowd.

In this out-of-the-way region we have been kept up to the mark in home politics by pleasant visits from Freddy Leveson – a robust Gladstonian – Cowper Temple, who told me more than I knew about the world of spirits; Goschen, who spent several days with us, and whose footsteps are very visible on the road that leads away from the Liberal party, through Brookes's, to a moderado coalition; Reay, … fresh from Midlothian; Mallet,[⁸] doctrinaire, disputatious and desponding, but abounding in criticism of the policy which he represents. Lord Blachford passed, but I did not see him. Nothing carried me back to England more than the two Italians[⁹] whom you overheard at Venice, who were here when I was very ill, but who took me over the whole ground traversed since 1842. Bonghi's essays[¹⁰] are appearing successively, and they are meant as a lesson for Italians, and break up the career in a way which loses the thread of continuity and the law of its progress and the wealth of the unity therein. But he is exceedingly intelligent and sympathetic, and I hope that he will recast his materials when he puts them together in a volume. When he asked me: Why is Mr. Gladstone so much attached to the Church and so much against establishments? Why is he so generous towards R. Catholics and so hard on the Pope? Why is not Ireland reconciled? Why is not England won? – you will believe that I found my voice again. I don't think the book will ever suit our public, but I should like it to appear in French.

*****

A certain letter of mine acknowledging the gift of the Lancashire Canvassing Speeches was written between the election and the summons to Windsor, in November 1868.[¹¹] If it leads you to look at the Bristol electioneering speeches mentioned in it, you will be disappointed; for they will seem to you poor in comparison. In reality, they are an epoch in constitutional history. Burke there laid down, for ever, the law of the relations between members and constituencies, which is the innermost barrier against the reign of democratic force. Charles Sumner once said to me: "Mr. Burke legislated from those hustings." When you met John Morley at Glasgow he had just written a very good life of Burke. It is impossible not to be struck by the many points of resemblance between Burke and your father – the only two men of that stature in our political history – but I have no idea whether they would have been friends or bitter enemies.

Madame de Staël is the author of that saying about liberty, whom I commemorate in terms studiously excluding rivalry with George Eliot.

Do you remember a question as to the number of words in Shakespeare and in Milton? There is all about it in Brother Mark's[¹²] "Life of Milton," which is in the same series as Morley's "Burke."

And another, as to the title of the "Imitation"? I find that it is not the title given by the author – so that Milman's very plausible remark falls through.

Plenty of muffs have written in the Edinbro', but I am not one of them.

You see so many interesting and eminent men that you can spare a miss sometimes. But I am sorry for that silent evening near Lowell. The easy brightness of his mind surpasses all I remember in America. I sat next to him at a dinner at Boston twenty-seven years ago, and spoke of the burying, by Constantine, of the Palladium in a vault at Constantinople. Longfellow would not believe my story. I quoted a passage. "Yes," said Lowell, "but the passage we want is the passage into the vault." Somebody questioned whether the statue of Cromwell would stand among the sovereigns at Westminster. "At least," said he, "among the half-crowns."

I have never met him since. But if I had been fortunate enough to drop in that evening at Ripon's, I rather think I should have liked to sit next to him. You would have seen the difference between a live dog and a dead lion.

Scherer ought to be much obliged to me for the conversation and for the readers I procured him. He is, I think, one of the three best living writers in France – deeper and more subtle than Taine, and infinitely better versed in political questions than Renan. If you see that arch person you will find his conversation, easy and tripping as it is, very inferior to his writings. There are volumes of essays which I am sure you would read with pleasure. And he has a special bone to pick with the author of "A History of Liberty."[¹³]

I sent for Seeley,[¹⁴] and read him with improvement, with much pleasure, and with more indignation. It is hard in a few crowded lines to explain my meaning on a question so fundamental. The great object, in trying to understand history, political, religious, literary or scientific, is to get behind men and to grasp ideas. Ideas have a radiation and development, an ancestry and posterity of their own, in which men play the part of godfathers and godmothers more than that of legitimate parents. We understand the work and place of Pascal, or Newton, or Montesquieu, or Adam Smith, when we have measured the gap between the state of astronomy, of political economy, &c., before they came and after they were gone. And the progress of the science is of more use to us than the idiosyncrasy of the man. Let me try to explain myself by an example of to-day. Here is Ferry's article 7.[¹⁵] One way of looking at it is to reckon up the passions, the follies, the vengeance of the republicans, to admire or deplore the victory of the Conservatives, to wonder at the Democrats. But beyond the wishes of the Democrats there are the doctrines of Democracy, doctrines which push things towards certain consequences without help from local or temporary or accidental motives. There is a state built on democratic principles, and a society built, largely, on anti-democratic elements, clergy and aristocracy. Those elements of society must needs react upon the state; that is, try to get political power and use it to qualify the Democracy of the Constitution. And the state power must needs try to react on society, to protect itself against the hostile elements. This is a law of Nature, and the vividness and force with which we trace the motion of history depends on the degree to which we look beyond persons and fix our gaze on things. – This is dreadfully didactic prose. But this is my quarrel with Seeley. He discerns no Whiggism, but only Whigs. And he wonders at the mistakes of the Whigs when he ought to be following up the growth and modifications of their doctrine, and its influence on the Church, on Toleration, on European politics, on the English monarchy, the Colonies, finance, local government, justice, Scotland, and Ireland. So you may read in Alison of the profligacy of Mirabeau, the ferocity of Marat, the weakness of Louis, the sombre fanaticism of Robespierre. But what we want to know is why the old world that had lasted so long went to ruin, how the doctrine of equality sprang into omnipotence, how it changed the principles of administration, justice, international law, taxation, representation, property, and religion. Seeley is as sick as I am of the picturesque scenery of the historians of sense, but he does not like to go straight at the impersonal forces which rule the world, such as predestination, equality, divine right, secularism, Congregationalism, nationality, and whatever other ruling ideas have grouped and propelled associations of men. And my great complaint is that he so much dislikes the intriguers of 1688 that he does not recognise the doctrine of 1688, which is one of the greatest forces, one of the three or four greatest forces, that have contributed to construct our civilisation, and make 1880 so unlike 1680. See H. of L.,[¹⁶] page 50,000. All which things make me more zealous, eager, anxious about the coming election than you who are in the midst of it, mindful of the blessing of repose and credulous of Seeley. Therefore I read with delight the address to Midlothian – more even than the speech in Marylebone – and am daily refreshed by Lowe, John Morley, even Rogers,[¹⁷] and fancy how happy the inquisitors were, who put a stop to the people they disagreed with! But I can quite feel your sensation in watching all this.

*****

If we win, then there will be no rest in this life for Mr. Gladstone. The victory will be his, and his only. And so will the responsibility be. Then will come the late harvest and the gathering in of its heavy sheaves. And then there will be not much Hawarden for you.

I heartily wish your brothers success – even the riotous one[¹⁸] – especially the riotous one. I will come and wish him joy. If we are beaten, I shall be ashamed to let you see my grief. And as it is, I am ashamed to tell you how much I should like to hear from you, because you will suspect that I only want a supplement to the Times, or a later edition of the Echo. But the next few weeks are going to be a great turning-point in the history of our lifetime, and I believe you know how to be generous. Be generous before you are just. Do not temper mercy with justice.

*****

Cannes April 10, 1880

There is nothing to regret. Your brother has held a conspicuous place[¹⁹] in the most wonderful election contest of this century. He has held it in a manner which will never be forgotten in his lifetime, and which will do as much for him as victory; and the picture of the young untried son bursting into sudden popularity and turning men's thoughts from the absorbing exploits of his father adds an affecting domestic feature to that great biography. That meeting at Hawarden, after such a revolution and such a growth, is a thing I cannot think of without emotion.

So I cannot offer you anything sincere, except congratulation. We know now, indeed, that the British Democracy is neither Liberal nor Conservative in its permanent convictions, and therefore the party triumph is not as altogether satisfactory and secure as it should be. But the individual triumph, the homage rendered to a single name, could not be greater; and there could not be a fuller atonement for the desertion of 1874, than a success so personal as to convey dictatorial authority, apart from party merits and combinations.

Your idea has this advantage, that one must strike when the iron is hot, and it is now at white heat, and our legislative measures, even though they involve an early dissolution, ought to be begun soon. What I should fear most would be that, content with the intense reality of power, Mr. Gladstone should repeat the unhappy declarations of five years since in a way that would commit him for all future time; absolute abdication would be a misfortune all round, and the Conservative reaction would soon set in. But if an eventual return to power is not absolutely excluded, if no word is said of what might happen under certain contingencies, then we should still feel that we have an invincible reserve force, that, when our first line is broken, we can proclaim the Jehad and unfurl the green flag of the Prophet. For the patchwork settlement of 1875 depends on the life of a man who is several years older than your father,[²⁰] who is a duke, and who has a deplorable habit of falling asleep early in the afternoon. But I only express this premature fear in view of circumstances which I am sure every influence in the country, except, perhaps, the influence of Windsor, will be strained to avert.

Your description of Lowe's generous and feeling sympathy is really touching. How little I thought, fourteen years ago,[²¹] when he was the hardest hitter your father had to meet, and when your father said he might well shrink from crossing swords with such a man, that he would close his active life as your brother's sponsor before vast constituencies, or that we should come to think of him listening with tears in his eyes to your brother's speeches, and muttering the words you tell.

Please tell Herbert that I have followed his proceedings as carefully as one could at a distance, that I don't think much of his defeat, that, in short, I go halves with Lowe.[²²]

I see that your sister made her way into the fray. I trust all the worry and toil was not too much for Mrs. Gladstone.

We are ending the season here, not as far out of the world as you would suppose; for I just saw your neighbour Westminster, and here are Argyll, Cardwell, and Goldsmid.

If Disraeli waits to meet Parliament, and to fall in the daylight, I may hope to have an opportunity of expressing to you myself all my sense of the meaning of the victory, and my want of sympathy for you in your defeat.[²³]

*****

Paris May 23, 1880

I have been in Paris only a few hours, and have seen nobody yet but Broglie, Gavard, and Laugel. I must see Scherer and talk to him about your visit here in the autumn. I have not been here for two years, and many of my friends are growing so old that I don't like putting off my visit to them. So I must keep those who have not that defect for a happier time.

Paris May 14, 1880

I shall be delighted to inaugurate breakfasting in Downing Street on Thursday; and I should very much like to drop in the night before, as you are to be there. But it seems very indiscreet; and if I dine with Lord Granville, I shall not be able to get away until very late, when you will be gone to bed. Tegernsee late hours cannot be kept in London. I will hope for the best, and keep all I have to say, partly for next week, partly for some more propitious season.

Würzburg May 23, 1880

Although ink was not invented to express our real feelings, I improve my first stoppage between two trains to thank you for three such delightful days in London. It was a shame to take up so much of your busy time, and to persecute you with the serpentine wisdom. I did not wish to turn into bitterness the sweetest thing on earth, but I fancied that there are things good to be observed in your great position which nobody will tell you if you do not hear them from the most wicked of your friends. Hayward, indeed, who walked home with me the other night, might claim that title and dispute my prerogative; and I thought he would be useful to you in many ways until I found out that he is only solicitous about getting invitations for – .

Since you detected … lending herself to a humble intrigue, you can never be surprised at the revelations of disappointment and self-seeking, and must not believe that the smiling faces you see express unmixed loyalty and satisfaction. So I want you to be vigilant not to resent, but to pursue the work of disarming resentment, and not easily to persuade yourself that it is done.

To begin at the top. Here is Lowe, positively wounded at the letter offering him a peerage instead of power, and wounded by the very thing which showed Mr. Gladstone's anxiety not to give him pain, by the absence of any reason given for being unable to offer him office. For one so often finds that acts specially showing delicacy and considerateness, little supererogatory works of kindness, are taken unkindly. Now that is just a state of mind you can improve away by an initiative of civility, bearing in mind that what Lowe says to me, his wife delivers from the house-tops.

*****

The animosity of the defeated party is natural, manifest, and invincible. They have offered Greenwood £110,000 for his newspaper, besides general offers of indefinite sums – enough to start it four or five times over. But the danger is not there, but at home; danger of disintegration and drifting. Both in church questions, and, ultimately, in land questions, your father is at variance with the great bulk of colleagues and followers – Chamberlain and Argyll in one Cabinet is an anomaly sure to tell in time, especially with Argyll discontented. So do not undervalue, or neglect, or waste, the social influence which centres in your hands.

Bismarck is so angry with Münster, that I hope he will transplant him; meanwhile it ought to be remembered that he, M., not only scouted the idea of Tory defeat, but wrote most disparagingly of Mr. Gladstone's influence and position.

Hayward will tell you what I learn from other sources, that Chenery really wishes to bring the Times round. Mr. Gladstone dislikes thinking of those things, and allowed Delane to slip from him. Don't leave the whole thing to be done at No. 18.[²⁴]

I hope, towards the end of the session, you will consult MacColl about the Bavarian mystery. It would be nice if Leeds does not require its member just then. Above all things keep a very regular diary. You will be so glad afterwards, unless you have some distant correspondent, and make your letters to him, or her, do for a regular diary, which is also a good plan.

Tegernsee June 1, 1880

I received your letter last night on my return from Italy, and read the enclosure with interest. There are two things to be said in its defence. It is true that Hartington has, of late, shown higher qualities than the world attributed to him, and so far his adoring kinsfolk may consider their higher estimate justified. His whole attitude during the election was creditable, and his conduct towards Mr. Gladstone was correct.

Then, there is a grain of truth in the notion that the force that creates, and sustains in a crisis, is not quite the same that is wanted in time of prose to continue and to preserve; or in other words, that creative power makes a great consumption of party resources, and, if Burke gave up to party what was meant for mankind, it is better still to give up to mankind what some people mean to use for party. This is only a half truth, because party is not only, not so much, a group of men as a set of ideas and ideal aims; so that I do not admit Goldsmith's antithesis.[²⁵] But taking party in the practical and popular sense, of an instrument for homing office, people are uneasily conscious that Mr. Gladstone will sacrifice it to loftier purpose sooner than they would like. Nothing is more untrue than the famous saying of an ancient historian, that power is retained by the same arts by which it is acquired; untrue at least for men, though truer in the case of nations.

But don't you see, pervading the letter and guiding the pen, the great intellectual and moral defect of the present day? I mean, the habit of dwelling on appearances, not on realities, of preferring the report to the bullet, and the echo to the report. To spend and lose a majority in some great cause, to be abused and ridiculed and calumniated, seems to the writer a misfortune so great that it is worth while to haul down one's flag rather than incur the risk of it. This is the power of journalism, of salons and club life, which teaches people to depend on popularity and success and not on the guide within, to act not from knowledge, but from opinion, and to be led by opinion of others rather than by knowledge which is their own. Not only – , nearly everybody yields up his conscience, his practical judgment, into the keeping of others. I do not accuse Hartington, but it is clear from the words of – and – , that there was a scheme to get Mr. Gladstone out of the way. To expect him to take the first step was to expect him to resign. It is so easy to do a dirty thing with self-satisfaction when it consists in abstaining from action. The one letter is only the plausible, affectionate, amplification of the other's impertinence, with a saving clause, on the first page, inserted from dictation, when the grievous indiscretion had been committed…

*****

It does not matter seriously; but it serves to corroborate that grave speech of mine: trust nobody. I don't want you to think ill of people, or even to suspect them until the evidence is strong. It is not their virtue I question, but their attachment, and consequently their discretion. And I question their attachment because I doubt their thorough agreement with Mr. Gladstone. I don't say they are perfidious; but they are bound by an alliance they do not mean to last for ever.

*****

I do not cite Northcote and Carnarvon in confirmation. Soon after his resignation Carnarvon certainly wished to come over. At a solemn dinner inaugurating him as President of the Society of Antiquaries, he asked the secretaries to get me to propose his health. In a preceding speech he spoke of himself as a true Conservative at heart; and so I took those words up, congratulating him upon them in an Antiquarian, and eventually in a Liberal sense, indicating that they meant no more than we mean by constitutional, that there were no Pyrenees between us, that we entirely agreed with each other. We became close friends from that hour, and he made it very clear that he was pleased to be so interpreted. But he got little encouragement afterwards; and I fancied he honestly took this line – there are intelligent High Church men who dread, in the looming future, an alliance between democratic nonconformity and the predestined chief of the stern and unbending Tories, on the basis of anti-Erastianism. They say that the late election, swamping the vulgar Whig, has made those two allies stronger than ever, making each depend upon the other. They would stand a Liberal Government made up of Spencers and Cowpers, but they say that the demagogues have been strong enough to force their way in, and will make their power felt. So that property and the Church are in danger. I am ashamed to say that I thought this was Carnarvon's line. But Liddon knows what he says. Be sure that I also know what I say when I assure you that the victoria pilgrimage will be a help to your father, and that Lady R.'s coachman will grease wheels more important than her own. Do go on, this summer at least, and see whether it is not true. Lady R. is, moreover, a friend of Lady Blennerhassett, and will sympathise with your feelings.