Letters of Lord Acton Part 23

[17] In 1866, Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Lowe took opposite sides on the question of Parliamentary Reform.

[18] Mr. Lowe, on hearing one of Mr. Herbert Gladstone's speeches during the Middles.e.x election, declared that in the pure gift of eloquence, there was nothing to choose between him and his father.

[19] In Middles.e.x.

[20] _i.e._, by Lord Granville.

[21] See p. 49, note 54.

[22] The Zulu.

[23] Lord Granville.

[24] An allusion to expeditions at Tegernsee.

[25] Evening parties in Downing Street.

[26] Sir John Strachey had seriously under-estimated the cost of the Afghan War.

[27] Mr. O'Donnell, an Irish member, moved the adjournment of the House for the purpose of attacking the new French Amba.s.sador, M. Challemel Lacour. Mr. Gladstone moved that he be not heard, and the debate on this motion occupied the whole sitting.

[28] Then Postmaster-General.

[29] House of Lords, not "History of Liberty."

[30] That any member claiming the right to affirm instead of taking an oath should be allowed to do so, subject to any liability imposed on him by statute. Under this motion Mr. Bradlaugh took his seat provisionally for Northampton.

[31] Littleberries, rented by Lord Aberdeen.

[32] Trench.

[33] Herbert Spencer.

[34] M. Tachard.

[35] Mr. Gladstone had just then a short, but serious illness.

[36] On the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, intended to protect the Irish tenants from eviction during the winter.

[37] The majority against the Bill was 230, of whom 51 were Liberals.

[38] Granville.

[39] Lowell.

[40] Non equidem invideo; miror magis.

[41] See p. 28, note 36.

[42] Lord Arthur Russell.

[43] The reference is to the Ground Game Bill, which enabled tenants to shoot hares and rabbits on their farms; and to the Burials Bill, which permitted the interment of Dissenters in parish churchyards with their own religious rites.

[44] Mr. Gladstone's voyage in the _Grantully Castle_.

[45] "History of Our Own Times."

[46] Shakespeare's Sonnets, pocket edition.

[47] Now Lady Battersea.

[48] Richard Simpson (1820-1876), author of an "Introduction to the Philosophy of Shakespeare's Sonnets" (1868) and "The School of Shakespeare" (1872).

[49] A letter from Mr. Gladstone on the choice of a profession.

[50] Mr. Ruskin.

[51] George Eliot lived in St. John's Wood.

[52] Agrarian Laws and Ecclesiastical Establishments.

[53] He stood by Ireland to the end, and his last letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe reaffirms the principles of his youth.

[54] "And to party gave up what was meant for mankind."

[55] The editor of the _Quarterly Review_.

[56] Lord Beaconsfield's "Endymion," in which Nigel Penruddocke is one of the characters.

[57] Lord Macaulay.

[58] George Otto Trevelyan.

[59] "Life of Panizzi."

[60] "Julian the Apostate." By the Rev. the Hon. Arthur Lyttelton, afterwards Bishop of Southampton.

[61] Charles Stewart Parker, then M.P. for Perth.

[62] "English Land and English Landlords." By the Honble. George Brodrick, late Warden of Merton.

[63] An allusion to Mr. Gladstone's speech on the Reform Bill of 1866.

[64] George Eliot's death.

[65] "Democracy," a political novel, published anonymously, which made much noise at the time.