"Mr. Rodwell will send you the formal thanks of the Committee. The matter will take a little time in consequence of the scattered residences of the issuing bankers, but I hope and believe that you will have very little, if any, further trouble with us. Any other changes we may suggest will, I hope, be of a very subordinate character, and that the bill as altered will have the entire assent and the substantial support of the issuing bankers."

A day later Bagehot writes to Mr. Gladstone :—

"It of course is not possible to predict with certainty what such a body as the bankers may precisely do, but in this case I have no reasonable doubt that after the alterations you have so kindly made, they will give their best aid to the bill. I am sure they ought, and I am confident they will."

In the spring of 1865 Bagehot and Mr. Goschen (Lord Goschen) held consultations together on the proposed Consolidated Bank, a question which had been fully discussed in the Economist. The Goschen family had been for some years among our London acquaintances, but it was at this time that a closer intimacy sprang up between Mr. Goschen and Bagehot, and the esteem and liking each had for the other led to a frequent intercourse which continued to the end of Bagehot's life.

At Highclere, Bagehot was frequently meeting Liberal no less than Conservative politicians. In this year, 1865, Lord and Lady Salisbury and Mr. Robert Lowe were fellow guests with Bagehot. Lord Carnarvon had no party prejudices. He was drawn towards Bagehot none the less because his creed in politics was opposed to his own.

CHAPTER XIII.

"THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION."

ON Sunday, 26th February, 1865, the Diary states: "Walter called on Mr. Lewes to talk over the Fortnightly Review, and saw Mrs. Lewes ". This was the first of the many visits he paid to The Priory, St. John's Wood, which visits continued till the year of Walter's death. As a rule very reserved, Mrs. Lewes (George Eliot) would at times speak intimately to Walter Bagehot of her own personal experiences. In him she could count on an understanding of no ordinary quality. Walter described how she would discuss with him what she designated "the pain of composition". He liked her, and she interested him greatly. Beyond appreciating her genius he also regarded her as a rare physiological study. She seemed somewhat unfitted for ordinary society, he said. She was too big, too weighty a being for the usual world and its ways, and somewhat strange in respect to its small amenities. He discussed with Mr. Lewes during these first visits to The Priory the starting and prospects of the Fortnightly Review. Mr. Lewes, as the editor, was anxious to obtain contributions from him.

The Fortnightly Review made its début on 15th May, 1865. The first chapter of Walter Bagehot's English Constitution headed the list of contents. At intervals, during a year and a half the nine chapters of this work appeared under the titles(1) "The Cabinet," (2) "The Monarchy," (3) "The Monarchy (continued)," (4) "The House of Lords," (5) "The House of Commons," (6) "On Change of Ministry," (7) "Its supposed Cheques and Balances," (8) "The Pre-Requisites of Cabinet Government, and the Peculiar Form which They Assumed in England," (9) "Its History and the Effects of that History

(conclusion)." The last chapter came out on 1st January, 1867, after Mr. Lewes had ceased to edit the Fortnightly Review. It would be superfluous to make any comments on the worth of this book, or the appreciation it has won for itself. In 1872, from The Poplars, Wimbledon, Bagehot wrote a rather lengthy introduction to the second edition, explaining the difficulty a writer experiences in attempting "to sketch a living Constitution-a Constitution that is in actual work and power. The difficulty is that the object is in constant change." He describes that the best plan, considering what has altered in the working of the Constitution since the book first appeared is, "to keep the original sketch in all essentials as it was first written, and to describe shortly such changes either in the Constitution itself or in the Constitutions compared with it, as seem material!"

Mr. George Lewes gave up the editorship of the Fortnightly Review at the end of 1866. The number in which the last chapter of the English Constitution appeared was unedited. On 10th February, 1867, the Diary states that "Mr. John Morley, the new editor of the Fortnightly Review, and Mr. Sanford dined with us ".

About this time Mr. Goschen wrote to Bagehot: "I sent you some time ago an essay of Morier on local government.1 I ought to tell you, he was very anxious that you should see it, as he says, 'I admire Bagehot's writings more than anybody's, the more so as they form such a delicious contrast to the only mode I can find of attacking a subject'. I hope I am not violating a confidence in telling you this."

Also referring to the English Constitution, Mr. A. V. Dicey writes to Mr. Hutton: "The more, by the way, I study Bagehot's book the more I admire it, though it so happens that the legal aspect of the Constitution with which I am mainly concerned is that side of it which did not fall within the scope of his work. I only wish one could accomplish a tenth as much for the explanation of the law as he did for the illustration of the Constitution. I do not think any one has

1 Sir Robert Morier, the distinguished diplomatist, brilliant writer of despatches, and the arch enemy of Bismarck.

read Bagehot's works more carefully than I have. They really fill one with despair, for he seems to explain with perfect ease the kind of things which one can, after the greatest labour, only make clear (if at all) in language which is so stiff and pedantic that it disgusts oneself as much as it is likely to disgust one's readers."

On Sunday, 2nd April, 1865, there is this entry in the Diary: "Walked in Eaton Square, called on Mrs. Moffatt. While with her Mr. Moffatt came in from attending Mr. Cobden's deathbed." At the age of twenty, as already quoted, Bagehot had written to his old school-fellow, Sir Edward Fry, "I do not know whether you are much of a free-trader or not. I am enthusiastic about -, am a worshipper of Richard Cobden." When students together at University College, London, Mr. Hutton and he would fly about London to any gathering where they had the chance of hearing Cobden speak. Twentyone years later Bagehot embodied the vivid impressions of those days in the first leader in the Economist of 8th April, 1865. "Twenty-three years ago—and it is very strange that it should be so many years-when Mr. Cobden first began to hold Free-Trade meetings in the Agricultural districts, people there were much confused. They could not believe the Cobden they saw to be the 'Mr. Cobden that was in the papers'. They expected a burly demagogue from the North, ignorant of rural matters, absorbed in manufacturing ideas, appealing to class-prejudices-hostile and exciting hostility. They saw a sensitive and almost slender man, of shrinking nerve, full of rural ideas, who proclaimed himself the son of a farmer, who understood and could state the facts of agricultural life far better than most agriculturalists, who was most anxious to convince every one of what he thought the truth, and who was almost more anxious not to offend any one. .. The tradition is dying out, but Mr. Cobden acquired, even in those days of Free-Trade agitation, a sort of agricultural popularity. He excited a personal interest-he left what may be called a sense of himself among his professed enemies. They were surprised at finding that he was not what they thought; they were charmed to find that he was not what they expected;

they were fascinated to find what he was. The same feeling has been evident at his sudden death-death at least which was to the mass of occupied men sudden. Over political Belgravia-the last part of English society Mr. Cobden ever cultivated-there was a sadness. Every one felt that England had lost an individuality which it could never have again, which was of the highest value, which was in its own kind altogether unequalled. . . . He was a sensitive agitator. Generally an agitator is a rough man of the O'Connell type, who says anything himself, and lets others say anything. You 'peg into me and I will peg into you, and let us see which will win,' is his motto. But Mr. Cobden's habit and feeling were utterly different. He never spoke ill of any one. He arraigned principles but not persons. We fearlessly say that after a career of agitation of thirty years, not one single individual has-we do not say a valid charge, but a produceable charge -a charge which he would wish to bring forward, against Mr. Cobden. . . . Very rarely, if even ever in history, has a man achieved so much by his words-been victor in what was thought at the time to be a class struggle-and yet spoken so little evil as Mr. Cobden. There is hardly a word to be found, perhaps, even now, which the recording Angel would wish to blot. We may on other grounds object to an agitator who lacerates no one, but no watchful man of the world will deny that such an agitator has vanquished one of life's most imperious and difficult temptations.

"Perhaps some of our readers may remember as vividly as we do a curious instance of Mr. Cobden's sensitiveness. He said in Drury Lane Theatre, in tones of feeling, almost of passion, curiously contrasting with the ordinary coolness of his nature: 'I could not serve with Sir Robert Peel'. After more than twenty years, the curiously thrilling tones of that phrase still live in our ears. Mr. Cobden alluded to the charge which Sir Robert Peel had made, or half made, that the AntiCorn Law League and Mr. Cobden had by their action and agitation, conduced to the actual assassination of Mr. Drummond, his secretary, and the intended assassination of himself, -Sir Robert Peel. No excuse or palliation could be made