THE career of the Eighth Duke of Devonshire, as it is displayed in the pages of Mr Bernard Holland's admirable biography, has an interest which is already archæological. If he were a statesman, we know not what they are who presume to carry on the traditions of his craft. Between him and his successors there is no binding link of purpose or ambition. He has been dead less than four years, and he seems to-day as remote as the heroes of Plutarch's world. So fast have we travelled down the inclined plane of lawlessness, that we can hardly realise that this staunch champion of law and order ever lived and spoke in our midst. But the wanton revolution which has lately taken place in the conduct of affairs increases the value of Mr Holland's presentment, and we can wish our politicians no better fate than that they should keep before them the high example of this wise and patriotic Duke.

For fifty years, as Lord Cavendish, the Marquis of Hartington, and the Duke of Devonshire, he took part in the government of his country, and never for a moment did he loosen his hold upon the faith and respect of the people. There was none, either friend or foe, who did not trust his lofty sense of honour and his profound knowledge of affairs. His countrymen always recog

nised that he brought far more to the task of government than he expected to get out of it. For him politics was no adventure. He was not forced by necessity or a false ambition to trim the sails of his bark to the popular breeze. The son of a noble and distinguished house, he inherited the best traditions of Whig policy, and he hoped to serve England, not to compel England to serve him. A sense of duty sent him into the House of Commons, and a sense of duty kept him there. There is a vast deal of evidence in Mr Holland's volumes to prove that, if he could, he would early have retired to the private life of an English gentleman. "We are in again, I am sorry to say," he wrote in 1873, "not without an attempt on my part to get free." Though he would not put his colleagues to any inconvenience, he had already "come to detest office." When Mr Gladstone had discovered prematurely that he was arriving at "the closing of his days," Lord Hartington hoped against hope that he might not be forced to succeed that eminent man. "It will really be a great relief to be out of it," he wrote; "and not only on idle grounds. I should never have liked it; but I don't think I could endure the toleration I should have to put up with." When he saw that he could no longer escape the leadership, he assumed it with a strong

hand. Yet the reluctance to lead never left him. "It is extraordinary," he wrote to Lord Salisbury many years many years later, "what an attraction office seems to have for some people." It had none for him, and he boasts the unique distinction of having refused three times to be Prime Minister.

This is the first secret of his profound influence: the whole world knew him to be disinterested. And not merely was he disinterested; he had an unconcealed dislike for cant of every sort. When Mr Gladstone was rushing up and down the country denouncing what he called "Bulgarian atrocities," Lord Hartington deplored the summoning of a Conference. "I see no great harm," he wrote to Lord Granville, "if it is a failure, so long as the moderate men of the party are not mixed up in it. They cannot talk more nonsense than has already been talked at the meetings; but why should we encourage any respectable member of the party to go and listen to, and be in some sense perhaps committed by the speeches of men like Freeman, Canon Liddon, Jenkins, Maxse, Lyulph Stanley, &c., &c., and innumerable parsons? The number of the latter on the list is quite enough for me." It was this same hatred of cant that made him take a modest view of his parliamentary services. He did not believe that because he was returned to the House of Commons by an enthusiastic constituency he was the saviour of his country. The vice of pomposity was impossible to

him. "I have seen much of the shorthorn world," he wrote, when men's minds were inflamed by the Eastern Question, "who do not appear to be wiser than other people." Once upon a time when an orator in the House of Lords said, "this is the proudest moment of my life," the Duke murmured to his neighbour, "the proudest moment of my life was when my pig won the first prize at Skipton Fair." It was his great virtue never to put false values upon things, nor to disguise his preferences. firmly believed that his birth and destiny called him to the political field. The obligation of honour did not leave him a free man. Had he been free, perhaps he would have given to sport not his leisure but his life. "Sometimes I dream that I am leading in the winner of the Derby," he said, "but I am afraid it will never be anything but a dream." It is certain that he never dreamed that he was Prime Minister.

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And with this nonchalance were bound up a transparent honesty, and a perfect sense of truth.

He made no sacrifice to the exigence of the moment. By a happy fate he was spared the disgrace of rhetoric. Such words as he had, and they were persuasive rather than many, he employed not to cloak but to reveal his mind. As Mr Holland says, "the witch, Imagination, had no power over him." It was his constant endeavour to strip falsehood of her trappings. A magnificently ingenuous passage in a letter of Mr Gladstone's

said, "I have had to work with men who thought three times as quick as I did, and have found this a great disadvantage." The disadvantage was not as great as he thought. The very slowness of his reasoning added enormously to his tenacity. When once he had determined upon a course of action, he was not easily driven from his course. The ample simplicity of his mind enabled him to discard all that was not essential to the policy in hand. He could not juggle with right and wrong. He would have scorned to assume the facile omniscience dear to some of his colleagues. He gladly acknowledged an ignorance of what he did not know, and thus discovered another reason why all men should trust him. His attitude towards the Fiscal question was straightforward and characteristic. He had been brought up in the school of Free Trade, and his Conservative instincts persuaded him not to change his view. It is clear that he did not understand the arguments of Mr Balfour and Mr Chamberlain. And not understanding them, he very rightly left the Government. The uncertainty of his position he explained to a friend with his own dry humour. "The politics of the family are rather mixed," he said. "Victor is a Balfourian, Dick is an outand-out free-trader, and God knows what I am." There is no jugglery here.

The deliberation of his thought saved him from the worst pitfall which yawns for

public men. He was never the victim of a discursive cleverness. He could not chatter of Shakespeare and the musical glasses. The light which came from his brain was intense, not diffused. He regarded art and literature with the same candour wherewith he looked upon life and politics. It is recorded that he once picked up 'Paradise Lost' and began to read it aloud. Then stopping for a moment he said, "How fine this is! I had forgotten how fine it was." Try to imagine what Mr Gladstone would have said on a like occasion, and you may measure roughly the contrast between the two men. It is indeed this contrast which most forcibly seizes the mind of the reader of Mr Holland's biography. For many years Mr Gladstone and the Duke were colleagues or adversaries. They represented two sides of English politics. They were incompatible always in method and ambition, and the wonder is that they worked together as long as they did. It was unfortunate for Mr Gladstone that they were at last dissolved. For if the influence of Mr Gladstone upon Lord Hartington was inappreciable, the influence of Lord Hartington upon Mr Gladstone was always salutary. Mr Gladstone was an actor, protean and irresponsible. him words were a thousand times more important than deeds; and by a cruel irony, even the words which he spoke were almost meaningless if unaccompanied by his massive gesture and the flashing of a

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vulturine eye. His mind was in a constant state of fluidity. The heresy of yesterday was converted by opportunity into the gospel of to-day. The past was nothing to him; the future immaterial. He vaunted only with persuasive eloquence the advantage of the present. In all things the Duke was his antithesis. He was far too honest and sincere ever to act a part. So securely anchored was he to the traditions of his race and time, that he could not separate the present from the past. Unchanging as the rocks of his native Derbyshire, he was loyal always to himself and to others. The story that he yawned in the middle of his own speech is true in essence, if not in fact. He cultivated a plain, even a dull, presentation, partly because plainness was natural to him, partly because he had a wise distrust of rhetoric. He had that quality which the French call morgue, and this prevented him from displaying an enthusiasm which he did not feel. He was a first-rate administrator, with a vast power of work, and he could get the heart out of a blue-book with astonishing speed and accuracy. As Mr Holland says in precisely the right words, "his work was done with a weary, or bored thoroughness." His attitude was that of a man "refusing to be hurried.' He could never have been described, like Mr Gladstone, as 66 an old man in a hurry." His character, as summed up by Mr Holland, wholly justifies his influence. "Hartington," writes

Mr Holland, "as Lord Granville once told him, resembled a certain diplomat of the day, who says that his head is so constructed that it can take in very little of what is not perfectly clear. He was, as the French say, of a caractère très une, or, as we say, 'all of a piece,' unum hominem. . . . His speeches only succeeded, so far as they did succeed, because of the weight and sincerity of his character. His word was known to be one with himself; he was, as the saying goes, 'as good as his word.' He was averse to speaking, nor was he flattered by the applause of the crowd. Had he evoked any loud applause, he would probably have felt like the Greek aristocrat who, hearing plaudits, turned to a friend near him and asked, 'Have I said anything very foolish?"" A far different statesman from the noisy rhetoricians who to-day usurp the reins of power, and who think the Empire well lost if only the raucous applause of fools echoes in their ears.

Such was the man who was appointed by providence to be a watch-dog upon the actions of Mr Gladstone. How faithfully he performed his office is related in Mr Holland's pages. It was particularly in Ireland that he dogged the footsteps of his great chief and opponent. His qualifications to speak of Ireland were many. He was an Irish landlord who liked and understood the people of the country. He had been Irish Secretary, and was familiar with all the tricks and