together at all. There is no use, over Sir George Lewis's grave, in reviving financial controversies; everybody will now admit that while he was in office and responsible, he was a sound and sure Chancellor of the Exchequer.

In the panic of 1857, we have heard, he was even amusing his perfect impassivity and collectedness contrasted much with the excitement of eager men, and in a panic most men are eager. A deputation of Scotch bankers attended at the Treasury to ask Sir George to induce the Bank of England to make advances to them in certain possible cases: Sir George said, "Ah, gentlemen, if I were to interfere with the discretion of the Bank, there would be a run upon me much greater than any which there has ever been upon you." He was a man who probably could not lose his head.

At the Home Office he had the opportunity of displaying great judicial faculties. The Home Office is the high court of appeal in cases of criminal justice; when any one is to be hanged, it is almost always argued before the Home Secretary that he should not be hanged. If Sir George Lewis had practiced at the bar, for which he studied, he would have been a bad advocate: his mind was not fertile in ambiguous fallacies, and was incapable of artificial belief; and a great pleader should excel in these. One of the greatest judges of our generation, when at the bar, could only state the point once, and when the court did not understand him, could only mutter, "What fools they are! awful fools! infernal fools!" Sir George Lewis would not have indulged in these epithets, but he would have been nearly as little able to invent ingenious suggestions and out-of-the-way arguments; he probably would have said, "I have explained the matter: if the court will not comprehend it, I cannot make them." But no man was fitter for a judge than himself: he would never have shirked labor, which is not unknown even among judges,

and his lucid exposition of substantial reasons would have been consulted by students for years. At the Home Office he could not display all these qualities, but he was able to display some of them.

At the War Office he shone far less. It did not suit his previous pursuits; and no other man with such pursuits would have taken it, or indeed would have been asked to take it. He pushed the notion too far in this case, that an able and educated man can master any subject and is fit for any office. The constitutional habit in England of making a civilian supreme over military matters, though we believe a most wise habit, has its objections and may easily look absurd; it did look rather absurd when the most pacific of the pacific, the most erudite of the erudite, Sir George Lewis, was placed at the head of the War Department. In great matters, it cannot be denied, he did well. When the capture of the "Trent" made a war with the Federal States a pressing probability, the arrangements were admitted to be admirable. Much of the credit must belong in such a case to military and other subordinates, — all the details must be managed by them; but the superior minister must have his credit too: he brought to a focus all which was done; he summed up the whole; he could say distinctly why everything which was done was done, and why everything left undone was left undone; he would have been ready with a plain, intelligible reason on all these matters in Parliament and elsewhere. And this was not an easy matter for a civilian after a few months of office. But on minor matters Sir George Lewis was not so good at the War Department as at the Exchequer or the Home Office. He had been apprenticed to the Home Office as Under-Secretary, and to the Exchequer as Financial Secretary to the Treasury, but he had never been apprenticed to the War Office: on matters of detail he was obliged to rely on others. He held, and justly, that a parliamentary chief, of temporary

perhaps very temporary-tenure of office, should be very cautious not to interfere too much with the minor business of his department; he should govern, but he should govern through others: but the due application of this maxim requires that the chief minister should know, as it were by intuition and instinct, which points are important and which are not important, and no civilian introduced at once to a new department like that of War can at once tell this, — he must be in the hands of others. In the House of Commons, too, Sir George Lewis could never answer questions of detail on war matters in an off-hand manner; he had to say, "I will inquire, and inform the honorable member:" at the Home Office he could have answered at once and of himself. It was an act of self-denial in him to go to the War Office, he felt himself out of place there, and was sure that his administration of military matters would not add to his reputation; but he was told it was for the interest of the Government that he should accept the office, and he accepted it. Perhaps he was wrong, the reputation of a first-rate public man is a great public power, and he should be careful not to diminish it the weight of the greatest men is diminished by their being seen to do daily that which they do not do particularly well. A cold and cynical wisdom particularly disapproves of most men's best actions: few men were less exposed to the censure of such wisdom than Sir George Lewis; but his acceptance of the War Office was a sacrifice of himself to the public, which injured him more than it advantaged the public, which it would have been better not to have made.

The usefulness of men like Sir George Lewis is not to be measured by their usefulness in mere office; it is in the Cabinet that they are of most use. Sir George Lewis was made to discuss business with other men: "If," we have heard one who did much business with him say, "if there is any fault in

what you say, he will find it out." In council, in the practical discussions of pending questions, a simple masculine intellect like that of Sir George Lewis finds its greatest pleasure and its best use: he was made to be a Cabinet minister.

The briefest notice of Sir George Lewis should not omit to mention one of his most agreeable and not one of his least rare peculiarities, - his good-natured use of great knowledge. It would have been easy for a man with such a memory as his, and such studious habits as his, to become most unpopular by cutting up the casual blunders of others; on the contrary, he was a most popular man, for he used his knowledge with a view to amend the ignorance of others, and not with a view to expose it. His conversation was superior either to his speeches or his writings: it had -what is perhaps rarer among parliamentary statesmen than among most people - the flavor of exact thought. It is hardly possible for men to pass their lives in oratorical efforts without losing some part of the taste for close-fitting words: well-sounding words which are not specially apt, which are not very precise, are as good or better for a popular assembly. Sir George Lewis's words in political conversation were as good as words could be; they might have gone to the press at once. We have compared it to hearing a chapter in Aristotle's "Politics," and perhaps that may give an idea that it was dull; but pointed thought on great matters is a very pleasant thing to hear, though after many ages and changes it is sometimes a hard thing to read. The conversation of the "Dialogue" at the end of his treatise on the "Best Form of Government" has been admired, but it is very inferior to the conversation of the writer; there was a delicate flavor of satire lurking in the precise thought which could not be written down, and which is now gone and irrecoverable.

"As often," says Lord Brougham, commenting on the death of a statesman once celebrated and now

*

66

"as

forgotten, a subject presented itself so large and shapeless, and dry and thorny, that few men's fortitude could face and no one's patience could grapple with it; or an emergency occurred demanding on the sudden, access to stores of learning, the collection of many long years, but arranged so as to be made available to the most ignorant at the shortest notice, it was then that men inquired where Laurence was." And now, not only when information is wanted, but when counsel is needed; when parties are confused; when few public men are trusted; when wisdom, always rare, is rarer even than usual, — many may ask, in no long time, "Where is Lewis now?"

-

* Dr. Laurence; see ante, page 256. The last sentence of this quotation is first in the original.-ED.