versal spirit of rebellion and disaffection to everything and everybody whom Nature has ordained to rule over them. We are all waiting in some alarm and much indignation for the result, and in the meantime (entre nous) I have written a small pamphlet, addressed to the higher classes on the present state of public feeling among the lower, urging them to moderate and direct it, if they can. But sooner than the present state of things should continue, I would adopt any principles, conceiving it to be the duty of all men, as Burke says, so to be patriots as not to forget that we are gentlemen, to mould our principles to our duties and our situations, and to be convinced that all (public) virtue which is impracticable is spurious.' I write to induce the people to leave politics to wiser heads, to consent to learn and not endeavour to direct or teach."

We here see that before he was one-and-twenty years old, Greg was possessed by the conception that haunted him to the very end. When the people complain, their complaint savours of rebellion. Those who make themselves the mouthpieces of popular complaint, must be wicked incendiaries. The privileged classes must be ordained by Nature to rule over the non-privileged. The few ought to direct and teach, the many to learn. That was Greg's theory of government from first to last. It was derived at this time, I suppose, from Burke, without the powerful correctives and indispensable supplements that are to be found in Burke's earlier writings. Some one said of De Tocqueville, who afterwards became Mr. Greg's friend, and who showed in a milder form the same fear of democracy, “Il a commencé à penser avant d'avoir rien appris; ce qui fait qu'il a quelquefois pensé creux." What is to be said for Mr. Greg, now and always, is that he most honourably accepted the obligations of his doctrine, and did his best to discharge his own duties as a member of the directing class.

He did not escape moods of reaction. The truth seems to be, that though his life was always well filled, he inherited rather the easy and buoyant disposition of his father, than the energy and strenuousness of his mother, though he too could be energetic and strenuous

It

enough upon occasion. Both William Greg and his favourite brother were of what is called, with doubtful fitness, the feminine temperament. It was much less true of William than of Samuel Greg; but it was in some degree true of him also that, though firm, tenacious, and infinitely patient, "he rather lacked that harder and tougher fibre, both of mind and frame, which makes the battle of life so easy and so successful to many men." may be suspected in both cases that their excessive and prolonged devotion to the practice of mesmerism and animal magnetism had tended to relax rather than to brace the natural fibre. Samuel Greg broke down at a comparatively early age; and though his brother's more vigorous system showed no evil results for many long years to come, there was a severe reaction from the nervous tension of their mesmeric experimentation.

Those who trace despondent speculations of the mind to depressed or morbid conditions of body will find some support for their thesis in Mr. Greg's case. When he was only oneand-twenty he writes to his sister (December 2, 1830):—

"I am again attacked with one of those fits of melancholy indifference to everything, and total incapacity for exertion, to which I am so often subject, and which are indeed the chronic malady of my existence. They sometimes last for many weeks, and during their continuance I do not believe, among those whose external circumstances are comfortable, there exists any one more thoroughly miserable. . . . For nearly four years these fits of melancholy and depression have been my periodical torment, and as yet I have found no remedy against them, except strong stimulants or the society of intimate friends, and even these are only temporary, and the latter seldom within my reach, and the former I abstain from partly on principle, but more from a fear of consequences. Every one has a thorn in the flesh, and this is mine; but I am egotistical, if not selfish, in inflicting it upon others. I begin to think I have mistaken my way both to my own happiness and the affections of others. My strongest passion has always been the desire to be loved-as the French call it, le besoin d'être aimé.' It is the great wish, want, desire, necessity, desideratum of my life, the source through which I expect

happiness to flow to me, the ultimate aim and object which has led me on in all the little I have done, and the much that I have tried to do."

From these broodings the young man was rescued by a year of travel. It was one of the elements in the domestic scheme of education that the university should be followed by a year abroad, and in William Greg's case it had been postponed for a season by the exigences of business and the factory at Bury. He went first through France and Switzerland to Italy. At Florence he steeped himself in Italian, and read Beccaria and Machiavelli; but he had no dæmonic passion (like Macaulay's) for literature. "Italian," he said, "is a wonderfully poor literature in everything but poetry, and the poets I am not up to, and I do not think that I shall take the trouble to study them." When he reached that city which usually excites a traveller as no other city on earth can excite him, dyspepsia, neuralgia, and vapours plunged him into bad spirits, and prevented him from enjoying either Rome or his books. The sights of Rome were very different fifty years ago from those that instruct and fascinate us to-day. Except the Colosseum, the Pantheon, and a few pillars covered thick with the filth of the modern city, the traveller found the ancient Rome an undistinguishable heap of bricks. Still, when we reflect on the profound and undying impression that Rome even then had made on such men as Goethe, or Winckelmann, or Byron, the shortcoming must have been partly in the traveller. In truth, Mr. Greg was not readily stirred either by Goethe's high artistic sense, or by Byron's romantic sense of the vast pathos of Rome.

"I pass my time here [he says] with extreme regularity and quietness, not knowing, even to speak to, a single individual in Rome; and the direction to my valet when I start on my perambulations, al Campidoglio,' 'al Foro,' forms the largest part of my daily utterIn a fit of desperation I took to writing a kind of political philosophy, in default of my poetical aim, which is quite gone

ances.

from me. It is a setting forth of the peculiar political and religious features of the age, wherein it differs from all preceding ones, and is entitled the Genius of the Nineteenth Century. I do not know if I shall ever finish it; but if I could write it as I have imagined it, it will at least be entitled to come under Mr. Godwin's definition of eloquence. That gentleman being in a company of literati, who were comparing their notions of what eloquence could be defined to consist in, when his opinion was asked replied, 'Eloquence is truth spoken with fervour.' I am going on with it, though slowly, and fill up the rest of my leisure time with Dante and Machiavelli (with which last author I am delighted) in the morning, and with Boccaccio and our English poets in the evening. Sight-seeing does not occupy much of my time."

From Rome Mr. Greg and a companion went to Naples, and from Naples they made their way to Sicily. I have said that Mr. Greg had not Byron's historic sense; still this was the Byronic era, and no one felt its influence more fervently. From youth to the end of his life, through good and evil repute, Mr. Greg maintained Byron's supremacy among poets of the modern time. It was no wonder, then, that he should write home to his friends,-"I am tired of civilised Europe, and I want to see a wild country if I can." Accordingly at Naples he made up his mind to undertake what would be a very adventurous tour even in our day, travelling through Greece and Asia Minor to Constantinople, and thence northwards through Hungary to Vienna. This wild and hazardous part of his tour him a refreshment and pleasure gave that he had not found in Swiss landscapes or Italian cities, and he enjoyed the excitement of the "wild countries' as thoroughly as he had expected. On his return to England he published anonymously an account of what he had seen in Greece and Turkey, in a volume which, if occasionally florid and imaginative, is still a lively and copious piece of description. It is even now worth turning to for a picture of the ruin and distraction of Greece after the final expulsion of the Turk.2 1 November 30, 1831.

2 Sketches in Greece and Turkey, with the Present Condition and Future Prospects of the Turkish Empire. London: Ridgway, 1833.

On his return he found the country in the throes of the great election after the Reform Bill. Perhaps his experiences of the sovereign Demos on that occasion helped to colour his opinions on popular government afterwards.

"December 5, 1832.-On Tuesday we nominated-there was a fearful crowd of 10,000 ruffians, Grundy's friends from the country. A tremendous uproar. I seconded Mr. Walker's nomination, but was received with yells and groans, owing chiefly to the prosecution which I have instituted against the other candidate and four of his supporters for intimidation of voters. The ruffians roared at me like so many bulls of Bashan, and shook their fists at me, whereupon I bowed profoundly; and finding it impossible to obtain a hearing, I turned to the opposite candidate and his immediate supporters on the hustings and spoke to them. When we concluded, the uproar was fearful I was warned to escape as I could, which I did, amid groans and hisses, but no violence. The next morning we started polling. I had the honour of giving the first vote, and at four o'clock the poll was decided in our favour-Walker, 301; Grundy, 151. The next day I returned from Manchester, and had not been in the mill two hours before I was summoned to assist in quelling a riot. I rode down immediately with three other gentlemen and a magistrate to the scene of faction. We found plenty of broken windows and heads, but no one killed. Here were two parties of such bludgeon men as I never before witnessed, evidently bent on mischief. We read the Riot Act-sent for the military and the Haslams! I rode among the ruffians. They were in a state of extreme exasperation, especially against me, but listened to my exhortations, and after shaking their bludgeons at me, came at last to shake hands. About dusk I received several hints to take care of myself, so rode back to Green Bank, and lay with my blunderbuss and sword, ready to give entertainment to any visitor."

It is little wonder that in a man of his literary temperament and predispositions a strong reaction followed close behind these energetic perform

ances.

"Do you know [he writes, December 29], I am sick of public life. I mean sicker than ever. The reward, or rather success, is so very inadequate to the sacrifice; and the exertion, and the injury to one's character, mentally, morally, and religiously, is so great, and one's real happiness suffers yet more. My love for retirement and the country, scientific studies, and calm, quiet, and refreshing society, such as the country only can afford, which has always been a sort of passion, is now urging No. 284.-VOL, XLVIII.

me more strongly and imperiously than ever, to weigh conflicting interests and tastes, and to hold fast that which is good. And is it not far better to retire in the full vigour of life, when the energy of application is still unimpaired, and can be usefully directed?"

A

In 1833 Mr. Greg started in business on his own account at Bury. He inherited his father's mechanical taste, and took a lively interest in the improvements that were constantly being made in those years in the wonderful machinery of the cotton manufacture. With his workpeople his relations were the most friendly, and he was as active as he had ever been before in trying to better their condition. wider field was open for his philanthropic energies. Lancashire was then the scene of diligent social efforts of all kinds. Mr. Greg was an energetic member of the circle at Manchester (Richard Cobden was another) which at this time pushed on educational, sanitary, and political improvements all over that important district. He fully shared the new spirit of independence and self-assertion that began to animate the commercial and manufacturing classes in the north of England at the time of the Reform Bill. It took a still more definite and resolute shape in the great struggle ten years later for the repeal of the Corn Laws. "It is among these classes," he said, in a speech in 1841, "that the onward movements of society have It is generally had their origin. among them that new discoveries in political and moral science have invariably found the readiest acceptance; and the cause of Peace, Civilisation, and sound National Morality

has been more indebted to their humble but enterprising labours, than to the measures of the most sagacious statesman, or the teachings of the wisest moralist."

In 1835 Mr. Greg married the daughter of Dr. Henry, an eminent physician in Manchester, and honourably known to the wider world of science by contributions to the chemistry of gases that were in their

K

times of difficulty and danger and excitement, and I am afraid my line of life will furnish me with but few of these times, so that I shall remain in the ground like the seed of a strong plant, which has never found the soil or the atmosphere necessary for its germination."

The judgment was not an unjust one, and the apprehension that life would bring too few difficulties was superfluous, as most of us find it to be. When the difficulties came, he confronted them with patient stoicism. His passionate love of natural beauty was solace and nourishment to him during the fifteen years of his sojourn in that taking, happy region of silver lake and green mountain slope. He had many congenial neighbours. Of Wordsworth he saw little. The poet was, in external manner and habit, too much of the peasant for Greg's in

tellectual fastidiousness. He called on one occasion at Rydal Mount, and Wordsworth, who had been re-gravelling his little garden-walks, would talk of nothing but gravel, its various qualities, and their respective virtues. The fine and subtle understanding of Hartley Coleridge, his lively fancy, his literature, his easy play of mind, made him a more sympathetic companion for a man of letters than his great neighbour. Of him Mr. Greg saw a good deal until his death in 1849.1 Southey was still lingering at Greta Hall; but it was death in life. He cherished and fondled the books in his beloved library as if they had been children, and moved mechanically to and fro in that mournful "dream from which the sufferer can neither wake nor be awakened." Southey's example might, perhaps, have been a warning to the newcomer how difficult it is to preserve a clear, healthy, and serviceable faculty of thinking about public affairs, without close and constant contact with

1 Hartley Coleridge must, in Mr. Greg's case, have overcome one of his prepossessions. "I don't like cotton manufacturers much, nor merchants over much. Cobden seems to be a good kind of fellow, but I wish he were not a cotton-spinner. I rather respect him. I'm always on the side of the poor."

those who are taking the lead in them.2 There was a lesson for the Cassandra of a later day in the picture of Southey when Mrs. Fletcher took tea with him in 1833.

"I never saw any one [she said] whose mind was in so morbid a state as that of this excellent poet and amiable man on the subject of the present political aspect of affairs in England. He is utterly desponding. He believes the downfall of the Church and the subversion of all law and government is at hand; for in spite of all our endeavours to steer clear of politics, he slid unconsciously into the subject, and proclaimed his belief that the ruin of all that was sacred and venerable was impending."

The condition, say of Bury, in Lancashire, at that time, contrasted with its condition to-day, is the to these dreary adequate answer

vaticinations.

One resident of the Lake District was as energetic and hopeful as Southey was despondent. This was Harriet Martineau, whom Mr. Greg first introduced to the captivating beauty of Westmoreland, and whom he induced in 1850 to settle there. Other friends -the Speddings, the Arnolds at Fox How, the Davys at Ambleside, the Fletchers at Lancrigg-formed a delightful circle, all within tolerably easy reach, and affording a haven of kind and nourishing companionship. But, for a thinker upon the practical aspects of political and social science, it was all too far from

"Labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar."

For during these years Mr. Greg did not handle merely the abstract principles of politics and sociology. A

? I do not forget the interesting passage in Mill's Autobiography (pp. 262-3), where he contends that "by means of the regular receipt of newspapers and periodicals, a political writer, who lives many hundreds of miles from the chief seat of the politics of his country, is kept au courant of even the most temporary politics, and is able to acquire a more correct view of the state and progress of opinion than he could acquire by personal contact with individuals." 3 Autobiography, p. 214.