hancellor Selborne) and of Archibald Tait (afterwards Archbishop of
Canterbury). He was much sought after and wonderfully effective as a
private tutor or "coach" in classical subjects, being not only an
excellent scholar but extremely clear and stimulating as a teacher. He
retained his love of literature all through life, and made himself,
_inter alia permulta_, a good Icelandic scholar and a fair Sanskrit
scholar. For mathematics he had no turn at all. Active sports, he
tells us, he enjoyed, characteristically adding, "they open to dulness
also its road to fame." When he left the University, where anecdotes
of his caustic wit were long current, he tried his fortune at the Bar,
but with such scant success that he presently emigrated to New South
Wales, soon rose to prominence and unpopularity there, returned in ten
years with a tolerable fortune and a detestation of democracy, became
a leading-article writer on the _Times_, entered Parliament, but was
little heard of till Lord Palmerston gave him (in 1859) the place of
Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education. His function
in that office was to administer the grants made from the national
treasury to elementary schools, and as he found the methods of
inspection rather lax, and noted a tendency to superficiality and a
neglect of backward children, he introduced new rules for the
distribution of the grant (the so-called "Revised Code") which
provoked violent opposition. The motive was good, but the rules were
too mechanical and rigid and often worked harshly; so he was presently
driven from office by an attack led by Lord Robert Cecil (now Lord
Salisbury).

Though Lowe became known by this struggle, his conspicuous fame dates
from 1865, when he appeared as the trenchant critic of a measure
for extending the parliamentary franchise in boroughs, introduced
by a private member. Next year his powers shone forth in their full
lustre. The Liberal Ministry of Lord Russell, led in the House of
Commons by Mr. Gladstone, had brought in a Franchise Extension Bill
(applying to boroughs only) which excited the dislike of the more
conservative or more timid among their supporters. This dislike might
not have gone beyond many mutterings and a few desertions but for the
vehemence with which Lowe opposed the measure. He fought against it
in a series of speeches which produced a greater impression in the
House of Commons, and roused stronger feelings of admiration and
hosti