maxim that mere intellectual power
does not stand first among the elements of character that go to the
winning of a foremost place.

-----

[41] A carefully written life of Lord Sherbrooke (in two volumes) by
Mr. Patchett Martin was published in 1896. The most interesting
part of it is the short fragment of autobiography with which it
begins, and which carries the story down to Lowe's arrival in
Australia.

[42] In his autobiography he writes, "With a quiet temper and a real
wish to please, I have been obliged all my life to submit to an
amount of unpopularity which I really did not deserve, and to
feel myself condemned for what were really physical rather than
moral deficiencies."

[43] There was an anecdote current in the University of Oxford down to
my time that when Lowe was examining in the examination which
the statutes call "Responsions," the dons "Little-go," and the
undergraduates "Smalls," a friend coming in while the _viva
voce_ was in progress, asked him how he was getting on.
"Excellently," said Lowe; "five men plucked already, and the
sixth very shaky." Another tale, not likely to have been
invented, relates that when he and several members of the then
Liberal Ministry were staying in Dublin with the Lord
Lieutenant, and had taken an excursion into the Wicklow hills,
they found themselves one afternoon obliged to wait for half an
hour at a railway station. To pass the time, Lowe forthwith
engaged in a dispute about the charge with the car-drivers who
had brought them, a dispute which soon became hot and noisy, to
the delight of Lowe, but to the horror of the old Lord
Chancellor, who was one of the party.

[44] _Essays on Reform_, published in 1867.

[45] The then borough qualification, which Mr. Gladstone's Bill
proposed to reduce to L7.

[46] Mr. Gladstone said to me in 1897 that the extension of the
suffrage had, in his judgment, improved the quality of
legislation, making it more regardful of the interests of the
body of the people, but had not improved the quality of the
House of Commons.

[47] Sir H. S. Maine's _Quarterly Review_ articles, published in a
volume under the title of _Popular Government_, come nearest to
being a literary presentation of the case against demo