dmiralty,
explained his position to me with happy candour: "I have always
been in favour of the most advanced thing in the Liberal Programme.
Just now the most advanced thing is Home Rule; so I'm a Home Ruler."

In the last year of Lord Ripon's life, when he had just retired
from the Cabinet and the leadership of the House of Lords, he was
entertained at luncheon by the Eighty Club, and the occasion was
marked by some more than usually interesting speeches. It always
is satisfactory to see public honours rendered, not to a monument
or a tomb, but to the living man; and, in Lord Ripon's case, the
honours, though ripe, were not belated. George Eliot has reminded
us that "to all ripeness under the sun there comes a further stage
of development which is less esteemed in the market." The Eighty
Club avoided that latent peril, and paid its honours, while they
were still fresh and worth having, to the living representative of a
Liberalism "more high and heroical than the present age affecteth."
One could not help feeling that the audience which Lord Ripon faced
when he was addressing the Club was Radical to the backbone. Radicals
themselves, and eager to set the world right, they paid reverence to
a Radical who, sixty years ago, was inspired by the same passion,
and in all that long stretch of time has never failed the cause.
The applause, hearty, genuine, emotional, was even more expressive
than the oratory, for it was evoked by the presence of a man who,
in his earliest youth, had burst the trammels of station and
environment, and had sworn himself to the service of the poor,
the ill-fed, and the unrepresented, in days when such devotion
was far more difficult than now. It is probable that not a few
of Lord Ripon's hearers, while they acclaimed his words and waved
their salutations, may have added in the depths of their hearts
some aspiration such as this: "When I come to my eightieth year, may
I be able to look back upon a career as consistent, as unselfish,
and as beneficent."

Thrice happy is the man, be he Warrior or Statesman, who, in spite
of lessened activity and increasing burdens and the loss of much
that once made life enjoyable, still

"Finds comfort in himself and in his cause,
And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause."

V

"_FREDDY LEVESON_"

When a man has died in his eighty-ninth year, it seems irreverent
to call him by his nickname. And