nd strong; and his style, though unadorned,
was perfectly correct. His truly noble nature shone through his
utterance, and his gentle humour conciliated the goodwill even of
political opponents. His ample fortune and large leisure enabled
him to devote himself to Parliamentary work, though the interests of
his brewery and of his landed estate were never neglected. He was
active in all local business, and had a singularly exact knowledge of
all that concerned his constituents, their personalities and desires.
A man thus endowed was clearly predestined for high office, and, in
1859 Lord Palmerston, who believed in political apprenticeship,
made Samuel Whitbread a Lord of the Admiralty. But this appointment
disclosed the one weak joint in the young politician's armour.
His circulation was not strong enough for his vast height, and
sedulous attention to the work of an office, superadded to the
normally unwholesome atmosphere of the House of Commons, was more
than he could stand. "I cannot," he said, "get a living out of
the London air;" and so in 1863, just on the threshold of high
preferment, he bade farewell to official ambition and devoted himself
thence-forward to the work of a private Member. But the leaders of
the Liberal party did not resign such a recruit without repeated
efforts to retain him. Three times he refused the Cabinet and twice
the Speakership; while every suggestion of personal distinctions
or hereditary honours he waved aside with a smile.

The knowledge that these things were so gave Whit bread a peculiar
authority in the House of Commons. His independence was absolute
and assured. He was, if any politician ever was, unbuyable; and
though he was a sound Party man, on whom at a pinch his leaders
could rely, he yet seemed to rise superior to the lower air of
partisanship, and to lift debate into the atmosphere of conviction.
The _St. James's Gazette_ once confessed that his peculiar position
in the House of Commons was one of those Parliamentary mysteries
which no outsider could understand. He seemed, even amid the hottest
controversies, to be rather an arbiter than an advocate. Once Mr.
T. W. Russell, in a moment of inspiration, described him as "an
umpire, perfectly impartial--except that he never gives his own
side out." Whereupon Whitbread, with a quaint half-smile, whispered
to the man sitting next to him: "That hit of 'T. W.'s' was _not
very bad_." A singular tribute to Whitbread's influence, and