age. From Fraser's Magazine. WALTER BAGEHOT. IN some respects, the intellect of the gifted man whose name furnishes the title of the present paper, was typical of the It was fearless and independent, accepting only that which came with wellestablished claims upon its credence; it was susceptible, yet capable of giving exact weight to the opinions and ideas which impinged upon its susceptibility; it was dissatisfied with the status quo, both in theology and politics; and, as in the case of all the best minds, it was not utterly devoid of some tinge of utopianism. To a frank and liberal nature were united deep mental culture, considerable philosophical power, imaginative endowments of no mean order, and — what is more surprising than all, perhaps, after the qualities just enumerated a large practical ability rarely witnessed in this order of brain. Few men of our own time have combined in so eminent a degree "the useful and the beautiful" if we may use a common phrase in this connection. Yet his name and his writings are by no means so widely known as they deserve to be. It would be unfair to the late Mr. Bagehot to apply the ordinary standards of popularity in his case; the value of such a mind is not to be measured by the amount of adulation poured upon it in the press. Nor did he at any time court popularity for its own sake. Now that he is gone, thinking men recognize a distinct loss; a gap which no other writer exactly fills; and this is, perhaps, the best of all tributes which could be paid to the memory of Walter Bagehot. even if it were It is not my intention within my power- to consider the claims of Mr. Bagehot upon his generation as a political economist or a political reformer and thinker; but I would say something upon the man himself, and upon his purely literary efforts. An opportunity is furnished for this, owing to the two volumes of essays by Mr. Bagehot recently published, and preceded by an admirable biographical sketch by Mr. Hutton.* This • Literary Studies. By the late Walter Bagehot, M.A., and Fellow of University College, London. I have sometimes felt somewhat unreasonably vexed that those who appreciated so well what I may almost call the smallest part of him appeared to know so little of the essence of him, of the high-spirited, buoyant, subtle, qualities were even more remarkable than the speculative nature in which the imaginative judgment, and were, indeed, at the root of all that was strongest in the judgment, of the gay and dashing humor which was the life of every conversation in which he joined, and of the visionary nature to which the commonest things often seemed the most marvellous, and the marvellous things the most intrinsically probable. There is a class of persons upon whom the mere words "political economy" act as a kind of nightmare; and many of these have probably been repelled from a closer acquaintance with Bagehot by a preconceived notion that he is one of "the dreary professors of a dismal science." It is supposed to be beyond the capacity of man to make the science of figures interesting, though we have the illustrious examples of a Pitt and a Gladstone to the contrary. However, the old adage, “Give a dog a bad name," has been carried out as regards political economists, and it many cases it acts as a most effective bogey. Mr. Hutton is convinced that Bagehot's judgment was sounder than other men's on many subjects, "not in spite of, but in consequence of the excursive imagination and vivid humor which are so often accused of betraying otherwise sober minds into dangerous aberrations." One cannot altogether coincide in this, nor in the statement that in Bagehot "both lucidity and caution were directly traceable to the force of his imagination." Humor undoubtedly has a With a Prefatory Memoir. Edited by Richard Holt Hutton. London: Longmans, Green, & Co. 66 66 great practical value; for what is it in vice-chairman of Stuckey's Banking Comessence, but the capacity to perceive dif-pany, and in this post he was succeeded ferences? But to trace caution as an effect by his son. Bagehot's mother was a niece of the imagination is another matter. In of the Mr. Samuel Stuckey above menone order of intellect, and that the highest tioned, and she appears to have been a range, of which Shakespeare is a type, we sensible as well as an intellectual woman. witness the practical and the imaginative "There is no doubt that Bagehot," says faculties developed pari passu. The au- his biographer, was greatly indebted to thor of "Hamlet" we are authorized the constant and careful sympathy in all in believing - would have made as good his studies that both she and his father a chancellor of the exchequer as Mr. gave him, as well as to a very studious Gladstone, as skilful an engineer as the disposition, for his future success." She Stephensons, as excellent a man of busi- had a marked taste for science, which she ness, and as shrewd, as the Stewarts and cultivated under the direction of her relathe Astors. To use a homely but expres- tive, Dr. Prichard, author of "The Races of sive phrase, one 'would have to get up Man." This taste, or a measure of it, was very early" to take Shakespeare in. But imparted to her son, and the results of who would venture to say all this of Milton, his early speculative thought and diligent or of Dante? men of towering imagina- inquiry are discovered in his work on tion, but lacking the all-round force of "Physics and Politics." Mr. Hutton first Shakespeare. And if we come to a some-made Bagehot's acquaintance at Univerwhat lower range of writers, we find that sity College, London, when neither of them the vast majority of those who have been had attained his seventeenth year. He distinguished for their imaginative gifts was struck by the questions he put, and have been equally noted for the absence the two having become known to each of business capabilities. The truth is that other, an intimate friendship resulted. in Bagehot's case the imagination and the Bagehot did not go to Oxford, as his business faculty were developed together; father was strongly opposed to all docbut if the former had been less active, I trinal tests. The loss was not great, fail to see why the latter should have however, to an intellect constituted like necessarily suffered, as would have been Bagehot's; it certainly would not have the case upon Mr. Hutton's hypothesis. ripened so well there as it did in those But one thing should be borne in mind haunts in London where the questions of and this will probably help us in fathoming the day were freely discussed, and handled the reason why Mr. Bagehot did not pro- without intellectual gloves. As Bagehot cure an intense hold upon the public mind himself afterwards expressed it, - viz., that though he had a lively imagination, it was not the imagination of absolute genius, but the imagination of a high order of talent. The life of Walter Bagehot, as regards its conspicuous incidents, may be put within a very brief compass. He was born at Langport, a small town in the heart of Somersetshire, on the third of February, 1826. An excellent centre for trade, it was at Langport that Mr. Samuel Stuckey founded the Somersetshire Bank, which holds a high position amongst provincial banking-houses. As Mr. Hutton states, it is now the largest private bank of issue in England. Walter Bagehot's father, Mr. Thomas Watson Bagehot, was for thirty years managing director and tutors, or lectures, or in books "got up," but In youth the real plastic energy is not in in Wordsworth and Shelley, in the books that all read because all like; in what all talk of because all are interested; in the argumentative walk or the disputatious lounge; in the impact of young thought upon young thought, of fresh thought on fresh thought, of hot thought on hot thought; in mirth and refutation, in ridicule and laughter; for these are the free play of the natural mind. In short, the best teacher and educator of man is humanity. Under the care of such men as Professors De Morgan, Malden, and Long, Bagehot's mind was quickly expanded and sharpened. But he did not remain content with the formal knowledge thus acquired. The period of his studies was one of great popular agitation, the | this is a very different thing from convicfree-trade campaign being then in full tion; they have been saved from embrac vigor; and Mr. Hutton says that he and ing her religion because intellect and Bagehot conscience have alike recoiled from her stupendous errors. It would be curious seldom missed an opportunity of hearing to inquire upon how many distinguished together the matchless practical disquisitions of Mr. Cobden-lucid and homely, yet glow-men of our own time Dr. Newman has not ing with intense conviction the profound wielded a powerful influence at some stage passion, and careless, though artistic, scorn of in their career. Though he has given to Mr. Bright, and the artificial and elaborately the Roman Catholic Church "what was ornate periods, and witty, though somewhat ad captandum, epigrams of Mr. W. J. Fox (afterwards M.P. for Oldham). Indeed, we scoured London together to hear any kind of oratory that had gained a reputation of its own, and compared all we heard with the declamation of Burke and the rhetoric of Macaulay, many of whose later essays came out and were eagerly discussed by us while we were together at college. Even at this early stage there seems to have been developed in Bagehot that sense of the advantages to be derived from compromise which afterwards distinguished him in relation to some great questions. In private life, however, while affable, kind, and generous, he does not appear to have had that mere "agreeableness" which Talleyrand defined as belonging to "the man who agrees with me." He was not of that numerous class of men who go out of their way to say smooth things for the express purpose of making matters pleasant all round. In 1846, Bagehot took the mathematical scholarship with his bachelor's degree in the University of London; and two years later he received the gold medal in intellectual and moral philosophy with his master's degree. It was at this time he became well grounded in the principles of political economy, though these severer studies did not preclude him from the more attractive pursuits of theology and poetry. Mr. Hutton says that one of his favorite authors was Dr. J. H. Newman, and that for seven or eight years of his life the Roman Catholic Church had a meant for mankind," there is, perhaps, more in him than in any other writer now living, to attract the admiration and veneration of men of all sects. Bagehot's admiration for him seems to have led him inal lines which Mr. Hutton quotes possess even to imitate his poetry; and some orig both vigor and idea. don While Bagehot was reading law in Lonundecided upon his future course, and hovering between the bar and the bank - he made the acquaintance of that singular man of genius, Arthur Hugh Clough. This acquaintance speedily ri pened into friendship. Clough was principal of University Hall, an institution in which Bagehot took a great interest. Mr. Hutton, who can trace the effect of some of Clough's writings on Bagehot's mind to the very end of his career, gives the following noticeable picture of Clough: There were some points of likeness between Bagehot and Clough, but many more of dif ference. Both had the capacity for boyish spirits in them, and the florid color which usu both were reserved men, with a great dislike ally accompanies a good deal of animal vigor; of anything like the appearance of false sentiment, and both were passionate admirers of Wordsworth's poetry; but Clough was slightly lymphatic, with a great tendency to unexpressed and unacknowledged discouragement, and to the paralysis of silent embarrassment when suffering from such feelings, while Bagehot was keen, and very quickly evacuated embarrassing positions, and never returned to them. When, however, Clough was happy and at ease, there was a calm and silent radiance in his face, and his head was set with a great fascination for his imagination, kind of stateliness on his shoulders, that gave though he does not believe that he was him almost an Olympian air; but this would ever at all near conversion. Many deep sometimes vanish in a moment into an emthinkers have been impressed by the his-barrassed taciturnity that was quite uncouth. tory and antiquity of the Roman Church, One of his friends declares that the man who and the picturesqueness of her ritual, but was said to be "a cross between a schoolboy and a bishop" must have been like Clough. | illustrations of that "ruinous force of the There was in Clough, too, a large Chaucerian simplicity and a flavor of homeliness, so that now and then, when the light shone into his eyes, there was something, in spite of the air of fine scholarship and culture, which reminded one of the best likenesses of Burns. Clough certainly possessed, what Bagehot lacked, distinct genius; but there was something of the intellectual dyspeptic in the former, and this cannot be said of Bagehot. It may, perhaps, be straining a point to describe the philosophy of Clough as the philosophy of discontent, though there was much of that in it. Discontent, per se, is an insidious and harmful creed; but discontent, as an incentive to inquiry, is most helpful. Clough's attitude on all vital questions was one of hesitancy; and however much we may admire the man and his gifts, hesitancy and negation have never done much for the human race. Man asks for something definite and positive, and it is a singular but undoubted fact, that the most stable happiness accompanies assurance and belief-not belief in this or that creed so much, but still a well-grounded and earnest belief in something. It is not surprising, consequently, that such a philosophy as that of Clough should make few proselytes. We admire his genius, but because we feel the difficulty with him of finding truth, we are not, necessarily, to plunge ourselves into the depths of despair. As Mr. Browning sings, God's in his heaven All's right with the world! One very curious intellectual episode in Bagehot's career is that during which he wrote a series of letters in the Inquirer upon Louis Napoleon's coup d'état. The Inquirer is the organ of the Unitarian body, and in 1851 a knot of clever young Unitarians, including Mr. J. Langton Sanford and Mr. Hutton, were engaged in conducting it. To this journal Mr. Bagehot (who was not a Unitarian) contributed his letters on the coup d'état. They must have fallen like a bombshell amongst the readers of the Inquirer, to most of whom the words "Louis Napoleon" were the synonym of despotism of the worst type. While almost all English Liberals were moved with indignation against Louis Napoleon, Bagehot undertook to defend the act for which his name was most execrated. As a specimen of ingenious reasoning and argument his letters are well worth reading; but, as Mr. Hutton says, the coup d'état was one of the best will" which Bagehot had learnt from Clough so much to dread. Mr. Hutton maintained that free institutions are apt to quotes an extract in which the writer succeed with a stupid people, and to founder with a ready-witted and vivacious one. These sentences, though fallacious, are excellent in their way : the clever people always lose? I need not say Why do the stupid people always win, and that in real sound stupidity the English people are unrivalled. You'll have more wit, and better wit, in an Irish street row than would keep Westminster Hall in humor for five weeks. . . . These valuable truths are no discoveries of mine. They are familiar enough to people whose business it is to know them. Hear what a douce and aged attorney says of your peculiarly promising barrister. "Sharp? Oh, yes, yes, he's too sharp by half. He isn't safe, not a minute, isn't that young man. director some youthful aspirant for literary "What style, sir," asked of an East Indian renown, "is most to be preferred in the composition of official despatches?" "My good fellow," responded the ruler of Hindostan, "the style as we like is the Humdrum!" This writing is clever, but it teems with false assumptions. The stupid people do not of course always win, nor do the clever people always lose. The English people are not unrivalled for their stupidity, nor is the humor of an Irish street row the highest development of wit. The average Englishman may not be so vivacious as the average Frenchman, yet England has produced (considering its restricted area) more nimble-witted men, and more men of genius, than any other country. Caution and slowness of speech must not be confounded with stupidity; and if England has acquired her liberties by slower stages than some other nations, she holds them with a firmer grip. If the English are a stupid people, our stupidity might be emulated with advantage by our vivacious neighbors across the Channel. It is this stupidity. or resolution, as we should prefer to call it - which has insured for modern Englishmen the inheritance described by Mr. Tennyson,— A land of settled government, A land of just and old renown, But though at one time Bagehot thus defended a high-handed and an outrageous act, his biographer states that in later life he was by no means blind to the political shortcomings of Louis Napoleon's régime. An article which he published in the Econ- | brotherhood." Here crops out Bagehot's omist after a later visit to France in 1865 cynicism, and his contempt for the cant of abundantly proves this. Speaking of the those who are perpetually talking of the government of the empire, he remarks: great human brotherhood, and yet keeping "It is an admirable government for present a sharp eye upon their neighbors, and and coarse purposes, but a detestable too often upon their neighbors' propgovernment for future and refined pur- erty. poses." Again: "A real course of free Ceasing to think of the bar as a profeslectures on popular subjects would be im- sion, Bagehot joined his father in the Sompossible in Paris. Agitation is forbidden, ersetshire bank, alternating his financial and it is agitation, and agitation alone, and commercial transactions with visits to which teaches. The crude mass of men London. He was fond of hunting, but he bear easily philosophical treatises, refined had no love for the ordinary amusements articles, elegant literature; there are but of society. Mr. Hutton relates an amustwo instruments penetrative enough to ing saying of his to the effect that he reach their opaque minds the newspaper wished he could think balls wicked, being article and the popular speech; both so unquestionably stupid, with all their of these are forbidden." Once more: "little blue and pink girls, so like each "France, as it is, may be happier because other." Banking and commerce now enof the empire, but France in the future gaged his attention, but literature was not will be more ignorant because of the em- neglected. He became joint editor of the pire. The daily play of the higher mind National Review, and to this and to the upon the lower mind is arrested." France Prospective Review he contributed a series of these articles reappear in the volumes now before us, and it is certainly matter for surprise that (as the editor observes) the literary taste of England could commit the blunder of passing by these remarkable essays. Few living men could have written some of the articles; where they do not command assent, they challenge admiration in the great majority of instances for their critical insight. "endures the daily presence of an efficient of articles which were afterwards pubimmorality; she sacrifices the educating lished under the title of "Estimates of apparatus which would elevate Frenchmen some Englishmen and Scotchmen." Most yet to be born. But these two disadvantages are not the only ones. France gains the material present, but she does not gain the material future." Bagehot's keen mind detected the flaws in the policy of the empire, and he hated with intensity its system of repression. The latest development of Cæsarism in France had a fall as swift and sudden as its rise; and under any circum stances the lack of the necessary conditions to sound and permanent government forbade its long continuance. The disaster of 1870 only precipitated that which was inevitable. It is stated that during his residence in Paris, and at the time of the riots, Bagehot "was a good deal in the streets, and from a mere love of art helped the Parisians to construct some of their barricades, notwithstanding the fact that his own sympathy was with those who shot down the barricades, not with those who manned them. He climbed over the gates of the Palais Royal on the morning of December second to breakfast, and used to say that he was the only person who did breakfast there on that day." He speaks of the Montagnard as the most horrible being to the eye I ever saw- sallow, sincere, sour fanaticism, with grizzled moustaches, and a strong wish to shoot you rather than The Montagnards are a scarce comthe real race only three or modity four, if so many, to a barricade. If you want a Satan any odd time, they'll do; only I hope that he don't believe in human not. 66 At the age of thirty-two Bagehot married the eldest daughter of the Right Hon. James Wilson. Mr. Wilson died in India while acting as financial member of the Indian Council. In editing the Economist, in the study of politics and of political economy, and in the preparation of his work on " Physics and Politics," Mr. Bagehot's time was now passed. In matters political he was as fearless a thinker as Mr. Lowe, though he had also much in common with that far more cautious statesman, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, for whom, indeed, he had a high admiration. There is something in these views which would commend itself to the member for the University of London: "He would have been glad to find a fair excuse for giving up India, for throwing the colonies on their own resources, and for persuading the English people to accept deliberately the place of a fourth or fifth rate European power- - which was not in his estimation a cynical or unpatriotic wish, but quite the reverse, for he thought that such a course would result in generally |