gelical Churchman of a now almost
extinct type, not beloved by Cobden and the Free Traders, occasionally
very vehement in his utterances, a man who, if he had stuck to the party
game of politics, would have taken a high place in the management of
public affairs. I knew him well, and he was always friendly to me. In
his prime he must have been a remarkably handsome man, tall, pale, with
dark hair and a commanding presence. Perhaps he took life a little too
seriously. To shake hands with him, said his brother, was a solemn
function. But his earnestness might well make him sad, as he saw and
felt the seriousness of the great work to which he had devoted his life.
He had no great party to back him up. The Dissenters regarded him with
suspicion, for he doubted their orthodoxy, and in his way he was a
Churchman to the core. He was too much a Tory for the Whigs, and too
Radical a philanthropist for the old-fashioned Tory fossils then
abounding in the land. On one occasion Lord Melbourne, when dining with
the Queen in his company, introduced him to royalty as the greatest
Jacobin in her dominions. In Exeter Hall he reigned supreme, and though
dead he still lives as his works survive. He was the friend of all the
weak, the poor, the desolate who needed help. He did much to arouse the
aristocracy to the discharge of their duties as well as the maintenance
of their rights. All the world is the better for his life. It was a
miracle to me how his son, the eighth Earl, came to commit suicide, as he
always seemed to me the cheerfullest of men, of the rollicking sailor
type. I often met him on board the steamer which took us all down the
river to the _Chichester_ and _Arethusa_, founded by the late Mr. William
Williams in 1843--a good man for whom Earl Shaftesbury had the most
ardent esteem--as refuges for homeless and destitute children to train up
for a naval career.

London poverty and London vice flourished unchecked till long after Queen
Victoria had commenced her reign. When I first knew London the streets
after dark were fearful, and a terrible snare to all, especially the
young and idle and well-to-do. The public-houses were kept open till a
late hour. There were coffee-houses that were never closed; music-halls,
where the songs, such as described in Thackeray's "Cave of Harmony," were
of a most degrading character; Judge and Jury Clubs, where the low wit
and obscenity of the actors were fearful; saloons for the