Artistic interests were not strong in him, and the decadent pursuit of
culture as a mere luxury had no stronger enemy. Intellectual activity,
apart from moral purpose, was anathema to Acton. He has been censured
for bidding the student of his hundred best books to steel his mind
against the charm of literary beauty and style. Yet he was right. His
list of books was expressly framed to be a guide, not a pleasure; it was
intended to supply the place of University direction to those who could
not afford a college life, and it throws light upon the various strands
that mingled in Acton and the historical, scientific, and political
influences which formed his mind. He felt the danger that lurks in the
charm of literary beauty and style, for he had both as a writer and a
reader a strong taste for rhetoric, and he knew how young minds are apt
to be enchained rather by the persuasive spell of the manner than the
living thought beneath it. Above all, he detested the modern
journalistic craze for novelty, and despised the shallowness which rates
cleverness above wisdom.

In the same way his eulogy of George Eliot has been censured far more
than it has been understood. It was not as an artist superior to all
others that he praised the author of _Daniel Deronda_ and the translator
of Strauss. It was because she supplied in her own person the solution
of the problem nearest to his heart, and redeemed (so far as teaching
went) infidelity in religion from immorality in ethics. It was, above
all, as a constructive teacher of morals that he admired George Eliot,
who might, in his view, save a daily increasing scepticism from its
worst dangers, and preserve morals which a future age of faith might
once more inspire with religious ideals. Here was a writer at the summit
of modern culture, saturated with materialistic science, a convinced and
unchanging atheist, who, in spite of this, proclaimed in all her work
that moral law is binding, and upheld a code of ethics, Christian in
content, though not in foundation.

In the same way his admiration for Mr. Gladstone is to be explained. It
was not his successes so much as his failures that attracted Acton, and
above all, his refusal to admit that nations, in their dealings with one
another, are subject to no law but that of greed. Doubtless one who gave
himself no credit for practical aptitude in public affairs, admired a
man who had gifts that were not his own. But what Acton most admired w