thcote (born 1818, died 1887) belonged to a type of
politician less common among us than it used to be, and likely to
become still more rare as England grows more democratic--the county
gentleman of old family and good estate, who receives and profits by a
classical education at one of the ancient universities, who is at an
early age returned to Parliament in respect of his social position in
his county, who has leisure to cultivate himself for statesmanship,
who has tastes and resources outside the sphere of politics.
Devonshire, whence he came, has preserved more of the old features of
English country life than the central and northern parts of England,
where manufactures and the growth of population have swept away the
venerable remains of feudalism. In Devonshire the old families are
still deeply respected by the people. They are so intermarried that
most of them have ties of kinship with all their neighbours. Few rich
parvenus have intruded among them; society is therefore exceptionally
easy, simple, and unostentatious. There is still a strong local
patriotism, which makes every Devonshire man, whatever his political
prepossessions, proud of other Devonshire men who rise to eminence,
and which exerts a wholesome influence on the tone of manners and
social intercourse. Northcote was a thorough Devonshire man, who loved
his county and knew its dialect: his Devonshire stories, told with the
strong accent he could assume, were the delight of any company that
could tempt him to repeat them. He was immensely popular in the
county, and had well earned his popularity by his pleasant neighbourly
ways, as well as by his attention to county business and to the duties
of a landowner.

He had the time-honoured training of the good old English type, was a
schoolboy at Eton, went thence to Oxford, won the highest distinctions
as a scholar, and laid the foundations of a remarkably wide knowledge
of modern as well as ancient literature. He served his apprenticeship
to statesmanship as private secretary to Mr. Gladstone, who was then
(1843) a member of Sir Robert Peel's Government. When the great schism
in the Tory party took place over the question of free trade in corn,
he was not yet in Parliament, and therefore was not driven to choose
between Peel and the Protectionists. In 1855, when he first entered
the House of Commons, that question was settled and gone, so there was
no inconsistency in his entering the Tory ranks although