e subject of the memoir before us, was the eldest son
of a Berkshire squire, and little more than a year older than his
brother and biographer. Very pleasant is the glimpse of child life in an
English county forty years ago that is given in the story of his first
years. From the first he showed the calm fearlessness, the practicality
and the helpfulness which seem to have been among his most prominent
characteristics. These qualities, and with them a rigorous
conscientiousness, a sensitive unselfishness, and--no trifling advantage
in these or any other days--a splendid _physique_, he took with him, and
preserved alike unaltered, through Rugby, Oxford and after years. Little
wonder that the possessor of such gifts became a Sixth-form boy and
football captain at his public school, and achieved boating and
cricketing successes, an honorable degree, and the repute of being the
most popular man of his day at the university. Most people who take an
interest in boat-racing, and many who do not, have heard of that famous
race upon the Thames at Henley, in which a crew of _seven_ Oxford
oarsmen snatched victory from a (not _the_) Cambridge "eight;" but not
everybody knows--for the feat was done now thirty years ago, and names
are lost while the memory of a fact survives--that George Hughes pulled
the stroke-oar of that plucky seven-oared boat.

Oxford days over, and after a three-years' spell of private tutoring--a
not uncommon temporary resort of English graduates while they are making
up their minds as to what profession or business to take up for life--we
find George Hughes settled in London, reading law in Doctors' Commons.
By this time his biographer, who has been close by his side, and
following his lead in work and play, through all the years of school and
college life, is at work in London too, and the two brothers are again
together under one roof. The similarity, one may almost say
identicality, of the circumstances of their bringing up might, but that
such things, luckily, don't always go by rule, have led one to expect to
find in them, now full-grown and thoughtful men, something like a
coincidence of sympathies and opinions. Nothing of the sort. George is
by temperament and conviction a Tory of the kindly, old-fashioned
school: his younger brother has become an advanced Liberal, an
enthusiastic promoter of workingmen's associations, and a leading
spirit among the so-called Christian Socialists. Needless to add that,