stantial "stake in the country," has given a cogency to his more Radical and humanitarian opinions in the eyes of the middle class, which no amount of mere argument could have ever supplied.
Was Mr. Bright equally happy in his education? The question is one of great difficulty; but, on the whole, I am disposed to think he was. True, he did not learn much at the Friends' schools which he frequented; but, on the other hand,—unlike Mr, Gladstone, with his great academic acquirements,—he learned nothing which it has been necessary for him, by a painful process, to unlearn. If, like Shakespeare, he "knows little Latin and less Greek," he knows uncommonly well how to do without them. At the Ackworth and York schools his heart was cultivated, if his head was not crammed. The foundations were laid deep and strong of a placid, free, wise, and upright manhood. "Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers." It was the educational aim of the friends of Bright's childhood to instil wisdom first, and to leave knowledge pretty much to take care of itself. I do not like to contemplate what might have happened to Mr. Bright if he had gone to Eton and to Oxford with Mr. Gladstone, and drunk in all the pernicious ecclesiastical and political nonsense which the Premier imbibed in his misdirected youth. Mr. Gladstone has survived Oxford, and come out clothed and in his right mind; but it is highly doubtful if Mr. Bright would have been equally fortunate. He is by temperament a Conservative, who has been singularly faithful to all the ideas with which he started in life. What he is to-day he was forty-five years ago. His principles are far-reaching, and susceptible of varied application; but I venture to affirm,
