III.
PETER ALFRED TAYLOR.
"And I have walked with Hampden and with Vane,
Names once so gracious in an English ear."
HAVING now portrayed, however imperfectly, our two most illustrious Radical statesmen,—Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright, I come to deal with one who is not a statesman,—who makes no pretension to statesmanship,—but who, as a politician, has nevertheless "been fashioned unto much honor." His name will not be found, I think, even among that multitude which no man can number, the "Men of the Times." Nor is the omission so culpable as may at first sight appear; for Mr. P. A. Taylor belongs at once to the Radical past and the Radical future rather than to the opportunist present. He is the most unique figure in the House of Commons,—a man who, in the days of the Long Parliament, would have been after gentle Lucy Hutchinson's own republican heart, and who, in those of Queen Victoria, has been best appreciated by such gifted pioneers of progress as Mazzini and Mill. He has now represented Leicester in Parliament for eighteen years, and all that time he has neither led nor followed,—neither been misled by the leaders of his party, nor been found following the multitude to do evil. If he has led at any time, it has been as the
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