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 written at the same period, was a plea to have a certain small library opened to working boys of his class. The 7,689 organs that he afterwards gave to churches and the 2,800 libraries that he founded were his acknowledgment to society for the impulse it had given him. He had worshipped a popular hero, Wallace, from the Dunfermline days; and the hero funds that he established throughout the world were tokens of his lifelong hero-worship. By the school of thought in which he was nourished, war among civilized nations was reckoned an obsolescent and absurd instrument of statecraft; his Palace of Peace commemorated the aspirations of a genuine friend of all the people.

In 1868 he had made a memorandum, indicating it as his intention to retire in two years and to "settle in Oxford and get a thorough education," and then to "take part in public affairs, especially those connected with education and improvement of the lower classes." Like another famous man of our time, he discovered that it is not easy for a leader in the fullness of his power to retire—"he had come to the ring and now he must hop." But he continued his education and his educating, when he could, by reading Plato, Confucius, and Buddha, by travelling in various lands, and by earnestly advising and taking the advice of philosophers, presidents, kaisers, prime ministers, secretaries of state, and other experts. He acknowledged the impulse to intellectual growth that society had given