Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/278

 How could such a one hope to enter in at the strait gate which leadeth to St. Stephen's? Impracticability were a grievous fault, and grievously did the gallant admiral answer it at Southampton in 1868, and in the Tower Hamlets in 1874. But the fault; and I frankly admit its existence, lay at least as much with the admiral's critics as with himself. If he were too much devoted to the ideal, they were too little. I agree, for once, with the prophet of "sweetness and light," that "Philistia has come to be thought by us as the true land of promise. The born lover of ideas, the born hater of commonplaces, must feel in this country that the sky over his head is of brass and iron."

Now, Admiral Maxse is a born lover of ideas, a born hater of commonplaces, and he has never been adequately able to apprehend how inaccessible are the vast majority of his countrymen to such sentiments. In this sense has he shown himself really impracticable. Among a quicker-witted and more logical people like the French, the chances are that he would have found himself quite at home. He ought to have known Englishmen better. A London constituency, unlike a Parisian, will always prefer a gluttonous alderman with a marked aversion to the letter h to the profoundest philosopher or to the truest philanthropist. Blessed is the cultivated Radical who expects little of the average English elector, for he shall not be disappointed. Admiral Maxse, I have heard it said, has been seriously disappointed by his political experiences. Not disappointed, though disenchanted he has certainly been. But, like other true soldiers of democracy, he has "learned to labor and to wait."

The disillusioning process is always a painful one for