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 "Ariel" in the Mediterranean. Thereafter his promotion in the service was, and would have continued, rapid; but circumstances arose which tended materially to divert his thoughts from purely professional objects.

Maxse's education had been purely naval. It ought, I think, to have been literary or philosophic. Ideas take possession of him with overpowering force. He is their servant rather than their master. He has read extensively and closely, but with passion,—I do not say prejudice. The consequence is, that he is at times apt to see objects in considerable disproportion,—a defect which a more systematic scholastic training in youth would have done much to cure. While yet a "middy," he had read star-eyed Shelley; and the humanitarian impression made on his mind has never been effaced. The seeds of Radicalism were thus early laid, though they took some little time to germinate.

Let us hear the admiral's own account of his conversion to the gospel of aggressive Radicalism: "My profession has been that of a naval officer. I was brought up to the tune of 'Rule Britannia' and 'Britons never shall be slaves.' Ignorant of politics, when at sea I was indifferent to politics. If I had been polled for my vote as a young lieutenant, I dare say I should have voted Conservative, indifferentism forming a main element of Conservatism. What made me an active politician was, when I came to live on shore, observing