Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/289



HEN a patrician like the Hon. Auberon Edward William Molyneux Herbert comes to figure as a strenuous people's tribune, it is not unnatural that his motives should be subjected to searching analysis. Of thorns men do not ordinarily gather figs, nor of aristocratic bramble-bushes gather they democratic grapes. Nevertheless, when it does happen that grapes are produced in such circumstances, they are sometimes of the choicest quality. They are like the strawberry that has ripened under the nettle. In the society of a man like Herbert you feel that noblesse oblige is not quite an empty phrase. There is a certain chivalry in his Radicalism, a knight-errantry if you will,—a combination of courage and courtesy, gentleness, and independence, which it would be hard indeed to match in these unromantic days.

By one or two critics I have been accused of fanatical abhorrence of aristocracy ; but it is not so. On the contrary, I should say of such men as Herbert, "I 275