Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/50

 IV.

SIR CHARLES W. DILKE.

treating of Gladstone, Bright, and Taylor, who have preceded the senior member for Chelsea in this series, I have in some measure felt on sure ground,—the ground of history or accomplished fact. The youngest of the above trio is sixty, and had entered the arena of public life ere the subject of this memoir had well left his cradle. One could, consequently, speak of them almost with as much confidence as of the dead. Their lengthened past was a clear index to their necessarily briefer future. In due course they will pass over to the majority-, and the places that know them now will know them no more. With Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke it is altogether different. He belongs exclusively to the immediate present. It will take him thirty-five more years to attain the venerable age of the woodcutter of Hawarden. He is emphatically a contemporary, as fine an example as can well be found of the culture and aspirations of this generation. It is his future that is most important, and it is full of promise.

As Mr. Gladstone in his youth was pronounced "the rising hope of Toryism," so Sir Charles W. Dilke may 36