Page:The empire and the century.djvu/521

 By F. EDMUND GARRETT

names history will not be able to neglect when she tells how the foundations were laid of the third great Colonial Union in the British Empire. Those names (history will round off their titular corners, and brevity pleads for the like freedom here) are Rhodes and Milner. I am asked to contribute a short study of the two careers as they appear to one who had the opportunity of watching them closely in South Africa, especially during the brief but stirring years when they overlapped.

There must be something of telling a story and something of portraiture. There are one or two touchstone aspects in which both men may alike be viewed. We must pause to seize these as the story brings them up, for each in turn. Desultory the plan may well seem; but its aim is to suggest some picture of two of the most interesting political figures of our day, and to project them upon a background which includes, in sweep of broadest distance, the bolder features of the last quarter-century in South Africa. The runners, as 478