1897.] on the Picturesque in History. 317 



character is more revealed by what he tries to do than by what he 

 succeeds in doing. Indeed, it is not paradoxical to say that his 

 abiding influence is expressed by his aspirations rather than by his 

 achievements. His most fruitful heritage is, generally speaking, 

 his temper, his attitude towards life, his method of facing its 

 problems. The great question is, Did he heighten or did he lower 

 the sense of duty of those amongst whom he lived and worked? 

 The same mode of judgment seems to me to hold true in the large 

 aifairs with which history is concerned. Before we can judge a 

 statesman rightly we must follow his aims and methods in detail. 

 He could only command certain forces, the power of which was best 

 known to himself. It is easy to prescribe an heroic policy at 

 great crises, to lament apparent pusillanimity, and to arrange 

 quietly in one's study, after a lapse of centuries, an ideal termination 

 to political difiiculties. But we are all of us conscious of the 

 difference between what we would do and what we can do. Every- 

 body who sits on a committee comes away feeling that he could 

 have managed its business better by himself. But the use even of 

 a committee is to show you what available resources a particular 

 line of action can command; and you generally depart with a 

 conviction that it is ODly the second-best policy which has any 

 chance of immediate success. Statesmen in the past suffered under 

 the same limitations. The possession of supreme power by rulers 

 is only apparent. Somehow or other they had to discover what 

 the nation was likely to do, and more than that they could not 

 venture to undertake. Improvements in the mechanism of govern- 

 ment are of use as they enable statesmen to gauge more accurately 

 the forces on which they can rely. There is one lesson that comes 

 from reading diplomatic records: it is that rulers were always 

 trying to make the best of a bad business. Parliamentary obstruc- 

 tion is only a condensed form of what had always to be reckoned 

 with. The outward expression of tendencies has changed, rather than 

 the tendencies themselves. 



It is very difficult to clothe with any appearance of interest 

 abortive attempts which came to nothing, which were put forward 

 in ambiguous language, and were often cloaks to some further 

 purpose behind. Yet, as a matter of fact, these constituted the 

 main activity of many statesmen, and if we leave them untraced or 

 unmentioned, we are missing the point of their laborious lives. 

 There is no more widespread delusion than that a man in a great 

 position gets his own way. He is envied by the ignorant and 

 thoughtless for his supposed power, for his freedom from those petty 

 inconveniences of which they themselves are keenly conscious. 

 The opportunity to do what one wills — this is assumed to be the 

 privilege of those who direct affairs. One of the great lessons of 

 history is to show the bondage, as well as the responsibility, of 

 power. The trials and disappointments of the great deserve recogni- 

 tion — not only their failures in great undertakings, the dramatic 



