1889] Political Disappointments 25 



amused ourselves by reading, and that among the rest were those lines 

 of Byron, perhaps his best and quite his best known : 



There was a sound of revelry by night. 



This he declared to be rubbish, and that he had not a notion whom 

 they were by. Morris in these playful moods was very attractive, and 

 of all the great men I have been in close relations with, I reckon him 

 intellectually the strongest. He had an astonishingly firm grasp of 

 things, and an immensely wide range of knowledge. I never knew 

 him deceived by a false argument, and he was difficult to overcome in 

 discussion even on subjects his adversary knew the best. One thing 

 only, I think, he did not know, much as he had written about it, the 

 love of women, and that he never cared to discuss. My talks with him 

 that summer confirmed me in my resolution politically to retire into my 

 shell, and I think my resolution had a corresponding influence on 

 him. 



"13th Oct., 1889. Paris. — I have left home once more for the 

 winter, and with a lighter heart than I have lately had. My last act 

 before leaving England was to write two letters severing the last links 

 which bound me to political life. One was to the Kidderminister 

 electors telling them that they must not depend on me to stand again 

 for Parliament, the other to T. P. O'Connor resigning my directorship 

 of the ' Star.' I have intended this for more than a year, but have 

 taken time to reflect, and am sure now that the step is a wise one. 

 As a matter of principle I cannot go on pretending to believe in the 

 Liberal Party, with which I have not an idea in common, beyond Irish 

 Home Rule. As a matter of personal ambition, politics have nothing 

 more to give me. I will not be a parliamentary drudge, and I cannot 

 aspire to lead a party. 



" Of doing good in the world in any public way I also despair. I 

 do not see clearly in what direction good lies. I do not love civilised 

 humanity ; and poor savage human nature seems a lost cause. I have 

 done what I could for it. I have, I think, saved Egypt from absorption 

 by Europe, and I have certainly, by stopping the Soudan war in 1885, 

 put back the clock of African conquest for a generation, perhaps for a 

 century. But the march of ' Progress ' is irresistible in the end ; and 

 every year the old-fashioned idea of the rights of uncivilised man dies 

 more completely out. Even in Ireland, the National cause is putting 

 itself in line with nineteenth century thought. The moonlighters and 

 cattle-houghers and rebels of all kinds are disappearing; and, instead, 

 we see Parnell manoeuvring and deceiving in Parliament neither more 

 nor less than Gladstone himself, and declaring with Rosebery for 

 Imperial Federation ! In all this I have no real lot or part. Ireland 

 will doubtless get something of what she wants, and she has all my 



