Grammar School of Sevenoaks, and at ten he was transferred to the Charterhouse, of which School Dr. Matthew Raine was Headmaster and a few others, were the familiar companions of George Grote's youthful days; the one whom he especially preferred, and with whom he maintained an affectionate intimacy throughout his after life, being George Waddington, the late Dean of Durham. During the six years that he passed at the Charterhouse, I believe that George Grote never got a flogging for any shortcomings in the performance of his tasks, though, in common with his fellows, he fell under Dr. Raine's rod in his turn for boyish offences, such as straying beyond the prescribed limits out of the school hours. England, Andreas Grote, grandfather of the Historian, came to England and settled in business towards the middle of the eighteenth century. He came of a burgher family long established in BreAmong the pupils of Dr. Raine at this pemen, and it was a tradition in the family riod, some were forward in the studies prethat Hugo Grotius was of their blood, dominant in public schools, and indeed became though this, it seems, was scarcely cred-eminent in mature life. The brothers George ited by Mrs. Grote and her husband. and Horace Waddington, Connop Thirlwall, Andreas Grote at first founded an agency | H. Havelock (the soldier), Creswell Creswell, business in Leadenhall Street, but the Banking-house so well known in the City for the last hundred years under the names of Grote and of Prescott, was founded in January, 1776, under two partners of that name, one of whom was Andrew Grote, as he called himself in later years. Andrew was twice married; his only issue by his first marriage was a son, Joseph; George Grote the elder, father of the Historian, and six daughters were the children of his second wife, a Miss Culverden. He died in 1788 leaving a well-established and lucrative business, and a fortune extensive enough to furnish portions of 20,000l. to 25,000l. to each of his daughters: his sons Joseph and George succeeded to the business, and the former inherited an estate in Lincolnshire, which his father had acquired by the foreclosure of a mortgage; he had also previously inherited an estate in Oxfordshire from his mother's brother, but as he died without issue in 1814, George Grote the elder succeeded to his landed property and acquired, though he soon relinquished for more congenial pursuits, the leading position in the firm. George married in 1793, Selina, the daughter of Doctor Peckwell, an eminent divine whose talents attracted the notice of the Countess of Huntingdon, and had secured him preferment through her favour. Selina's mother, whose name was Blosset or De Blosset, was descended from an ancient family in Touraine which had long been settled in Ireland. George Grote the elder and his wife settled at Clay Hill, near Beckenham, and here on November 17th, 1794, their eldest son George the Historian was born: his infancy was passed at Beckenham, but at the early age of five and a half years young George was sent to the Indeed, he actually underwent this punishment along with his friend Waddington and when he was almost at the head of it, viz. and others, on the eve of quitting the school, in 1810; the occasion being that Grote had given a farewell supper to his schoolmates at the "Albion Tavern in Aldersgate Street, where (as was natural under the circumstances) they had all indulged in somewhat ample potations. Such was school discipline early in the nineteenth century. —Life, p. 7. George's father had no sympathy with learning; beyond sending his sons successively to the Charterhouse, where he had himself been brought up, he seems to have taken little thought for their education. He was "fond of hunting, shooting, and exercise generally," and as soon as his eldest son was of age to enter the business, he took him from school and set him to work in the City. It appears the youth had already distinguished himself in his studies, and his friends and his teachers had begun to suggest for him an Academical training: but his father wanted his services in the business and was anxious to withdraw himself from commerce to the pursuits and duties of a country gentleman to which he afterwards devoted himself. Accordingly, at the early age of sixteen, and indeed somewhat under it, George Grote be gan the career of a banker. 454 He lived with his father; that is to say, his When he stayed father's house was his home. in London, it was in Threadneedle Street that he resided, and, whilst Mr. Grote was in Oxfordshire (usually from September until April), such was his regular habit, diversified by visits to Badgemoor at intervals. During his family's residence at Beckenham, George used to pass the greater part of the weck with them. He dined and slept at Clay Hill, riding to London daily (bating occasional exceptions) with his father, and riding back, ten miles, to dinner. Young George was accustomed to go over a good deal of ground on foot also, besides the exercise of riding twenty miles per day. In those days, the junior members of the firm had to go forth, along with what was called "the walk clerk," carrying the various "bills" for presentation, a duty involving some two or three hours of walking exercise. On the evening of the days when it was necessary for him to stay in the City to "lock up," George occupied himself principally with study. He had contracted a strong taste for the classics at Charterhouse, and felt prompted to cultivate them on quitting the scene of his boyish training. Looking forward to a commercial course of life, certain to prove uninteresting in itself, he resolved to provide for himself the higher resources of intellectual occupation. He was at the same time sensible to the charm of music, and frequented the concerts of the Philharmonic Society (then newly established), which made a pleasant variety in his City routine. He began to learn the violoncello, too, towards the year 1815, and on that instrument he frequently accompanied his mother, who was a fair musician, and they played Handel's compositions in the family circle with pleasure and good effect. Again, young George addressed himself to the study of the German language, under the tuition of Dr. Schwabe, a minister of the Lu theran Church (in Alie Street, Goodman's Fields). At that period very few young men (and scarcely any women, of course) knew German, and it furnished evidence of earnest devotion to literary pursuits when George Grote gave up his leisure hours, few as they were, to its acquisition. — p. 10. Little more than half a century before Grote was removed from his youthful studies to the uncongenial pursuits of commerce, another historian, with whom perhaps it is Grote's highest praise that he can without disparagement be compared, was permitted to enjoy the privileges which were withheld from Grote; and this is Gibbon's estimate of the re sult: The expression of gratitude is a virtue and a pleasure; a liberal mind will delight to cherish and celebrate the memory of its parents, and the teachers of science are the parents of Το at the mind. I applaud the filial piety which it -- We have set these passages in juxtaposition the one describing Grote's studious industry in the midst of commerce, the other Gibbon's unchided indolence at the centre of learning. because we think it may be inferred from the contrast that Threadneedle Street was possibly a more favourable home for an earnest student than Oxford at the beginning of the present century. Gibbon, it is true, belongs to an earlier period, but the sloth and indolence which overwhelmed Oxford in his day had not been entirely cast off in 1810. It may truly be said that the Universities lost more in losing Grote, than Grote lost in missing the Universities; while it is her everlasting shame that Gibbon left Oxford with bitterness in his heart, which was never appeased. On the other hand, the life on which Grote entered furnished training which The sober was not to be despised. restraints of commerce afforded a sound discipline to the character; and the leisurely course of a well-established business yielded many a quiet hour to the pursuit of learning. Still the pressure of uncongenial labour was severely felt; Smith's Gibbon, vol. i. p. 28. 455 and this and the lack of cultivated society | fully to supplant him. His father perare pathetically expressed in an extract ceiving the dejection which naturally given from a letter to a friend in 1817: My studies on other subjects have not been so regular as they might have been. A routine of business which stupefies the mind (affigit humi divinæ particulam aura), and engagements, if possible, more stupid still, fill up nearly the whole measure of my occupations. A numerous family and the present artificial state of society absolutely imprison me to such an extent, that I can enjoy but very little solitude. And it is dull and wretched to the last degree to a mind which has a glimpse of a nobler sphere of action, to witness the total exclusion of intellect which disgraces general conversation. "O miseras hominum mentes! O pectora Qualibus in tenebris vitæ, quantis que periclis In my present frame of mind I could preach followed on this disappointment soon ascertained the state of his son's affections, and exacted from him a promise that he would never propose marriage to any woman without his sanction. This promise was readily given at the time; but when Grote shortly afterwards discovered that he had been deceived, and that Miss Lewin was free, he appealed to his father to release him from the pledge he had so hastily given. His father, however, reluctant to incur the expense of establishing his son, who was dependent on him, inexorably refused, and all intercourse with the Lewin family was broken off. This happened in 1815; he did not see Miss Lewin again till he met her by accident in 1818, and though he had striven in the meantime to conquer his passion in obedience to his father's wishes, he was unable entirely to suppress it; he thus describes the meeting The toils of business moreover were not relieved by the pleasures of a cheer-in which it was revived: ful home; for though Grote continued to live with his father at Clay Hill, whenever his duties did not require his presence in Threadneedle Street, yet he was almost excluded from society by the religious fanaticism of his mother. Mrs. Grote was a Calvinistic recluse, and eschewed social intercourse of all kinds, and her husband, for the sake of domestic peace, yielded, though reluctantly, to her rigid seclusion. Fortunately for Grote, the neighbourhood of Beckenham afforded him the cheerful society which he sought in vain at home, and in the social and friendly intercourse of country life the foundations of more than one lasting friendship were laid. Two friends may especially be named as sharing and sympathizing with Grote's classical tastes and studious habits-George Warde Norman, and Charles Cameron; the former shared and encouraged Grote's taste for poetry and imaginative literature, the latter, whose turn of mind was analytic, stimulated and sustained his zeal for speculative inquiry. I had the happiness or misfortune (I know not which to call it, the feelings are so mixed) to see my dear friend and favourite, Harriet Lewin, the other day, in Bromley. She was sitting with Charlotte and another lady in the carriage, which was waiting at the door of the "Bell." I stood there, and conversed with know not what it is-kept me during the her for about ten minutes, but something-I whole of the time in such a state of indescribable tremor and uneasiness, that I could hardly utter a rational sentence. She looked lovely beyond expression. Her features still retained the same life and soul which once did so magnetize me; I never have seen it, and I never shall see it, on any other face. My dear Harriet! It is terrible work. It is most cruelly painful to think that I can only appear to her but pain and uneasiness to her. Yet so it must in the light of one who has occasioned nothing be. I am sometimes tempted to wish myself an isolated being, without any family or relations, and nothing but those friends whom my own merit (little as that is) may attach to me, and to whom my affections flow spontaneously and ardently. Relations are a chain which drags a man on by means of his sense of duty. Happy is he who has fewest!"-p. 27. Among the friends to whom Grote was After this meeting George appealed introduced by Norman was a family of again to his father, and with such ferthe name of Lewin, residing within a few vency and persistency that a grudging miles of Beckenham: for Miss Harriet consent was given, on condition that his Lewin, one of the young ladies of this marriage should be postponed for two family, Grote soon conceived a profound years. Miss Lewin's family were opand absorbing affection, which, as the posed to this long engagement, and were result showed, was warmly returned. not unnaturally irritated at the evident He was deterred however from telling his reluctance of George's father to consent love by the misrepresentations of a to the union: she herself shared this treacherous friend who tried unsuccess-irritation, and could not entirely efface from her memory the mortifying circum- | often at his house, and hope to derive great stances which had brought her former pleasure and instruction from his acquaintintimacy with Grote to a close. Nevertheless, her long-cherished preference for George Grote, coupled with a discerning appreciation of his general character, and especially of its suitableness to her views of the value of literary communion and culture as an element of conjugal life, prevailed over all, and she acquiesced in the harsh conditions imposed by the elder Grote. Thus it came to pass that the future of these two young persons was stamped and irrevocably coloured by the events of the summer of 1818. — p.27. While the course of this connexion remained broken, and George entertained no hopes of renewing it, he endeavoured with even added industry to occupy his thoughts with various kinds of study in April, 1871, he thus writes to his friend Norman: : Literature still continues to form the greatest attraction to my mind; it is the only pleasure I enjoy which leaves no repentance behind it. I send you down the best "Lucretius" I have, and I think he will afford you much pleasure. Though the reasoning is generally indistinct, and in some places unintelligible, yet in those passages where he indulges his vein of poetry without reserve, the sublimity of his conceptions and the charm and elegance of his language are such as I have hardly ever seen equalled. He is much superior to Virgil in every quality except chastity and delicacy of taste, wherein the latter has reached the utmost pinnacle of perfection. I likewise send you the Tragedies attributed to Seneca, which I think I have heard you express an inclination to read. I have read one or two of them, and they appeared to me not above mediocrity. ance, as he is a very profound thinking man, and seems well disposed to communicate, as well as clear and intelligible in his manner. His mind has, indeed, all that cynicism and asperity which belong to the Benthamian school, and what I chiefly dislike in him is the readiness and seeming preference with which he dwells on the faults and defects of others— even of the greatest men! But it is so very rarely that a man of any depth comes across my path, that I shall most assuredly cultivate his acquaintance a good deal farther. —p. 21. The foundations of a lasting friendship were here laid, and the influence which James Mill exercised over Grote probably affected the whole of his future career. Few men saw much of James Mill without feeling his influence; Grote became his disciple as far as was possible for a vigorous and independent mind to acknowledge the sway of another, and in one of the latter years of his life it was his chosen task in the midst of his own strenuous activity to endeavour to rescue from unmerited neglect the works of one to whom he felt he owed so much. In 1865 he thus writes to John Mill: I am glad to get an opportunity of saying what I think about your "System of Logic and "Essay on Liberty;" but I am still more glad to get (or perhaps to make) an opportunity of saying something about your father. It has always rankled in my thoughts, that so grand and powerful a mind as his left behind such insufficient traces in the estimation of successors. p. 278. Through James Mill Grote made the acquaintance of Bentham, and he soon I am now studying Aristotle's "Nicoma- joined that band of ardent and enthusichean Ethics." His reasonings on the sub-astic disciples, who at the feet of the ject of morals are wonderfully just and pene- combative sage learnt those lessons of trating, and I feel anxious, as I read on, for a more intimate acquaintance with him. Hume's wisdom to which they were destined to Essays, some of which I have likewise read give effect in the political struggles of lately, do not improve, in my view, on further the next generation. knowledge. p. 19. In those days it needed not a little social courage to be a Radical; for RadiHis studies seem as usual to have calism was then but a militant minority, chiefly taken the direction of philosophy, against which all the forces of respecthistory, and political economy, though able society were massed in solid array. his range was enlarged by wide excur- Though the Radicals were feared in polsions into the varied field of classical itics, they were despised in society, and literature. His interest in political econ- they were forced to meet contempt with omy had secured him the acquaintance defiance. Now that the struggle in of David Ricardo, whose writings were at which they engaged is over and the victhat time the chief authority on the sub-tory for which they fought is won, it is ject. Through Ricardo he made the acquaintance of James Mill. .. I have breakfasted and dined several times with Ricardo, who has been uncommonly civil and kind to me. I have met Mill difficult for us who reap the benefit of their efforts to estimate the sacrifices by which it was obtained. But an instructive passage quoted by Mrs. Grote will help us to understand the obloquy which the early Radicals had to undergo, and | ciferously, the most obstinate and incorrigible will serve to explain the defiant attitude doctrinaire. Mr. Grote is one of those individthey were forced to assume. In 1837 uals of whom it may with truth be said that the the tide of political progress had begun —as in 1873—to ebb: the impulse which had passed the great Reform Bill was beginning to expend itself, and the lassitude which great impulses entail was creeping on. Grote, who in 1832 had been returned to Parliament by the City of London at the head of the poll with a triumphant majority, had in 1837 only distanced his Conservative opponent by a few votes, and in fact his return until the poll-books had been finally cast up, was considered doubtful even by his friends. The Times, which was then as now the organ of respectability, timid when society pauses, rash when it is disposed to move, published a leader on the subject of the City election, from which the following extract is taken : them. progress of the public mind towards revolution would be most clearly developed as well as it: but that their political downfall or decline demonstrated by their increased authority over could originate in nothing else than a general reaction towards Conservatism amongst the people of England. Mr. Grote, if once more a member, which at midnight yesterday we were assured he was not, is still at the fag end of the City poll-book-still boots to the metropolitan concern. His station, even if returned for London, proves that there is something principle of everlasting change begins to be rotten in the state of Radicalism, that the abjured by its most zealous idolaters, and that if London does not advance, all the rest of England must ere long be retrograde. We heartily congratulate our countrymen on the decisive efficacy of this first great blow. -p. 117. This was written five years after the This gentleman has gained no ground with passing of the Reform Bill, twenty years any class of Liberals in the City of London-after Grote first felt the influence of yea, he has lost ground. Relatively to Mr. Bentham, and joined the Radical ranks. Wood, who is very fit to be a Radical Alder- But its tone is a striking index of the man, but has not wisdom to be anything mingled feeling of fear and contempt beyond it; to Mr. Crawford, who is a com- which the Radicals, even in their hour of monplace jog-trot merchant; and to Mr. Pattison, who has just brains and respectability triumph, inspired. If this was the feelsufficient to qualify him for a banker's clerk, ing in 1837, what must it have been in the showy speechmaker, Mr. Grote, has not so 1820, when Radicalism was considered much as trodden upon the heels of any one of almost as criminal as treason, and quite as despicable as Dissent? Can we wonNow, we should like our readers to ask der at the defiant tone the Radicals themselves wherefore is this stagnation, where- adopted; at the narrowness of their fore this retrogression? Possessed of every creed; at the brusquerie which distrusted personal quality fitted to ingratiate him with his fellow-citizens of London, we must travel the advances of society, which admitted out of his social and private character to ac- them only on sufferance to its ranks? count for such a phenomenon of a few years' We smile as we read Mrs. Grote's pagrowth. It is therefore to the political attri- thetic complaint that in the early years butes of Mr. Grote that we have to turn for a of her married life she was compelled to solution of the difficulty. Messrs. Wood and forego the friendships she had made Pattison and Crawford are Radicals, it is true among the aristocracy, by the invincible -blind, stupid, mill-horses of the Democrat- aversion felt by her husband to everyic, or, as they fancy it, the Reforming Associ- thing tinctured with aristocratic tastes ation. Nobody cares about them, nobody and forms of opinion; but the feeling thinks about them; - whether they be in or out of Parliament, they are symbols of nothing was doubtless a sound one, and was the -types of nothing; their re-election to the product not of pride but of self-respect. House of Commons, or their exclusion from It is pleasing, however, to find that in it, would provoke no particle of speculation as later years it was softened, and that to its causes, or of inference that those causes Grote was an honoured guest at Holland went beyond mere individual circumstances. House, at Bowood, and at Windsor; for But it is not so with Mr. Grote. That hon. it shows not so much that the austerity gentleman has made himself the frontispiece of the Radicals was in the first instance of a revolutionary code. He has become the mistaken, but that society had recogrepresentative and the peculiar organ of what- nized the utility of their efforts, and had ever is most chimerical in theory, most reckless in experiment, most fatal and revolting in hos-appreciated the uprightness of their aims. tility to our national institutions. Mr. Grote Having obtained the sanction of his personifies the movement system. He concen- father to his marriage, Grote set himself trates in himself the destructive principle, of patiently to fulfil the conditions which which he is, substantially at least, if not vo- had been imposed. Business and study |