in it, and it had a living interest for her. That is the mode and manner in which I would recommend you to study history.

Let me be more precise. I would not gallop through histories any more than I would through a country if I wanted to explore it. I would take a particular period and read every book bearing on that particular period which my library supplied me, and which I had time to read. Then I would read the poets who had written in the same period. I should read the dramas relating to that period, and thus I should saturate myself with everything which was connected with it, and by that means I would acquire that power which I value, which I want you to have individually and which I should like every English man and woman to have as far as they could, namely, the power of being able to live in other times and sympathize with other times, and to sympathize with persons and races and influences different from those amongst which we move.

And do not think that in such studies you lose your time. Are there fathers and mothers here who hold that it is a dangerous doctrine which I preach? If so, I hope I may be able to reassure them; for I hold that in all spheres and all classes culture of this kind is of the highest value and that it does not disqualify, but the reverse, for business life. Amongst the wealthier classes of business men I rejoice to think that prejudice against culture as being dangerous to business is rapidly dying out, and that a university education is no longer regarded with suspicion.

"What do men learn at Oxford and Cambridge that will fit them for business?" was formerly often asked; but I do not think this question is put quite so often now. I will tell you what once occurred to myself in regard to this point. Some eight years ago I met a distinguished modern poet, call

Orations. Vol. 22-10

ing at the same house where I was calling, and he asked, "What becomes of all the senior wranglers and of all the Oxford first class men? One does not hear of them in after life." I ventured very modestly to say in reply that, not being a Cambridge man, I could not speak on behalf of Cambridge men; but as to Oxford I was able to inform him that eight of her first class men were at that moment in her Majesty's cabinet.

But you may say, "This is all very well for the greater affairs of life, but as regards the general rough-and-tumble of business life, why should you have this cultivation? Is it not dangerous and does it not rather hamper a young man when he goes into business life?"

Let me give you another instance on this point and you will forgive me if it is somewhat of a personal character; but it may come home to some of the young men here more forcibly than the most eloquent generalization. My own father came over to England as a very young man, with one friend as young as himself, and with very little more money in his pocket than a great many of the students here, I dare say, possess; and he has told me, half in joke and half in earnest, that he was obliged to found a firm because he wrote such a bad hand that no one would take him for a clerk. But he was steeped to the lips in intellectual culture. In his father's1 house, as a boy, he had met all the great literary men of the best period of German literature. He had heard Schiller read his own plays. He had listened to the conversation of great thinkers and great poets. He was a good historian, an acute critic, well versed in literature, and a very good musician to boot. But did this stand in his way as a young man coming over to London with a view to found a business? Has

1 Georg Joachim Göschen (1752-1828), the famous Leipzig bookseller.

it stood in his way of founding a firm of which I, as his son, am very proud? It did not stand in his way. On the contrary it aided his success; and, with this before me, I hope you will say that I am able to speak with affectionate conviction of the fact that culture will not interfere with the due discharge of the duties of business men in any sphere of business life.

I will not add to what I have said about the great increase of happiness and amusement to be gained for your own leisure in after-life if you follow the studies I have named. It is most certainly for your happiness and advantage; but you may remember that I used much stronger language than this. I said it was not only of advantage for the young themselves, but for the national advantage, that imaginative culture should be considered as one of the aims of education.

I have still got to make this point good. Consider what are the duties of this country in which we live. Let me now take you away from Liverpool-away even from England— and ask you to look at our imperial duties at our colonies, at our vast empire, at our foreign relations—and then I want you to ask yourselves whether it is important or not that Englishmen shall be able to realize to themselves what is not immediately around them, that they shall be able to transport themselves in imagination to other countries over which they rule. It is not sufficient for Englishmen to think only of their own surroundings.

There was a time when the destinies of England used to be wielded by a few individual men, or by small coteries of trained statesmen. India was governed for years externally to the influence of public opinion. But that is past now. Public opinion is now stepping in; and if public opinion steps in I wish that public opinion to be properly trained. Why,

even ministers for foreign affairs now declare that they wait the behests of the public, their employers, before they take any decided step. If public opinion assumes these responsibilities, again I say, "Let us look to the formation of that public opinion, and see that the young generation of Englishmen are trained properly for the discharge of these functions." Parliament is more and more sharing with the executive government of the country the duties of administration, and the press and the public are more and more sharing this duty with Parliament. Therefore you will understand the importance I attach to the training of the coming generation, not only in useful knowledge, but in all that they ought to know and ought to be able to feel and think when they are discharging imperial duties.

And, I ask, by what power can this result be better obtained than by the intelligent study of history and of modes of thought which lie beyond our own immediate range? It is no easy thing for democracies to rule wisely and satisfactorily self-governing colonies or subject races. Imagination, in its highest and broadest sense, is necessary for the noble discharge of imperial duties.

DONNELLY

【GNATIUS DONNELLY, an American editor, humorist, and orator, was Central High School. In 1852 he was admitted to the bar and four years later emigrated to Minnesota, where he rapidly rose to notice and was elected successively lieutenant-governor and governor. In 1863 he was sent to Congress and served six years. He was president of the State Farmers' Alliance of Minnesota and was chairman of the National Anti-monopoly convention that nominated Peter Cooper for president in 1872. He engaged actively in newspaper work and was several times a member of the Minnesota legislature. In 1898 he was nominated for vice-president of the United States on the ticket of People's party. Among his best known pub lications are The Great Cryptogram," in which he claimed to have dis covered an arithmetical word-cypher in the works of Shakespeare, provinĮ the author of those plays to have been Lord Bacon; Atlantis, the AnteDiluvian World," “Ragnarök," Cæsar's Column," and "The Golden Bottle." He died in 1901.

RECONSTRUCTION

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, JANUARY 18, 1866

[The House having under consideration House bill No. 543, to provide for restoring to the States lately in insurrection their full political rights, Mr. Donnelly said:]

M

R. SPEAKER,-I desire to express myself in favor of the main purposes of the bill now under consideration. [To provide for restoring to the States lately in insurrection their full political rights.]

Through the clouds of a great war and the confusion of a vast mass of uncertain legislation we are at length reaching something tangible; we have passed the "Serbonian bog," and are approaching good dry land.

This is the logical conclusion of the war. The war was simply the expression of the determination of the nation to