Collections and Recollections | Page 9

mark, and Sir John Millais's noble portrait, painted in 1877, shows a
countenance on which a lifelong contact with human suffering had
written its tale in legible characters.
Temperament is, I suppose, hereditary. Lord Shaftesbury's father, who
was for nearly forty years Chairman of Committees in the House of
Lords, was distinguished by a strong intellect, an imperious temper,
and a character singularly deficient in amiability. His mother (whose
childish beauty is familiar to all lovers of Sir Joshua's art as the little
girl frightened by the mask in the great "Marlborough Group") was the
daughter of the third Duke of Marlborough by that Duchess whom
Queen Charlotte pronounced to be the proudest woman in England. It is
reasonable to suppose that from such a parentage and such an ancestry
Lord Shaftesbury derived some of the most conspicuous features of his
character. From his father he inherited his keenness of intellect, his
habits of laborious industry, and his iron tenacity of purpose. From his
mother he may have acquired that strong sense of personal dignity--that
intuitive and perhaps unconscious feeling of what was due to his station
as well as to his individuality--which made his presence and address so
impressive and sometimes alarming.
Dignity was indeed the quality which immediately struck one on one's
first encounter with Lord Shaftesbury; and with dignity were associated
a marked imperiousness and an eager rapidity of thought, utterance,
and action. As one got to know him better, one began to realize his
intense tenderness towards all weakness and suffering; his overflowing
affection for those who stood nearest to him; his almost morbid
sensitiveness; his passionate indignation against cruelty or oppression.
Now and then his conversation was brightened by brief and sudden
gleams of genuine humour, but these gleams were rare. He had seen too

much of human misery to be habitually jocose, and his whole nature
was underlain by a groundwork of melancholy.
The marble of manhood retained the impression stamped upon the wax
of childhood. His early years had been profoundly unhappy. His
parents were stern disciplinarians of the antique type. His private
school was a hell on earth; and yet he used to say that he feared the
master and the bullies less than he feared his parents. One element of
joy, and one only, he recognized in looking back to those dark days,
and that was the devotion of an old nurse, who comforted him in his
childish sorrows, and taught him the rudiments of Christian faith. In all
the struggles and distresses of boyhood and manhood, he used the
words of prayer which he had learned from this good woman before he
was seven years old; and of a keepsake which she left him--the gold
watch which he wore to the last day of his life--he used to say, "That
was given to me by the best friend I ever had in the world."
At twelve years old Anthony Ashley went to Harrow, where he boarded
with the Head Master, Dr. Butler, father of the present Master of
Trinity. I have heard him say that the master in whose form he was,
being a bad sleeper, held "first school" at four o'clock on a winter's
morning; and that the boy for whom he fagged, being anxious to shine
as a reciter, and finding it difficult to secure an audience, compelled
him and his fellow-fag to listen night after night to his recitations,
perched on a high stool where a nap was impossible.
But in spite of these austerities, Anthony Ashley was happy at Harrow;
and the place should be sacred in the eyes of all philanthropists,
because it was there that, when he was fourteen years old, he
consciously and definitely gave his life to the service of his fellow-men.
He chanced to see a scene of drunken indecency and neglect at the
funeral of one of the villagers, and exclaimed in horror, "Good heavens!
Can this be permitted simply because the man was poor and
friendless?" What resulted is told by a tablet on the wall of the Old
School, which bears the following inscription:--
Love. Serve.

NEAR THIS SPOT
ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER
AFTERWARDS 7TH EARL OF SHAFTESBURY, K.G.
WHILE YET A BOY IN HARROW SCHOOL
SAW WITH SHAME AND INDIGNATION
THE PAUPER'S FUNERAL
WHICH HELPED TO AWAKEN HIS LIFELONG
DEVOTION TO THE SERVICE OF THE POOR
AND THE OPPRESSED.
Blessed is he that considereth the poor.
After leaving Harrow Lord Ashley (as he now was) spent two years at a
private tutor's, and in 1819 he went up to Christ Church. In 1822 he
took a First Class in Classics. The next four years were spent in study
and travel, and in 1826 he was returned to Parliament, by the influence
of his uncle the Duke of Marlborough, for the