i

have, had I not been supported by true, zealous, earnest men, who gave me their time and their brains to help forward the different movements. My religious views are not popular, but they are the views that have sustained and comforted me all through my life. They have never been disguised, nor have I ever sought to disguise them. I think a man's religion, if it is worth anything, should enter into every sphere of life and rule his conduct in every relation. I have always been, and, please God, always shall be, an Evangelical of the Evangelicals, and no biography can represent me that does not fully and emphatically represent my religious views."

For the selection of the quotations from Lord Shaftesbury's Diaries I am alone responsible. My object has been to make them illustrate, as much as possible, every phase of life and opinion. If it should appear that, in some instances, I have inserted passages which are of too purely a domestic character, I can only plead that I have acted in the spirit of the instructions given to me by Lord Shaftesbury. For example, on one occasion he had been narrating to me. some incidents in the life of the late Countess of Shaftesbury, in connection with his factory labours, and lamented how little the factory people knew the extent to which they were indebted to "that blessed

woman," as he called her. Then he spoke of her death. "But you will find it all recorded in the Diaries," he said. "Those entries would be far too private and personal to put into print, would they not?" I asked. "Not at all," he answered, "I should like you to use them. I should wish you to use them. Her memory is far better worth preserving than mine." And then taking down from a shelf in the library the "Shaftesbury Papers," edited by Mr. Christie, he turned to a page in which the First Earl pays a tribute of affection to the wife whose loss he mourns. There," said he, “that, in my opinion, is the best thing in the book."

66

In his Diaries Lord Shaftesbury has unconsciously done, what he so often said no one but himself could do satisfactorily he has "written his own life." It was by a mere accident, however, that the whole of these valuable records were not destroyed. About the year 1880 he was suffering from illness which confined him to the house, and he determined to occupy his enforced leisure, in looking through and burning old papers. The Diaries were consigned to a heap awaiting destruction; but, in the meantime, health returned, the usual daily duties were resumed, and the books and papers were put away to await another pause, and so escaped the threatened fate.

Only a few of the bulky quarto Diaries of Lord

f

Shaftesbury, and four of his Journals of Travels, had been placed in my hands, when the news came from Folkestone of the alarming illness which terminated in his death. For the privilege of perusing and making extracts from the remaining volumes, for information supplying the defects of my own personal knowledge, for access to his correspondence, for reading the proofs and examining the extracts from the Diaries with the originals, and for other invaluable aid, I am indebted to the great kindness and courtesy of his son, the Hon. Evelyn Ashley.

Before Lord Shaftesbury gave me the first volume of his Diaries to peruse, he intimated that it would, in his opinion, be of special advantage to me in my labours to have the assistance of some one who, apart from his own family, had known him for many years, and in whose judgment he could repose the fullest confidence. To this end he asked me to place myself in communication with Mrs. Corsbie, the daughter of the late Mr. Alexander Haldane, one of his most intimate friends, with whom for thirty years he had been in almost daily correspondence. To her careful and valuable assistance in reading the proofs for the press, and for the kindness which placed at my disposal the voluminous letters of Lord Shaftesbury to her father, I am under the deepest obligation.

The sources from which much of the information in this work has been drawn have been extremely various, and I have to express my hearty thanks to the Secretaries of Societies with which Lord Shaftesbury was connected; to co-workers with him in various departments of labour; to personal friends and others, who have given me ready access to whole libraries of reports, minutes, pamphlets, and other records, and have rendered me important service in many ways.

It has been my endeavour to let the record of Lord Shaftesbury's whole life-work be told, as much as possible, in his own words; and in doing so I have not added to his opinions or founded conjectures upon his plans. My aim has been to present him as he was; a Christian gentleman first, then a patriot, a statesman, a social reformer, and all that is implied in the word he liked so little-a philanthropist.

'I have no desire whatever to be recorded," he wrote shortly before his death; "but if I must, sooner or later, appear before the public, I should like the reality to be told, be it good, or be it bad, and not a sham."

I have made no endeavour, therefore, to tone down. his strong Protestantism; his unshaken and unshakable belief in Scripture, in dogma, and in prayer. If he was wrong here, he was wrong throughout, for he was a

man with a single aim; his labours in the field of politics sprang from his philanthropy; his philanthropy sprang from his deep and earnest religious convictions; and every labour, political, benevolent, and religious, was begun, continued, and ended in one and the same spirit.

21, CRAVEN PARK, Willesden, N.W.,

October, 1886.

E. H.