wholly innocent. As it is, the worst that has happened has been that Peel never enjoyed during his lifetime the harvest of reputation that was his due, and that the honour we now pay him is as cold and unmeaning as an epitaph. Still the votary of fame, "that last infirmity of noble minds," must lay his account for forfeiting immediate recognition if he wishes to do the purest work in any capacity. Shelley never lived to see his works read,[1] and Wordsworth and Browning were only honoured when they were old. Peel frankly admitted that to Cobden rather than himself should have belonged the honour of passing Free Trade into law; and Cobden was impossible. There is therefore a chance in these matters which is never likely to be eliminated. Beyond this, while the great names of the past are luminous from being few, the prominent men of modern times are jostled in an almost indistinguishable crowd. One of the few of this generation in England, whose reputation in the higher mathematics was more than insular, used to speak regretfully of the chances by which real distinction of intellect was enabled to forge to the front in days when the whole civilised world was scarcely more populous than Scotland and London together are now.[2]
Napoleon is said to have inquired what the lifetime of a great picture was, and being told that in the nature of things it could only last some centuries, to have ejaculated contemptuously, "Quelle belle immortalité!" It is more than conceivable that, as new nations spring into prominence, as the record of past time is extended, as the occupations in which men take interest multiply,
