MR. ROBERT LOWE AT SCHOOL AND COLLEGE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5035, 14 May 1877, Page 3

MR. ROBERT LOWE AT SCHOOL AND COLLEGE.

Unless, perhaps, we go back to year 1811, when he made his first appearance iu the nursery at the Bingham Rectory, iu Notts, we shall fail to discover a time when Mr. Lowe could by any stretch of language be called popular. Even as a lad at Winchester school he was imperious and ngreaeive. He was always clever, always pushing his way up to a position of authority and command. But though at Winchester his swiftly developing intellectual power made him respected and not a little feared by all who knew him, it is impossible to deny that he had an utter want of sympathy for the mental inferiority of his “ weaker brethren," which rendered him by no means the most beloved boy iu tile school. He got on a little better at Oxford, where he joined University College. Possibly he found his level more easily there, and by association with a f. w young men who were as clever as himself, some of the more disagreeable angularities of his character may have been smoothed down. But even at University College his characteristic determination, “ never to be beaten by anybody,” got free scope. He was fortunately gifted with great physical as well as mental strength, with an iron will and an unlimited capacity for hard and sustained work. He soon excelled all his contemporaries—a striking achievement at a time when amongst them might be reckoned tlie present Dean of Christchurch and the late Master of Baliol. When he took his degree he won the most brilliant first-class in classics of his year, and not content with thus achieving distinction in one branch of scholarship, he aspired to win it in another, by taking se-cond-class honors in mathematics. This was in 1833, and during the next three years he seems to have entertained a desire to devote himself to academic pursuits. He was elected a Fellow of Magdalen, and devoting himself to tuition, he became famed far and wide as the most brilliant and successful of lecturers. That the most intellectual of English statesmen should also be the oue most uotable for lack of personal popularity is a fact botii curious and instructive. It we study the life history of the Right Honorable Robert Lowe we need have little difficulty in finding a clue to the mystery. Polities abstractly considered may be a science, as some enthusiastic doctrinaires hold. In England, however, this so-called science is not ,entirely an affair of the head, for if it were, then undoubtedly the member for London University would be the fnturelleader of the English people. Statesmanship in this country is to a great extent an affair of the heart. The persons whom it affects are neither dead nor devoid of feelings, . . . . When we say that Mr. Robert Lowe, of all the political chiefs who have ever risen to eminence in this country, is the one whose statesmanship and administration are iu their character as unsympathetic as they are rigidly intellectual, we have explained in brief epitome the secret of his success as a politician, and of his failure as a statesman. Intellectual gifts of a severely high order, a capacity for trenchant criticism, an almost heartless delight iu its free and unsparing exercise, a determined ambition to elbow one’s way past all obstacles to a place in the Cabinet—these qualities are certain to enable a man to succeed brilliantly as a politician. But after he has attained the glittering prize of office, other and subtler gifts are required to develop the rising politician into a powerful statesman, and enable him to sway the judgments and the passions of a great and free democra -y. It is because Mr. Lowe is unfortunately devoid of all democratic symnathies —because, in point of fact, he entertains and frankly expresses his contempt for popular rule—that he has failed to ho what his marvellous intellectual gifts entitle him to become, the acknowledged successor of Mr. Gladstone, as leader of the Liberal party, and future Premier of Great Britain.—-English paper.