of reading as would have taken any ordinary person months to get
through, but he arrived the following day in a hansom, with a number of
the books he had named, and for a long time they lived on my shelves.
Alack! I never wrote the article, but when I came to the writing of
_Eleanor_, for which certain material was drawn from the life of
Chateaubriand, his advice helped me. And I don't think he would have
thought it thrown away. He never despised novels!

Once on a visit to us at Stocks, there were nine books of different
sorts in his room which I had chosen and placed there. By Monday morning
he had read them all. His library, when he died, contained about 60,000
volumes--all read; and it will be remembered that Lord Morley, to whom
Mr. Carnegie gave it, has handed it on to the University of Cambridge.

In 1884, when I first knew him, however, Lord Acton was every bit as
keen a politician as he was a scholar. As is well known, he was a poor
speaker, and never made any success in Parliament; and this was always,
it seemed to me, the drop of gall in his otherwise happy and
distinguished lot. But if he was never in an English Cabinet, his
influence over Mr. Gladstone through the whole of the Home Rule struggle
gave him very real political power. He and Mr. Morley were the constant
friends and associates to whom Mr. Gladstone turned through all that
critical time. But the great split was rushing on, and it was also in
1884 that, at Admiral Maxse's one night at dinner, I first saw Mr.
Chamberlain, who was to play so great a part in the following years. It
was a memorable evening to me, for the other guest in a small party was
M. Clemenceau.

M. Clemenceau was then at the height of his power as the maker and
unmaker of French Ministries. It was he more than any other single man