Engraved by C.H. Jeens from a Picture by G.F. Watts.
MEMOIR OF A BROTHER.
BY
THOMAS HUGHES,
AUTHOR OF “TOM BROWN’S SCHOOLDAYS.”
BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,
Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.
1873.
AUTHOR’S EDITION.
PREFACE.
This Memoir was written for, and at the request of, thenear relatives, and intimate friends, of the home-lovingcountry gentleman, whose unlooked-for death had madethem all mourners indeed. Had it been meant originallyfor publication, it would have taken a very different form.In compiling it, my whole thoughts were fixed on myown sons and nephews, and not on the public. It tellsof a life with which indeed the public has no concernin one sense; for my brother, with all his ability andpower of different kinds, was one of the humblest andmost retiring of men; who just did his own duty, andheld his own tongue, without the slightest effort or wishfor fame or notoriety of any kind. In another sense,however, I do see that it has a meaning and interest forEnglishmen in general, and have therefore consented toits publication in the usual way, though not without a[viii]sense of discomfort and annoyance at having the veileven partially lifted from the intimacies of a privatefamily circle. For, in a noisy and confused time likeours, it does seem to me that most of us have need tobe reminded of, and will be the better for bearing inmind, the reserve of strength and power which liesquietly at the nation’s call, outside the whirl and din ofpublic and fashionable life, and entirely ignored in thecolumns of the daily press. The subject of this memoirwas only a good specimen of thousands of Englishmenof high culture, high courage, high principle, who areliving their own quiet lives in every corner of thekingdom, from John o’ Groat’s to the Land’s-End, bringingup their families in the love of God and their neighbour,and keeping the atmosphere around them clean, and pureand strong, by their example,—men who would come tothe front, and might be relied on, in any serious nationalcrisis.
One is too apt to fancy, from the photographs of thenation’s life which one gets day by day, that the old shiphas lost the ballast which has stood her in such goodstead for a thousand years, and is rolling more and morehelplessly, in a gale which shows no sign of abating, for[ix]her or any other national vessel, until at last she mustroll over and founder. But it is not so. England is inless stress, and in better trim, than she has been in inmany a stiffer gale.
The real fact i