burning flame. And the fires below on which it fed were, at least for those present, immeasurable. More than all else, it was perhaps this conviction that gave to Lord Acton's Lectures their amazing force and vivacity. He pronounced each sentence as if he were feeling it, poising it lightly, and uttering it with measured deliberation. His feeling passed to the audience, which sat enthralled. It was in truth an emotional performance of the highest order, his lecture; a wonderful work of art, such as in all likelihood will never again be witnessed.[1]
From the first his Lectures were crowded. It must be admitted that in the audience there were some who were not serious students. But it may be questioned whether any one who heard even a single lecture could go away quite unimpressed. No one could fail to see how the speaker's mind was possessed with the greatness of human affairs, with the moral (or immoral) aspects of political and ecclesiastical dexterity; above all, with the final supremacy of the soul over circumstance, as the real ground for asserting the sacredness of truth and the inalienable glory of Liberty. It was this sense of the fundamentally spiritual nature of his work which formed the distinction, the difficulty, and the triumph of Acton. His high seriousness gave him the influence which, despite all detraction, he unmistakably wielded. For Machiavelli is more than the bane of politicians. His principles are the eternal snare of those who investigate their actions; while a flippant cynicism is the common homage paid by youth to the duty of reflection. Now no hearer, however intelligent, no student, however anti-sentimental, could fail to find in Acton's austere judgments, in the dignity of his language, in the tones of his voice, a warning against any treatment of history that was mean or utilitarian, and any view of human nature that demands of it less than "may become a man."
But it was in the direction of the school that Acton
- ↑ See an article by John Pollock on "Lord Acton at Cambridge," in the Independent Review for April 1904.
