that he could no longer conscientiously act with them; and, what testified still more strongly to the sincerity of his motives, he resigned his private secretaryship under Sir Stafford Northcote, and engaged in the less lucrative occupation of furthering various working-class movements in which Mr. Hodgson Pratt took an interest. The conversion was complete, but not sudden. It had been produced by several considerations, the cumulative effects of which were simply irresistible. On his way to serve in India he had stopped long enough in Venice to take sides against the Austrian tyrant; and on his return to Oxford the writings of Mill, more particularly his famous treatise on "Liberty," Buckle's "History of Civilization," and the personal influence of Goldwin Smith, had the effect, so to speak, of regenerating his entire political nature. When he made the final plunge into Radicalism he felt like an escaped prisoner on the first day of freedom.
In 1868 he made a gallant but unsuccessful effort to wrest a seat from the Tories in Berkshire. It was not long, however, before a much more suitable constituency sought and secured his services. In 1870 he was returned for Nottingham by a large Radical majority, and remained in Parliament till the dissolution of 1874, when, to the disappointment of many enthusiastic friends and supporters, he retired from the representation of the borough. His health had suffered, and his notions of the true functions of a legislature had in the interval undergone a change of which he could not at the time foresee the consequences. He required leisure to think them out. But of this more anon.
In Parliament Mr. Herbert was not, generally speaking, a grata persona. He was too conscientious to be
