When _England's Trust_ appeared, its author had just left Cambridge.
Almost immediately afterward, it was decided that Young England ought
to be represented in Parliament, where its Utopian chivalries, it was
believed, needed only to be heard to prevail. Accordingly Lord John
Manners presented himself, in June 1841, as one of the Conservative
candidates for the borough of Newark. He was elected, and so was the
other Tory candidate, a man already distinguished, and at present
known to the entire world as Mr. W.E. Gladstone. On the hustings, Lord
John Manners was a good deal heckled, and in particular he was teased
excessively about a certain couplet in _England's Trust_. I am not
going to repeat that couplet here, for after nearly half a century
the Duke of Rutland has a right to be forgiven that extraordinary
indiscretion. If any of my readers turn to the volume for themselves,
which, of course, I have no power to prevent their doing, they will
probably exclaim:
"Was it the Duke of Rutland who wrote _that?_" for if frequency of
quotation is the hall-mark of popularity, his Grace must be one of the
most popular of our living poets.
There is something exceedingly pathetic in this little volume.
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