At twelve years old Anthony Ashley went to Harrow, where he boarded with the Head Master, Dr. Butler, father of the present Master of Trinity.  I have heard him say that the master in whose form he was, being a bad sleeper, held “first school” at four o’clock on a winter’s morning; and that the boy for whom he fagged, being anxious to shine as a reciter, and finding it difficult to secure an audience, compelled him and his fellow-fag to listen night after night to his recitations, perched on a high stool where a nap was impossible.

But in spite of these austerities, Anthony Ashley was happy at Harrow; and the place should be sacred in the eyes of all philanthropists, because it was there that, when he was fourteen years old, he consciously and definitely gave his life to the service of his fellow-men.  He chanced to see a scene of drunken indecency and neglect at the funeral of one of the villagers, and exclaimed in horror, “Good heavens!  Can this be permitted simply because the man was poor and friendless?” What resulted is told by a tablet on the wall of the Old School, which bears the following inscription:—­

  Love.  Serve.

     NEAR THIS SPOT

  ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER

AFTERWARDS 7TH EARL OF SHAFTESBURY, K.G.

  WHILE YET A BOY IN HARROW SCHOOL

  SAW WITH SHAME AND INDIGNATION

    THE PAUPER’S FUNERAL

WHICH HELPED TO AWAKEN HIS LIFELONG

DEVOTION TO THE SERVICE OF THE POOR

    AND THE OPPRESSED.

  Blessed is he that considereth the poor.

After leaving Harrow Lord Ashley (as he now was) spent two years at a private tutor’s, and in 1819 he went up to Christ Church.  In 1822 he took a First Class in Classics.  The next four years were spent in study and travel, and in 1826 he was returned to Parliament, by the influence of his uncle the Duke of Marlborough, for the Borough of Woodstock.  On November 16 he recorded in his diary:  “Took the oaths of Parliament with great good will; a slight prayer for assistance in my thoughts and deeds.”  Never was a politician’s prayer more abundantly granted.

In 1830 Lord Ashley married a daughter of Lord Cowper, and this marriage, independently of the radiant happiness which it brought, had an important bearing on his political career; for Lady Ashley’s uncle was Lord Melbourne, and her mother became, by a second marriage, the wife of Lord Palmerston.  Of Lord Melbourne and his strong common sense Lord Shaftesbury, in 1882, told me the following characteristic story.  When the Queen became engaged to Prince Albert, she wished him to be made King Consort by Act of Parliament, and urged her wish upon the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne.  At first that sagacious man simply evaded the point, but when her Majesty insisted on a categorical answer, “I thought it my duty to be very plain with her.  I said, ’For G——­’s sake, let’s hear no more of it, ma’am; for if you once get the English people into the way of making kings, you will get them into the way of unmaking them.’”