[SIR CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE is the eldest son of the late Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, Bart., who received his title in consideration of his services in connection with the Great Exhibition of 1851. He was born in 1843, and married, in 1872, Eliza, only daughter of W. A. G. Sheill. She died in 1874. Educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Elected for Chelsea in December 1868. Sir Charles Dilke is a writer of considerable power. Among his works are 'Greater Britain,' a political treatise suggested by a tour through the British Colonies and foreign possessions; and the Fall of Prince Florestan of Monaco,' a political satire. He is the proprietor of the Athenæum.] SIR C. W. DILKE. OME seven or eight years ago a young SOME Member of Parliament, whose chief claim to anything like public recognition was his connection with the founder of an important literary journal, and with a gentleman who had been attached to the scientific, artistic, and literary 'Court' of the Prince Consort, made a speech by which he suddenly became notorious. The speech was made in the Lecture Room at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and the speaker was Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, the Member for Chelsea. There is no need now to recall all the incidents of a controversy which excited a good deal of attention in 1871. to Sir Charles Dilke, who had been returned Parliament in 1868, had apparently espoused Republican opinions, and, being very young and very enthusiastic, he had felt it to be a duty to make his views known in some way to the world at large. Unfortunately, the particular method he chose was not calculated to lead him to any very brilliant success. In his speech at Newcastle, and if I mistake not, in others which he subsequently delivered elsewhere, he took the ground that the English Monarchy cost more than it was worth, and he fortified the case upon which he appealed to the public by small criticisms on the petty cash expenses of the Royal Court, including even the sums expended in the laundry of the Sovereign. He had, of course, a certain following; for those were days in which English Radicalism was very restless and very impatient, and in which any new departure in politics was certain to be hailed with delight by men who believed that the General Election of 1868 ought to be followed by the complete reconstruction of society from the foundations upwards. The young Member for Chelsea became the favourite and hero of that section of the Liberal party which seeks to atone for the weakness of its intelligence by the strength of its language, and those critics who ventured to suggest that Sir Charles Dilke was wasting his energies by devoting himself to an exposition of the washing-bills of Queen Victoria came in for a good deal of tolerably harmless abuse. For a time it might have been thought that a new political party was on the point of being formed, and that a real Red,' seated in the House of Commons, as Member for a metropolitan constituency, |