The "passion" referred to--never avowed and never obtruded, but which "neither slumbered nor slept"--was ambition. It might be called Paramountcy--that dangerous war-engendering word of Imperialism--which only the arrogant pronounce, and only the subjugated submit to. The Cowen family had no past but that of industry, and in Mr. Cowen's youth the "slings and arrows of outrageous" Toryism, shafts of arrogance, insolence, and contempt, flew about him. He inherited from his mother a proud and indomitable spirit, and resolved to create a Liberal force which should withstand all that--and he did. Then, when he came to be, as he thought, flouted by those whom he had served (the common experience of the noblest men), he at length resented and turned against himself. He had reached the heights where he had been awarded an imperishable place, and then descended in resentment to mingle and be lost in the ignominious faction whom he had defeated and despised. Those who had enraged him were not, as we shall see, worth his resentment It was not for "a handful of silver" he left us--for he had plenty--nor for "a ribbon to stick in his coat," for he would not wear one if offered a basketful. It was just indignation, stronger than self-respect. Not all at once did the desire of control assume this form. By his natural nobility of nature he inclined to the view that all the supremacy inherent in man is that of superior capacity, to which all men yield spontaneous allegiance. Some time elapsed before the bent of his mind became apparent. Possibly it was not known to himself. When a young man, he promoted and maintained two or three journals, in which he also wrote himself, without suggesting to others the passion for journalism by which he was possessed. Some years later, when proofs of one of his speeches which a reporter had taken down, and Mr. Cowen had himself corrected, passed through my hands, I was struck with the dexterity with which he put a word of fire into a tame sentence, infused colour into a pale-faced expression, and established a pulse in an anaemic one. It was clear that he had the genius of speech in him and was ambitious of distinction in it.