In 1868, he was chosen Chancellor of the Exchequer, apparently a step upward, in reality the beginning of his decline. For he soon became unpopular, personally by his brusque manner, officially because his conception of his duty would not allow him to apply the public moneys to such purposes as the purchase of Epping Forest for a public park, and the installation of gardens along the Thames Embankment. This office he eventually resigned. Although, in 1873, he was made Home Secretary, he had already passed not so much out of the public eye as out of the public mind. The next year, with the defeat of the Gladstone Ministry, he made his definitive departure from political life. The further honor of the peerage awaited Lowe,--from 1880 he was Viscount Sherbrooke,--but the last twenty years of his life were those of anti-climax and decay. The peculiar malignancy of fate that latterly seemed to pursue him was shown in the accidental publication in 1884 of the inconsiderable booklet, _Poems of a Life_, which he had privately printed for private circulation. He died in 1892, at the age of eighty-one. The world had almost forgotten him. Such, briefly, are the facts of Lowe’s history, a record of honorable achievement surely, but not the record which others--and probably the man himself--had dreamed of. It may be asked how the career of a man who from modest beginnings attained cabinet rank could be in any sense a failure. But when the supreme episode of his life--the brief hour of glory, followed by the gradual reversal from almost universal laudation to wide-spread unpopularity--is remembered the question should be answered. The causes of Lowe’s failure to justify his own promise were perhaps largely personal. The temper of the man was brusque, independent, imperious. In his love for invective and satire as weapons of oratory, there was something Swiftian; Swiftian, too, was his general disregard for the feelings of others. This did not arise from any native insensibility--it is the sensitive who can inflict the keenest wounds--but from a pride of intellect that made him despise the slow-minded and the ill-informed. He was not so much tactless as disdaining tact. Some of the projects he favored were signally progressive: in 1856 he introduced an unsuccessful bill for the conversion of partnerships comprising more than twenty persons into incorporated companies; he was an advocate of public libraries, of undenominational education; as Chancellor he devised ingenious budgets and proposed a revenue stamp on match-boxes, a tax which had already been levied in America; and Mr. A. Patchett Martin claims for him the original project of Imperial Federation. He was also one of the earliest enthusiasts over the bicycle. On the other hand, he was personally opposed to the democratic idea, especially as represented by universal suffrage. He was never strictly a party man. It is a tribute to him that the Liberals, under whose banners he nominally