Read Ebook: The Real Gladstone: An Anecdotal Biography by Ritchie J Ewing James Ewing

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Many, many years ago England's foremost statesman, as George Canning then was, distrusted by the multitude, feared by his colleagues, regarded with suspicion by the First Gentleman of the Age--as it was the fashion to term George the Magnificent, who was then seated on the British throne--wearied of the strife and turmoil of party, spent a short time at Seaforth House, bidding what he deemed his farewell to his Liverpool correspondents. His custom, we are told, was to sit for hours gazing on the wide expanse of waters before him. His had been a marvellous career. Born out of the circle of the ruling classes, by his indomitable energy, the greatness of his intellectual gifts, his brilliant eloquence, he had lifted himself up above his contemporaries, and had become their leader; and here he was about to quit the scene of his triumphs--to reign as Viceroy in a far-off land. Canning, however, did not retire from the Parliamentary arena, but stopped at home to be Premier of Great Britain and Ireland, and to let all Europe know that this country had done with the Holy Alliance; that a new and better spirit was walking the earth; that the dark night of bigotry was past, and that the dawn of a better day had come. As he sat there looking out over the waters, a little one was to be seen playing below upon the sand. That little lad was the son of Canning's host and friend, and his name was William Ewart Gladstone. Does it not seem as if the little one playing on the sand had unconsciously caught something of the genius, of the individuality, of the eloquence, of the loftiness of aim, of the statesman who sat above him overlooking the sea? Circumstances have much to do with the formation of character. To the youthful Gladstone, Canning was a light, a glory, and a star.

William Ewart Gladstone was born on December 29, 1809, at a house which may still be seen, 62, Rodney Street, Liverpool. He was of Scotch extraction, his father, a Liverpool merchant, having an estate in Scotland. Mr. Gladstone senior lived to become one of the merchant princes of Great Britain, a Baronet, and a Member of Parliament. He died, at the advanced age of eighty-seven, in 1851. His wife was Anne, daughter of Andrew Robertson, of Stornoway. They had six children; William Ewart Gladstone was the third. The family were all brought up as debaters. The children and their parents are said to have argued upon everything. They would debate whether the meat should be boiled or broiled, whether a window should be shut or opened, and whether it was likely to be fine or wet next day.

As a little boy, Gladstone went to school at Seaforth, where the late Dean Stanley was a pupil. The latter is responsible for the following: 'There is a small school near Liverpool at which Mr. Gladstone was brought up before he went to Eton. A few years ago, another little boy who was sent to this school, and whose name I will not mention, called upon the old clergyman who was the headmaster. The boy was now a young man, and he said to the old clergyman: "There is one thing in which I have never in the least degree improved since I was at school--the casting up of figures." "Well," replied the master, "it is very extraordinary that it should be so, because certainly no one could be a more incapable arithmetician at school than you were; but I will tell you a curious thing. When Mr. Gladstone was at the school, he was just as incapable at addition and subtraction as you were; now you see what he has become--he is one of the greatest of our financiers."'

Dr. Wilkinson, in his 'Reminiscences of Eton,' gives a couplet and its translation by Mr. Gladstone, when a boy at Eton:

'Ne sis O cera mollior, Grandiloquus et vanus; Heus bone non es gigas tu, Et non sum ego nanus.'

'Don't tip me now, you lad of wax, Your blarney and locution; You're not a giant yet, I hope, Nor I a Liliputian.'

The impression Gladstone made on his schoolfellows at Eton is clearly shown in a letter of Miles Gaskell to his mother, pleading for his going to Oxford rather than Cambridge: 'Gladstone is no ordinary individual. . . . If you finally decide in favour of Cambridge, my separation from Gladstone will be a source of great sorrow to me.' And Arthur Hallam wrote: 'Whatever may be our lot, I am very confident that he is a bud that will blossom with a richer fragrance than almost any whose early promise I have witnessed.'

'Who, in his editorial den, Clenched grimly an eradicating pen, Confronting frantic poets with calm eye, And dooming hardened metaphors to die. Who, if he found his young adherents fail, The ode unfinished, uncommenced the tale, With the next number bawling to be fed, And its false feeders latitant or fled, Sat down unflinchingly to write it all, And kept the staggering project from a fall.'

Dr. Furnivall, president of the Maurice Rowing Club, lately sent Mr. Gladstone a copy of his letter on 'Sculls or Oars.' The ex-Prime Minister, in returning his thanks for the letter, says: 'When I was at Eton, and during the season, I sculled constantly, more than almost any other boy in the school. Our boats then were not so light as they now are, but they went along merrily, with no fear of getting them under water.'

After spending six months with private tutors, in October, 1828, he went up to Christ Church, Oxford, and the following year was nominated to a studentship. 'As for Gladstone,' writes Sir Francis Doyle, 'in the earlier part of his undergraduateship he read steadily, and did not exert himself to shine as a speaker; in point of fact, he did not attempt to distinguish himself in the Debating Society till he had pretty well made sure of his distinction in the Schools. I used often to walk with him in the afternoon, but I never recollect riding or boating in his company, and I believe that he was seldom diverted from his normal constitutional between two and five along one of the Oxford roads. The most adventurous thing I ever did at Oxford in Mr. Gladstone's company, if it really were as adventurous as I find he still asserts it to have been, was when I allowed myself to be taken to Dissenting chapels. We were rewarded by hearing Dr. Chalmers preach on two occasions, and Rowland Hill at another time.'

Gladstone seems to have delighted in these escapades. His mother was an occasional attendant on the ministrations of the celebrated Dissenting preacher Dr. Raffles, of Liverpool, and possibly might have taken the future Premier with her. His attendance at church was very regular. 'He used rather to mount guard over my religious observances,' writes Sir Francis Doyle, 'and habitually marched me off after luncheon to the University sermon at two o'clock. Now, I have not the gift of snoring comfortably under a dull preacher; instead of a narcotic he acts on my nerves as an irritant, but with Mr. Gladstone the case was different. One afternoon I looked up, and discovered, not without a glow of triumph, that although the reverend gentleman above me had not yet arrived at his "Thirdly," my Mentor was sleeping the sleep of the just. "Hullo!" said I to myself, "no more two-o'clock sermons for me." Accordingly, on the very next occasion when he came to carry me off, my answer was ready: "No, thank you, not to-day. I can sleep just as well in my arm-chair as at St. Mary's." The great man was discomfited, and retired, shaking his head, but he acknowledged his defeat by troubling me no more in that matter.'

Cardinal Manning had been the principal leader in the Oxford Debating Society till Mr. Gladstone appeared upon the scene. At once he and Gaskell became the leading Christ Church orators, and the great oratorical event of the time was Mr. Gladstone's speech against the first Reform Bill. 'Most of the speakers,' writes Sir Francis Doyle, who was present on the occasion, 'rose more or less above their ordinary level, but when Mr. Gladstone sat down we all of us felt that an epoch in our lives had arrived. It was certainly the finest speech of his that I ever heard. The effect produced by that great speech led to his being returned to Parliament as M.P. for Newark by the Tory Duke of Newcastle, who is remembered for his question, "May I not do what I like with my own?"'

To return to Mr. Gladstone's career at the University. In 1831 he took a double first-class, and would easily have attained a Fellowship in any college where Fellowships depended upon a competitive examination. He held with Scott, the foremost scholar of the day, the second place in the Ireland for 1829. In that year a deputation from the Union of Cambridge went to Oxford to take part in a debate on the respective merits of Byron and Shelley. One of the Cambridge party was Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton. He writes: 'The man that took me most was the youngest Gladstone, of Liverpool--I am sure a very superior person.' On all he seems to have exercised a beneficial influence. He deprecated the example of the gentlemen commoners, and did much to check the pernicious habit prevalent at that time in the University, of over-indulgence in wine. His tutor was the Rev. Robert Briscoe. He also attended the lectures of the Rev. Dr. Benton on divinity and Dr. Pusey on Hebrew. He read classics privately with a tutor of the Bishop of St. Andrews. In 1830 he was at Cuddesdon Vicarage with a small reading-party, where he seems to have mastered Hooker's 'Ecclesiastical Polity.' He founded and presided over an essay society called after his name, of which he was successively secretary and president. In his maiden speech at the Union in 1830 he defended Catholic emancipation; declared the Duke of Wellington's Government unworthy of the confidence of the nation; opposed the removal of Jewish disabilities; and argued for the gradual emancipation of slavery rather than immediate abolition.

It is evident that all the time of his University career Mr. Gladstone had a profoundly religious bias, and at one time seems to have contemplated taking Holy Orders. Bishop Wordsworth declared that no man of his standing read the Bible more or knew it better. One of his fellow-students writes: 'Poor Gladstone mixed himself up with the St. Mary Hall and Oriel set, who are really for the most part only fit to live with maiden aunts and keep tame rabbits.' At this time Mr. Gladstone's High Churchmanship does not seem to have been so pronounced as it afterwards became. He was a disciple of Canning, and rejoiced at Catholic emancipation. 'When in Scotland, staying at his father's house in Kincardineshire, he attended the Presbyterian Kirk zealously and contentedly, and took me with him,' writes Sir Francis Doyle, 'to what they call the "fencing of the tables," an operation lasting five or six hours.'

One of Gladstone's college acquaintances was Martin Tupper, whose 'Proverbial Philosophy' had a sale out of all proportion to its merits, in 1864. He wrote--

'Orator, statesman, scholar, and sage, The Crichton-more, the Gladstone of his age.'

'My first acquaintance with Gladstone,' Martin Tupper writes, 'was a memorable event. It was at that time not so common a thing for undergraduates to go to the Communion at Christ Church Cathedral, that holy celebration being supposed to be for the particular benefit of Deans and Canons and Masters of Arts; so when two undergraduates went out of the chancel together after Communion, which they had both attended, it is small wonder that they addressed each other genially, in defiance of Oxford etiquette, nor that a friendship so well begun has continued to this hour.' He testifies how Gladstone was the foremost man--warm-hearted, earnest, hard working, and religious, and had a following even in his teens.

The following anecdote is amusing. Tupper writes: 'I had the honour at Christ Church of being prize-taker of Dr. Benton's theological essay, "The Reconciliation of Matthew and John," when Gladstone, who had also contested it, stood second, and when Dr. Benton had me before him to give me the twenty-five pounds' worth of books, he requested me to allow Mr. Gladstone to have five pounds' worth, as he was so good a second.' Alas! Mr. Tupper in after-life was led to think that the man to whom at one time he looked up, had deviated from the proper path. In his 'Three Hundred Sonnets,' he kindly undertook, in the reference to Gladstone, to warn the public to

'Beware of mere delusive eloquence.'

And again he wrote of a

'Glozing tongue whom none can trust.'

Still, it is well to quote in this connection how Tupper considered Gladstone the central figure at Oxford University. He writes: 'Fifty years ago Briscoe's Aristotle class at Christ Church was comprised almost wholly of men who have since become celebrated, some in a remarkable degree; and as we believe that so many names afterwards attaining to great distinction have rarely been associated at one lecture board, either at Oxford or elsewhere, it may be allowed to one who counts himself the least and lowest of the company to pen this brief note of those old Aristotelians. In this class was Gladstone, ever from youth up the beloved and admired of many personal intimates.'

Miss Clough's character of Gladstone, solely from his handwriting, is thus recorded by Lord Houghton: 'A well-judging person; a good classic; considerate; apt to mistrust himself; undecided; if to choose a profession, would prefer the Church; has much application; a good reasoner; very affectionate and tender in his domestic relations; has a good deal of pride and determination, or rather obstinacy; is very fond of society, particularly ladies'; is neat, and fond of reading.'

Bishop Wordsworth writes: 'My cousin William Wordsworth, then living at Eton, was dining at Liverpool at the house of a great Liverpool merchant just after Gladstone had taken his degree. Amongst the company were Wordsworth, the poet, and Mr. John Gladstone, the father of the future Premier. After dinner, the poet congratulated the father on the success of his distinguished son. "Yes, sir," replied the father, "I thank you. My son has greatly distinguished himself at the University, and I trust he will continue to do so when he enters public life, for there is no doubt that he is a man of great ability, but he has no stability."'

Sir Francis Doyle describes a visit he paid to Gladstone at his father's house. 'Whilst there,' he writes, 'I was very much struck with the remarkable acuteness and great natural powers of Mr. Gladstone the father. Under his influence, apparently, nothing was taken for granted between the father and his sons. A succession of arguments on great topics and small topics alike--arguments conducted with perfect good humour, but also with the most implacable logic--formed the staple of the family conversations. Hence, it was easy to see from what foundations Mr. Gladstone's skill as a debater was built up.' Further illustrative traits are supplied. For instance, one of the amusements of the place was shooting with bows and arrows. The arrows were lost in the long grass; Sir Francis would have left them to chance and time. Not so Mr. Gladstone. He insisted on their being all found. Again, on a trip to Dunottar Castle, Mr. Gladstone was riding a skittish chestnut mare, who would not let him open a gate in front of him. 'My cob,' Sir Francis writes, 'was perfectly docile, and quiet as a sheep. I naturally said, "Let me do that for you." But no; his antagonist had to be tamed, but it took forty minutes to do so, and then the horsemen proceeded on their way.' It is said that Mr. Rarey, the horse-tamer, subsequently had a high opinion of Mr. Gladstone's skill as an equestrian.

In 1832 Mr. Gladstone left Oxford, and after spending six months in Italy, he was recalled to England to become Member for Newark. In his address he declared that the duties of governors are strictly and peculiarly religious, and that legislators, like individuals, are bound to carry throughout their acts the spirit of the high truths they have acknowledged. Much required to be done for popular education, and labour should receive adequate remuneration. He regarded slavery as sanctioned by Holy Scripture, but he was in favour of the gradual education and emancipation of the slaves. It was said that he was the Duke of Newcastle's nominee. He replied that he was nothing of the kind--that he came there by the invitation of the Red Club, than whom none were more respectable and intelligent. He was returned at the head of the poll. Newark rejoiced in two members. Another Tory was second, and the Liberal candidate, Serjeant Wilde, was defeated. Mr. Gladstone accordingly took his seat in the first Reformed Parliament, which met in January, 1833. His maiden speech was on the Anti-slavery Debate, to defend his father from an attack made on him by Lord Howick with regard to the treatment of his slaves in Demerara. On the morning of the debate, as he was riding in Hyde Park, a passer-by pointed him out to another new member, Lord Charles Russell, and said, 'That is Gladstone; he is to make his maiden speech to-night; that will be worth hearing.'

Commenting on Mr. Disraeli's d?but in the House of Commons, Professor Prynne writes: 'This was a contrast to the graceful, harmonious, almost timid, maiden speech of Mr. W. E. Gladstone--a manner that I never saw equalled, except by Lord Derby when he was in the House of Commons. The speaking of these two was like a stream pouring foam, or it may be described as reading from a book. Of Mr. Gladstone we all agreed in saying, "This is a young man of great promise."' A foreigner writes that until he had heard Mr. Gladstone speak he never believed that the English was a musical language, but that after hearing him he was convinced that it was the most melodious of living tongues.

About this time there appeared Mr. James Grant's 'Random Recollections.' It is amusing to read: 'I have no idea that he will ever acquire the reputation of a great statesman. His views are not sufficiently enlarged or profound for that; his celebrity in the House of Commons will chiefly depend on his readiness and dexterity as a clever debater, in conjunction with the excellence of his elocution and the gracefulness of his manner when speaking.' 'When a Select Committee of the House of Commons,' writes Sir George Stephen, 'was appointed to take evidence on the working of the apprenticeship system among the West Indian blacks, it was arranged between Buxton on the one side and Gladstone on the other that Mr. Burge and myself should be admitted as their respective legal advisers. At that time evidently Mr. Gladstone had been recognised as the champion of the one party as much as Mr. Buxton of the other.'

In the anti-slavery recollections of Sir George Stephen we have a graphic account of the struggle between Gladstone, as the advocate of slavery, and Sir John Jerome, a colonial judge, who may be said to have died a martyr to his anti-slavery zeal. 'I shall never forget,' writes Sir George, 'his examination before the Apprenticeship Committee. Gladstone employed all his ingenuity in vain, and no man has a greater share of logical acumen, to bewilder him. But Jerome was quite his match. His evidence was argumentative, and therefore the cross-examination was in the nature of argument, as it generally is in Parliamentary Committees. It was a brilliant affair of thrust and counter-thrust. Gladstone was calm, imperturbable, and deliberate; Jerome wide-awake, ready at every point, and, though full of vivacity, as impossible to catch tripping as a French rope-dancer. He evaded what he could not answer, but evaded it so adroitly that Gladstone might detect but could not expose the evasion; and every now and then Jerome retorted objection to objection with a readiness that made it difficult to say which was the examiner and which the examined. The rest of the Committee silently watched the scene, as a conflict between two practised intellectual gladiators, and I am persuaded that Mr. Gladstone himself would admit that Jerome had not the worst of it. But if Mr. Gladstone had studied in the school of Oxford, Jerome was educated as an advocate for the French Bar, so they met on equal terms, while Jerome had the advantage of a good cause.'

Mr. Gladstone has been celebrated for his explanations. One of the earliest of them was written when he was Conservative candidate for Newark, addressed to a Mr. John Simpson, a Conservative Nonconformist. It is dated 'Hawarden, Chester, July 10, 1841.'

'DEAR SIR,

'I remain, dear sir, your faithful servant,

'W. E. GLADSTONE.

'You are at perfect liberty to make this letter known.'

In July, 1838, Mr. W. E. Gladstone wrote to Mr. Murray, the publisher, from 6, Carlton Gardens, informing him that he has written and thinks of publishing some papers on the relationship of the Church and the State, which would probably fill a moderate octavo volume, and he would be glad to know if Mr. Murray would be inclined to see them. Mr. Murray saw the papers, and on August 9 he agreed with Mr. Gladstone to publish 750 or 1,000 copies of the work on Church and State on half-profits, the copyright to remain with the author after the first edition was sold. The work was immediately sent to press, and proofs were sent to Mr. Gladstone, about to embark for Holland. A note was received from the author, dated from Rotterdam, saying that sea-sickness prevented him from correcting the proofs on the passage. This was Mr. Gladstone's first appearance as author, and the work proved remarkably successful.

Writing to Mr. John Murray, Lord Mahon, afterwards Lord Stanhope, says: 'Mr. Gladstone's volume has lately engaged much of my attention. It is difficult to feel quite free from partiality where so amiable and excellent a man is concerned; but if my friendship does not blind me, I should pronounce his production as marked by profound ecclesiastical learning and eminent native ability. At the same time, I must confess myself startled at some of his tenets; his doctrine of Private Judgment especially seems to me a contradiction in terms, attempting to blend together the incompatible advantages of the Romanists and of the Protestant principle upon that point.'

Two years afterwards, we find a reference to the same subject. 'As to the third edition of "The State in its Relations to the Church," I should think the remaining copies had better be got rid of in whatever summary or ignominious mode you may deem best. They must be dead beyond recall. . . . With regard to the fourth edition, I do not know whether it would be well to procure any review or notice of it, and I am not a fair judge of its merits, even in comparison with the original form of the work; but my idea is that it is less defective, both in the theoretical and historical development, and ought to be worthy of the notice of those who deemed the earlier editions worth their notice and purchase; that it really would put a reader in possession of the view it was intended to convey, which, I fear, is more than can be said of any of its predecessors.'

About the same time Mr. Gladstone seems to have been not a little moved by our military proceedings in India. When Lieutenant Eyre's 'Military Operations in Cabool' appeared, Mr. Murray sent Mr. Gladstone a copy. He replied: 'I have read it with great pain and shame, which are, I fear, as one must say in such a case, the tests of its merits as a work. May another occasion for such a narrative never arise!' A humane wish, as subsequent events show, not likely to be speedily realized.

'Church and State' soon reached a third edition, and led to the famous review of it by Macaulay, in which he speaks of Gladstone as 'the rising hope of the stern and unbending Tories.' 'I have bought Gladstone's book on Church and State,' he writes to Macvey Napier, 'and I think I can make a good article on it. It seems to me the very thing for a spirited, popular, and at the same time gentlemanlike, critique.' Again he writes: 'I met Gladstone at Rome. We talked and walked together in St. Peter's during the best part of an afternoon, and I have in consequence been more civil to him personally than I otherwise should have been. He is both a clever and an able man, with all his fanaticism.' At this time Gladstone's eyesight failed him, and the doctors recommended him to spend the winter at Rome, where he met, besides Macaulay, Henry Manning and Cardinal Wiseman and Grant, who afterwards became Roman Catholic Bishop of Southwark. Among the visitors at Rome that winter were the widow and daughters of Sir Stephen Richard Glynne, of Hawarden Castle, Flintshire. Mr. Gladstone was already acquainted with these ladies, having been a friend of Lady Glynne's eldest son at Oxford and having also met him at Hawarden. The visit to Rome threw him much into their society, and he became engaged to Lady Glynne's eldest daughter.

'In 1839,' writes Sir Francis Doyle, 'I attended Mr. Gladstone's wedding at Hawarden as his best man. Catherine Glynne and her sister Mary, both beautiful women, were married on the same day--the first to William Gladstone, the second to Lord Lyttelton. The occasion was a very interesting one from the high character of the two bridegrooms and the warmth of affection shown for the two charming young ladies by all their friends and neighbours in every rank of life. There was a depth and genuineness of sympathy diffused around which, as the French say, spoke for itself without any words.'

During the early part of their married life Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone lived with Sir Thomas Gladstone at 6, Carlton Gardens. Later they lived at 13, Carlton House Terrace, and when Mr. Gladstone was in office occupied an official residence in Downing Street. In 1850, Mr. Gladstone, who had succeeded to his patrimony five years before, bought 11, Carlton House Terrace, which was his London house for twenty years, and he subsequently lived in Harley Street, where on one occasion an angry mob smashed his windows. During the Parliamentary recess Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone divided their time between Fasque, Sir John Gladstone's seat in Kincardineshire, and Hawarden House, which they shared with Mrs. Gladstone's brother, Sir Stephen Glynne, till, on his death, it passed into their sole possession. Mr. Gladstone had a numerous family. His eldest son predeceased him; his second son is known as Herbert Gladstone; another was Henry Gladstone. One of his daughters married the Rev. Mr. Drew.

It is interesting to read what an American writer has to say of Mrs. Gladstone: 'The French have a derisive saying that there are no political women in England, and hence no salons in London. They have no appreciation of that class of Englishwomen, who are far more important and beneficial to society than are the corresponding class in France. But there is a social factor in English politics unattainable by any other nation, and possibly only under just such a form of Government and with such a ruler as Queen Victoria has proved herself to be. She is in a large sense the leader of the woman movement in her country--a movement which is represented in a stricter sense by Mrs. Gladstone, the wife of England's foremost statesman. In this movement are no diplomats or political female deputies; but women who, knowing the practical work that must be done for humanity, are about it in earnest fashion, giving the world fitting examples of their ability and power as women and workers. To better the condition of the people, not to scheme and wire-pull for a party, is the aim of women like Mrs. Gladstone, whose social power is stronger than the strongest political influence that exists.

'She is a noble woman, aside from the fact that her position is so exceptional that her faults would naturally seem trivial, surrounded by the halo of her rank and her husband's fame. As a little child she exhibited the unselfishness which has made her name beloved in England. Her father said of her that she was his most gifted child, and always spoke with subdued pride of the strong character she exhibited in earliest youth. She chose as a schoolgirl the motto, "If you want a thing well done, do it yourself," and has kept it as hers through life. The practical good sense manifested by her when young has been her magic wand through all the passing years. She is now a woman of seventy-six years, and is the same wise-minded, sensible person that she was when she wrote her chosen sentence in her diary fully seventy years ago. The story of her life would read like a beautiful romance, so full has it been of work, domestic, social, and philanthropic, and so overflowing with happiness.

'The variety and interest which have marked Mrs. Gladstone's life would have been lacking to a large extent had she not felt such an overflowing sympathy for the people--for the poor and trouble-burdened, the weary and the faint-hearted. One of her friends was once lamenting to her that she could do nothing for others because she had not means. "Oh yes, you can, my dear: you can do everything; you can love them." "But that would not help the poor or the sick or the dying," was answered. "Yes, it would; it would cheer and bless and comfort; try it and prove my words," said Mrs. Gladstone, and her visitor parted from her in tears, so heartfelt and earnest were her words.

'The story of Mr. Gladstone's public career is in part his wife's; for in all his undertakings she has been a powerful factor. Wherever he has journeyed she has gone: in whatever work he has been engaged she has been at his side, mastering details and keeping pace with him, so that she has been his comrade in all things. Mr. Gladstone at all times, and on every fitting occasion, pays tribute to the mind and heart of his wife, and attributes to her companionship and encouragement the stimulus and the solace without which he could not have undertaken the tasks he has performed. She was his "helpmeet" from their earliest union, and as time passed and their affection for each other grew as a protecting shelter about them, he relied more and more upon her counsels. Always at his side ministering to him and diverting his mind by steady cheerfulness and bright talk, she has made his life an exceptionably joyous one, and she basks in the sunshine of the happiness she has created. For many years, while her children were growing up about her and needing her watchful care, she had manifold duties, but for a long time there has been no divided responsibility, and the accustomed way for both of them has been together, and together in a union so close that it is really that exceptional thing--a soul-marriage. She alone has shared alike in his labours and his recreations, his triumphs and defeats, and, beyond all the incidents of their united lives, her unselfish devotion has been his staff and his support.

'Mr. Gladstone's manners, especially when addressing ladies, are very courtly. There is a fine stateliness, and at the same time an exquisite courtesy, in his address. In his manners, as well as in much else, Mr. Gladstone belongs distinctly to the older school which flourished before the Queen came to the throne, when society still preserved a certain distinctive style, which has suffered much in the rush and tumble of our new democracy.'

In 1841 he accepted the office of Vice-President of the Board of Trade under Sir Robert Peel, afterwards becoming President as successor to Lord Ripon. In his address seeking re-election at Newark, he declared that the British farmer might rely upon two points--first, 'that adequate protection would be given to him; secondly, that protection would be given him through the means of the sliding scale.' In 1842 he was engaged in the preparation of the revised tariff, by which duties were either abolished or diminished on some twelve hundred articles. Greville writes in the March of that year that he had already displayed a capacity which made his admission into the Cabinet indispensable. In the course of the next year he became President of the Board of Trade and a member of the Cabinet, and the very first act he had to perform was to give his vote in favour of withdrawing the Bill providing for the education of children in factories, which had been violently opposed by the Dissenters on the plea that it was too favourable to the Established Church. In this connection we have the following curious story: A brusque but wealthy shipowner of Sunderland once entered the London office of Mr. Lindsay on business. 'Noo, is Lindsay in?' inquired the northern diamond in the rough. 'Sir!' exclaimed the clerk to whom the inquiry was addressed. 'Well, then, is Mr. Lindsay in, seest thou?' 'He will be in shortly,' said the clerk. 'Will you wait?' The Sunderland shipowner intimated that he would, and was ushered into an adjacent room, where a person was busily employed copying some statistics. Our Sunderland friend paced the room several times, and presently, walking to the table where the other occupant of the room was seated, took careful note of the writer's doings. The copier looked up inquiringly, when the northerner said: 'Thou writest a bonny hand, thou dost.' 'I am glad you think so,' was the reply. 'Ah! thou dost--thou maks thy figures well; thou'rt just the chap I want.' 'Indeed,' said the Londoner. 'Yes, indeed,' said Sunderland. 'I'm a man of few words. Noo, if thou'lt coom o'er to canny auld Sunderland, thou seest, I'll gie thee a hoondred and twenty pund a year, and that's a plum thou doesn't meet with every day in thy life, I reckon--noo then.' The Londoner thanked the admirer of his penmanship most gratefully, and intimated that he would like to consult Mr. Lindsay upon the subject. 'Ah, that's reet!' And in walked Mr. Lindsay, who cordially greeted his Sunderland friend, after which the gentleman at the desk gravely rose and informed Mr. Lindsay of the handsome appointment which had been offered him in the Sunderland shipowner's office. 'Very well,' said Mr. Lindsay, 'I should be sorry to stand in your way; a hundred and twenty pound is more than I can afford to pay you in the department in which you are at present placed. You will find my friend a good and kind master, and, under the circumstances, I think the sooner you know each other the better. Allow me, therefore, to introduce to you the Right Hon. W. Gladstone.' Mr. Gladstone had been engaged in making a note of some shipping returns for his budget. The shipowner was, of course, a little taken aback, but he soon recovered his self-possession, and enjoyed the joke as much as Mr. Gladstone did. Very soon Sir Robert Peel proposed to establish non-sectarian colleges in Ireland, and to increase the grant to Maynooth. This led to Mr. Gladstone's resignation in 1845, but not before he had completed a second revised tariff, carrying on still further the work of commercial reform. In the explanation which he gave for his resignation he was understood to say that the measure with regard to Maynooth was a departure from the principles he had contended for in his books.

Everyone was amazed, and the party he had left was very angry. Greville writes: 'Gladstone's explanation was ludicrous. Everybody said that he had only succeeded in showing that his explanation was quite uncalled for.' It is perfectly clear that no one was able to understand the explanation. In a letter to Mr. W. E. Forster, Cobden wrote: 'Gladstone's speeches have the effect on my mind of a beautiful strain of music; I can rarely remember any clear unqualified expression of opinion on any subject outside his political, economical and financial statements. I remember on the occasion when he left Sir Robert Peel's Government on the Maynooth question, and when the House sat in unusual numbers to hear his explanation, I sat beside Villiers and Ricardo for an hour listening with real pleasure to his beautiful rhetorical involutions and evolutions, and at the close turning round to one of my neighbours and exclaiming, "What a marvellous talent is this! Here have I been listening with pleasure for an hour to his explanation, and I know no more why he left the Government than when he commenced."'

A little prior to this speech Mr. Gladstone had secured a follower in the person of Mr. Stafford Northcote, afterwards Lord Iddesleigh, as private secretary. 'From what I know of Mr. Gladstone's character,' writes Mr. Northcote to his father, 'there is no single statesman of the present day to whom I would more gladly attach myself; and I should think, from the talent he has shown for business since he came into office, there is no one more likely to retain his place unless any revolution takes place.' To another friend, Mr. Northcote, on his acceptance of the office, writes: 'With any other man than Gladstone I might have hesitated longer. But he is one whom I respect beyond measure; he stands almost alone as the representative of principles with which I cordially agree; and as a man of business, and one who, humanly speaking, is sure to rise, he is pre-eminent.' A little later Mr. Northcote writes to a lady: 'I look upon him' 'as the representative of the party scarcely developed as yet, though secretly forming, which will stand by all that is dear and sacred, in my estimation, in the struggle which will come ere very long between good and evil, order and disorder, the Church and the world; and I see a very small band collecting around him, and ready to fight manfully under his leading.'

In a letter to a friend, Mr. Gladstone thus explains his retirement from office: 'My whole purpose was to place myself in a position in which I should be free to consider my course without being liable to any just suspicion on the ground of personal interest. It is not profane if I say, "With a great price obtained I this freedom." The political association in which I stood was to me, at the time, the Alpha and Omega of public life. The Government of Sir Robert Peel was believed to be of immovable strength. My place, as President of the Board of Trade, was at the very kernel of its most interesting operations . . . I felt myself open to the charge of being opinionated and wanting in deference to really great authorities, and I could not but see that I should be evidently regarded as fastidious and fanciful, fitter for a dreamer, or possibly a schoolman, than for the active purposes of public life in a busy and moving age.'

While at the Board of Trade Mr. Gladstone found time to devote himself as ardently as ever to ecclesiastical subjects. He was one of the party supremely interested in the establishment of an Anglican Bishop at Jerusalem. Lord Shaftesbury describes how, in connection with the event at a dinner given by Baron Bunsen, 'he' 'stripped himself of a part of his Puseyite garment, and spoke like a pious man.' Bunsen, writing of Gladstone's speech, says: 'Never was heard a more exquisite speech: it flowed like a gentle and translucent stream. . . . We drove back to town in the clearest starlight, Gladstone continuing, with unabated animation, to pour forth his harmonious thoughts in melodious tones.'

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