which require some casuistry to defend, even though the motives may be unimpeachable, and though the thing itself may, on its merits, and apart from technicalities, be the right thing to be done. The Collier appointment was, it appears, approved by the Cabinet and sanctioned by the high authority, legal and moral, of Lord Hatherley and Roundell Palmer. The Ewelme Rectory appointment was more exclusively Mr. Gladstone's own doing. We agree with Mr. Morley in thinking the thing had better not have been done. But it was a storm in a tea-cup at the worst; and what administration has ever existed, down to the present day, which can afford to throw stones on the score of jobs?

A more serious question arises as to the sudden dissolution of 1874. It has been alleged on high authority-that of two of Mr. Gladstone's own colleagues -that the time of this dissolution, which certainly took every one by surprise, was determined by no reasons of policy but mainly, if not solely, by the difficulty in which Mr. Gladstone found himself, owing to his having assumed the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer in addition to that of First Lord of the Treasury. It seemed impossible to ascertain whether this act had vacated his seat for Greenwich or not. The Speaker, the law officers of the Crown, and other high legal authorities, were consulted and gave either contradictory opinions or none at all. Lord Selborne, who thought that the seat had been vacated, also thought in after years-it seems doubtful whether he held the same opinion at the timethat there was no way out of the difficulty except through the door of a dissolution. It seems natural, therefore, that he should record in his "Memorials" that this difficulty was the determining cause of the dissolution when it came so suddenly. But Lord Halifax, a man of sound sense and great

experience in public affairs, had pointed out to Mr. Gladstone how the parliamentary difficulty ought to be met. Mr. Childers, who had been disappointed in not being made Chancellor of the Exchequer when Mr. Lowe resigned and Mr. Gladstone took his office, also held that the double office and its unsolved problems were the main cause of the dissolution. "But his surmise," as Mr. Morley says, "was not quite impartial.” The opinion of Lord Selborne and Mr. Childers seems now to have been very commonly accepted.

"I can only say," Mr. Morley comments, "that in the mass of papers connected with the Greenwich seat and the dissolution, there is no single word in one of them associating in any way either topic with the other. Mr. Gladstone acted so promptly in the affair of the seat that both the Speaker of the House of Commons and Lord Selborne himself said that no fault could be found with him. His position before the House was therefore entirely straightforward. Finally, Mr. Gladstone gave an obviously adequate and sufficient case for the dissolution both to the Queen and to the Cabinet, and stated to at least three of his colleagues what was 'the determining cause'; and this was not the Greenwich seat, but something wholly remote from it" (ii, 471-2).

We have seen that the proposed repeal of the income-tax was alleged by many critics to have been a mere bribe to an estranged electorate, improvised to cover the Prime Minister's retreat. We have also seen that this charitable allegation is devoid of foundation. Mr. Gladstone began to think of measures for the repeal of the income-tax almost as soon as he became Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was indeed this plan, fully conceived in his own mind, but not yet sanctioned by his colleagues, that was the real cause of the dissolution, not its equivocal consequence.

This

The plan involved certain economies; and this brought the Prime Minister into direct conflict-a too frequent episode in his career—with his two colleagues at the head of what he was fond of calling "the great spending departments." Both declined to give way, but both consented to review their position should a general election be found to approve the policy put before the country by Mr. Gladstone. was known at the time only to Lord Granville, Mr. Cardwell, and Mr. Goschen-the three ministers mentioned above by Mr. Morley. The statement made to the Queen and to the Cabinet was couched in more general terms, and the difficulty about the estimates was not specifically mentioned. There may have been bad policy in all this, but there was no bad faith or base motive in it.

Lastly, we have to consider, very briefly, Mr. Gladstone's conversion to Home Rule. We shall not be suspected of defending the policy in trying to ascertain Mr. Gladstone's real motives, and, where necessary, to do justice to them. Unless he was a hypocrite to his own diary and to his own familiar friends, it is quite certain that his desire gradually to withdraw from public life when he withdrew from the leadership of the Liberal party in 1874 was entirely sincere. It is equally certain that his public conscience, as he understood its promptings, and nothing else, compelled him to suppress that desire when the Eastern Question became acute between 1877 and 1880, and to do his utmost to restrain his country from committing what he regarded, rightly or wrongly, as a great act of treason to freedom, humanity, and Christianity. This brings us to 1880, and to the government of that year, which lasted until 1885. Again, Mr. Gladstone, unless he was a consummate hypocrite, would gladly have quitted public life if his sense of public duty had permit

ted him to follow his own bent. But the Irish question had now become acute. The Irish peasant had been enfranchised; and a large access of strength to the Nationalist party in Parliament was known to be inevitable. The Conservative government had abandoned coercion; Lord Salisbury had permitted his Lord-Lieutenant to confer with the Nationalist leader of course without prejudice-and had made a speech at Newport which was regarded by many as indicating, to say the least, a "coming-on disposition." A general election followed, which gave the Conservatives no majority, even with the Irish vote, and the Liberals no majority without it. Did Mr. Gladstone then, for the first time, intimate that the Irish question must be faced in all its magnitude, and that even the demand for Home Rule, now constitutionally expressed, must be considered in all seriousness? Assuredly not. He had intimated SO much in his election address, and he had allowed Mr. Childers at Pontefract to put similar ideas into much plainer language than he thought it politic to use himself to propound, in fact, what Mr. Morley calls "a tolerably fullfledged scheme of Home Rule." Moreover, before declaring himself definitely, he had made overtures to Lord Salisbury with a view to such a settlement of the Irish question, by consent of both parties, and under the auspices of the Conservative leader, as might be acceptable to the Imperial Parliament, without being wholly unacceptable to Parnell and his followers. These overtures were rejected. It was only then that, very slowly and reluctantly, and not without many conferences with his leading colleagues, he came to the conclusion that he must attempt to deal with the question himself, and deal with it by the way of party conflict instead of by the way of party co-operation, which had been

closed to him. However strongly we may condemn the policy which he then adopted, we cannot resist Mr. Morley's contention that, if wrong, he was not basely wrong. On this point, at any rate, there seems to be no appeal from the declaration made by Lord Hartington in March 1886:

When I look back to the declarations that Mr. Gladstone made in Parliament, which have not been infrequent; when I look back to the increased definiteness given to these declarations in his address to the electors of Midlothian and in his Midlothian speeches; when I consider all these things, I feel that I have not, and that no one has, any right to complain of the declaration that Mr. Gladstone has recently made (iii, 293).

It must be added that Mr. Morley declares emphatically that the story of his being concerned in Mr. Gladstone's conversion to Home Rule is "pure moonshine." "I only glance at it," he says, "because in politics people are ready to believe anything."

We have exhausted our space, but not our subject. There is only one thing to be said in conclusion. Our

own appreciation of so vast and complex a subject is of necessity superficial, discontinuous, and fragmentary. But no one can read Mr. Morley's survey of Mr. Gladstone's life as a whole without feeling that here was a man of commanding intellect, of exemplary conduct in all the relations of private

life, of untiring devotion to public duty, of almost superhuman industry and application, of lightning rapidity of apprehension, insight, and grasp, of infinite variety of parts, of frequently erring policies, but of lofty aims, of questionable actions not a few, but never of base motives or unworthy ambitions in a word, a man who set before himself a high standard in public and private life, and never willingly

deviated from it. Mr. Morley shall speak for the last time:

The more you make of his errors the more is the need to explain his vast renown, the long reign of his authority, the substance and reality of his powers. We call men great for many reasons, apart from service wrought or eminence of intellect or even from force and depth of character. To have taken a leading part in transactions of decisive moment; to have proved himself able to meet demands on which high issues hung; to combine intellectual qualities, though moderate, yet adequate and sufficient, with the moral qualities needed for the given circumstance with daring, circumspection, energy, intrepid initiative; to have fallen in with one of those occasions in the world that impart their own greatness even to a mediocre actor, and surround his name with a halo not radiating from within, but shed upon him from without-in all these and many other ways men come to be counted great. Mr. Gladstone belongs to the rarer class who acquire authority and fame by transcendent qualities of genius within, in half independence of any occasions beyond those they create for themselves (iii, 540-1).

It is idle to deny that Mr. Gladstone's name and character have lost much of their influence since his death. He represented and evoked a phase of national thought too high-flown and quixotic, it may be, certainly too much immersed in the sordid traffic of party politics, to be permanent. Have we lost nothing by its eclipse? He stood for one ideal-the rarer one by far-in political life and action, as Bismarck, his greatest contemporary, stood for the other-the commoner and the more acceptable to the natural man. On the one hand, the gospel of force, nakedly avowed, the policy of blood and iron ruthlessly pursued, the ethics of Machiavelli combined with the duplicity of our own Elizabeth; on the other, a sustained conviction that what

is wrong in private life cannot be right în public life, a large and expanding love of freedom, a life-long endeavor to raise politics to the ethical level of Christianity itself-in a word, the materialism of politics contrasted with their idealism.

We know not whether

the publication of Mr. Morley's bioggraphy will tend in any degree to reestablish Mr. Gladstone's moral ascendency over the minds and consciences of his countrymen. But now that the dross of circumstance and the unseemly stains of party conflict and misunderstanding are being gradually disengaged by time from the fine gold of his true personality, it were surely not amiss that it should. For, after all, it was this that gave him his power, this that established his immense ascendency; and no one has better divined the true secret of his greatness than The Quarterly Review.

the statesman whose loss we are now in turn deploring, the greatest and not the least generous of his later opponents.

"What he sought," said Lord Salisbury at the time of Mr. Gladstone's death, "was the achievement of great ideals; and, whether they were based on sound convictions or not, they could have issued from nothing but the greatest and the purest moral aspirations; and he is honored by his countrymen, because, through so many years, through so many vicissitudes and conflicts, they have recognized this one characteristic of his action, which has never left it, nor ceased to color it. He will leave behind him, especially to those who have followed with deep interest the history of his later years-I might almost say the later months of his life-he will leave behind him the memory of a great Christian statesman."

"Us wants more of they black pigs, and less of they black parsons," is the motto said to be inscribed on the heart of the Berkshire agricultural laborer. It may be so. It is not given to that bird of passage, a locum tenens, to penetrate in one short month to the secret aspirations of his temporary flock. The only criticism upon which he may tremblingly venture is to the effect that the Berkshire laborer is singularly successful in dissembling his likes and dislikes, and bestows a remarkably excellent imitation of cordial welcome upon the clerical stranger.

The parish, the cure of whose souls was temporarily committed to the writer, is situated at the foot of the downs which bound the Vale of White Horse, and is therefore connected with the English antiquities. It is the abode of

two or three great racing stables, and therefore identified with English modernities. Indeed, when the writer mentioned in a working men's club in central London (in which much of his time is passed) the name of the village where he proposed to spend his holiday, no pundit fell into raptures over the glorious memory of Alfred, but a mocking chorus instantly arose, "Send us the latest wires from the stables."

These racing stables employ a large number of lads whose duty it is to attend to the needs, welfare, and training of the thoroughbreds which are placed under their care. Day by day long strings of horses pass through the village ridden by these lads, going for. long walks through the country by way of training. When the wayfarer meets one of these proces

sions he must place himself in an attitude of unconditional and utter submission to the leading rider. An imperious gesture bids the cyclist dismount, or the foot passenger go slow, or the coachman take the wrong side of the road, and no one dreams of anything but instant obedience, for racehorses are skittish and excitable creatures, and easily moved to dangerous restiveness. Four or five miles away on the downs is the great galloping ground where, if you are a friend of the trainer and receive information from him as to the appointed morning, you may witness, at sunrise, speed trials and miniature race-meetings. There, too, you may see the furtive tout making notes, which will appear later on in the evening papers-especially in those which cry aloud that they are the true prophets of social reform-as "So-and-so's finals," or "Somebody's treble," whereby the innocent van-boy and the confiding clerk will be encouraged to dispose of their scanty superfluous coin to the best advantage-that is to say, to the advantage of the thrifty book-maker.

Some of these stable-lads and apprentices are a source of keen interest to the vicar, and he took steps to impress this fact upon his locum tenens. A few days before the latter entered upon his duties, he wrote to the vicar suggesting that it might be well for the two to meet in London, so that the deputy shepherd might be instructed in the ways and methods of the parish. The vicar retorted that it would be far better for the deputy to come down to the country and be instructed there. Controversy ensued, and ended (the deputy being a peaceful man) in the vicar getting his way. The visitor arrived at the vicarage, and then learned the true significance of the vicar's obstinacy. Behind the thin veil of excuses concerning inventories, service books, and the like there loomed the stable-lads.

"When I was on my honeymoon in the Lake district," said the vicar, "I took the opportunity of having lessons in Cumberland wrestling, and I have been teaching the lads the art. I want you to come this afternoon and give them an exhibition of heavy-weight wrestling with me. You see they're hardly up to my weight." A glance at the vicar's portly form, reposing in an armchair, contrasted with a mental vision of an embryo jockey, confirmed the last remark.

The exhibition was duly given, and the aching traveller hoped next day that the parochial results were worthy of the toil and pains bestowed upon them.

But 'twas ever thus. Years ago this thing had been foreshadowed. In those days the vicar was a South London curate, and his victim a heedless layman. The then curate was in love with work among boys, and had a company of the Boys' Brigade mustering 150. Among other levers employed for the elevation of these youngsters was instruction in boxing. "Come," said the cleric, with a pleasant heartiness, "and let us give these lads an exhibition in hard hitting." He gave an excellent exhibition in hard hitting, and, while his opponent lay upon his back to stop the bleeding, explained lucidly to a circle of admiring youths how it was done.

The church stands in the centre of the pretty straggling village. From it radiate the roads, some trailing up the hills, some stretching away to the vale, and from the roads shoot off little paths through the cornfields and fat pasture-lands. In days affectionately remembered by elderly farmers land on the downs was worth having, and rent then stood at twenty-four shillings an acre. Now it fetches seven shillings an acre. Such figures convey to the ignorant Londoner a clearer impression of what is meant by agricultural de.