volumes under the title of Gleanings of Past Years. These volumes do not include, however, his essays of a strictly controversial and classical nature.

In the literary aspect of Mr. Gladstone's career, no less than in its political aspect, one is forcibly struck with the immense amount of ground he has covered, and the stupendous results he has obtained. His pen has been as ready as his tongue to give expression to his views on all manner of subjects; and if now and then he has been liable to the charge of ponderosity, there has never been absent from his writings that fulness of thought which is more valuable than mere grace of expression, and a sincerity and earnestness which carry with them the stamp of firm conviction.

Coming now to examine the social and domestic side of Mr. Gladstone's character, we are met with a diversity of action and an adaptability of mind which are altogether extraordinary. No matter in what circumstances he finds himself placed-whether at a flower show, a gathering of operatives on strike, or at a reunion of dramatic celebrities-he has always the word in season' ready; he can always advance a wealth of pertinent ideas, and enlarge upon the duties and obligations of the people he addresses. The daily newspapers are for ever on the alert for the words of wisdom, or of denunciation, or of entreaty that he may be prevailed upon to utter in his goings from place to place. His kindliness of heart is so great, and so active is his mind, that he is easily prevailed upon to speak or to write on anything and everything at a moment's notice. In his triumphal journeys to Midlothian and back he has been waylaid at all the principal stations on the route by deputations and

miscellaneous crowds, and has deigned to launch forth his invectives against his political opponents with as much seriousness from a carriage-window as if he had been standing in some large hall surrounded by his own particular satellites. His industry is marvellous. His correspondence is probably as great as that of half a dozen editors; he is pestered daily with letters from all parts of the kingdom-letters asking his opinion on every conceivable subject; letters inviting him to take the chair at, or address, political gatherings; letters requesting charitable donations; and letters of compliment, criticism, or complaint without end. No wonder that Mr. Gladstone should have recourse to post-cards to facilitate the sending of replies. It is a great saving of time to Mr. Gladstone to be able to inform John Smith on a post-card that he (Mr. Gladstone) never did vote for the abolition of knee-breeches, or to answer William Jones some mysterious question on the law of hypothec, or to tell Mrs. Thompson that he is much obliged for the valuable hamper of vegetables and the innumerable good wishes he has received from her. As a true financier and economist Mr. Gladstone could not pretend to shut his eyes to the advantages of communication by post-card, especially when it is considered that it was a Gladstone Government that invented it.

The public journals are much beholden to Mr. Gladstone for the variety of subjects he gives them to write about in the course of a working year. Now it is 'Mr. Gladstone on Gardening;' now 'Mr. Gladstone on the Study of Natural History;' now 'Mr. Gladstone on Sunday Observance,' or 'On the Cultivation of Art,' or 'On Railway Travelling,' or 'On

the Advantages of Music.' In the days of his brief retirement at Hawarden, after relinquishing the leadership of the Liberal party, he found vent for his excessive energy in the occupation of woodcutting. In contrast with this vigorous taste may be put Mr. Gladstone's well-known passion for pottery. At one time he possessed a magnificent collection of china and bric-a-brac, and his knowledge of such things is that of a connoisseur. As an instance of his power of appreciating the artistic value of articles of this class, his speech on the occasion of laying the foundation stone of the Wedgwood Institute at Burslem ought not to be forgotten.

We have yet to speak of Mr. Gladstone's domestic life. Mr. Gladstone was married in 1839 to Catherine, daughter of Sir Stephen Richard Glynne of Hawarden Castle, Flintshire, a descendant of the Serjeant Glynne who was Lord Chief Justice in Cromwell's time, and to whom Butler makes this allusion in Hudibras:

'Was not the king by proclamation Declared a rebel all over the nation? Did not the learned Glyn and Maynard To make good subjects traitors strain hard?"

It was Lord Chief Justice Glynne who bought Hawarden Castle from the Derby family after the execution of James, seventh Earl of Derby. On the death of Mrs. Gladstone's brother, Sir Stephen Richard Glynne, the eighth baronet, in 1874, the baronetcy became extinct, there being no son to inherit the title; the main portion of the wealth of the Glynnes, however, descended to Mrs. Gladstone. Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone have had eight children, seven of whom survive, four sons and three daughters. The eldest son, Mr. W. H. Gladstone, has

just been elected M.P. for East Worcestershire, having previously represented Whitby in Parliament; the second son, the Rev. Stephen Edward Gladstone, is Rector of Hawarden; the third son, Henry Neville Gladstone, keeps up the commercial reputation of the Gladstone family; and the youngest son, Herbert John Gladstone, has lately come forward as a candidate for parliamentary honours, having at the late general election unsuccessfully contested Middlesex in the Liberal interest, and at the present time being before the electors of Leeds as the chosen Liberal candidate in place of his father, who was elected both for Leeds and Midlothian, but has decided to sit for the latter constituency. Mr. Gladstone's eldest daughter, Agnes, is the wife of the Rev. E. C. Wickham, M.A., head-master of Wellington College. His two other daughters, Mary and Helen, are unmarried.

In thus rapidly sketching a long and illustrious career many important features have necessarily passed unnoticed, but such a broad general outline has been marked out as will, it is hoped, indicate the main stages by which Mr.Gladstone has attained to his present greatness. He has been more lauded and more denounced, probably, than any man of his time. He has been accused of almost every possible political crime, and not a few private ones. It has been asserted that he is a Jesuit, that he is a Russian spy, and that, in fact, in him has been personified all the seven cardinal sins. So many evil things were said against him a couple of years ago that the Turkish newspapers found out that the ex-Premier was a Bulgarian. 'His father was a pigdealer in the vilayet of Kustendje,' said the report; and young Glad.

stone ran away at the age of sixteen to Servia, and was then, with another pig-dealer, sent to London to sell pigs. He sold the proceeds, changed his name from Trozadin to Gladstone, and became a British subject. Fortune favoured him

His

till he became Prime Minister. Gladstone has no virtues.' enemies in England have been hardly more correct in their estimate of his character and motives. To begin with, he was, according to Macaulay, 'the rising hope of those stern and unbending Tories;' to-day he is the Tories' evil genius, following them with his merciless shafts of deprecation whichever way they turn. On the other hand, the Liberals regard him with such an amount of admiration and devotion as they have had for no other leader in modern times. To them he is the perfect statesman, the man who combines in himself the highest gifts of oratory, the greatest ability as a financier, and the most honest and upright views of statesmanship of any man living. One would have liked Macaulay to have been spared to see the change which has come over Mr. Gladstone's political theories in these later years, and to have expressed his opinion upon them in the same free and candid manner that he did in 1839. He would have found that there was little that was 'unbending' in Mr. Gladstone's Toryism, after all, and would have been astonished to see that the once member for Newark had developed into a much more advanced Liberal than ever Lord Macaulay himself could claim to be. But even at the commencement of his parliamentary career Mr. Gladstone was too extensive in his mental range to admit of his being brought within the focus of ordinary criticism. It has often been unfortunate for Mr. Gladstone that he has seen so VOL. XXXVII. NO. CCXXI.

much of a subject at one time; he has had a clear view of all the shadows that have been hovering around, and has often fought with them when it might have been better to have passed them by. The shadows have occasionally been more to him than the substance. 'He has one gift,' said Macaulay, 'most dangerous to a speculator, a vast command of a kind of language, grave and majestic, but of vague and uncertain import.' It is not a difficult transition from this charge of redundancy of words to a more recent charge made by Lord Beaconsfield against Mr. Gladstone's 'exuberant verbosity.' Certainly Mr. Gladstone has excelled all living men in the length and number of his speeches, but it is from the fulness of his heart and the passion that is within his soul that he has spoken, not for the sake of any mere oratorical display. Speaking has been as natural to him as thinking or breathing, and Nature, and not art, has always been his prompter. To Mr. Gladstone life, and above all statesmanship, is a very serious matter. He cannot bring himself, except on very rare occasions, to deal with a question tenderly and airily; he is too sincere and earnest for that; there is such a supreme gravity about him that sallies of wit and little sparkles of playfulness are almost entirely lost upon him. His solemnity of style has been in strange contrast to the verbal sharp-shooting which Lord Beaconsfield has so frequently indulged in, and of which Mr. Gladstone has so often been the victim. The obscure member who rose to assail the great Conservative leader, in the House of Commons period of his existence, was lightly and unceremoniously brushed away; a similar personage rising to arraign Mr. Gladstone as a traitor and a

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trickster, and really too insignificant and absurd to be able to gain the sympathy of his own side of the House, would provoke Mr. Gladstone to turn upon him the full force of his indignation. It is something like answering a smart rap inflicted by a cane with a heavy blow from a sledge-hammer. But, notwithstanding this absence of the lighter weapons of oratory, Mr. Gladstone is one of the finest speakers that have ever graced the British Parliament. When the career of Mr. Gladstone comes to be regarded apart from the excitement and prejudice of contemporary events; when he has finally ended his labours and doffed his harness; when the shadows of party warfare have moved away from the scene, driven back by the advancing rush of fresh parties and fresh objects of contention; and when the biographers and historians of a later generation step forward to assess the good and evil which the statesmen of to-day may have wrought, when all these things come to pass, the name of Mr. Gladstone will be more bright and lustrous even than now, and the world will hold him in memory for the great and good work he has done for his country, and for the noble piety and integrity of his life.

MR. ROBERTSON GLADSTONE.

As we have already shown, Mr. Robertson Gladstone was the only commercial man amongst the sons of Sir John Gladstone. The fortunes of the Gladstone family had been already made in business when Mr. Robertson Gladstone elected to continue the house of Gladstone & Co. ; nevertheless, when he came to manhood, he threw himself into the work with as much ardour as if his fortune had been still to make. Mr.

Robertson Gladstone, like George Heriot, was of opinion that commerce was most honourable, and he followed it diligently and with profit for a large number of years. While his brother, Mr. W. E. Gladstone, was devoting all his strength and intellect to the work of the nation, Mr. Robertson Gladstone was quietly, steadily, and persistently extending the operations of the firm of Gladstone & Co., of which he rose to be the head on the death of his father in 1851. As a business man he was highly respected, and in the public affairs of Liverpool always took the most lively interest. In 1852 he was elected mayor of the borough, and was repeatedly solicited to allow himself to be brought forward as a parliamentary candidate, but he declined. Like his brothers, he started political life as a Tory, but during the great Freetrade agitation gradually veered to the Liberal side, and became one of the most active supporters of the cause in Liverpool. knowledge of trade matters was very extensive; and it is said that on many questions of fiscal and commercial policy the experience and knowledge of the Liverpool merchant were of great service to his brother when, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he had to deal with financial and trading concerns. The strongest feeling of affection always subsisted between Mr. Robertson Gladstone and his distinguished brother. Whenever the ex-Premier came to Liverpool he invariably called at his brother's office in Orange Court. During the memorable contest for Southwest Lancashire, on the pollingday Mr. W. E. Gladstone was at his brother Robertson's office, sitting in a private room, quietly engaged in the translation of a portion of his beloved Iliad, while telegram after telegram arrived

His

telling how the election was proceeding. Mr. Robertson Gladstone served Liverpool with great fidelity and vigour; he was essentially a public-spirited man and a philanthropist, and both as a magistrate and as a member of the Municipal Corporation was deeply respected. At one time he made a strong effort to put down drunkenness in Liverpool. Morning after morning he was called upon in his magisterial capacity to inflict fines upon persons charged with being drunk, and the number of cases of this nature got to be so appalling that he at last decided upon publishing in the local papers every day the names and addresses of all drunkards brought before the bench. He carried this into force for a considerable time; but, unfortunately, the idea did not answer, publicity proved to have few terrors for the hordes of miserable creatures who were brought up before him for drunkenness, and his well-meant endeavours proved fruitless. He was a careful, kind, and conscientious magistrate, discharging the duties of the office with very great ability. He also gave a large share of his time to the work of the Town Council; and it is worthy of remark, as showing the regard in which he was held by

his townsmen, that for very many years he sat as the representative of the most influential ward in the town, that of Abercromby, and was year after year returned without opposition. All local movements of a charitable nature were sure of his sympathy and active support, and his benefactions to the institutions of the town were very numerous. He was a man of large heart and clear understanding, and has left a name behind him which will not soon be forgotten.

The house of Gladstone & Co. yet remains one of honour and note in Liverpool, and carries on an extensive business. The Gladstones still possess large sugar and other plantations in the West Indies, and have trade connections with various parts of the world. Mr. Robertson Gladstone's sons now take an active part in the direction of the firm's affairs, and the reputation of the old house is as great as ever. A firm that, while doing so much for the commercial advancement of the country, has in one of its sons been linked with the highest position in the State, has good cause to be remembered amongst the firms that have made their fortunes in business.