But it was not for that he was born; and those who look back to the mighty work he did for his country in the forty years preceding the Home Rule split can only thank the Powers "that hold the broad Heaven" for the part which the passion of his Christian faith, the eagerness of his love for letters--for the Homer and the Dante he knew by heart--played in refreshing and sustaining so great a soul. I remember returning, shaken and uplifted, through the April air, to the house where my mother lay in death; and among my old papers lies a torn fragment of a letter thirty years old, which I began to write to Mr. Gladstone a few days later, and was too shy to send. This morning [says the letter, written from Fox How, on the day of my mother's funeral] we laid my dear Mother to rest in her grave among the mountains, and this afternoon I am free to think a little over what has befallen me personally and separately during this past week. It is not that I wish to continue our argument--quite the contrary. As I walked home from Keble on Monday morning, I felt it a hard fate that I should have been arguing, rather than listening.... Argument, perhaps, was inevitable, but none the less I felt afterward as though there were something incongruous and unfitting in it. In a serious discussion it seemed to me right to say plainly what I felt and believed; but if in doing so I have given pain, or expressed myself on any point with a too great trenchancy and confidence, please believe that I regret it very sincerely. I shall always remember our talks. If consciousness lasts "beyond these voices"--my inmost hope as well as yours--we shall know of all these things. Till then I cherish the belief that we are not so far apart as we seem. But there the letter abruptly ended, and was never sent. I probably shrank from the added emotion of sending it, and I found it again the other day in a packet that had not been looked at for many years. I print it now as evidence of the effect that Mr. Gladstone's personality could produce on one forty years younger than himself, and in sharp rebellion at that time against his opinions and influence in two main fields--religion and politics. * * * * *