On this moving scene there followed what Mr. Gladstone himself described as the first period of comparative leisure he had ever known, extending to four and a half months. They were marked first by increasing blindness, then by an operation for cataract, and finally by a moderate return of sight. In July he notes that "during the last months of partial incapacity I have not written with my own hand probably so much as one letter a day." In this faded packet of mine lies one of these rare letters, written with his own hand--a full sheet--from Dollis Hill, on April 27th. When _Marcella_ arrived my thankfulness was alloyed with a feeling that the state of my eyesight made your kindness for the time a waste. But Mr. Nettleship has since then by an infusion supplied a temporary stimulus to the organ, such that I have been enabled to begin, and am reading the work with great pleasure and an agreeable sense of congeniality which I do not doubt I shall retain to the close. Then he describes a book--a novel--dealing with religious controversy, which he had lately been reading, in which every character embodying views opposed to those of the author "is exhibited as odious." With this he warmly contrasts the method and spirit of _David Grieve_, and then continues: Well, I have by my resignation passed into a new state of existence. And in that state I shall be very glad when our respective stars may cause our paths to meet. I am full of prospective work; but for the present a tenacious influenza greatly cripples me and prevents my making any definite arrangement for an expected operation on my eye. Eighty-five!--greatly crippled by influenza and blindness--yet "full of prospective work"! The following year, remembering _Robert Elsmere_ days, and _à propos_ of certain passages in his review of that book, I ventured to send him an Introduction I had contributed to my brother-in-law Leonard Huxley's translation of Hausrath's _New Testament Times._ This time the well-known handwriting is feebler and the old "fighter" is not roused. He puts discussion by, and turns instead to kind words about a near relative of my own who had been winning distinctions at Oxford. It is one of the most legitimate interests of the old to watch with hope and joy these opening lives, and it has the secondary effect of whispering to them that they are not yet wholly frozen up.... I am busy as far as my limited powers of exertion allow upon a new edition of Bishop Butler's Works, which costs me a good deal of labor and leaves me, after a few hours upon it, good for very little else. And my perspective, dubious as it is, is filled with other work, in the Homeric region lying beyond. I hope it will be very long before you know anything of compulsory limitations on the exercise of your powers. Believe me always, Sincerely yours, W. E. GLADSTONE.