"The Atlantic Telegraph, no doubt, already excites wild and impatient hopes in our Australians, of which you will hear an echo. It is indeed a critical event, as determining an immense extension of the telegraphic system.... "Ever yours heartily, "F. W. Newman." It will be remembered that the Crimean War broke up the Coalition Ministry which Lord Aberdeen had formed. This was due to the fact that the motion for enquiry into the state of our soldiers before Sebastopol was carried by a great majority against the Government. Lord Aberdeen resigned when this happened, and Lord Palmerston came into office, with Mr. Gladstone as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Then, when Palmerston acceded to the demand that a committee of enquiry should be appointed, Gladstone, who had opposed it before, thought he ought not to remain in the Cabinet which had now agreed to have the enquiry made. So he gave up office, but still helped the Government generally until after Orsini's attempt in 1858, upon Napoleon III's life. Perhaps it is necessary to recall here that Gladstone had taken up the cause of the prisoners--especially political prisoners-- in the prisons of Naples in 1851. He spoke strongly on the terrible cruelties which were perpetrated there. In _this_ effort to help forward an enquiry Gladstone threw himself most heartily. * * * * * "I send you to-day a Latin Grammar which I have found on my shelves. By the _binder's_ ticket 'Penrith' I infer it to be Harry's. I hope I may congratulate him.... I never met Gladstone. He was a hero of mine for about a year. I hoped great things of him. After the letters on Naples and his Chancellorship of the Exchequer, I thought he had worked clear of the errors of his youth and was 'the coming man.' But in the Russian war his intense party spirit and endless mistakes have lowered his ... intellectual discernments. * * * * * "I am, ever yours heartily, "F. W. Newman." In December of this year Newman writes word that he has been working hard at Arabic for some time, because he has undertaken to teach a friend modern Arabic. He is again staying at Hastings, where he had been so constantly. "20 White Rock Place, Hastings, "_30th Dec._, 1858. "My dear Nicholson, * * * * *