MY MEMORY OF GLADSTONE AN INTERESTING VOLUME OF CHARACTER SKETCHES: POLITICAL AND OTHER. PORTRAITS OF THE SIXTIES. By JUSTIN MCCARTHY, Author of “A History of our own Time.” With many Illustrations from Contemporary Photographs. Demy 8vo, cloth, 15s. net. LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN. [Illustration: _Photo_] [_Barraud._ W. E. GLADSTONE.] MY MEMORY OF GLADSTONE BY GOLDWIN SMITH [Illustration] _SECOND IMPRESSION_ LONDON T. FISHER UNWIN PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1904 _All Rights Reserved_ MY MEMORY OF GLADSTONE Since the appearance of the first volumes of Macaulay’s History there has not been such an event in the publishing world as the appearance of a Life of Gladstone by Mr. Morley. Nor has public expectation been disappointed. Though I saw a good deal of Gladstone, both in the way of business and socially, I never was nor could I have been, like Mr. Morley, his colleague and a partner of his counsels. On the other hand, I lived in the closest intimacy with men who were his associates in public life, and saw him through their eyes. This man was a wonderful being, physically and mentally, the mental part being well sustained by the physical. His form bespoke the nervous energy with which it was surcharged. His eye was intensely bright, though in the rest of the face there was nothing specially indicative of genius. His physical and mental force was such that he could speak for more than four hours at a stretch, and with vigour and freshness so sustained that George Venables, an extremely fastidious and not over-friendly critic, after hearing him for four hours, and on a financial subject, wished that he could go on for four hours more. His powers of work were enormous. He once called me to him to help in settling the details of a University Bill. He told me that he had been up over the Bill late at night. We worked at it together from ten in the morning till six in the afternoon, saving an hour and a half which he spent at a Privy Council, leaving me with the Bill. When we parted, he went down to the House, where he spoke at one o’clock the next morning. Besides his mountain of business, he was a voluminous writer on other than political subjects, and did a vast amount of miscellaneous reading. As a proof of his powers of acquisition, he gained so perfect a mastery of the Italian language as to be able to make a long speech, in which Professor Villari could detect only two mistakes, and those merely uses of a poetical instead of the ordinary word.