for the sake of his principles and his party. It is this final possibility of sacrificing ease and renewing labour which Mr. Gladstone undertakes in the Midlothian campaign now so very soon to be opened by him. The above is the merest bird's-eye glance at his career, but it seemed to us a retrospect which all Liberals should have in their minds more completely than is common when he again draws to him the national gaze, as he of necessity will do. But on reading back, how inadequate does the above record seem for Mr. Gladstone! It is simply the background of the picture; a field of industry and achievements, on which the portraiture of the man himself needs yet making to stand out. We have been speaking of the ex-Premier, for instance, just as we might talk of any politician, and Mr. Gladstone, though our chiefest politician, has throughout been so much more than that. It is perfectly true that there is no public man among us who has projected less of a special atmosphere of personality than he has through which his doings are to be beheld. He has been too busy with his work to think of any attitudinizing or trick in doing it. Mr. Gladstone's only mannerism has been that of superior excellence of thinking, speaking, and doing. Anybody else might have done and said what he has uttered and effected, if only they had had the same ability and industry. His one comprehensive distinction, summing up all the others, lies in his having developed more of these two simple, old-fashioned things than his best contemporaries. He has invented no mysteries, traded in no artificialities, given us no pyrotechnics; only a plain common air lies along his track, in which, if we perhaps except two or three points where a little mist hangs, everything can be clearly seen in white light, without exaggeration or distortion. His whole style has been the old traditionary English one, accentuated only by Scotch earnestness and seriousness of religious feeling. If Mr. Gladstone, however, has not made any eccentric or theatrical impression on the public mind, he has done something larger and better. He has kept all the three kingdoms continuously aware of him as an element in our general thinking, as well as being a power in our practical affairs. If we put aside Mr. Carlyle, Mr. Mill, and Mr. Ruskin, scarcely any one has had so much to do with the general mental activity of the last two generations as Mr. Gladstone. The result is what we have just pointed out,--that if we sketch him as a statesman only, everybody sees that the canvas is not big enough. It is a sufficiently full description of most men who have been politicians to ascribe to them statesmanship; but in Mr. Gladstone's case we want a yet larger phrase; his business has not been politics merely, it has been patriotism; and he has made time, nobody quite knows how, to do nearly as much work outside Parliament as within it. We may cut a scholar able to adorn a university out of Mr.