Gladstone to be the only one to whose idiosyncrasy nothing is to be allowed? The hullabaloo which was raised when somebody could say that he had broken through a technicality seemed very like, after all, as though from this one politician perfection was expected, which was not an ill compliment at bottom; and any admirers who may admit that perfection was not always got, do not, in granting that, depreciate him much as this world goes, and may still think him the most upright of our public men. His mental machinery is complicated, whilst there is no apparatus like it for rapidity, and once set going he himself cannot always stop it; his mind, as we have said, riots in ratiocination, and will multiply arguments to the last shred of the material which any case in hand affords. But, to return to the main point,--it never leaves go of the real business. Even what has seemed to some persons his off-work, his voluminous writing, has, with the one exception of his classical studies, been no mere leisurely literature, but persistent advocacy of special objects. These productions have been meant to frame public opinion, and to give him openings for legislation, if that became possible. He has used the press because it had become the hugest instrument of the time he lived in; but it was not for the purpose of multiplying books that Mr. Gladstone wrote, but with a view to practically influencing men. This relentless subordination of everything to practical ends--this iron determination to keep doing, even while ready frankly to depend upon his power of speaking and writing to produce conviction and popular persuasion as the means for effecting his objects, gives as the final imprint of Mr. Gladstone on one's mind that he was always meant for a Liberal. A man of this kind might be born a Conservative; it might take him time to break fully with old ties; but for him to stay finally in the ranks where thought was allowed to remain muddled, where abuses were looked on with toleration, and ease was enjoyed at the cost of others, was an impossibility. Mr. Gladstone, if only from the fact that he was a born financier and an inveterate thinker, and a man with a passion for publicly talking, belonged to the Liberals from the first. His whole life, too, has consistently lent itself to that style. If it has had in it a touch of austerity, that excellently befitted the social condition of the masses of our people. His gaze has been fixed too much upon them to be attracted by the glitter of the narrow upper circle, which so foolishly persists, amidst its gaudy splendour, in believing itself the nation. That silliness was not for Mr. Gladstone. He has been subjected to some tests. If his family was not highly placed, his father was a baronet, and he himself was educated at Eton and Oxford. Nobles have been among his friends at all periods of his life, as well as his official subordinates more than once in it. But he has passed the whole