He has made speeches, they say; he has written articles in every organ there is; he has even republished previous writings. As we before said, they have themselves to blame for it in great measure: if they wanted Mr. Gladstone to stay in retirement, they should have carefully kept quiet. Instead of that they made a noise before his door, disturbing him in his studies. What more natural than that he should come out? He did so, and found that, disguised like harlequins in the flimsy bedizenment which they call Imperialism, they were playing high jinks with Britain's reputation and the chances of freedom for the oppressed in the East. It was too much for him; but if they complain of the number of the weapons he attacked them with, we know that it would have been impossible for him to please them there. They never have been satisfied on that score. What they really find fault with are the blows they got. And there are more to come. Directly we shall have them complaining that he has chosen a constituency so far away as Scotland; the real fact being that they wish he had gone much farther still. They never are sincere with Mr. Gladstone; he cannot please them. We leave them anxiously listening for his approach again unto these shores, knowing very well that to their thinking they will hear his voice all too soon. A LIBERAL. II. Description is said to be only possible by comparing, and when one is asked to sketch Mr. Gladstone, how is it to be set about? His admirers will have it that he has been a very great Minister, so that if we adopt the comparative method, we ought to look high for standards. Shall we match him alongside Bismarck or Cavour? The latter, to give him precedence, stands renowned for building up his country in evil days, when every omen was against her. But Mr. Gladstone, succeeding to power when England was in the full tide of prosperity and at the height of fame, gave up her prospects, and would have acquiesced in her decadence. There is no likeness whatever between him and Cavour. Then take Bismarck. The great German Chancellor shares with the Italian Minister the glory of having widened the bounds and raised the position of his land, and he stands now head and shoulders above all in the midst of the diplomatic world a very Colossus. But Mr. Gladstone is and has always been outside that world altogether. Prince Bismarck has his hand on all the springs of action, and will let pass no chance of exalting his country. Mr. Gladstone, we repeat, never made the slightest impression in the regions of diplomacy; Courts did not know him, foreign statesmen left him out of their reckoning of the men that had to be dealt with. The great international achievements for which he has alone been talked of have been the surrender of British territory and the paying down of English money lavishly to another State for preposterous claims. But it will be said that it is not fair to Mr. Gladstone to compare him to