If this very hasty review of Mr. Gladstone's chronicle does not agree with the impression of him which is the prevailing one on the Liberal side, it is the one which the bare facts of his career would produce on every side if they could be seen without the misleading effect of his very fine words and exceedingly solemn attitudes. Very fortunately for him it is only the Conservatives who have a full and accurate recollection of Mr. Gladstone. They have necessarily observed him continuously from their own unshifting party position, and so have been able to perceive in a way that hardly was practicable to the Liberals, who were always shifting and struggling among themselves, how invariably and consistently his announcements of change of view have hit with the opportunities for improvement of his Parliamentary position. On every occasion, to the very moment, so soon as a Liberal question had fully ripened, Mr. Gladstone presented himself to pluck it. It was so with Reform, it was so with Church Rates, it was so with University Reform, it was so with the Ballot, it was so with the spoliation of the Irish Church and the unsettling of the Irish landowners, and it is so with the County Franchise, and it will be so once more, if the Liberals ever get into power again, with the English Church and the English Land Laws. Mr. Bright, Mr. Miall, and all the Radicals have drudged for many a year for Mr. Gladstone, who, when all the outdoor work has been done, has always allowed himself to be persuaded to bring in the Measure just in the nick of time, and, by expounding it in a very fine speech, has robbed its actual originators of two-thirds of the credit of making it possible. Luckily for the Conservatives, though he never had the courage to attack a question of the very first class himself in the way of initiative, he had an insatiable ambition for meddling with smaller ones, and by making vents in these ways for his restlessness and his ambition, he finally ruined all that his skilful prudence in the larger affairs had gained him, disgusting the country till it determined to get him off its hands at any price. Still, that is not just now the point in question.