It is well known that Mr. Gladstone is an authority in the ceramic art, and he never loses an opportunity of inspecting rare and beautiful specimens. When he lately visited Manchester he spent an early hour at the exhibition among the beautiful collection placed there by Messrs. Doulton. And there he received an unexpected pleasure. More than a dozen years ago, when speaking at a dinner of the Turners’ Company, he alluded to a visit he had made to the works of Messrs. Doulton. He had been taken into the room of a young man, who happened to be absent at the time, to see the quality of his workmanship. He was delighted with what he saw, the more when he learned that the young artist had not heard a sound since his fourth year. He spoke so kindly of him and his work that it almost seemed as if Mr. Gladstone envied the isolation which seemed to favour abstraction and study in the midst of bustle and din. It was this gentleman, Mr. Frank Butler, whom Mr. Gladstone found in charge of the Doulton art treasures at Manchester. He at once remembered him, and, before leaving, he had Mr. Butler to seat himself at the potter’s wheel, and fashion before him a vase as a specimen of his skill. Upon this Mr. Gladstone inscribed his name in the wet clay, and another was turned for Mrs. Gladstone. From a little volume—‘Mr. Gladstone in the Evening of his Days’—I take the following: ‘Another reason why Mr. Gladstone gets through such an astounding amount of work is his extraordinary habit of using up odds and ends of time. One day not long ago he was driving into Chester after luncheon; his pudding was very hot, so he went away from table, changed his clothes, got ready for his drive, and came back and finished the meal, thus saving the ten minutes during which his pudding cooled. It may here be mentioned, in connection with the drives to Chester, that on the day a few months ago when he drove in for the purpose of making his powerful Armenian speech, Mr. Gladstone had been absorbed in Butler all the morning, and the speech was made without any special preparation.’ Even at the great age of eighty-five it was evident that Mr. Gladstone worked more hours a day than many men in the prime of life would like. Sir Francis Doyle once asked Mr. Gladstone whether, after his long years of practice, he ever felt nervous on rising to speak. ‘Not on political questions,’ was his answer; ‘but if I am called upon to deliver what the Greeks used to call an “epideictic oration,” as at the Literary Fund dinner, or the like, I am often somewhat troubled at first.’