‘I have just heard,’ wrote on one occasion a correspondent of the _Manchester Guardian_, ‘a highly characteristic anecdote of Mr. Gladstone’s versatility. I suppress the name and place. After an interesting interview with a prominent author, whose acquaintance he had newly made, in reply to a courteous hope that his health and strength might long be spared, Mr. Gladstone said: “Yes, I confess I wish to live for two great objects. You can guess one of them: it is to settle the Irish question. The other is, to convince my countrymen of the substantial identity between the theology of Homer and that of the Old Testament.”’ Under this heading we give a few items from Bishop Wilberforce’s notes. In 1868 he writes: ‘Gladstone noble as ever.’ Again: ‘Gladstone, as ever, just, earnest, and honest, as unlike the tricky Disraeli as ever.’ Again the Bishop writes, after staying with him at Hatfield: ‘I have very much enjoyed meeting Gladstone. He is so delightfully true—just as full of interest in every good thing of every kind, and exactly the reverse of the mystery man. When people talk of Gladstone going mad, they do not take into account the wonderful elasticity of his mind and the variety of his interests. Now, this morning after breakfast he and I and Salisbury went a walk round the beautiful park, and he was just as much interested in the size of the oaks, their probable age, etc., as if no care of State ever pressed upon him. This is his safeguard, joined to rectitude of purpose and clearness of view.’ No reference to Mr. Gladstone would be complete without a word about his collars. In a paper on the subject in the _New Century_, Mr. Harry Furniss writes: ‘I believe I am generally supposed to have invented Mr. Gladstone’s collars; but, as a matter of fact, I merely sketched them. Many men wear collars quite as large, and even larger, than his, but they are not so prominent in appearance, for the simple reason that when Mr. Gladstone sits down it is his custom to sit well forward; his body collapsed, so to speak, and his head sunk into his seat. The inevitable result was that his collar rose, and owing to this circumstance I have frequently seen it looking quite as conspicuous as it is depicted in my caricatures. When Mr. Gladstone upon one occasion met the artists of _Punch_ at dinner, I was chagrined to find when he walked into the dining-room that he had discarded his usual large collar for one of the masher type. I felt that my reputation for accuracy was blighted, and sought consolation from the editor of a Gladstonian organ who happened to be present. “Yes,” he said; “he is evidently dressed up to meet the _Punch_ artists. He is the pink of fashion and neatness now; but last night when I met him at dinner his shirt was frayed at the edges, and his collar was pinned down behind, but the pin gave way during the evening, and the collar nearly came over his head.”’