For Charles Wesley’s hymns Mr. Gladstone did not greatly care. He considered them much over-rated. ‘And he wrote more than Homer,’ exclaimed Mr. Gladstone once; ‘7,000 hymns of thirty lines each, say; do the sum, gentlemen, and be appalled.’ CHAPTER XV. MR. GLADSTONE’S LETTERS. ‘Hawarden, ‘_July_ 2, 1886. ‘MY DEAR BRIGHT, ‘I am sorry to be compelled again to address you. In your speech you charge me with having successfully concealed my thoughts last November. You ought to have known that this was not the fact, for in reply to others, from whom this gross charge was more to be expected than from you, I pointed out last week that on the 9th November, in Edinburgh, I told my constituents that if the Irish elections went as was expected, the magnitude of the subject they would bring forward would throw all others into the shade, and that it “went down to the very roots and foundations of our whole civil and political constitution” (“Midlothian Speeches,” 1885, p. 44). 2. You say I have described a conspiracy now existing in Ireland as marching through rapine to the break-up of the United Kingdom. This also is contrary to the fact. In 1881 there was, in my opinion, such a conspiracy against the payment of rent and the union of the countries, and I so described it. In my opinion, there is no such conspiracy now, nor anything in the least degree resembling it. You put into my mouth words which, coming from me, would be absolute falsehood. 3. You charge me with a want of frankness, because I have not pledged the Government to some defined line of action with regard to the Land Purchase Bill. A charge of this kind is, between old colleagues and old friends, to say the least, unusual. Evidently you have not read the Bill or my speech on its introduction, and you have never been concerned in the practical work of legislation on difficult and complicated subjects. The foundation of your charge is that on one of the most difficult and most complicated of all subjects I do not, in the midst of overwhelming work, formulate at once a new course or method of action without consulting the colleagues to whom I am so much bound, and from whom I receive invaluable aid. It might, I think, have occurred to you, as you have been in the Cabinet, that such a course on my part would have been indecent and disloyal, and that I should greatly prefer to bear all the charges and suspicions which you are now unexpectedly the man to fasten upon me. 4. You state you are convinced it is my intention to thrust the Land Purchase Bill upon the House of Commons. If I am a man capable of such an intention, I wonder you ever took office with