‘Mr. Gladstone is an appreciated man, but he is not understood. Why not? The first duty of a pretty woman, it has been said, is to let everyone know that she is pretty. Extending that kind of code to the other sex, it is surely the first duty of an intellectual man to be intelligible. In this age there is more of the suspicion that Mr. Gladstone is Talleyrandizing, and using his copious vocabulary for the concealment of thought. . . . He sees so much to say on all sides that he never clearly defines on which side lies the preponderating reasoning. He sums up controversies, rather than ranges himself in them. Debate is with him pure debate—a division appears, in his apprehension, rather to disfigure the proceedings. . . . If Premier himself, he could ally himself on one hand with Mr. Milner Gibson, and on the other with Mr. Spencer Walpole. He is the _juste milieu_ of the day, and, biding his time, he offers to his contingent supporters “chameleon’s diet—eating the air promise-crammed.’”—‘Political Portraits,’ by E. M. Whittey, published in 1851, p. 226. Mr. Hill, in his ‘Political Portraits,’ writes: ‘If Mr. Gladstone has to make up his mind while he is on his legs whether he will or will not answer a delicate question, he will express himself somewhat after this fashion: “The honourable gentleman, in the exercise of that discretion which I should be the last to deny to any member of this House, least of all to one so justly entitled to respect as my hon. friend, both on account of his high personal character and his long Parliamentary experience, has asked me whether the Government intend to bring in a Bill for the establishment of secular education in Ireland. Now, the discretion which I freely concede to the hon. gentleman in regard to the proposal of this question, I must, as a member of the Government, reserve to myself in considering whether or how I shall answer the question. I have to consider it not only in itself, but in regard to the time at which it is put, and the circumstances which surround the topic.” Mr. Gladstone then, perhaps, will say, what Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell would have said in a single sentence, that he must decline to answer it.’