‘It became so notorious that foreigners got to suppose that Mr. Gladstone did little else in his spare time but fell timber, and Americans who visited Hawarden Castle were disappointed at not finding the park a desolation of tree-stumps. ‘That Mr. Gladstone should often have gone out, axe in hand, to assist his woodmen was really the most natural thing imaginable. Wood-cutting was just the kind of Titanic exercise in which he delighted to let out the flood of his energy. Again, the park being one of the best timbered in England, it was to be expected that Mr. Gladstone, with a keen eye to the improvement of the property, should take a personal interest in the removal of those trees whose growth, position or decay marred the splendour of their neighbours. ‘Mr. Gladstone is now a very old man—older than many who remember him in his vigorous Parliamentary days quite realize. It is many years since his wood-cutting exploits. But, three summers ago, on a special occasion, he went out for the last time on his favourite pastime. The axe that he used—a new one, and lighter than those he usually wielded—is now stored away in a cupboard in Mr. Herbert Gladstone’s room at the Castle. “To the end of the handle,” says a writer in _Pearson’s Magazine_ for March, “is pasted a little label with the brief inscription: ‘“Used by W. E. G. on a beech in the North Garden, 1895.” ‘Mr. Gladstone’s favourite implement was the ordinary wedge-shaped American axe. But one that he used a great deal in later days still stands in a corner of his study. Its long, thin blade made it a difficult weapon to handle skilfully; yet the shape or size of the axe made little difference to so experienced a craftsman. In an outdoor room at Hawarden, now chiefly devoted to the storage of bicycles and fishing-baskets, are between thirty and forty axes piled together—long axes and short axes, thick and thin, plain and varnished, new and worn. These represent only a small portion of the collection that Mr. Gladstone once had. In bygone days admirers were constantly sending him axes as marks of their esteem, and now other admirers quite as constantly smuggle them away as treasured mementoes of their visits. ‘Besides these workaday axes one may see several with silver heads, and among them one, especially valued, that was presented to Mr. Gladstone in 1884 by the workmen on the Forth Bridge. There are, too, miniature axes beautifully modelled in solid gold, kept among the jewels in the drawing-room; and a silver pencil, axe-shaped, which was presented to the G. O. M. by the Princess of Wales “for axing questions.”’