=William Ewart Gladstone (1809- )=, the son of a Lancashire merchant, was born at Liverpool. Into his political career it is not my province to enter. His first literary work, "The State in its Relations with the Church," was made famous through a review by Macaulay. Later in life he indulged in theological controversy, publishing an "Essay on Ritualism" and "The Vatican Decrees." Mr Gladstone's chief work is, however, his "Studies in Homer," in which he argues for the unity of the poem, for the foundation in fact of its main incidents, and for the definite personality of the author. His contributions to periodical literature have been innumerable, and only a few--and those non-controversial and non-classical--have been republished in his five volumes of "Gleanings." Mr Gladstone's chief opponent in theological controversy, Cardinal Newman, has profoundly influenced his religious views. "In my opinion," wrote Mr Gladstone many years after Newman had become a Roman Catholic, "his secession from the Church of England has never yet been estimated among us at anything like the full amount of its calamitous importance. It has been said that the world does not know its greatest men; neither, I will add, is it aware of the power and weight carried by the words and the acts of those among its greatest men whom it does know. The ecclesiastical historian will perhaps hereafter judge that this secession was a much greater event even than the partial secession of John Wesley, the only case of personal loss suffered by the Church of England since the Reformation which can be at all compared with it in magnitude."