theological, made this familiarity more than usually thorough. Like most Etonians, he loved and knew the poets by preference. Theology claimed a place beside poetry; history came next, and was always a favorite branch of study. It seemed odd that the constitutional history of England was by no means one of his strong subjects, but the fact is that this was preeminently a Whig subject, and Mr. Gladstone never was a Whig, never learned to think upon the lines of the great Whigs of former days. His knowledge was not, perhaps, very wide, but it was generally exact; indeed, the accuracy with which he grasped facts that belonged to the realm of history proper was sometimes in strange contrast to the fanciful way in which he reasoned from them, or to the wildness of his conjectures in the prehistoric region. For metaphysics strictly so called he had apparently little turn—his reading did not go far beyond those companions of his youth, Aristotle and Bishop Butler; and philosophical speculation interested him only so far as it bore on Christian doctrine. Neither, in spite of his eminence as a financier and an advocate of free trade, did he show much taste for economic studies. On practical topics, such as the working of protective tariffs, the abuse of charitable endowments, the development of fruit-culture in England, the duty of liberal giving by the rich, the utility of thrift among the poor, his remarks were always full of point, clearness, and good sense, but he seldom launched out into the wider sea of economic theory. He must have possessed mathematical talent, for he took a first class in mathematics at Oxford, at the same time as his first in classics, but it was a subject he soon dropped. Regarding the sciences of nature, the sciences of experiment and observation, he seemed to feel as little curiosity as any educated man who notes the enormous part they play in the modern world can feel. Sayings of his have been quoted which show that he imperfectly comprehended the character of the evidence they rely upon and of the methods they employ. On one occasion he astonished a dinner-table of younger friends by refusing to accept some of the most certain conclusions of modern geology. No doubt he belonged (as the famous Lord Derby once said of himself) to a pre-scientific age; still, it was hard to avoid thinking that he was unconsciously influenced by a belief that such sciences as geology and biology, for instance, were being worked in a sense hostile to revealed religion, and were therefore influences threatening the moral welfare of mankind. VIII RELIGIOUS CHARACTER