Mrs. Gladstone’s active political work was undertaken solely because she thought she could thereby be useful to her husband and the causes he had so deeply at heart. It extended only over some half-dozen years, from her seventy-fifth to her eighty-first year. She disliked publicity, though she was quite ready to accept the share of it inevitable from her husband’s great position, but she had no idea of aggrandising women as women, of setting sex against sex; she believed that organisation would enable women to take their share of the larger life of the world without any risk of hurting “distinctive womanhood,” and her own life set an example of the possibility for a woman to gain mental breadth without failing in “childward care” or losing “the childlike in the larger mind.” III On 25th July 1889 Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone celebrated their golden wedding, completing fifty years of a married life in which they had abundantly realised “all the unclouded blessings of the home.” The year before, on entering their fiftieth year of married life, colleagues and personal friends presented them with their portraits, that of Mr. Gladstone painted by Holl and of his wife by Herkomer, and three massive silver cups. In thanking them Mr. Gladstone said that it was difficult for him to give an adequate idea of the domestic happiness he had enjoyed during the fifty years of his married life. Other presentations were made on the wedding anniversary itself, both in London and at Hawarden, and again Mr. Gladstone said that no words he could use would ever suffice to express the debt he owed his wife in relation to all the offices she had discharged in his behalf during the long and happy period of their conjugal union. Mr. Gladstone was Prime Minister for a short time in 1886. From 1892 to 1894 he again held the office, and in the latter year retired for good from public life. Mrs. Gladstone was much disturbed by his decision and did everything in her power to persuade him to continue in office, but he stood firm as the rocks at Biarritz, where the discussion was held. It had always been his belief that men ought not to go on with official work after they had become really old. He was eighty-five, so that no one could say he had not done his share of the work of the world.