“Helpfulness, that was the note of her character; in any difficulty, in the most impossible case, Mrs. Gladstone would plan, contrive, arrange, enlist others, and never rest until the difficulty was solved, and the persons put in the way of helping themselves--nay more, supported, befriended, encouraged, till they could stand alone. Perhaps few persons were so often consulted and appealed to as was Mrs. Gladstone. It might be young girls entering on life in the first joy of a marriage engagement, or young beauties to whom she would gently suggest thoughts that were unworldly. Very often it would be some hard-worked London priest toiling single-handed amongst his thousands, and thinking no one cared, who found in Mrs. Gladstone a listener not only sympathetic but suggestive, one who did not forget, but would forward his plans, and who had the rare gift of setting other people to work. “Mrs. Gladstone had the genius of charity. _Good_ or to be helped to be good, that was the essence of it all. Religion not forced, not obtruded, but as natural and vital as fresh air, was, not an adjunct of life, but life itself. In her own devotions, in the daily services of the Church, in many a Eucharist did Catherine Gladstone renew her soul’s life, and increase the charity and the delightful gaiety of her temperament, and from the spirit of wisdom learn those intuitions which so rarely failed her. It seemed but natural that her last spoken words were, ‘I must not be late for Church.’” In these days of storm and stress and feverish excitement and unrest among women, it is well to recall the life of a woman like Mrs. Gladstone who, in a period when such mechanical aids to activity as motor-cars and telephones were non-existent, yet contrived to be a devoted wife, smoothing her husband’s path in every direction, accompanying him everywhere, an equally devoted mother, as well as a charming hostess of country-house parties at Hawarden and of the more formal entertainments in London consequent on her position as the wife of a great Minister of State. In addition to such domestic and social duties she engaged in philanthropic work, and in no dilettante spirit; she visited hospitals, founded convalescent homes, and refuges and orphanages; she played her part in the public political work then undertaken by women. She accomplished all these things without an idea that she was doing anything worthy of note or of record, and yet quietly, unostentatiously, and unconsciously leaving an ineffaceable mark on every phase of life with which she came in contact. VII LADY SALISBURY