The Grand Old Man | Page 2

Great is thy mark upon historic page."

CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I
ANCESTRY AND BIRTH
CHAPTER II
AT ETON AND OXFORD
CHAPTER III
EARLY PARLIAMENTARY EXPERIENCES
CHAPTER IV
BOOK ON CHURCH AND STATE
CHAPTER V
TRAVELS AND MARRIAGE
CHAPTER VI
ENTERS THE CABINET
CHAPTER VII
MEMBER FOR OXFORD
CHAPTER VIII
THE NEAPOLITAN PRISONS
CHAPTER IX
THE FIRST BUDGET
CHAPTER X
THE CRIMEAN WAR
CHAPTER XI
IN OPPOSITION TO THE GOVERNMENT
CHAPTER XII
HOMERIC STUDIES
CHAPTER XIII
GREAT BUDGETS
CHAPTER XIV
LIBERAL REFORMER AND PRIME MINISTER
CHAPTER XV
THE GOLDEN AGE OF LIBERALISM
CHAPTER XVI
THE EASTERN QUESTION
CHAPTER XVII
MIDLOTHIAN AND THE SECOND PREMIERSHIP
CHAPTER XVIII
THIRD ADMINISTRATION AND HOME RULE
CHAPTER XIX
PRIME MINISTER THE FOURTH TIME
CHAPTER XX
IN PRIVATE LIFE
CHAPTER XXI
CLOSING SCENES
[Illustration: Gladstone entering Palace Yard, Westminster.]

"In thought, word and deed, How throughout all thy warfare thou wast pure, I find it easy to believe." --ROBERT BROWNING

List of Illustrations.
WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE (Frontispiece)
GLADSTONE ENTERING PALACE YARD, WESTMINSTER
GLADSTONE AND SISTER
INTERIOR OF THE OLD HOUSE OF COMMONS
BIRTHPLACE OF GLADSTONE
GLIMPSES OF GLADSTONE'S EARLIER YEARS
HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT
GLADSTONE'S LONDON RESIDENCE
LOBBY OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
GRATTAN
KILMAINHAM JAIL
GLADSTONE'S MARRIAGE AT HAWARDEN
NO. 10 DOWNING STREET, LONDON
THE PARK GATE, HAWARDEN
OLD HAWARDEN CASTLE
HAWARDEN CASTLE, FROM THE PARK
WATERFALL IN HAWARDEN PARK
COURT YARD, HAWARDEN
GLADSTONE READING THE LESSONS AT HAWARDEN CHURCH
THE REV. H. DREW
DOROTHY'S DOVECOTE
DINING-ROOM IN THE ORPHANAGE
STAIRCASE IN THE ORPHANAGE
HAWARDEN CHURCH
HAWARDEN CASTLE
LOYAL ULSTER
GLADSTONE'S EARLY ENGLISH CONTEMPORARIES
GLADSTONE'S LATER ENGLISH CONTEMPORARIES
GLADSTONE IN WALES
CITY AND COUNTY VOLUNTEERS OF DUBLIN
CONDITION OF IRELAND, 1882
GLADSTONE VISITING NEAPOLITAN PRISONS
GLADSTONE INTRODUCING HIS FIRST BUDGET
THE SUNDERLAND SHIPOWNER SURPRISED
FAMILY GROUP AT HAWARDEN
HOUSE OF COMMONS
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR
GLADSTONE AND GRANDDAUGHTER
GLADSTONE'S AXE
GLADSTONE FAMILY GROUP
SALISBURY MINISTRY DEFEATED
THE OLD LION
GLADSTONE'S RECEPTION IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
GLADSTONE'S MAIL
RELEASE OF PARNELL, DILLON AND O'KELLY
GLADSTONE ON HIS WAY HOME
THE MIDLOTHIAN CAMPAIGN
QUEEN VICTORIA
GLADSTONE AND HIS SON, HERBERT
GALLERY OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
IRISH LEADERS
IRISH CONSTABULARY EVICTING TENANTS
GLADSTONE'S STUDY AT HAWARDEN
FOURTH ADMINISTRATION CABINET
GLADSTONE ON THE QUEEN'S YACHT
ST. JAMES PALACE
QUEEN AND PREMIER
GLADSTONE IN HIS STUDY, READING
MR. AND MRS. GLADSTONE, 1897

INTRODUCTORY.
There are few, even among those who differed from him, who would deny to Mr. Gladstone the title of a great statesman: and in order to appreciate his wonderful career, it is necessary to realize the condition of the world of thought, manners and works at the time when he entered public life.
In medicine there was no chloroform; in art the sun had not been enlisted in portraiture; railways were just struggling into existence; the electric telegraph was unknown; gas was an unfashionable light; postage was dear, and newspapers were taxed.
In literature, Scott had just died; Carlyle was awaiting the publication of his first characteristic book; Tennyson was regarded as worthy of hope because of his juvenile poems; Macaulay was simply a brilliant young man who had written some stirring verse and splendid prose; the Bront?s were schoolgirls; Thackeray was dreaming of becoming an artist; Dickens had not written a line of fiction; Browning and George Eliot were yet to come.
In theology, Newman was just emerging from evangelicalism; Pusey was an Oxford tutor; Samuel Wilberforce a village curate; Henry Manning a young graduate; and Darwin was commencing that series of investigations which revolutionized the popular conception of created things.
Princess, afterwards Queen Victoria, was a girl of thirteen; Cobden a young calico printer; Bright a younger cotton spinner; Palmerston was regarded as a man-about-town, and Disraeli as a brilliant and eccentric novelist with parliamentary ambition. The future Marquis of Salisbury and Prime Minister of Great Britain was an infant scarcely out of arms; Lord Rosebery, (Mr. Gladstone's successor in the Liberal Premiership), Lord Spencer, Lord Herschell, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Campbell-Bannerman, Mr. Asquith, Mr. Brice, Mr. Acland and Mr. Arnold Morley, or more than half the members of his latest cabinet remained to be born; as did also the Duke of Devonshire, Mr. Balfour and Mr. Chamberlain, among those who were his keenest opponents toward the end of his public career.
At last the end of Mr. Gladstone's public life arrived, but it had been extended to an age greater than that at which any English statesman had ever conducted the government of his country.
Of the significance of the life of this great man, it would be superfluous to speak. The story will signally fail of its purpose if it does not carry its own moral with it. We can best conclude these introductory remarks by applying to the subject of the following pages, some words which he applied a generation ago to others:
In the sphere of common experience we see some human beings live and die, and furnish by their life no special lessons visible to man, but only that general teaching in elementary and simple forms which is derivable from every particle of human histories. Others there have been, who, from the times when their young lives first, as it were, peeped over the horizon, seemed at once to--
"'Flame in the forehead of the evening sky,'" --Whose lengthening years have been but one growing splendor, and who at last-- "------Leave a lofty name, A light, a landmark on the cliffs of fame."
CHAPTER I
ANCESTRY AND BIRTH
All history, says Emerson, "resolves itself into the biographies of a few