V

_WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE_

Most people remember Gladstone as an old man. He reached the summit
of his career when he had just struck seventy. After Easter, 1880,
when he dethroned Lord Beaconsfield and formed his second
Administration, the eighteen years of life that remained to him
added nothing to his fame, and even in some respects detracted
from it. Gradually he passed into the stage which was indicated
by Labouchere's nickname of "The Grand Old Man"; and he enjoyed
the homage which rightly attends the closing period of an exemplary
life, wonderfully prolonged, and spent in the service of the nation.
He had become historical before he died. But my recollections of
him go back to the earlier sixties, when he was Chancellor of the
Exchequer in Lord Palmerston's Government, and they become vivid
at the point of time when he became Prime Minister--December, 1868.

In old age his appearance was impressive, through the combination of
physical wear-and-tear with the unconquerable vitality of the spirit
which dwelt within. The pictures of him as a young man represent
him as distinctly handsome, with masses of dark hair thrown back
from a truly noble forehead, and eyes of singular expressiveness.
But in middle life--and in his case middle life was continued till
he was sixty--he was neither as good-looking as he once had been,
nor, as grand-looking as he eventually became. He looked much older
than his age. When he met the new Parliament which had been elected
at the end of 1868, he was only as old as Lord Curzon is now; but