Ballot, filled Session after Session with excitement; and Gladstone
pursued each in turn with an ardour which left his followers out
of breath.

He was not very skilful in managing his party, or even his Cabinet.
He kept his friendships and his official relations quite distinct.
He never realized the force of the saying that men who have only
worked together have only half lived together. It was truly said
that he understood MAN, but not men; and meek followers in the
House of Commons, who had sacrificed money, time, toil, health,
and sometimes conscience, to the support of the Government, turned,
like the crushed worm, when they found that Gladstone sternly ignored
their presence in the Lobby, or, if forced to speak to them, called
them by inappropriate names. His strenuousness of reforming purpose
and strength of will were concealed by no lightness of touch, no
give-and-take, no playfulness, no fun. He had little of that saving
grace of humour which smoothes the practical working of life as much
as it adds to its enjoyment. He was fiercely, terribly, incessantly
in earnest; and unbroken earnestness, though admirable, exhausts
and in the long run alienates.

There was yet another feature of his Parliamentary management which
proved disastrous to his cause, and this was his tendency to what the
vulgar call hair-splitting and the learned casuistry. At Oxford men
are taught to distinguish with scrupulous care between propositions
closely similar, but not identical. In the House of Commons they
are satisfied with the roughest and broadest divisions between
right and wrong; they see no shades of colour between black-and
white. Hence arose two unfortunate incidents, which were nicknamed
"The Ewelme Scandal" and "The Colliery Explosion"--two cases in