dangerously impulsive, and had frequently to suffer from his
impulsiveness; yet he was also not merely wary and cautious, but so
astute as to have been accused of craft and dissimulation. So great
was his respect for authority and tradition that he clung to views
regarding the unity of Homer and the historical claims of Christian
sacerdotalism which the majority of competent specialists have now
rejected. So bold was he in practical matters that he transformed
the British constitution, changed the course of English policy in
the Orient, destroyed an established church in one part of the
United Kingdom, and committed himself to the destruction of two
established churches in two other parts. He came near to being a
Roman Catholic in his religious opinions, yet was for twenty years
the darling leader of the English Protestant Nonconformists and the
Scotch Presbyterians. No one who knew him intimately doubted his
conscientious sincerity and earnestness, yet four fifths of the
English upper classes were in his later years wont to regard him as
a self-interested schemer who would sacrifice his country to his
lust for power. Though he loved general principles, and often
soared out of the sight of his audience when discussing them, he
generally ended by deciding upon points of detail the question at
issue. He was at different times of his life the defender and the
assailant of the same institutions, yet he scarcely seemed
inconsistent in doing opposite things, because his method and his
arguments preserved the same type and color throughout. Any one who
had at the beginning of his career discerned in him the capacity for
such strange diversities and contradictions would probably have
predicted that they must wreck it by making his purposes weak and
his course erratic. Such a prediction would have proved true of any
one with less firmness of will and less intensity of temper. It was
the persistent heat and vehemence of his character, the sustained