inspired. He was so much the most interesting human being in the
House of Commons that, when he withdrew, many members said that the
place had lost half its attraction for them, and that the chamber
seemed empty because he was not in it. Plenty of able men remained.
But even the ablest seemed ordinary, perhaps even commonplace, when
compared with the figure that had vanished, a figure in whom were
combined, as in no other man of his time, an unrivaled experience,
an extraordinary activity and versatility of intellect, a fervid
imagination, and an indomitable will.



CHAPTER V: ORIGINALITY AND INDEPENDENCE



Though Mr. Gladstone's oratory was a main source of his power, both
in Parliament and over the people, the effort of his enemies to
represent him as a mere rhetorician will seem absurd to the
historian who reviews his whole career. The mere rhetorician adorns
and popularizes the ideas which have originated with others, he
advocates policies which others have devised; he follows and
expresses the sentiments which already prevail in his party. He may
help to destroy; he does not construct. Mr. Gladstone was himself a
source of new ideas and new policies; he evoked new sentiments or
turned sentiments into new channels. He was a constructive
statesman not less conspicuously than Pitt, Canning, and Peel. If
the memory of his oratorical triumphs were to pass completely away,
he would deserve to be remembered in respect of the mark he left
upon the British statute-book and of the changes he wrought both in