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William Ewart Gladstone by Viscount James Bryce Bryce
page 51 of 52 (98%)
disposition, but rather to self-control and to a certain largeness
and dignity of soul which would not condescend to anything mean or
petty. Nor should it be forgotten that the perfectly happy life
which he led at home, cared for in everything by a devoted wife,
kept far from him those domestic troubles which have soured the
temper and embittered the judgments of not a few famous men.
Reviewing his whole career, and summing up the impressions and
recollections of those who knew him best, this dignity is the
feature which dwells most in the mind, as the outline of some
majestic Alp moves one from afar when all the lesser beauties of
glen and wood, of crag and glacier, have faded in the distance. As
elevation was the note of his oratory, so was magnanimity the note
of his character.

The favorite Greek maxim that no man can be called happy till his
life is ended must, in the case of statesmen, be extended to warn us
from the attempt to fix any one's place in history till a generation
has arisen to whom he is a mere name, not a familiar figure to be
loved, opposed, or hated. Few reputations made in politics keep so
far green and fresh that men continue to read and write and
speculate about the person when those who can remember him living
have departed. Out of all the men who have played a leading part in
English public life in the present century there are but seven or
eight--Pitt, Fox, Canning, Wellington, Peel, O'Connell, Disraeli,
perhaps Melbourne and Brougham--who still excite our curiosity. The
great poet or the great artist lives longer--indeed, he lives as
long as his books or his pictures; the statesman, like the musician
or the actor, begins to be forgotten so soon as his voice is still,
unless he has so dominated the men of his own time, and made himself
a part of his country's history, that his personal character becomes
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