and--sometimes--irritation. His own autobiographical reminiscences
were wonderfully interesting, and his repetition of the 42d
psalm--"Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks"--_grand_!

He said that he had never read any book on the hostile side written
in such a spirit of, "generous appreciation" of the Christian side.

Yes, those were hours to which I shall always look back with gratitude
and emotion. Wonderful old man! I see him still standing, as I took
leave of him, one hand leaning on the table beside him, his lined,
pallid face and eagle eyes framed in his noble white hair, shining amid
the dusk of the room. "There are still two things left for me to do!" he
said, finally, in answer to some remark of mine. "One is to carry Home
Rule; the other is to prove the intimate connection between the Hebrew
and Olympian revelations!"

Could any remark have been more characteristic of that double life of
his--the life of the politician and the life of the student--which kept
him fresh and eager to the end of his days? Characteristic, too, of the
amateurish element in all his historical and literary thinking. In
dealing "with early Greek mythology, genealogy, and religion," says his
old friend, Lord Bryce, Mr. Gladstone's theories "have been condemned by
the unanimous voice of scholars as fantastic." Like his great
contemporary, Newman--on whom a good deal of our conversation turned--he
had no critical sense of evidence; and when he was writing on _The
Impregnable Rock of Scripture_ Lord Acton, who was staying at Hawarden
at the time, ran after him in vain, with Welhausen or Kuenen under his
arm, if haply he might persuade his host to read them.

But it was not for that he was born; and those who look back to the