being. The acts and utterances of such a character are his best
biography, and especially for one differing so largely from all other
men as to have none to be compared with him.

In this record we simply spread before the reader his private life and
public services, connected together through many startling changes, from
home to school, from university to Parliament, from Tory follower to
Liberal leader, from the early start in his political course to the
grand consummation of the statesman's success in his attainment to the
fourth Premiership of this Grand Old Man, and the glorious end of an
eventful life.

We could not do better, in closing this chapter, than to reproduce a
part of the character sketch of William E. Gladstone, from the pen of
William T. Stead, and published in the "Review of Reviews:"

"So much has been written about Mr. Gladstone that it was with some
sinking of heart I ventured to select him as a subject for my next
character sketch. But I took heart of grace when I remembered that the
object of these sketches is to describe their subject as he appears to
himself at his best, and his countrymen. There are plenty of other
people ready to fill in the shadows. This paper claims in no way to be a
critical estimate or a judicial summing up of the merits and demerits
of the most remarkable of all living Englishmen. It is merely an attempt
to catch, as it were, the outline of the heroic figure which has
dominated English politics for the lifetime of this generation, and
thereby to explain something of the fascination which his personality
has exercised and still exercises over the men and women of his time. If
his enemies, and they are many, say that I have idealized a wily old
opportunist out of all recognition, I answer that to the majority of his