experience of successive administrations, from a time dating back longer
than most of his colleagues can remember. For nearly forty years he has
had a leading part in making or unmaking of Cabinets; he has served his
Queen and his country in almost every capacity in office and in
opposition, and yet to-day, despite his prolonged sojourn in the malaria
of political wire-pulling, his heart seems to be as the heart of a
little child. If some who remember 'the old Parliamentary hand' should
whisper that innocence of the dove is sometimes compatible with the
wisdom of the serpent, I make no dissent. It is easy to be a dove, and
to be as silly as a dove. It is easy to be as wise as a serpent, and as
wicked, let us say, as Mr. Governor Hill or Lord Beaconsfield. But it is
the combination that is difficult, and in Mr. Gladstone the combination
is almost ideally complete.

"Mr. Gladstone is old enough to be the grandfather of the younger race
of politicians, but still his courage, his faith, his versatility, put
the youngest of them to shame. It is this ebullience of youthful energy,
this inexhaustible vitality, which is the admiration and despair of his
contemporaries. Surely when a schoolboy at Eton he must somewhere have
discovered the elixir of life, or have been bathed by some beneficent
fairy in the well of perpetual youth. Gladly would many a man of fifty
exchange physique with this hale and hearty octogenarian. Only in one
respect does he show any trace of advancing years. His hearing is not
quite so good as it was, but still it is far better than that of
Cardinal Manning, who became very deaf in his closing years. Otherwise
Mr. Gladstone is hale and hearty. His eye is not dim, neither is his
natural force abated. A splendid physical frame, carefully preserved,
gives every promise of a continuance of his green old age.

"His political opponents, who began this Parliament by confidently