calculating upon his death before the dissolution, are now beginning to
admit that it is by no means improbable that Mr. Gladstone may survive
the century. Nor was it quite so fantastic as it appears at first sight,
when an ingenious disciple told him the other day that by the fitness of
things he ought to live for twenty years yet. 'For,' said this political
arithmetician, 'you have been twenty-six years a Tory, twenty-six years
a Whig Liberal, and you have been only six years a Radical Home Ruler.
To make the balance even you have twenty years still to serve.'

"Sir Provo Wallis, the Admiral of the Fleet, who died the other day at
the age of one hundred, had not a better constitution than Mr.
Gladstone, nor had it been more carefully preserved in the rough and
tumble of our naval war. If the man who smelt powder in the famous fight
between the Chesapeake and the Shannon lived to read the reports of the
preparations for the exhibition at Chicago, it is not so incredible that
Mr. Gladstone may at least be in the foretop of the State at the dawn of
the twentieth century.

"The thought is enough to turn the Tories green with sickening despair,
that the chances of his life, from a life insurance office point of
view, are probably much better than Lord Salisbury's. But that is one of
the attributes of Mr. Gladstone which endear him so much to his party.
He is always making his enemies sick with despairing jealousy. He is the
great political evergreen, who seems, even in his political life, to
have borrowed something of immortality from the fame which he has won.
He has long been the Grand Old Man. If he lives much longer he bids fair
to be known as the immortal old man in more senses than one."

[Illustration: GLADSTONE'S BIRTHPLACE, RODNEY STREET, LIVERPOOL.]