CHAPTER II


AT ETON AND OXFORD

There is very little recorded of the boyhood of some great men, and this
is true of the childhood of William E. Gladstone, until he leaves the
parental home for school, which he does in 1821, at the early age of
eleven. He was fortunate in his parentage, but no less so in his early
associations, both in and out of school. We refer particularly to his
private preceptors, two of whom, the venerable Archdeacon Jones and the
Rev. William Rawson, first Vicar of Seaforth, a watering-place near
Liverpool, were both men of high character and great ability. Mr.
Gladstone always highly esteemed Mr. Rawson, his earliest preceptor, and
visited him on his death-bed. Dr. Turner, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta,
was for two years young Gladstone's private tutor, beginning his
instruction when his pupil left Eton in 1827.

Besides these associations of his early life there were Canning, a
frequent visitor, as has been mentioned, at his father's house, and
Hannah More--"Holy Hannah," as Horace Walpole called her. She singled
out "Billy" Gladstone for her especial pet out of the group of eleven
children in whom her warm heart delighted, and it has been asked
wonderingly if Miss More could preternaturally have lengthened her days
until William E. Gladstone's present glory, whether she would have gone
on dubbing him "Billy" in undignified brevity until the end.