figure, but I am bound to say that his greatness
seemed to me to lie in carrying out ideas, after they had been suggested
by others, rather than in working them out himself.'

Sir George meant that Mr. Gladstone's genius as a statesman, was
constructive more than creative, the fashioner of progress. For himself,
a solitary idea sufficed to keep his heart warm, even in the colds of
age--the federation of the English-speaking people. In one of the last
letters he received from David Livingstone, there was the request, 'Write
me often, because you cheer me up.' It was always possible to cheer Sir
George up on federation; that set him aglow.

There were few to listen when he first preached the federal idea; he
cried in the wilderness, but he did not cease to cry. He waited long for
the echoes to come back, and they did come, with interest, too, when
negotiations for an Anglo-American treaty of arbitration went afoot.
Then, the negotiations tumbled through, whereat he said: 'Oh, the road
may be a gradual one, with hills and stops, but there it lies, traced by
destiny, and in the fulness of time it will be trodden.'

Peering into the twentieth century, one who would never see it, he
foretold that its great problem would be this of Anglo-Saxon federation.
It was not for us to dip into the future, farther than we could
reasonably behold, but so far we were not only entitled, but bound, to
go. He doubted whether any question, equal in importance to federation,
had ever before engaged the attention of so large a portion of mankind.
On that account he put forward with diffidence, the views which, after
much reflection, he had formed upon it.

By Anglo-Saxon federation, he understood joint action, in the interests
of mankind, on the part of those owning allegiance to the English tongue.
Forms and methods might take care of themselves, so the thing itself was
begotten. Yet that could only be, if the ties sought to be woven were
elastic, free and freedom-giving. He wanted a golden chain, binding men
to men the Anglo-Saxon world over, but a curb-chain nowhere.

'I am,' he spoke, 'merely expressing what is generally agreed, when I say
that the end of the nineteenth century has brought us to a critical
period in the history of the world. Systems of government do not last for
ever; they decay and have to be replaced. The most perfect of machines
wears itself out, and another has to be substituted.

'Not merely that, but the new one