eate? Oh, I hate him.' It is equally
beyond doubt that to the persons of the whole of them, with the
rarest exceptions, it had been the ease of Dr. Keate to administer
the salutary correction of the birch. But upon this occasion, when
his name had been announced the scene was indescribable. Queen and
Queen Dowager alike vanished into insignificance. The roar of
cheering had a beginning, but never knew satiety or end. Like the
huge waves at Biarritz, the floods of cheering continually
recommenced; the whole process was such that we seemed all to have
lost our self-possession and to be hardly able to keep our seats.
When at length it became possible Keate rose: that is to say, his
head was projected slightly over the heads of his two neighbours.
He struggled to speak; I will not say I heard every syllable, for
there were no syllables; speak he could not. He tried in vain to
mumble a word or two, but wholly failed, recommenced the vain
struggle and sat down. It was certainly one of the most moving
spectacles that in my whole life I have witnessed.

IV

AT WILMSLOW

Some months passed between leaving Eton and going to Oxford. In January
1828, Gladstone went to reside with Dr. Turner at Wilmslow in Cheshire,
and remained there until Turner was made Bishop of Calcutta. The
bishop's pupil afterwards testified to his amiability, refinement, and
devoutness; but the days of his energy were past, and 'the religious
condition of the parish was depressing.' Among the neighbouring
families, with whom he made acquaintance while at Wilmslow, were the
Gregs of Quarry Bank, a refined and philanthropic household, including
among the sons William R. Greg (born in the same year as Mr. Gladstone),
that ingenious, urbane, interesting, and independent mind, whose
speculations, dissolvent and other, were afterwards to take an effective
place in the writings of the time. 'I fear he is a unitarian,' the young
churchman mentions to his father, and gives sundry reasons for that
sombre apprehension; it was, indeed, only too well founded.

While at Wilmslow (Feb. 5, 1828) Gladstone was taken to dine with the
rector of Alderley--'an extremely gentlemanly and said to be a very
clever man,'--afterwards to be known as the liberal and enlightened
Edward Stanley, Bishop of Norwich, and father of Arthur Stanley,