es that vast
accumulation, I have been favoured with several thousands of other
pieces from the legion of Mr. Gladstone's correspondents. Between two
and three hundred thousand written papers of one sort or another must
have passed under my view. To some important journals and papers from
other sources I have enjoyed free access, and my warm thanks are due to
those who have generously lent me this valuable aid. I am especially
indebted to the King for the liberality with which his Majesty has been
graciously pleased to sanction the use of certain documents, in cases
where the permission of the Sovereign was required.

When I submitted an application for the same purpose to Queen Victoria,
in readily promising her favourable consideration, the Queen added a
message strongly impressing on me that the work I was about to undertake
should not be handled in the narrow way of party. This injunction
represents my own clear view of the spirit in which the history of a
career so memorable as Mr. Gladstone's should be composed. That, to be
sure, is not at all inconsistent with our regarding party feeling in its
honourable sense, as entirely the reverse of an infirmity.

The diaries from which I have often quoted consist of forty little books
in double columns, intended to do little more than record persons seen,
or books read, or letters written as the days passed by. From these
diaries come several of the mottoes prefixed to our chapters; such
mottoes are marked by an asterisk.

The trustees and other members of Mr. Gladstone's family have extended
to me a uniform kindness and consideration and an absolutely unstinted
confidence, for which I can never cease to owe them my heartiest
acknowledgment. They left with the writer an unqualified and undivided
responsibility for these pages, and for the use of the material that
they entrusted to him. Whatever may prove to be amiss, whether in
leaving out or putting in or putting wrong, the blame is wholly mine.

J. M.

1903.

CONTENTS

_BOOK I_

(_1809-1831_)

CHAPTER PAGE

INTRODUCTORY 1

I. CHILDHOOD 7

II. ETON