view. But in the interval he had apparently thought
otherwise. For on Monday he read to Lord Aberdeen and myself a
letter from Stanley written with the utmost frankness and in a tone
of political intimacy, saying that an engagement as chairman of a
committee at the House would prevent his meeting us. The business
of the day was discussed in conversation, and it was agreed to be
quite impossible to support the resolution on the legislative
council in its existing terms, without at least a protest. Peel
made the following remark: 'You have got another Ireland growing up
in every colony you possess.'

A week later he was shocked by the death of Lady Canning. 'Breakfast
with Gaskell' (March 23rd), 'and thence to Lady Canning's funeral in
Westminster Abbey. We were but eleven in attendance. Her coffin was
laid on that of her illustrious husband. Canning showed a deep but manly
sorrow. May we live as by the side of a grave and looking in.'

In the same month he spoke on Canada (March 8th) 'with insufficient
possession of the subject,' and a week later on church rates, for an
hour or more, 'with more success than the matter or manner deserved.' He
finished his translation of the _Bride of Corinth_, and the episode of
Ugolino from Dante, and read Eckermann's _Conversations with Goethe_, to
which he gives the too commonplace praise of being very interesting. He
learned Manzoni's noble ode on the death of Napoleon, of which he
by-and-by made a noble translation; this by way of sparing his eyes, and
Italian poetry not taking him nearly half the time of any other to
commit to memory. He found a 'beautiful and powerful production' in
Channing's letter to Clay, and he made the acquaintance of Southey, 'in
appearance benignant, melancholy, and intellectual.'

II

THE GENERAL ELECTION OF 1837

In June King William IV. died, 'leaving a perilous legacy to his
successor.' A month later (July 14) Mr. Gladstone went up with the
Oxford address, and this was, I suppose, the first occasion on which he
was called to present himself before the Queen, with whose long reign
his own future career and fame were destined to be so closely and so
conspicuously associated. According to the old law prescribing a
dissolution of parliament within six months of the demise of the crown,
Mr. Gladstone was soon in the thick of a general election. By Jul