before Mr. Gladstone arrived in London,
and by that time his work had been out for six or seven weeks.[103] On
his return we may be sure that his book and its fortunes were the young
author's most lively interest. Church authorities and the clergy
generally, so far as he could learn, approved, many of them very warmly.
The Bishop of London wrote this, and the Archbishop of Canterbury said
it. It is easy to understand with what interest and delight the average
churchman would welcome so serious a contribution to the good cause, so
bold an effort by so skilled a hand, by lessons from history, by general
principles of national probity and a national religion, and by
well-digested materials gathered, as Hooker gathered his, 'from the
characteristic circumstances of the time,' to support the case for
ecclesiastical privilege. Anglicans of the better sort had their
intellectual self-respect restored in Mr. Gladstone's book, by finding
that they need no longer subsist on the dregs of Eldonian prejudice, but
could sustain themselves in intellectual dignity and affluence by large
thoughts and sonorous phrases upon the nature of human society as a
grand whole.[104] Even unconvinced whigs who quarrelled with the
arguments, admitted that the tories had found in the young member for
Newark a well-read scholar, with extraordinary amplitude of mind, a man
who knew what reasoning meant, and a man who knew how to write.

The first chapter dealing with establishment drew forth premature
praise from many who condemned the succeeding chapters setting out high
notions as to the church. From both universities he had favourable
accounts. 'From Scotland they are mixed; those which are most definite
tend to show there is considerable soreness, at which, God knows, I am
not surprised; but I have not sought nor desired it.' The Germans on the
whole approved. Bunsen was exuberant; there was nobody, he said, with
whom he so loved [Greek: symphilosophein kai symphilologein]; people have too
much to do about themselves to have time to seek truth on its own
account; the greater, therefore, the merit of the writer who forces his
age to decide, whether they will serve God or Baal. Gladstone is the
first man in England as to intellectual power, he cried, and he has
heard higher tones than any one else in this land. The Crown Prince of
Prussia sent him civil messages, and meant to have the book translated.
Rogers, the poet, wrote that his mother was desce