swer to the same
question in the history of Mr. Gladstone?

II

INTERNAL CONFLICT

His physical vitality--his faculties of free energy, endurance,
elasticity--was a superb endowment to begin with. We may often ask for
ourselves and others: How many of a man's days does he really live?
However men may judge the fruit it bore, Mr. Gladstone lived in vigorous
activity every day through all his years. Time showed that he was born
with a frame of steel. Though, unlike some men of heroic
strength--Napoleon for example--he often knew fatigue and weariness, yet
his organs never failed to answer the call of an intense and persistent
Will. As we have already seen, in early manhood his eyes gave him much
trouble, and he both learned by heart and composed a good deal of verse
by way of sparing them. He was a great walker, and at this time he was a
sportsman, as his diary has shown. 'My object in shooting, ill as I do
it, is the invigorating and cheering exercise, which does so much for
health (1842).' One day this year (Sept. 13, '42) while out shooting,
the second barrel of a gun went off while he was reloading, shattering
the forefinger of his left hand. The remains of the finger the surgeons
removed. 'I have hardly ever in my life,' he says, 'had to endure
serious bodily pain, and this was short.' In 1845, he notes, 'a hard
day. What a mercy that my strength, in appearance not remarkable, so
little fails me.' In the autumn of 1853 he was able to record, 'Eight or
nine days of bed illness, the longest since I had the scarlet fever at
nine or ten years old.' It was the same all through. His bodily strength
was in fact to prove extraordinary, and was no secondary element in the
long and strenuous course now opening before him.

Not second to vigour of physical organisation--perhaps, if we only knew
all the secrets of mind and matter, even connected with this vigour--was
strength and steadfastness of Will. Character, as has been often
repeated, is completely fashioned will, and this superlative
requirement, so indispensable for every man of action in whatever walk
and on whatever scale, was eminently Mr. Gladstone's. From force of
will, with all its roots in habit, example, conviction, purpose, sprang
his leading and most effective qualities. He was never very ready to
talk about himself, but when asked what he regarded as his master
secret, he always said, '_Conce