itterness, 'Ah, Oxford on the surface, but Liverpool
below.' No bad combination. He once had a lesson from Sir Robert Peel.
Mr. Gladstone, being about to reply in debate, turned to his chief and
said: 'Shall I be short and concise?' 'No,' was the answer, 'be long and
diffuse. It is all important in the House of Commons to state your case
in many different ways, so as to produce an effect on men of many ways
of thinking.'

In discussing Macaulay, Sir Francis Baring, an able and unbiassed judge,
advised a junior (1860) about patterns for the parliamentary
aspirant:--'Gladstone is to my mind a much better model for speaking; I
mean he is happier in joining great eloquence and selection of words and
rhetoric, if you will, with a style not a bit above debate. It does not
smell of the oil. Of course there has been plenty of labour, and that
not of to-day but during a whole life.' Nothing could be truer.
Certainly for more than the first forty years of his parliamentary
existence, he cultivated a style not above debate, though it was debate
of incomparable force and brilliance. When simpletons say, as if this
were to dispose of every higher claim for him, that he worked all his
wonders by his gifts as orator, do they ever think what power over such
an assembly as the House of Commons signifies? Here--and it was not
until he had been for thirty years and more in parliament that he betook
himself largely to the efforts of the platform--here he was addressing
men of the world, some of them the flower of English education and
intellectual accomplishment; experts in all the high practical lines of
life, bankers, merchants, lawyers, captains of industry in every walk;
men trained in the wide experience and high responsibilities of public
office; lynx-eyed rivals and opponents. Is this the scene, or were these
the men, for the triumphs of the barren rhetorician and the sophist,
whose words have no true relation to the facts? Where could general
mental strength be better tested? As a matter of history most of those
who have held the place of leading minister in the House of Commons have
hardly been orators at all, any more than Washington and Jefferson were
orators. Mr. Gladstone conquered the house, because he was saturated
with a subject and its arguments; because he could state and enforce his
case; because he plainly believed every word he said, and earnestly
wished to press the same belief into the minds of his hearers; finally
b