'I
cannot understand the world. I cannot comprehend its littlenesses. When
I look at the frivolities and littlenesses, _it seems to me as if they
were all a little mad_.'[122]

THE SOCIAL DRAMA

This was the stage on which Mr. Gladstone, with 'the dominant tendencies
of a recluse' and a mind that might easily have been 'accommodated to
the cloister,' came to play his part,--in which he was 'by a slow
experience' to insert piecemeal the mental apparatus proper to the
character of the public man. Yet it was not among the booths and
merchandise and hubbub of Vanity Fair, it was among strata in the
community but little recognised as yet, that he was to find the field
and the sources of his highest power. His view of the secular world was
never fastidious or unmanly. Looking back upon his long experience of it
he wrote (1894):--

That political life considered as a profession has great dangers
for the inner and true life of the human being, is too obvious. It
has, however, some redeeming qualities. In the first place, I have
never known, and can hardly conceive, a finer school of temper than
the House of Commons. A lapse in this respect is on the instant an
offence, a jar, a wound, to every member of the assembly; and it
brings its own punishment on the instant, like the sins of the Jews
under the old dispensation. Again, I think the imperious nature of
the subjects, their weight and force, demanding the entire strength
of a man and all his faculties, leave him no residue, at least for
the time, to apply to self-regard; no more than there is for a
swimmer swimming for his life. He must, too, in retrospect feel
himself to be so very small in comparison with the themes and the
interests of which he has to treat. It is a further advantage if
his occupation be not mere debate, but debate ending in work. For
in this way, whether the work be legislative or administrative, it
is continually tested by results, and he is enabled to strip away
his extravagant anticipations, his fallacious conceptions, to
perceive his mistakes, and to reduce his estimates to the reality.
No politician has any excuse for being vain.

Like the stoic emperor, Mr. Gladstone had in his heart the feeling that
the man is a runaway who deserts the exercise of civil reason.

IV