the critical question still
stands over, how he regards his responsibility for using them. Once in a
conversation with Mr. Gladstone, some fifty years from the epoch of this
present chapter, we fell upon the topic of ambition. 'Well,' he said, 'I
do not think that I can tax myself in my own life with ever having been
much moved by ambition.' The remark so astonished me that, as he
afterwards playfully reported to a friend, I almost jumped up from my
chair. We soon shall reach a stage in his career when both remark and
surprise may explain themselves. We shall see that if ambition means
love of power or fame for the sake of glitter, decoration, external
renown, or even dominion and authority on their own account--and all
these are common passions enough in strong natures as well as weak--then
his view of himself was just. I think he had none of it. Ambition in a
better sense, the motion of a resolute and potent genius to use strength
for the purposes of strength, to clear the path, dash obstacles aside,
force good causes forward--such a quality as that is the very law of the
being of a personality so vigorous, intrepid, confident, and capable as
his.

FOOTNOTES:

[112] Hawarden Grammar School, Sept. 19, 1877.

[113] Mr. Gladstone on Lord Houghton's _Life_; _Speaker_, Nov. 29, 1890.

[114] _Gleanings_, vii. p. 133.

[115] _Homeric Studies_, vol. iii.

[116] Book ii. Sec. 89, 363.

[117] Non enim solum acuenda nobis neque procudenda lingua est, sed
onerandum complendumque pectus maximarum rerum et plurimarum suavitate,
copia, varietate. Cicero, _De Orat._, iii. Sec. 30.

[118] _The British Senate_, by James Grant, vol. ii. pp. 88-92.

[119] _Anatomy of Parliament_, November 1840. 'Contemporary Orators,' in
_Fraser's Magazine_.

[120] Lord Lansdowne to Senior (1855), in Mrs. Simpson's _Many
Memories_, p. 226.

[121] Malmesbury, _Memoirs of an Ex-Minister_, i. p. 155.

[122] _Life of Archbishop Benson_, ii. p. 11.

[123] The noble anti-slavery movement must be excepted, for it was very
directly connected with evangelicalism.

[124] Paruta, i. p. 64.

[125] 'Blest statesman he, whose mind's unselfish will'
(1838).--Knight's _Wordsworth_, viii. p. 101.

[126] The first chapter in Sir Henry Taylor's _Notes from Life_ (1847).

[127] Marcus Aurelius, ix. p. 29.

[128] Aristotle, Augustine, Dante, Butler. 'My four "doctors,"' he tells
Manning, 'are doctors to the speculative man; would they were such to
the