ir
school. Otherwise, flags, bands, suppers, processions, all went on in
high ceremonial order as before. Day after day passed with nothing worse
than the threat of a blue candidate, but one Sunday morning (June 26) as
people came out of church, they found an address on the walls and a dark
rumour got afloat that the new man had brought heavy bags of money. For
this rumour there was no foundation, but it inspired annoying fears in
the good and cheerful hopes in the bad. The time was in any case too
short, and at four o'clock on June 29 the poll was found to be,
Gladstone 633, Manners 630, Hobhouse 391. His own election safely over,
Mr. Gladstone turned to take part in a fierce contest in which Sir
Stephen Glynne was candidate for the representation of Flintshire, but
'bribery, faggotry, abduction, personation, riot, factious delays,
landlord's intimidations, partiality of authorities,' carried the day,
and to the bitter dismay of Hawarden, Sir Stephen was narrowly beaten.
One ancient dame, overwhelmed by the defeat of the family that for
eighty years she had idolised, cried aloud to Mrs. Gladstone, 'I am a
great woman for thinking of the Lord, but O, my dear lady, this has put
it all out of my head.' The election involved him in what would now be
thought a whimsical correspondence with one of the Grosvenor family, who
complained of Mr. Gladstone for violating the sacred canons of
electioneering etiquette by canvassing Lord Westminster's tenants. 'I
did think,' says the wounded patrician, 'that interference between a
landlord with whose opinions you were acquainted and his tenants was not
justifiable according to those laws of delicacy and propriety which I
considered binding in such cases.'

ELECTION OF 1841

At last he was able to snatch a holiday with his wife and child by the
seaside at Hoylake, which rather oddly struck him as being like Paestum
without the temples. He read away at Gibbon and Dante until he went to
Hawarden, partly to consider the state of its financial affairs; as to
these something is to be said later. 'Walked alone in the Hawarden
grounds,' he says one day during his stay; 'ruminated on the last-named
subject [accounts], also on anticipated changes [in government]. I can
digest the crippled religious action of the state; but I cannot be a
party to exacting by blood opium compensation from the Chinese.' Then to
London (Aug. 18). He attended the select party meetings at S