r. Gladstone's memorandum of August, and no doubt conveyed the
impression that it had made upon her own mind. Later correspondence
between her secretary and the Duke of Richmond set up a salutary ferment
in what had not been at first a very promising quarter.

Meanwhile Mr. Gladstone was hard at work in other directions. He was
urgent (Oct. 2) that Lord Granville should make every effort to bring more
peers into the fold to save the bill when it reappeared in the autumn
session. He had himself "garnered in a rich harvest" of bishops in July.
On previous occasions he had plied the episcopal bench with political
appeals, and this time he wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury:--

_July 2, 1884._--I should have felt repugnance and scruple about
addressing your Grace at any time on any subject of a political
nature, if it were confined within the ordinary limits of such
subjects. But it seems impossible to refuse credit to the
accounts, which assure us that the peers of the opposition, under
Lord Salisbury and his coadjutors, are determined to use all their
strength and influence for the purpose of throwing out the
Franchise bill in the House of Lords; and thus of entering upon a
conflict with the House of Commons, from which at each step in the
proceeding it may probably become more difficult to retire, and
which, if left to its natural course, will probably develop itself
into a constitutional crisis of such an order, as has not occurred
since 1832....

To Tennyson, the possessor of a spiritual power even more than
archiepiscopal, who had now a place among peers temporal, he addressed a
remonstrance (July 6):--

... Upon consideration I cannot help writing a line, for I must
hope you will reconsider your intention. The best mode in which I
can support a suggestion seemingly so audacious is by informing
you, that all sober-minded conservative peers are in great dismay
at this wild proceeding of Lord Salisbury; that the ultra-radicals
and Parnellites, on the other hand, are in a state of glee, as
they believe, and with good reason, that the battle once begun
will end in some great humiliation to the House of Lords, or some
important change in its composition. That (to my knowledge)
various bishops of conservative leanings are, on this account,
going to vote with the government--as may be the case with lay
peers also.