will enable him to estimate, with some impartiality, future
political changes, and he is certainly under the impression that,
partly from the present composition and temper of the liberal
party, and still more, and even much more, from the changes which
the conservative party has been undergoing during the last forty
years (especially the last ten or fifteen of them), the next
change of government may possibly form the introduction to a
period presenting some new features, and may mean more than what
is usually implied in the transfer of power from one party to
another.

Mr. Bright has left a note of a meeting with him at this time:--

_March 2, 1885._--Dined with Mrs. Gladstone. After dinner, sat for
half an hour or more with Mr. Gladstone, who is ill with cold and
hoarseness. Long talk on Egypt. He said he had suffered torment
during the continuance of the difficulty in that country. The
sending Gordon out a great mistake,--a man totally unsuited for the
work he undertook. Mr. Gladstone never saw Gordon. He was
appointed by ministers in town, and Gladstone concurred, but had
never seen him.

At this moment clouds began to darken the remote horizon on the north-west
boundary of our great Indian possessions. The entanglement in the deserts
of the Soudan was an obvious temptation to any other Power with policies
of its own, to disregard the susceptibilities or even the solid interests
of Great Britain. As we shall see, Mr. Gladstone was as little disposed as
Chatham or Palmerston to shrink from the defence of the legitimate rights
or obligations of his country. But the action of Russia in Afghanistan
became an added and rather poignant anxiety.

As early as March 12 the cabinet found it necessary to consider the
menacing look of things on the Afghan frontier. Military necessities in
India, as Mr. Gladstone described to the Queen what was in the mind of her
ministers, "might conceivably at this juncture come to overrule the
present intentions as to the Soudan as part of them, and it would
consequently be imprudent to do anything which could practically extend
our obligations in that quarter; as it is the entanglement of the British
forces in Soudanese operations, which would most powerfully tempt Russia
to adopt aggressive measures." Three or four weeks later these
considerations came to a head. The question put by Mr. Gladstone to his
colle