nic forms,
official conventions, social force; it means the charity that is greater
than even faith and hope. Marked is the day for a man when he can truly
say, as Mr. Gladstone here said, "Long, long have I cast those weeds
behind me."

Chapter IX. Defeat At Oxford--Death Of Lord Palmerston--Parliamentary
Leadership. (1865)

In public life a man of elevated mind does not make his own self
tell upon others simply and entirely. He must act with other men;
he cannot select his objects, or pursue them by means
unadulterated by the methods and practices of minds less elevated
than his own. He can only do what he feels to be second-best. He
labours at a venture, prosecuting measures so large or so
complicated that their ultimate issue is uncertain.--CARDINAL
NEWMAN.

I

The faithful steward is a chartered bore alike of the mimic and the
working stage; the rake and spendthrift carries all before him. Nobody
knew better than Mr. Gladstone that of all the parts in public life, the
teasing and economising drudge is the most thankless. The public only half
apprehends, or refuses to apprehend at all; his spending colleagues
naturally fight; colleagues who do not spend, have other business and
prize a quiet life. All this made Mr. Gladstone's invincible tenacity as
guardian of the national accounts the more genuinely heroic. In a long
letter from Balmoral, in the October of 1864, he began what was destined
to be the closing battle of the six years' war. To Mrs. Gladstone he
wrote:--

I have fired off to-day my letter to Lord Palmerston about
expenditure. For a long time, though I did not let myself worry by
needlessly thinking about it, I have had it lying on me like a
nightmare. I mean it to be moderate (I shall have the copy when we
meet to show you), but unless he concurs it may lead to
consequences between this time and February. What is really
painful is to believe that he will not agree unless through
apprehension, his own leanings and desires being in favour of a
large and not a moderate expenditure....

Figures, details, points, were varied, but the issue was in essence the
same, and the end was much the same. Lord Palmerston took his stand on the
demands of public opinion. He insisted (Oct. 19) that anybody who looked
carefully at the signs of the times must see that there were at present
two strong feelings in the national mind-