were also my political friends. How
it speaks to me 'Be doing, and be done.' "

_To Mrs. Gladstone._

_Oct. 19._--Dr. Kingsley sent me a telegram to inform me of the sad
event at Clumber; but it only arrived two hours before the papers,
though the death happened last night. So that brave heart has at
last ceased to beat. Certainly in him more than in any one I have
known, was exhibited the character of our life as a dispensation
of pain. This must ever be a mystery, for we cannot see the
working-out of the purposes of God. Yet in his case I have always
thought some glimpse of them seemed to be permitted. It is well to
be permitted also to believe that he is now at rest for ever, and
that the cloud is at length removed from his destiny.

_Clumber, Oct. 26._--It is a time and a place to feel, if one could
feel. He died in the room where we have been sitting before and
after dinner--where, thirty-two years ago, a stripling, I came over
from Newark in fear and trembling to see the duke, his father;
where a stiff horseshoe semi-circle then sat round the fire in
evenings; where that rigour melted away in Lady Lincoln's time;
where she and her mother sang so beautifully at the pianoforte, in
the same place where it now stands. The house is full of local
memories.

IV

On July 6 (1865) parliament was dissolved. Four years before, Mr.
Gladstone had considered the question of retaining or abandoning the seat
for the university. It was in contemplation to give a third member to the
southern division of Lancashire, and, in July 1861, he received a
requisition begging his assent to nomination there, signed by nearly 8000
of the electors--a number that seemed to make success certain. His letters
to Dr. Pusey and others show how strongly he inclined to comply. Flesh and
blood shrank from perpetual strife, he thought, and after four contested
elections in fourteen years at Oxford, he asked himself whether he should
not escape the prolongation of the series. He saw, as he said, that they
meant to make it a life-battle, like the old famous college war between
Bentley and the fellows of Trinity. But he felt his deep obligation to his
Oxford supporters, and was honourably constrained again to bear their
flag. In the same month of 1861 he had declined absolutely to stand for
London in the place of Lord John Russell.

At Oxford the tories this time