transmigration.
"The oracular sentence," Mr. Gladstone replied, "has little bearing on
present affairs or prospects, and may stand in its proper darkness." In
the same letter the bishop urged Mr. Gladstone to imitate Canning when he
claimed the post of prime minister. "I think," was the reply (July 25)
"that if you had the same means of estimating my position, jointly with my
faculties, as I have, you would be of a different opinion. It is my fixed
determination never to take any step whatever to raise myself to a higher
level in official life, and this not on grounds of Christian self-denial
which would hardly apply, but on the double ground, first, of my total
ignorance of my capacity, bodily or mental, to hold such a higher level,
and, secondly--perhaps I might say especially--because I am certain that the
fact of my seeking it would seal my doom in taking it."(103)

Truly was it said of Mr. Gladstone that his rejection at Oxford, and his
election in Lancashire, were regarded as matters of national importance,
because he was felt to have the promise of the future in him, to have a
living fire in him, a capacity for action, and a belief that moving on was
a national necessity; because he was bold, earnest, impulsive; because he
could sympathise with men of all classes, occupations, interests,
opinions; because he thought nothing done so long as much remained for him
to do. While liberals thus venerated him as if he had been a Moses
beckoning from Sinai towards the promised land, tories were described as
dreading him, ever since his suffrage speech, as continental monarchs
dreaded Mazzini--"a man whose name is at once an alarm, a menace, and a
prediction." They hated him partly as a deserter, partly as a disciple of
Manchester. Throughout the struggle, the phrase "I believe in Mr.
Gladstone" served as the liberal _credo_, and "I distrust Mr. Gladstone"
as the condensed commination service of the tories upon all manner of
change.(104)

V

(M43) On October 18, the prime minister died at Brocket. The news found
Mr. Gladstone at Clumber, in performance of his duties as Newcastle
trustee. For him the event opened many possibilities, and his action upon
it is set out in two or three extracts from his letters:--

_To Lord Russell. Clumber, Oct. 18, 1865._--I have received tonight
by telegraph the appalling news of Lord Palmerston's decease. None
of us, I suppose, were prepared for this event, in the sen