se of
having communicated as to what should follow. The Queen must take
the first step, but I cannot feel uncertain what it will be. Your
former place as her minister, your powers, experience, services,
and renown, do not leave reason for doubt that you will be sent
for. Your hands will be entirely free--you are pledged probably to
no one, certainly not to me. But any government now to be formed
cannot be wholly a continuation, it must be in some degree a new
commencement.

I am sore with conflicts about the public expenditure, which I
feel that other men would have either escaped, or have conducted
more gently and less fretfully. I am most willing to retire. On
the other hand, I am bound by conviction even more than by credit
to the principle of progressive reduction in our military and
naval establishments and in the charges for them, under the
favourable circumstances which we appear to enjoy. This I think is
the moment to say thus much in subject matter which greatly
appertains to my department. On the general field of politics,
after having known your course in cabinet for eight and a half
years, I am quite willing to take my chance under your banner, in
the exact capacity I now fill, and I adopt the step, perhaps a
little unusual, of saying so, because it may be convenient to you
at a juncture when time is precious, while it can, I trust, after
what I have said above, hardly be hurtful.

_To Mr. Panizzi, Oct. 18._--_Ei fu!_(105) Death has indeed laid low
the most towering antlers in all the forest. No man in England
will more sincerely mourn Lord Palmerston than you. Your warm
heart, your long and close friendship with him, and your sense of
all he had said and done for Italy, all so bound you to him that
you will deeply feel this loss; as for myself I am stunned. It was
plain that this would come; but sufficient unto the day is the
burden thereof, and there is no surplus stock of energy in the
mind to face, far less to anticipate, fresh contingencies. But I
need not speak of this great event--to-morrow all England will be
ringing of it, and the world will echo England. I cannot forecast
the changes which will follow; but it is easy to see what the
first step should be.

_To Mrs. Gladstone, Oct. 20._--I received two letters from you
today together. The first, v