lour throughout. Those who had at the beginning of
his career discerned in him the capacity for such diversities and
contradictions would probably have predicted that they must wreck
it by making his purposes fluctuating and his course erratic. Such
a prediction might have proved true of any one with less firmness of
will and less intensity of temper. It was the persistent heat and
vehemence of his character, the sustained passion which he threw
into the pursuit of the object on which he was for the moment bent,
that fused these dissimilar qualities and made them appear to
contribute to and increase the total force which he exerted.

The circumstances of Mr. Gladstone's political career help to explain,
or, at any rate, will furnish occasion for the attempt to explain,
this complexity and variety of character. But before I come to his
manhood it is convenient to advert to three conditions whose influence
on him was profound--the first his Scottish blood, the second his
Oxford education, the third his apprenticeship to public life under
Sir Robert Peel.

Theories of character based on race differences are dangerous, because
they are as hard to test as they are easy to form. Still, we all know
that there are specific qualities and tendencies usually found in the
minds of men of certain stocks, just as there are peculiarities in
their faces or in their speech. Mr. Gladstone was born and brought up
in Liverpool, and always retained a touch of Lancashire accent. But,
as he was fond of saying, every drop of blood in his veins was Scotch.
His father's family belonged to the Scottish Lowlands, and came from
the neighbourhood of Biggar, in the Upper Ward of Lanarkshire, where
the ruined walls of Gledstanes[63]--"the kite's rock"--may still be
seen. His mother was of Highland extraction, by name Robertson, from
Dingwall, in Ross-shire. Thus he was not only a Scot, but a Scot with
a strong infusion of the Celtic element, the element whence the Scotch
derive most of what distinguishes them from the northern English. The
Scot is more excitable, more easily brought to a glow of passion, more
apt to be eagerly absorbed in one thing at a time. He is also more
fond of exerting his intellect on abstractions. It is not merely that
the taste for metaphysical theology is commoner in Scotland than in
England, but that the Scotch have a stronger relish for general
principles. They like to set out by ascertaining and defining such
principles