be a standard
authority. As a writer he was inferior to Macaulay and Newman, nor had
he the judicial powers of Hallam. He could not be said to have occupied
more than one sphere, that of politics,--here unlike Thiers, Guizot, and
even Lyndhurst and Brougham.

In 1858, however, Gladstone appeared in a new light, and commanded
immediate attention by the publication of his "Studies on Homer and the
Homeric Age,"--a remarkable work in three large octavo volumes, which
called into the controversial field of Greek history a host of critics,
like Mr. Freeman, who yet conceded to Mr. Gladstone wonderful classical
learning, and the more wonderful as he was preoccupied with affairs of
State, and without the supposed leisure for erudite studies. This
learned work entitled him to a high position in another sphere than that
of politics. Guizot wrote learned histories of modern political
movements, but he could not have written so able a treatise as
Gladstone's on the Homeric age. Some advanced German critics took
exceptions to the author's statements about early Greek history; yet it
cannot be questioned that he has thrown a bright if not a new light on
the actors of the siege of Troy and the age when they were supposed to
live. The illustrious author is no agnostic. It is not for want of
knowledge that in some things he is not up to the times, but for a
conservative bent of mind which leads him to distrust destructive
criticism. Gladstone has been content to present the ancient world as
revealed in the Homeric poems, whether Homer lived less than a hundred
years from the heroic deeds described with such inimitable charm, or
whether he did not live at all. He wrote the book not merely to amuse
his leisure hours, but to incite students to a closer study of the works
attributed to him who alone is enrolled with the two other men now
regarded as the greatest of immortal poets. Gladstone's admiration for
Homer is as unbounded as that of German scholars for Dante and
Shakspeare. It is hardly to be supposed that this work on the heroic age
was written during the author's retirement from office; it was probably
the result of his life-studies on Grecian literature, which he pursued
with unusual and genuine enthusiasm. Who among American statesmen or
even scholars are competent to such an undertaking?

Two years after this, in 1860, Mr. Gladstone was elected Lord Rector of
the University of Edinburgh in recognition of his scholarly
attain