t how that should be distributed. I
will not say that the English are "a nation of shopkeepers;" but I do
say that comparatively small matters occupy the thoughts of men in every
country outside the routine of ordinary duties, and form the staple of
ordinary conversation,--among pedants, the difference between _ac_ and
_et_; among aristocrats, the investigation of pedigrees; in society,
the comparative merits of horses, the movements of well-known persons,
the speed of ocean steamers, boat-races, the dresses of ladies of
fashion, football contests, the last novel, weddings, receptions, the
trials of housekeepers, the claims of rival singers, the gestures and
declamation of favorite play-actors, the platitudes of popular
preachers, the rise and fall of stocks, murders in bar-rooms, robberies
in stores, accidental fires in distant localities,--these and other
innumerable forms of gossip, collected by newspapers and retailed in
drawing-rooms, which have no important bearing on human life or national
welfare or immortal destiny. It is not that the elaborate presentations
of financial details for which Mr. Gladstone was so justly famous were
without importance. I only wonder why they should have had such
overwhelming interest to English legislators and the English public; and
why his statistics should have given him claims to transcendent oratory
and the profoundest statesmanship,--for it is undeniable that his
financial speeches brought him more fame and importance in the House of
Commons than all the others he made during those seven years of
parliamentary gladiatorship. One of these triumphantly carried through
Parliament a commercial reciprocity treaty with France, arranged by Mr.
Cobden; and another, scarcely less notable, repealed the duty on
paper,--a measure of great importance for the facilitation of making
books and cheapening newspapers, but both of which were desperately
opposed by the monopolists and manufacturers.

Some of Mr. Gladstone's other speeches stand on higher ground and are of
permanent value; they will live for the lofty sentiments and the
comprehensive knowledge which marked them,--appealing to the highest
intellect as well as to the hearts of those common people of whom all
nations are chiefly composed. Among these might be mentioned those which
related to Italian affairs, sympathizing with the struggle which the
Italians were making to secure constitutional liberty and the unity of
their nation,--