questions till, tested in some difficult point in theology, the
candidate exclaimed, "Not yet, if you please" and began to pour forth a
fresh store of learning and argument.

From the university Mr. Gladstone carried away two passions--the one for
Greek literature, especially Greek poetry, the other for Christian
theology. The Oxford that formed these tastes was intensely conservative
in politics, representing the aristocratic system of English society and
the exclusiveness of the Established Church, whose creed was that of the
fourth century. Ecclesiasticism is not friendly to literature; but how
far Oxford's most loyal son was permeated by ecclesiasticism is a matter
of opinion. Fortunately, personality is stronger than dogma, and ideas
than literary form; and Mr. Gladstone, than whom few men outside the
profession of letters have written more, is always sure of an
intelligent hearing. His discussion of a subject seems to invest it with
some of his own marvelous vitality; and when he selects a book for
review, he is said to make the fortune of both publisher and author, if
only the title be used as a crotchet to hang his sermon on.

And this not merely because curiosity is excited concerning the opinion
of the greatest living Englishman (for notwithstanding his political
vacillations, his views on inward and higher subjects have little
changed since his Oxford days, and may easily be prognosticated), but on
account of the subtlety and fertility of his mind and the adroitness of
his argument. Plunging into the heart of the subject, he is at the same
time working round it, holding it up for inspection in one light and
then in another, reasoning from this premise and that; while the string
of elucidations and explanations grows longer and longer, and the
atmosphere of complexity thickens. It was out of such an atmosphere that
a barrister advised his client, a bigamist, to get Mr. Gladstone to
explain away one of his wives.

When Mr. Gladstone made his debut as an author, he locked horns with
Macaulay in the characteristic paper 'Church and State' (1837). He
published his 'Studies in Homer and the Homeric Age' in 1858, 'Juventus
Mundi' in 1869, 'Homeric Synchronism' in 1857. In 1879 most of his
essays, political, social, economic, religious, and literary, written
between 1843 and 1879, were collected in seven volumes, and appeared
under the title of 'Gleanings of Past Years.' He has published a very
great number of smal