Mr. Gladstone in 1842, and five years
later was called to the bar; entering Parliament in 1885, he sat in
succession for Dudley, for Stamford, and for North Devon; under Lord
Derby he was Financial Secretary to the Treasury in 1859, and President
of the Board of Trade in 1866; under Disraeli he was at the India Office
in 1868, and Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1874; he succeeded Disraeli
in the leadership of the Commons, and was raised to the peerage in 1885;
was successively First Lord of the Treasury and Foreign Secretary under
Lord Salisbury; in 1871 Mr. Gladstone appointed him Commissioner in the
settlement of the _Alabama_ claim, and he was elected Lord Hector of
Edinburgh University in 1883; resigning from the Foreign Office in
January 1887, he died suddenly a few days later at the Prime Minister's
residence (1818-1887).

IDEALISM, that view of the universe which, in opposition to
MATERIALISM (q. v.), refers everything to and derives everything
from a spiritual root; is Subjective if traced no further back than the
_ego_, and Objective if traced back to the _non-ego_ likewise, its
counterpart, or other, in the objective world. Idealism in art is art
more or less at work in the region of the ideal in comparative disregard
of the actual.

IDELER, CHRISTIAN LUDWIG, a German astronomer, born in Prussia; an
authority on chronology, on which he wrote a handbook, as also a work on
the reckoning of time among the Chinese (1766-1846).

IDENTICAL NOTE, a term in diplomacy to denote terms agreed upon by
two Powers to coerce a third.

IDES, the name given in the Roman calendar to certain days that
_divide_ the month; in March, May, July, and October they fall on the
15th, in the rest on the 13th.

IDOLATRY, worship paid to a mere symbol of the divine while the
heart is dead to all sense of that which it symbolises; a species of
offence against the Most High, of which many are flagrantly guilty who
affect to regard with pity the worshipper of idols of wood or stone.
"Idolatry," says Buskin, _apropos_ of Carlyle's well-known doctrine, "is
summed up in the one broad wickedness of refusing to worship Force and
resolving to worship No-Force; denying the Almighty, and bowing down to
four-and-twopence with a stamp on it."

IDOMENEUS, king of Crete, grandson of Minos, and a hero of the
Greeks in the war with Troy.

IDRIS, a giant, prince, and astronomer of Welsh tradition, whose
rock-hewn chair on the summit o