too petty for his notice and intervention; in short, he tries
to do not only his own work, but everybody else's.

[Sidenote: His justification.]

I have once or twice gently suggested that I thought the G.O.M. might
leave a little more to his subordinates, and spare that frame and mind
which bears the Atlantean burden of the Home Rule struggle. But Mr.
Gladstone is able to unexpectedly justify himself when his friends are
crying out in remonstrance; and it is, too, one of the peculiarities of
this extraordinary portent of a man--extraordinary physically as much as
mentally--that the more he works, the fresher and happier he seems to
be. If you see him peculiarly light-hearted; if he be gesticulating with
broad and generous sweep on the Treasury Bench; if he be whispering to
Sir William Harcourt, and then talking almost aloud to Mr. John
Morley--above all, if he be ready to meet all comers, you may be quite
sure that he has just delivered a couple of rattling and lengthy
speeches, in which, with his deadly skill and perfect temper, he has
devastated the whole army of false arguments with which his opponents
have invaded him. So, for instance, it was on March 28th. It was noticed
that he was not in the House for some hours during the discussion of the
Vote on Account. But, as evening approached, there he was in his
place--fresh, smiling, happy, every limb moving with all the alertness
of auroral youth. In the interval between his first appearance in the
House and then later, he had delivered two lengthy speeches to two
deputations of deadly foes; but he came down after this exertion just as
if he had been playing a game of cricket, and had taken enough physical
exercise to bring blitheness to his spirits and alacrity to his limbs.

[Sidenote: His unending progress.]

And then the best of it all is that Mr. Gladstone justifies his
speech-making by improving every hour. It would scarcely seem credible
that a man with more than half-a-century of speech-making and triumphs
behind him would have been capable of making any change, and especially
of making a change for the better. But the peculiarity of Mr. Gladstone
is that even as a speaker he grows and improves every day. I have been
watching him closely now for some sixteen years in the House of Commons,
and I thought that it was impossible for him to ever reach again the
triumphs of some of his utterances. I have heard people say, too, that
they felt it pathetic to hear