above the middle height,
and both clothed in a suit of clothes the exact counterpart of each
other in make, shape, and colour. There was a dominant and almost
monotonous grey in their appearance; but there was little of grey in
their looks. When at once there burst from the Tory and Unionists
Benches a loud, wild, prolonged huzzah, it was seen that this theatrical
little entrance at one and the same time of Joe and Mr. Balfour, was
their method of accentuating the Tory triumph in Linlithgow. The two
gentlemen seen entering together separated as they walked up the
floor--the Tory going to his place on the front Opposition Bench, the
Unionist to his corner seat on the Liberal side. It was a very skilfully
arranged bit of business, though there were critics who thought its
histrionic element a little out of place in the sombre and solemn
realities of public life, and a great national controversy. In the midst
of it all I looked at Mr. Gladstone. It is in such moments that you are
able to get a glimpse into all the great depths of this extraordinary
nature. And I have written more than once in these columns that the
greatest of all his characteristics is composure. This mighty, restless,
fiery fighter against wrong--this stalwart and unconquerable wrestler
for right, this Titan--I might even say this Don Quixote--who has gone
out with spear and sword to assault the most strongly-entrenched
citadels of human wrongs--who has faced a world in arms--this man has,
after all, at the centre of his existence, and in the depths of his
nature, a gospel which sustains him in the hours of defeat and gloom,
and makes him one of the most restless of combatants, and the most
tranquil.

[Sidenote: The grand old philosopher.]

Devotional, almost pietistic, introspective, accustomed, I have no
doubt, from that early training of domestic piety and sacerdotal
surroundings, to see all this gay, vast phantasmagoria of life the
antechamber to a greater, more enduring, and better world beyond those
voices, Mr. Gladstone--at least that is my reading of his
character--looks at everything in human existence with the power of
self-detachment from its garish moments and its transient interests.
Behind this constant warfare, underneath all this public passion and
sweeping resolves, there is a nether and unseen world of thought,
emotion, hope, and in that world there is ever calm. It is a tabernacle
in his soul where only holy thoughts may enter. Outsi