d to take a lesson from
the private soldier who gives his life to his country at a shilling
a day.

'We are on our way back,' he writes at the end of September, 'after a
month of sea-bathing and touring among the Welsh mountains. Most of my
time is taken up with Homer and Homeric literature, in which I am
immersed with great delight up to my ears; perhaps I should say out of
my depth.' Mr. Gladstone was one of the men whom the agitations of
politics can never submerge. Political interests were what they ought to
be, a very serious part of life; but they took their place with other
things, and were never suffered, as in narrower natures sometimes
happens, to blot out 'stars and orbs of sun and moon' from the spacious
firmament above us. He now found a shelter from the intensity of the
times in the systematic production of his book on Homer, a striking
piece of literature that became the most definite of his pursuits for
two years or more. His children observed that he never lounged or
strolled upon the shore, but when the morning's labour was over--and
nothing was ever allowed to break or mutilate the daily spell of serious
work--he would stride forth staff in hand, and vigorously breast the
steepest bluffs and hills that he could find. This was only emblematic
of a temperament to which the putting forth of power was both necessity
and delight. The only rest he ever knew was change of effort.

While he was on the Welsh coast Sebastopol fell, after a siege of three
hundred and fifty days. Negotiations for peace were opened tolerably
soon afterwards, ending, after many checks and diplomatic difficulties,
in the Treaty of Paris (March 30, 1856), as to which I need only remind
the reader, with a view to a future incident in Mr. Gladstone's history,
that the Black Sea was neutralised, and all warships of every nation
excluded from its waters. Three hundred thousand men had perished.
Countless treasure had been flung into the abyss. The nation that had
won its last victory at Waterloo did not now enhance the glory of its
arms, nor the power of its diplomacy, nor the strength of any of its
material interests. It was our French ally who profited. The integrity
of Turkey was so ill confirmed that even at the Congress of Paris the
question of the Danubian Principalities was raised in a form that in a
couple of years reduced Turkish rule over six millions of her subjects
to the shadow of smoke. Of the confidently promise