to Mr.
Gladstone, and he was fully conscious of the new awkwardness of his
public position. Painful change seemed imminent even in his intimate
relations with cherished friends. Sidney Herbert had written to him that
as for Gladstone, Graham, and himself, they were not only broken up as a
party, but the country intended to break them up and would resent any
attempt at resuscitation; they ought on no account to reappear as a
triumvirate on their old bench. Mr. Gladstone's reply discloses in some
of its phrases a peculiar warmth of sensibility, of which he was not
often wont to make much display:--

_To Sidney Herbert._

_March 22, 1857._--I did not reply to your letter when it arrived,
because it touches principally upon subjects with respect to which
I feel that my mind has been wrought into a state of sensitiveness
which is excessive and morbid. For the last eleven years, with the
exception of only two among them, the pains of political strife
have not for us found their usual and proper compensation in the
genial and extended sympathies of a great body of comrades, while
suspicion, mistrust, and criticism have flanked us on both sides
and in unusual measure. Our one comfort has been a concurrence of
opinion which has been upon the whole remarkably close, and which
has been cemented by the closer bonds of feeling and of friendship.
The loss of this one comfort I have no strength to face. Contrary
to your supposition, I have nothing with which to replace it; but
the attachments, which began with political infancy, and which
have lived through so many storms and so many subtler vicissitudes
will never be replaced. You will never be able to get away from me
as long as I can cling to you, and if at length, urged by your
conscience and deliberate judgment, you effect the operation, the
result will not be to throw me into the staff of Lord Derby. I
shall seek my duty, as well as consult my inclination, first, by
absconding from what may be termed general politics, and secondly,
by appearing, wherever I must appear, only in the ranks.

I can neither give even the most qualified adhesion to the ministry
of Lord Palmerston, nor follow the liberal party in the abandonment
of the very principles and pledges which were original and
principal bonds of union with it. So, on the