and
paramount consolation in seeking, as we best can, the truth and the
public interests; and I think it a marked instance of liberality,
that you should give me credit for keeping this object in my view.

My seeking, however, has not on the present occasion been very
difficult. The opinions, such as they are, that I hold on many
questions of government and administration are strongly held; and
although I set a value, and a high value, upon the power which
office gives, I earnestly hope never to be tempted by its exterior
allurements, unless they are accompanied with the reasonable
prospect of giving effect to some at least of those opinions and
with some adequate opening for public good. On the present
occasion I have not seen such a prospect; and before I received
your letter yesterday afternoon I had made my choice.

This ended the first scene of the short fifth act. The new government
was wholly conservative.

II

UNEASINESS OF FRIENDS

Throughout the whole of this period, Mr. Gladstone's political friends
were uneasy about him. 'He writes and says and does too much,' Graham
had told Lord Aberdeen (Dec. 1856), and a year and a half later the same
correspondent notices a restless anxiety for a change of position,
though at Gladstone's age and with his abilities he could not wonder at
it. Mr. Gladstone was now approaching fifty; Graham was nearer seventy
than sixty; and Aberdeen drawing on to seventy-five. One of the most
eminent of his friends confessed that he was 'amazed at a man of
Gladstone's high moral sense of feeling being able to _bear_ with Dizzy.
I can only account for it on the supposition, which I suppose to be the
true one, that personal dislike and distrust of Palmerston is the one
absorbing feeling with him.... I see no good ground for the violent
personal prejudice which is the sole ruling motive of Gladstone's and
Graham's course--especially when the alternative is such a man as
Dizzy.' Then comes some angry language about that enigmatic personage
which at this cooling distance of time need not here be transcribed. At
the end of 1856 Lord Aberdeen told Mr. Gladstone that his position in
the House was 'very peculiar.' 'With an admitted superiority of
character and intellectual power above any other member, I fear that you
do not really possess the sympathy of the House