the estimate of mere pleasure and pain, the representation
of the university is not worth my having; for though the account is long
on both sides, the latter is the heavier, and sharper. In the true
estimates of good and evil, I can look back upon the last twelve years
with some satisfaction, first, because I feel that as far as I am
capable of labouring for anything, I have laboured for Oxford; and
secondly, because in this respect at least I have been happy, that the
times afforded me in various ways a field. And even as to the
contemptible summing up between suffering and enjoyment, my belief is
that the latter will endure, while the former will pass away.' The
balance struck in this last sentence is a characteristic fragment of Mr.
Gladstone's philosophy of public life. It lightened and dispelled the
inevitable hours of disappointment and chagrin that, in natures of less
lofty fortitude than his, are apt to slacken the nerve and rust the
sword.

III

PARTY SEVERANCE, NOT CHANGED PRINCIPLES

It seems a mistake to treat the acceptance of office under Lord
Palmerston as a chief landmark in Mr. Gladstone's protracted journey
from tory to liberal. The dilemma between joining Derby and joining
Palmerston was no vital choice between two political creeds. The new
prime minister and his chancellor of the exchequer had both of them
started with Canning for their common master; but there was a generation
between them, and Mr. Gladstone had travelled along a road of his own,
perhaps not even now perceiving its goal. As we have seen, he told Mr.
Walpole in May 1858 (p. 584), that there were 'no broad and palpable
differences of opinion on public questions of principle,' that separated
himself from the Derbyite tories.[392] Palmerston on the other hand was
so much of a Derbyite tory, that his government, which Mr. Gladstone was
now entering, owed its long spell of office and power to the countenance
of Derby and his men. Mr. Bright had contemplated (p. 579) the
possibility of a reverse process--a Derbyite government favoured by
Palmerston's men. In either case, the political identity of the two
leaders was recognised. To join the new administration, then, marked a
party severance but no changed principles. I am far from denying the
enormous significance of the party wrench, but it was not a conversion.
Mr. Gladstone was at this time in his politics a liberal reformer of
Tur