to believe that we have now _some_ prospect of
surviving the Reform bill without a bloody revolution, is to me as
surprising as delightful; it seems to me the greatest and most
providential mercy with which a nation was ever visited.... To-day I am
going to dine with the lord chancellor [Lyndhurst], having received a
card to that effect last night.'

It was at this dinner that Mr. Gladstone had his first opportunity of
making a remarkable acquaintance. In his diary he mentions as present
three of the judges, the flower of the bench, as he supposes, but he
says not a word of the man of the strangest destiny there, the author of
_Vivian Grey_. Disraeli himself, in a letter to his sister, names 'young
Gladstone,' and others, but condemns the feast as rather dull, and
declares that a swan very white and tender, and stuffed with truffles,
was the best company at the table. What Mr. Gladstone carried away in
his memory was a sage lesson of Lyndhurst's, by which the two men of
genius at his table were in time to show themselves extremely competent
to profit,--'Never defend yourself before a popular assemblage, except
with and by retorting the attack; the hearers, in the pleasure which
the assault gives them, will forget the previous charge.' As Disraeli
himself put it afterwards, _Never complain and never explain._

II

CHANGE OF OFFICE

One afternoon, a few days later, while he was grappling at the treasury
with a file of papers on the mysteries of superannuation, Mr. Gladstone
was again summoned by the prime minister, and again (Jan. 26) he writes
to his father:--

I have had an important interview with Sir R. Peel, the result of
which is that I am to be under-secretary for the colonies. I will
give you a hurried and imperfect sketch of the conversation. He
began by saying he was about to make a great sacrifice both of his
own feelings and convenience, but that what he had to say he hoped
would be gratifying to me, as a mark of his confidence and regard.
'I am going to propose to you, Gladstone, that you should be, for
you know Wortley has lost his election, under-secretary of state
for the colonies, and I give you my word that I do not know six
offices which are at this moment of greater importance than that to
which is attached the representation of the colonial department in
the House of Com