ather and
even Peel had furnished him, he would have been left helpless and
useless in the days stretching before him. The second point is that the
orator of Mr. Gladstone's commanding school exists by virtue of large
and intense expression; then if circumstances make him as vehement for
one opinion to-day as he was vehement for what the world regards as a
conflicting opinion yesterday, his intellectual self-respect naturally
prompts him to insist that the opinions do not really clash, but are in
fact identical. You may call this a weakness if you choose, and it
certainly involved Mr. Gladstone in much unfruitful and not very
edifying exertion; but it is at any rate better than the front of brass
that takes any change of opinion for matter-of-course expedient, as to
which the least said will be soonest mended. And it is better still than
the disastrous self-consciousness that makes a man persist in a foolish
thing to-day, because he chanced to say or do a foolish thing yesterday.

VIII

MINOR MORALS

In this period of his life, with the battle of the world still to come,
Mr. Gladstone to whose grave temperament everything, little or great,
was matter of deliberate reflection, of duty and scruple, took early
note of minor morals as well as major. Characteristically he found some
fault with a sermon of Dr. Wordsworth's upon Saint Barnabas, for

hardly pushing the argument for the connection of good manners with
Christianity to the full extent of which it is fairly capable. The
whole system of legitimate courtesy, politeness, and refinement is
surely nothing less than one of the genuine though minor and often
unacknowledged results of the gospel scheme. All the great moral
qualities or graces, which in their large sphere determine the
formation and habits of the Christian soul as before God, do also
on a smaller scale apply to the very same principles in the common
intercourse of life, and pervade its innumerable and separately
inappreciable particulars; and the result of this application is
that good breeding which distinguishes Christian civilisation.
(March 31, 1844.)

It is not for us to discuss whether the breeding of Plato or Cicero or
the Arabs of Cordova was better or worse than the breeding of the
eastern bishops at Nicaea or Ephesus. Good manners, we may be sure,
hardly have a singl