on, counsel, and dependence,
in which I have now for from fifteen to eighteen years lived with
them both.... My intellect does deliberately reject the grounds on
which Manning has proceeded. Indeed they are such as go far to
destroy my confidence, which was once and far too long at the
highest point, in the healthiness and soundness of his. To show
that at any rate this is not from the mere change he has made, I
may add, that my conversations with Hope have not left any
corresponding impression upon my mind with regard to him.

A wider breach was this same year made in his inmost circle. In April of
the year before a little daughter, between four and five years old, had
died, and was buried at Fasque. The illness was long and painful, and
Mr. Gladstone bore his part in the nursing and watching. He was tenderly
fond of his little children, and the sorrow had a peculiar bitterness.
It was the first time that death entered his married home.

When he returned to Fasque in the autumn he found that his father had
taken 'a decided step, nay a stride, in old age'; not having lost any of
his interest in politics, but grown quite mild. The old man was nearing
his eighty-seventh year. 'The very wreck of his powerful and simple
nature is full of grandeur.... Mischief is at work upon his brain--that
indefatigable brain which has had to stand all the wear and pressure of
his long life.' In the spring of 1851 he finds him 'very like a spent
cannon-ball, with a great and sometimes almost frightful energy
remaining in him: though weak in comparison with what he was, he hits a
very hard knock to those who come across him.' When December came, the
veteran was taken seriously ill, and the hope disappeared of seeing him
even reach his eighty-seventh birthday (Dec. 11). On the 7th he died. As
Mr. Gladstone wrote to Phillimore, 'though with little left either of
sight or hearing, and only able to walk from one room to another or to
his brougham for a short drive, though his memory was gone, his hold
upon language even for common purposes imperfect, the reasoning power
much decayed, and even his perception of personality rather indistinct,
yet so much remained about him as one of the most manful, energetic,
affectionate, and simple-hearted among human beings, that he still
filled a great space to the eye, mind, and heart, and a great space is
accordingly left void by his withdrawal.' 'The death of my fat