's _Life of Scott_. Then Hope found that his father-in-law's own
abridgment was unknown; and (1871) asks Mr. Gladstone's leave to
dedicate a reprint of it to him as 'one among those who think that Scott
still deserves to be remembered, not as an author only, but as a noble
and vigorous man.'

[240] From 1853 to 1861 they did not correspond nor did they even meet.

CHAPTER VI

NAPLES

(_1850-1851_)

It would be amusing, if the misfortunes of mankind ever could be
so, to hear the pretensions of the government here [Naples] to
mildness and clemency, because it does not put men to death, and
confines itself to leaving six or seven thousand state prisoners to
perish in dungeons. I am ready to believe that the king of Naples
is naturally mild and kindly, but he is afraid, and the worst of
all tyrannies is the tyranny of cowards.--TOCQUEVILLE [1850].

In the autumn of 1850, with the object of benefiting the eyesight of one
of their daughters, the Gladstones made a journey to southern Italy, and
an eventful journey it proved. For Italy it was, that now first drew Mr.
Gladstone by the native ardour of his humanity, unconsciously and
involuntarily, into that great European stream of liberalism which was
destined to carry him so far. Two deep principles, sentiments,
aspirations, forces, call them what we will, awoke the huge uprisings
that shook Europe in 1848--the principle of Liberty, the sentiment of
Nationality. Mr. Gladstone, slowly and almost blindly heaving off his
shoulders the weight of old conservative tradition, did not at first go
beyond liberty, with all that ordered liberty conveys. Nationality
penetrated later, and then indeed it penetrated to the heart's core. He
went to Naples with no purposes of political propagandism, and his
prepossessions were at that time pretty strongly in favour of
established governments, either at Naples or anywhere else. The case had
doubtless been opened to him by Panizzi--a man as Mr. Gladstone
described him, 'of warm, large, and free nature, an accomplished man of
letters, and a victim of political persecution, who came to this country
a nearly starving refugee.' But Panizzi had certainly made no great
revolutionist of him. His opinions, as he told Lord Aberdeen, were the
involuntary and unexpected result of his sojourn.

He had nothing to do with