here
are others who would willingly see more moderate means adopted.' On
such grounds as these (I do not quote words) he strongly
recommended me to _act_.

II

RETURN TO LONDON

Mr. Gladstone reached London on February 26. Phillimore met him at the
station with Lord Stanley's letter, of which we shall hear in the next
chapter, pressing him to enter the government. 'I was never more
struck,' says Phillimore, 'by the earnestness and simplicity of his
character. He could speak of nothing so readily as the horrors of the
Neapolitan government, of which I verily believe he thought nearly as
much as the prospect of his own accession to one of the highest offices
of state.' He probably thought not only nearly as much, but infinitely
more of those 'scenes fitter for hell than earth,' now many hundred
miles away, but still vividly burning in the haunted chambers of his
wrath and pity. After rapidly despatching the proposal to join the new
cabinet, after making the best he could of the poignant anxieties that
were stirred in him by the unmistakeable signs of the approaching
secession of Hope and Manning, he sought Lord Aberdeen (March 4), and
'found him as always, satisfactory; kind, just, moderate, humane' (to
Mrs. Gladstone, March 4). He had come to London with the intention of
obtaining, if possible, Aberdeen's intervention, in preference to any
other mode of proceeding,[242] and they agreed that private
representation and remonstrance should be tried in the first instance,
as less likely than public action by Mr. Gladstone in parliament, to
rouse international jealousy abroad, or to turn the odious tragedy into
the narrow channels of party at home. Mr. Gladstone, at Lord Aberdeen's
desire, was to submit a statement of the case for his consideration and
judgment.

POSITION OF LORD ABERDEEN

This statement, the first memorable Letter to Lord Aberdeen, was ready
at the beginning of April. The old minister gave it 'mature
consideration' for the best part of a month. His antecedents made him
cautious. Mr. Gladstone, ten years later, admitted that Lord Aberdeen's
views of Italy did not harmonise with what was his general mode of
estimating human action and the world's affairs, and there was a reason
for this in his past career. In very early youth he had been called upon
to deal with the gigantic questions that laid their m