st Turkey with a
zeal which in his prime he had never excelled, if, indeed, he had
equalled it. On Christmas Day, 1876, he wrote in his diary--"The most
solemn I have known for long; I see that eastward sky of storm and of
underlight!" When Parliament met in February, 1877, he was ready with
all his unequalled resources of eloquence, argumentation, and
inconvenient enquiry, to drive home his great indictment against the
Turkish Government and its champion, Disraeli, who had now become Lord
Beaconsfield. For three arduous years he sustained the strife with a
versatility, a courage, and a resourcefulness, which raised the
enthusiasm of his followers to the highest pitch, and filled his
antagonists with a rage akin to frenzy. I well remember that in July,
1878, just after Lord Beaconsfield's triumphant return from Berlin, a
lady asked me as a special favour to dine with her: "Because I have got
the Gladstones coming, and everyone declines to meet him." Strange, but
true.

1878 was perhaps the most critical year of the Eastern question. Russia
and Turkey were at death-grips, and Lord Beaconsfield seemed determined
to commit this country to a war in defence of the Mahomedan Power, which
for centuries has persecuted the worshippers of Christ in the East of
Europe. By frustrating the sinister design Gladstone saved England from
the indelible disgrace of a second Crimea. But it was not only in
Eastern Europe that he played the hero's part. In Africa, and India, and
wherever British arms were exercised and British honour was involved, he
dealt his resounding blows at that odious system of bluster and swagger
and might against right, on which the Prime Minister and his colleagues
bestowed the tawdry nickname of Imperialism. In his own phrase he
devoted himself to "counterworking the purpose of Lord Beaconsfield,"
and all that was ardent and enthusiastic and adventurous in Liberalism
flocked to his standard.

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven."

One could not stand aloof--the call to arms was too imperious. We saw
our Leader contending single-handed with "the obscene empires of Mammon
and Belial," and we longed to be at his side in the thick of the fight.
To a man born and circumstanced as I was the call came with peculiar
power. I had the love of Freedom in my blood. I had been trained to
believe in and to serve the Liberal cause. I was incessantly reminded of
the verse, whi