mighty Bay resounding under our windows at Biarritz soon
after midnight.

The long day's journey left no signs of fatigue on either Mr. or Mrs.
Gladstone, and his only regret was that we had not come straight through
instead of staying a night in Paris. I'm always for going straight on, he
said. For some odd reason in spite of the late hour he was full of stories
of American humour, which he told with extraordinary verve and enjoyment.
I contributed one that amused him much, of the Bostonian who, having read
Shakespeare for the first time, observed, "I call that a very clever book.
Now, I don't suppose there are twenty men in Boston to-day who could have
written that book!"

_Thursday, Dec. 17._--Splendid morning for making acquaintance with a new
place. Saw the western spur of the Pyrenees falling down to the Bidassoa
and the first glimpse of the giant wall, beyond which, according to
Michelet, Africa begins, and our first glimpse of Spain.

After breakfast we all sallied forth to look into the shops and to see the
lie of the land. Mr. G. as interested as a child in all the objects in the
shops--many of them showing that we are not far from Spain. The consul very
polite, showed us about, and told us the hundred trifles that bring a
place really into one's mind. Nothing is like a first morning's stroll in
a foreign town. By afternoon the spell dissolves, and the mood comes of
Dante's lines, "_Era gia l'ora_," etc.(288)

Some mention was made of Charles Austin, the famous lawyer: it brought up
the case of men who are suddenly torn from lives of great activity to
complete idleness.

_Mr. G._--I don't know how to reconcile it with what I've always regarded
as the foundation of character--Bishop Butler's view of habit. How comes it
that during the hundreds of years in which priests and fellows of Eton
College have retired from hard work to college livings and leisure, not
one of them has ever done anything whatever for either scholarship or
divinity--not one?

Mr. G. did not know Mazzini, but Armellini, another of the Roman
triumvirs, taught him Italian in 1832. (M163) I spoke a word for Gambetta,
but he would not have it. "Gambetta was _autoritaire_; I do not feel as if
he were a true liberal in the old and best sense. I cannot forget how
hostile he was to the movement for freedom in the Balkans."

Said he only once saw Lord Liverpool. He went to call on Canning at
Glos'ter House (close to our Glos'ter Road Station