IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}.

_Iliad_, i. 250.

Two generations of mortal men had he already seen pass away, who
with him of old had been born and bred in sacred Pylos, and among
the third generation he held rule.

I

In 1892 the general election came, after a session that was not very long
nor at all remarkable. Everybody knew that we should soon be dismissed,
and everybody knew that the liberals would have a majority, but the size
of it was beyond prognostication. Mr. Gladstone did not talk much about
it, but in fact he reckoned on winning by eighty or a hundred. A leading
liberal-unionist at whose table we met (May 24) gave us forty. That
afternoon by the way the House had heard a speech of great power and
splendour. An Irish tory peer in the gallery said afterwards, "That old
hero of yours is a miracle. When he set off in that high pitch, I said
that won't last. Yet he kept it up all through as grand as ever, and came
in fresher and stronger than when he began." His sight failed him in
reading an extract, and he asked me to read it for him, so he sat down
amid sympathetic cheers while it was read out from the box.

After listening to a strong and undaunted reply from Mr. Balfour, he asked
me to go with him into the tea-room; he was fresh, unperturbed, and in
high spirits. He told me he had once sat at table with Lord Melbourne, but
regretted that he had never known him. Said that of the sixty men or so
who had been his colleagues in cabinet, the (M175) very easiest and most
attractive was Clarendon. Constantly regretted that he had never met nor
known Sir Walter Scott, as of course he might have done. Thought the
effect of diplomacy to be bad on the character; to train yourself to
practise the airs of genial friendship towards men from whom you are doing
your best to hide yourself, and out of whom you are striving to worm that
which they wish to conceal. Said that he was often asked for advice by
young men as to objects of study. He bade them study and ponder, first,
the history and working of freedom in America; second, the history of
absolutism in France from Louis XIV. to the Revolution. It was suggested
that if the great t