h your Majesty has been pleased to intrust to him. His
desire to make this surrender is accompanied with a grateful sense
of the condescending kindnesses, which your Majesty has graciously
shown him on so many occasions during the various periods for
which he has had the honour to serve your Majesty. Mr. Gladstone
will not needlessly burden your Majesty with a recital of
particulars. He may, however, say that although at eighty-four
years of age he is sensible of a diminished capacity for prolonged
labour, this is not of itself such as would justify his praying to
be relieved from the restraints and exigencies of official life.
But his deafness has become in parliament, and even in the
cabinet, a serious inconvenience, of which he must reckon on more
progressive increase. More grave than this, and more rapid in its
growth, is the obstruction of vision which arises from cataract in
both his eyes. It has cut him off in substance from the
newspapers, and from all except the best types in the best lights,
while even as to these he cannot master them with that ordinary
facility and despatch which he deems absolutely required for the
due despatch of his public duties. In other respects than reading
the operation of the complaint is not as yet so serious, but this
one he deems to be vital. Accordingly he brings together these two
facts, the condition of his sight and hearing, and the break in
the course of public affairs brought about in the ordinary way by
the close of the session. He has therefore felt that this is the
fitting opportunity for the resignation which by this letter he
humbly prays your Majesty to accept.

In the course of the day the Queen wrote what I take to be her last letter
to him:--

_Windsor Castle, March 3, 1894._--Though the Queen has already
accepted Mr. Gladstone's resignation, and has taken leave of him,
she does not like to leave his letter tendering his resignation
unanswered. She therefore writes these few lines to say that she
thinks that after so many years of arduous labour and
responsibility he is right in wishing to be relieved at his age of
these arduous duties. And she trusts he will be able to enjoy
peace and quiet with his excellent and devoted wife in health and
happiness, and that his eyesight may improve.

The Queen would gladly have confer