ftly
with gentle steerage.... And herein we have from our own nature a
great lesson of suavity; for in such a death as this there is no
grief nor any bitterness: but as a ripe apple is lightly and
without violence loosened from its branch, so our soul without
grieving departs from the body in which it hath been.--DANTE,
_Convito_.(308)

I

After the first wrench was over, and an end had come to the demands,
pursuits, duties, glories, of powerful and active station held for a long
lifetime, Mr. Gladstone soon settled to the new conditions of his
existence, knowing that for him all that could be left was, in the figure
of his great Italian poet,"to lower sails and gather in his ropes."(309)
He was not much in London, and when he came he stayed in the pleasant
retreat to which his affectionate and ever-attached friends, Lord and Lady
Aberdeen, so often invited him at Dollis Hill. Much against his will, he
did not resign his seat in the House, and he held it until the dissolution
of 1895.(310) In June (1895) he took a final cruise in one of Sir Donald
Currie's ships, visiting Hamburg, the new North Sea canal, and Copenhagen
once more. His injured sight was a far deadlier breach in the habit of his
days than withdrawal from office or from parliament. His own tranquil
words written in the year in which he laid down his part in the shows of
the world's huge stage, tell the story:--

_July 25, 1894._--For the first time in my life there has been
given to me by the providence of God a period of comparative
leisure, reckoning at the present date to four and a half months.
Such a period drives the mind in upon itself, and invites, almost
constrains, to recollection, and the rendering at least internally
an account of life; further it lays the basis of a habit of
meditation, to the formation of which the course of my existence,
packed and crammed with occupation outwards, never stagnant,
oft-times overdriven, has been extremely hostile. As there is no
life which in its detail does not seem to afford intervals of
brief leisure, or what is termed "waiting" for others engaged with
us in some common action, these are commonly spent in murmurs and
in petulant desire for their termination. But in reality they
supply excellent opportunities for brief or ejaculatory prayer.

As this new period of my life has brought with it my retirement
fr