tion, as a man who in
almost every branch of mental exertion seems to have had the capacity for
attaining, and generally at a single bound, the very highest excellence.
"There are many things," he adds, "in which Christians would do well to
follow him: in the warmth of his attachments; in the moderation of his
wants; in his noble freedom from the love of money; in his all-conquering
assiduity."(324) Perhaps the most remarkable sentence of all is this: "...
what is not needful, and is commonly wrong, namely, is to pass a judgment
on our fellow-creatures. Never let it be forgotten that there is scarcely
a single moral action of a single man of which other men can have such a
knowledge, in its ultimate grounds, its surrounding incidents, and the
real determining causes of its merits, as to warrant their pronouncing a
conclusive judgment upon it."

The translation of poetry into poetry, as Coleridge said, is difficult
because the translator must give brilliancy without the warmth of original
conception, from which such brilliancy would follow of its own accord. But
we must not judge Mr. Gladstone's translation either of Horace's odes or
of detached pieces from Greek or Italian, as we should judge the professed
man of letters or poet like Coleridge himself. His pieces are the
diversions of the man of affairs, with educated tastes and interest in
good literature. Perhaps the best single piece is his really noble
rendering of Manzoni's noble ode on the death of Napoleon; for instance:--

From Alp to farthest Pyramid,
From Rhine to Mansanar,
How sure his lightning's flash foretold
His thunderbolts of war!
To Don from Scilla's height they roar,
From North to Southern shore.
And this was glory? After-men,
Judge the dark problem. Low
We to the Mighty Maker bend
The while, Who planned to show
What vaster mould Creative Will
With him could fill.

-------------------------------------

As on the shipwrecked mariner
The weltering wave's descent--
The wave, o'er which, a moment since,
For distant shores he bent
And bent in vain, his eager eye;
So on that stricken head
Came whelming down the mighty Past.
How often did his pen
Essay to tell the wondrous tale
For after times and men,
And o'er the lines that could not die
His ha