nd lay dead.

How often, as the listless day
In silence died away,
He stood with lightning eye deprest,
And arms across his breast,
And bygone years, in rushing train,
Smote on his soul amain:
The breezy tents he seemed to see,
And the battering cannon's course,
And the flashing of the infantry,
And the torrent of the horse,
And, obeyed as soon as heard,
Th' ecstatic word.

Always let us remember that his literary life was part of the rest of his
life, as literature ought to be. He was no mere reader of many books, used
to relieve the strain of mental anxiety or to slake the thirst of literary
or intellectual curiosity. Reading with him in the days of his full vigour
was a habitual communing with the master spirits of mankind, as a
vivifying and nourishing part of life. As we have seen, he would not read
Dante in the session, nor unless he could have a large draught. Here as
elsewhere in the ordering of his days he was methodical, systematic, full.

V

(M195) Though man of action, yet Mr. Gladstone too has a place by
character and influences among what we may call the abstract, moral,
spiritual forces that stamped the realm of Britain in his age. In a new
time, marked in an incomparable degree by the progress of science and
invention, by vast mechanical, industrial, and commercial development, he
accepted it all, he adjusted his statesmanship to it all, nay, he revelled
in it all, as tending to ameliorate the lot of the "mass of men, women,
and children who can just ward off hunger, cold, and nakedness." He did
not rail at his age, he strove to help it. Following Walpole and Cobden
and Peel in the policies of peace, he knew how to augment the material
resources on which our people depend. When was Britain stronger, richer,
more honoured among the nations--I do not say always among the diplomatic
chanceries and governments--than in the years when Mr. Gladstone was at the
zenith of his authority among us? When were her armed forces by sea and
land more adequate for defence of every interest? When was her material
resource sounder? When was her moral credit higher? Besides all this, he
upheld a golden lamp.

The unending revolutions of the world are for ever bringing old phases
uppermost again. Events from season to season are taken to teach sinister
lessons, that the Real is the only Rational, force is the test of right
and