stunned by this wonderful
place, and so vast a change at a moment's notice in the conditions of
life." He read steadily through the _Odyssey_, Dixon's _History of the
Church of England_, Scherer's _Miscellanies_, and _The Life of
Clerk-Maxwell_, and every day he had long talks and walks with Lord Acton
on themes personal, political and religious--and we may believe what a
restorative he found in communion with that deep and well-filled mind--that
"most satisfactory mind," as Mr. Gladstone here one day calls it. He took
drives to gardens that struck him as fairyland. The Prince of Wales paid
him kindly attentions as always. He had long conversations with the Comte
de Paris, and with M. Clemenceau, and with the Duke of Argyll, the oldest
of his surviving friends. In the evening he played whist. Home affairs he
kept at bay pretty successfully, though a speech of Lord Hartington's
about local government in Ireland drew from him a longish letter to Lord
Granville that the reader, if he likes, will find elsewhere.(68) His
conversation with M. Clemenceau (whom he found "decidedly pleasing") was
thought indiscreet, but though the most circumspect of men, the buckram of
a spurious discretion was no favourite wear with Mr. Gladstone. As for the
report of his conversation with the French radical, he wrote to Lord
Granville, "It includes much which Clemenceau did not say to me, and omits
much which he did, for our principal conversation was on Egypt, about
which he spoke in a most temperate and reasonable manner." He read the
"harrowing details" of the terrible scene in the court-house at
Kilmainham, where the murderous Invincibles were found out. "About Carey,"
he said to Lord Granville, "the spectacle is indeed loathsome, but I
cannot doubt that the Irish government are distinctly _right_. In
accepting an approver you do not incite him to do what is in itself wrong;
only his own bad mind can make it wrong to him. The government looks for
the truth. Approvers are, I suppose, for the most part base, but I do not
see how you could act on a distinction of degree between them. Still, one
would have heard the hiss from the dock with sympathy."

Lord Granville wrote to him (Jan. 31, 1883) that the Queen insisted much
upon his diminishing the amount of labour thrown upon him, and expressed
her opinion that his acceptance of a peerage would relieve him of the
heavy strain. Lord Granville told her that personally he should be
delighted to