t have lately disclosed themselves in
the cabinet. I think it is now certain that they will cause a
split in the new parliament, and it seems hardly fair to the
constituencies that this should only be admitted, after they have
discharged their function and are unable to influence the result.

III

Still the prime minister altogether declined, in his own phrase, to lose
heart, and new compromises were invented. Meanwhile he cheerfully went for
the Whitsuntide recess to Hawarden, and dived into Lechler's _Wycliffe_,
Walpole's _George III._, Conrad on German Union, Cooper on the Atonement,
and so forth. Among other guests at Hawarden came Lord Wolverton, "with
much conversation; we opened rather a new view as to my retirement." What
the new view was we do not know, but the conversation was resumed and
again resumed, until the unwelcome day (June 4) for return to Downing
Street. Before returning, however, Mr. Gladstone set forth his view of the
internal crisis in a letter to Lord Hartington:--

_To Lord Hartington._

_May 30, 1885._--I am sorry but not surprised that your rather
remarkable strength should have given way under the pressure of
labour or anxiety or both. Almost the whole period of this
ministry, particularly the year and a half since the defeat of
Hicks, and most particularly of all, the four months since the
morning when you deciphered the Khartoum telegram at Holker, have
been without example in my experience, as to the gravity and
diversity of difficulties which they have presented. What I hope
is that they will not discourage you, or any of our colleagues, in
your anticipations of the future. It appears to me that there is
not one of them, viewed in the gross, which has been due to our
own action. By viewing in the gross, I mean taking the Egyptian
question as one. When we subdivide between Egypt proper and the
Soudan, I find what seem to me two grave errors in our management
of the Soudan business: the first our _landing_ at Suakin, the
second the mission of Gordon, or rather the choice of Gordon for
that mission. But it sometimes happens that the errors gravest in
their consequences are also the most pardonable. And these errors
were surely pardonable enough in themselves, without relying on
the fact that they were approved by the public opinion of the day
and by the opposition. Plenty of o