moved by the ultras of law and order,--the same who had mutinied on the
Maamtrasna debate,--censuring ministers for having failed to uphold the
authority of the Queen. The same correspondent (January 15), who was well
able to make his words good, wrote to Mr. Gladstone that even though home
rule might perhaps not be in a parliamentary sense before the House, it
was in a most distinct manner before the country, and no political party
could avoid expressing an opinion upon it. On the same day another
colleague of hardly less importance drew attention to an article in a
journal supposed to be inspired by Lord Randolph, to the effect that
conciliation in Ireland had totally failed, that Lord Carnarvon had
retired because that policy was to be reversed and he was not the man for
the rival policy of vigour, and finally, that the new policy would
probably be announced in the Queen's Speech; in no circumstances would it
be possible to avoid a general action on the Address.

II

The current of domestic life at Hawarden, in the midst of all these
perplexities, flowed in its usual ordered channels. The engagement of his
second daughter stirred Mr. Gladstone's deepest interest. He practised
occasional woodcraft with his sons, though ending his seventy-sixth year.
He spends a morning in reviewing his private money affairs, the first time
for three years. He never misses church. He corrects the proofs of an
article on Huxley; carries on tolerably profuse correspondence, coming to
very little; he works among his books, and arranges his papers; reads
Beaconsfield's _Home Letters_, Lord Stanhope's _Pitt_, Macaulay's _Warren
Hastings_, which he counts the most brilliant of all that illustrious
man's performances; Maine on _Popular Government_; _King Solomon's Mines_;
something of Tolstoy; Dicey's _Law of the Constitution_, where a chapter
on semi-sovereign assemblies made a deep impression on him in regard to
the business that now absorbed his mind. Above all, he nearly every day
reads Burke: "_December 18._--Read Burke; what a magazine of wisdom on
Ireland and America. _January 9._--Made many extracts from Burke--_sometimes
almost divine_."(174) We may easily imagine how the heat from that
profound and glowing furnace still further inflamed strong purposes and
exalted resolution in Mr. Gladstone. The Duke of Argyll wrote to say that
he was sorry to hear of the study of Burke: "Your _perfervidum ingenium
Scoti_ does not need being