here for sixteen years he had fought so bold and uncompromising a fight.
During this period Mr. Gladstone stood in the most trying of all the
varied positions of his life, and without flinching he confronted it in
the strong faith that the national honour as well as the assuagement
(M128) of the inveterate Irish wound in the flank of his country, were the
issues at stake.

This intense pre-occupation in the political struggle did not for a single
week impair his other interests, nor stay his ceaseless activity in
controversies that were not touched by politics. Not even now, when the
great cause to which he had so daringly committed himself was in decisive
issue, could he allow it to dull or sever what had been the standing
concerns of life and thought to him for so long a span of years. As from
his youth up, so now behind the man of public action was the diligent,
eager, watchful student, churchman, apologist, divine. And what is curious
and delightful is that he never set a more admirable example of the tone
and temper in which literary and religious controversy should be
conducted, than in these years when in politics exasperation was at its
worst. It was about this time that he wrote: "Certainly one of the lessons
life has taught me is that where there is known to be a common object, the
pursuit of truth, there should also be a studious desire to interpret the
adversary in the best sense his words will fairly bear; to avoid whatever
widens the breach; and to make the most of whatever tends to narrow it.
These I hold to be part of the laws of knightly tournament." And to these
laws he sedulously conformed. Perhaps at some happy time before the day of
judgment they may be transferred from the tournament to the battle-fields
of philosophy, criticism, and even politics.

II

After the defeat in which his tremendous labours had for the moment ended,
he made his way to what was to him the most congenial atmosphere in the
world, to the company of Doellinger and Acton, at Tegernsee in Bavaria.
"Tegernsee," Lord Acton wrote to me (Sept. 7), "is an out-of-the-way
place, peaceful and silent, and as there is a good library in the house, I
have taken some care of his mind, leading in the direction of little
French comedies, and away from the tragedy of existence. It has done him
good, and he has just started with Doellinger to climb a high mountain in
the neighbourhood."

_To Mrs. Gladstone._

_Tegernsee, Au