without its being
said that the old Prophet is wrong, it may be said that the young
Prophet was unquestionably right.

Here is the way in which a man of noble heart and high vision as of a
circling eagle, transcends his individual chagrins. All this optimism was
the natural vein of a statesman who had lived a long life of effort in
persuading opinion in so many regions, in overcoming difficulty upon
difficulty, in content with a small reform where men would not let him
achieve a great one, in patching where he could not build anew, in
unquenchable faith, hope, patience, endeavour. Mr. Gladstone knew as well
as Tennyson that "every blessing has its drawbacks, and every age its
dangers"; he was as sensitive as Tennyson or Ruskin or any of them, to the
implacable tragedy of industrial civilisation--the city children
"blackening soul and sense in city slime," progress halting on palsied
feet "among the glooming alleys," crime and hunger casting maidens on the
street, and all the other recesses of human life depicted by the poetic
prophet in his sombre hours. But the triumphs of the past inspired
confidence in victories for the future, and meanwhile he thought it well
to remind Englishmen that "their country is still young as well as old,
and that in these latest days it has not been unworthy of itself."(216)

On his birthday he enters in his diary:--

_Dec. 29, 1886._--This day in its outer experience recalls the
Scotch usage which would say, "terrible pleasant." In spite of the
ruin of telegraph wires by snow, my letters and postal arrivals of
to-day have much exceeded those of last year. Even my share of the
reading was very heavy. The day was gone before it seemed to have
begun, all amidst stir and festivity. The estimate was nine
hundred arrivals. O for a birthday of recollection. It is long
since I have had one. There is so much to say on the soul's
history, but bracing is necessary to say it, as it is for reading
Dante. It has been a year of shock and strain. I think a year of
some progress; but of greater absorption in interests which,
though profoundly human, are quite off the line of an old man's
direct preparation for passing the River of Death. I have not had
a chance given me of creeping from this whirlpool, for I cannot
abandon a cause which is so evidently that of my fellow-men, and
in which a particular part seems to be assigned to