-was on my
mind as I sat, last evening, at the same table with the
brilliantly-gifted man whom once--but that "once" is too sad to
remember.

At a gathering at Spencer House in the summer of 1888, when this year of
felicitation opened, Lord Granville, on behalf of a number of subscribers,
presented Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone with two portraits, and in his address
spoke of the long span of years through, which, they had enjoyed "the
unclouded blessings of the home." The expression was a just one. The
extraordinary splendour and exalted joys of an outer life so illustrious
were matched in the inner circle of the hearth by a happy order,
affectionate reciprocal attachments, a genial round of kindliness and
duty, that from year to year went on untarnished, unstrained, unbroken.
Visitors at Hawarden noticed that, though the two heads of the house were
now old, the whole atmosphere seemed somehow to be alive with the
freshness and vigour of youth; it was one of the youngest of households in
its interests and activities. The constant tension of his mind never
impaired his tenderness and wise solicitude for family and kinsfolk, and
for all about him; and no man ever had such observance of decorum with
such entire freedom from pharisaism.

Nor did the order and moral prosperity of his own home (M149) leave him
complacently forgetful of fellow-creatures to whom life's cup had been
dealt in another measure. On his first entry upon the field of responsible
life, he had formed a serious and solemn engagement with a friend--I
suppose it was Hope-Scott--that each would devote himself to active service
in some branch of religious work.(259) He could not, without treason to
his gifts, go forth like Selwyn or Patteson to Melanesia to convert the
savages. He sought a missionary field at home, and he found it among the
unfortunate ministers to "the great sin of great cities." In these humane
efforts at reclamation he persevered all through his life, fearless of
misconstruction, fearless of the levity or baseness of men's tongues,
regardless almost of the possible mischiefs to the public policies that
depended on him. Greville(260) tells the story how in 1853 a man made an
attempt one night to extort money from Mr. Gladstone, then in office as
chancellor of the exchequer, by threats of exposure; and how he instantly
gave the offender into custody, and met the case at the police office.
Greville could not complete the story. The m