t of tact, perhaps
the worst is to insist, no matter where you are or with whom you
are, on arguing about the hardest subjects to the full pitch of
elaboration and detail.

I

We have seen how in 1889 Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone celebrated the fiftieth
anniversary of one of the most devoted and successful marriages that ever
was made, and the unbroken felicity of their home. In 1891, after the
shadows of approaching calamity had for many months hung doubtfully over
them, a heavy blow fell, and their eldest son died. Not deeply concerned
in ordinary politics, he was a man of many virtues and some admirable
gifts; he was an accomplished musician, and I have seen letters of his to
his father, marked by a rare delicacy of feeling and true power of
expression. "I had known him for nearly thirty years," one friend wrote,
"and there was no man, until his long illness, who had changed so little,
or retained so long the best qualities of youth, and my first thought was
that the greater the loss to you, the greater would be the consolation."

To Archbishop Benson, Mr. Gladstone wrote (July 6):--

It is now forty-six years since we lost a child,(285) and he who
has now passed away from our eyes, leaves to us only blessed
recollections. I suppose all feel that those deaths which reverse
the order of nature have a sharpness of their own. But setting
this apart, there is nothing lacking to us in consolations human
or divine. I can only wish that I may become less unworthy to have
been his father.

To me he wrote (July 10):--

We feel deeply the kindness and tenderness of your letter. It
supplies one more link in a long chain of recollection which I
deeply prize. Yes, ours is a tribulation, and a sore one, but yet
we feel we ought to find ourselves carried out of ourselves by
sympathy with the wife whose noble and absorbing devotion had
become like an entire life of itself, and who is now face to face
with the void. The grief of children too, which passes, is very
sharp while it remains. The case has been very remarkable. Though
with abatement of some powers, my son has not been without many
among the signs and comforts of health during a period of nearly
two and a half years. All this time the terrible enemy was lodged
in the royal seat, and only his healthy and unyielding
constitution kept it at defiance, and maintained his ment