wrote to the Queen,
"Mr. Gladstone may not be an impartial judge, but he believes there can be
no doubt that there does not live the man in any of the three kingdoms of
your Majesty who has, by his own indefatigable and unmeasured labours,
given such a powerful impulse as the Bishop of Winchester gave to the
religious life of the country." When he mentioned that the bishop's family
declined the proposal of Westminster Abbey for his last resting place, the
Queen replied that she was very glad, for "to her nothing more gloomy and
doleful exists."

"Few men," Mr. Gladstone wrote later in this very year, "have had a more
varied experience of personal friendships than myself. Among the large
numbers of estimable and remarkable people whom I have known, and who have
now passed away, there is in my memory an inner circle, and within it are
the forms of those who were marked off from the comparative crowd even of
the estimable and remarkable, by the peculiarity and privilege of their
type."(291) In this inner circle the bishop must have held a place, not
merely by habit of life, which accounts for so many friendships in the
world, but by fellowship in their deepest interests, by common ideals in
church and state, by common sympathy in their arduous aim to reconcile
greetings in the market-place and occupation of high seats, with the
spiritual glow of the soul within its own sanctuary.

(M150) While still grieving over this painful loss, Mr. Gladstone suddenly
found himself in a cauldron of ministerial embarrassments. An inquiry into
certain irregularities at the general post office led to the discovery
that the sum of eight hundred thousand pounds had been detained on its way
to the exchequer, and applied to the service of the telegraphs. The
persons concerned in the gross and inexcused irregularities were Mr.
Monsell, Mr. Ayrton, and the chancellor of the exchequer. "There probably
have been times," Mr. Gladstone wrote to the Queen (Aug. 7), "when the
three gentlemen who in their several positions have been chiefly to blame
would have been summarily dismissed from your Majesty's service. But on
none of them could any ill-intent be charged; two of them had, among
whatever errors of judgment, done much and marked good service to the
state." Under the circumstances he could not resort to so severe a course
without injustice and harshness. "The recent exposures," Mr. Gladstone
wrote to Lord Russell, "have been gall and wormwood t