writing it, he was called
upon from such various quarters; and his conscience told him that he who
had been in great measure the cause of so many becoming catholics, had no
right to leave them in the lurch, when charges were made against them as
serious as unexpected. "I do not think," he concluded, "I ever can be
sorry for what I have done, but I never can cease to be sorry for the
necessity of doing it."

VII

(M167) This fierce controversial episode was enough to show that the habit
and temperament of action still followed him in the midst of all his
purposes of retreat. Withdrawal from parliamentary leadership was
accompanied by other steps, apparently all making in the same direction.
He sold the house in Carlton House Terrace, where he had passed
eight-and-twenty years of work and power and varied sociability. "I had
grown to the house," he says (April 15), "having lived more time in it
than in any other since I was born, and mainly by reason of all that was
done in it." To Mrs. Gladstone he wrote (Feb. 28):--

I do not wonder that you feel parting from the house will be a
blow and a pang. It is nothing less than this to me, but it must
be faced and you will face it gallantly. So much has occurred
there; and thus it is leaving not the house only but the
neighbourhood, where I have been with you for more than
thirty-five years, and altogether nearly forty. The truth is that
innocently and from special causes we have on the whole been
housed better than according to our circumstances. All along
Carlton House Terrace I think you would not find any one with less
than L20,000 a year, and most of them with, much more.

He sold his collection of china and his Wedgwood ware.(324) He despatched
his books to Hawarden. He can hardly have resolved on retirement that
should be effective and complete, or else he must have arranged to quit
the House of Commons. In his diary he entered (March 30, 1875):--

Views about the future and remaining section of my life. In
outline they are undefined but in substance definite. The main
point is this: that setting aside exceptional circumstances which
would have to provide for themselves, my prospective work is not
parliamentary. My ties will be slight to an assembly with whose
tendencies I am little in harmony at the present time; nor can I
flatter myself that what is called the public out of doors is mor