ians and that of the Jews, perpetuated
in our times through all Mussulman countries, and a prohibition not to be
explained on sanitary grounds, because to the present day Christians in
the East all indulge in pork and are none the worse for it. A young member
of parliament one night fell into conversation with him, as a branch from
the subject of the eating of bovine flesh by the Greeks, on the eating of
horseflesh, and the next day writes to mention to him that at a council in
785 with the Bishop of Ostia as president, it was decreed, "Many among you
eat horses, which is not done by any Christians in the East: avoid this;"
and he asks Mr. Gladstone whether he believed that by reason of the high
estimation in which the Greeks held the horse, they abstained from his
flesh. Mr. Gladstone (August 1889) replies that while on his guard against
speaking with confidence about the historic period, he thought he was safe
in saying that the Greeks did not eat the horse in the heroic period, and
he refers to passages in this book and the other. "It was only a
conjecture, however, on my part that the near relation of the horse to
human feeling and life may probably have been the cause that prevented the
consumption of horse-flesh." In a further letter he refers his
correspondent to the closing part of the _Englishman in Paris_ for some
curious particulars on hippophagy. Then he seems to have interested
himself in a delicate question as to the personal claims of Socrates in
the light of a moral reformer, and the sage's accommodation of moral
sentiment to certain existing fashions in Athenian manners. But as I have
not his side of the correspondence, I can only guess that his point was
the inferiority of the moral ideals of Socrates to those of Christ.
Gustave d'Eichthal, one of the celebrated group of Saint-Simonians who
mingled so much of what was chimerical with much that was practical and
fruitful, draws the attention of Mr. Gladstone, statesman, philosopher,
and hellenist, to writings of his own on the practical use of Greek, as
destined to be the great national language of humanity, perhaps even
within the space of two or three generations. Guizot begs him to accept
his book on Peel; and thanking him for his article on the "Royal
Supremacy" (Feb. 9, 1864), says further what must have given Mr. Gladstone
lively satisfaction:--

Like you, I could wish that the anglican church had more
independence and self-government; bu