repulsive,
so Mr. Gladstone made thousands eager to follow the public balance-sheet,
and the whole nation became his audience, interested in him and his themes
and in the House where his dazzling wonders were performed. All this made
a magnificent contribution to the national spirit of his time. Such
extraordinary power over others had its mainspring in the depths and zeal
of his own conviction and concern. "For nine or ten months of the year,"
he told Sir Henry Taylor in 1864, "I am always willing to go out of
office, but in the two or three that precede the budget I begin to feel an
itch to have the handling of it. Last summer I should have been delighted
to go out; now [December] I am indifferent; in February, if I live as
long, I shall, I have no doubt, be loath; but in April quite ready again.
Such are my signs of the zodiac." The eagerness of his own mind
transmitted itself like an electric current through his audience.

Interest abroad was almost as much alive as the interest felt in England
itself. We have already seen how keenly Cavour followed Mr. Gladstone's
performances. His budget speeches were circulated by foreign ministers
among deputies and editors. Fould, one of the best of Napoleon's finance
ministers, kept up a pretty steady correspondence with the English
chancellor: appeals to him as to the sound doctrine on sugar drawbacks; is
much struck by his proposals on Scotch banks; says mournfully to him
(April 28, 1863), in a sentence that is a whole chapter in the history of
the empire: "You are very fortunate in being able to give such relief to
the taxpayers; if it had not been for the war in Mexico, I should perhaps
have been able to do something of the same sort, and that would have been,
especially in view of the elections, very favourable to the government of
the Emperor.'"

When Mr. Gladstone came to leave office in 1866, he said to Fould (July
11): "The statesmen of to-day have a new mission opened to them: the
mission of substituting the concert of nations for their conflicts, and of
teaching them to grow great in common, and to give to others by giving to
themselves. Of this beneficent work a good share has fallen to the
departments with which we have respectively been connected." Fould had
already deplored his loss. "I counted," he says, "on the influence of your
wise doctrines in finance, to help me in maintaining our country in that
system of order and economy, of which you were setting the e