and definite policy. I told him that I found no cause for
surprise in your reserve, and thought you held yourself in hand
for the purpose of holding your party in hand--a view which I think
he more or less embraced. Now, I have not your responsibilities to
the party, but I have for the moment more than your
responsibilities to the country, in this sense that I feel myself
compelled to advise from time to time upon the course of that
national movement which I have tried hard to evoke, and assist in
evoking. I regard myself as an outside workman, engaged in the
preparation of materials, which you and the party will probably
have to manipulate and then to build into a structure. For though
I do not wish to shut the door upon the government, I despair of
them, after so many invitations and so many refusals....

(M179) To Madame Novikoff, a Russian lady who at this time began to
exercise a marked influence upon the opinions of important men with much
influence on the opinions of many other people,(341) he indicated some
doubtful symptoms:--

_Hawarden, Oct. 17, 1876._--There is an undoubted and smart rally
on behalf of Turkey in the metropolitan press. It is in the main
representative of the ideas and opinions of what are called the
upper ten thousand. From this body there has never on any occasion
within my memory proceeded the impulse that has prompted, and
finally achieved, _any_ of the great measures which in the last
half century have contributed so much to the fame and happiness of
England. They did not emancipate the dissenters, Roman catholics,
and Jews. They did not reform the parliament. They did not
liberate the negro slave. They did not abolish the corn law. They
did not take the taxes off the press. They did not abolish the
Irish established church. They did not cheer on the work of
Italian freedom and reconstitution. Yet all these things have been
done; and done by other agencies than theirs, and despite their
opposition. When I speak of _them_, I speak of course of the
majority among them. Unhappily, the country is understood abroad
mainly through the metropolitan press.

He was no sooner back at Hawarden than he fell to work on subsidiary
branches of the question of questions.

_Oct. 22._--Worked hard and finished my paper on Russia in
Turkestan, and sent it off. Criminal ju