illustrious pair, born in the same year, had never
met before. Mr. Gladstone as soon as seated took Darwin's interest in
lessons of massacre for granted, and launched forth his thunderbolts with
unexhausted zest. His great, wise, simple, and truth-loving listener,
then, I think, busy on digestive powers of the drosera in his green-house,
was intensely delighted. When we broke up, watching Mr. Gladstone's erect
alert figure as he walked away, Darwin, shading his eyes with his hand
against the evening rays, said to me in unaffected satisfaction, "What an
honour that such a great man should come to visit me!" Too absorbed in his
own overwhelming conflict with the powers of evil, Mr. Gladstone makes no
mention of his afternoon call, and only says of the two days that "he
found a notable party, and made interesting conversation," and that he
"could not help liking" one of the company, then a stranger to him. In his
absence at church, we were talking of the qualities that send men forward
and keep them back. "I should like to know," cried Huxley, "what would
keep such a man as that back," pointing to where Mr. Gladstone had been
sitting; "why, put him in the middle of a moor, with nothing in the world
but his shirt, and you could not prevent him from being anything he
liked." And Huxley was as far as possible from being a Gladstonian.

IV

(M182) Events meanwhile had moved. The failure of the conference in
December, and the futility of an instrument known as the London protocol
devised in March, led up to a declaration of war by Russia against Turkey
in April. We now come to an episode in this controversy, that excited
lively passions at the moment, and subjected Mr. Gladstone's relation to
his party to a strain that would have been profoundly painful, if his
heroic intensity had not for the time taken him beyond the region of pain
and pleasure.

_To Lord Granville. 73 Harley Street, April 23, 1877._--The
protocol, the refusal of Turkey, the insistence of Russia, have
been followed to-night by the announcement that the Russian Charge
has suspended relations with Turkey. Is not the moment now come
for raising the rather stiff question whether a policy, or a
substantive motion, is to be submitted to parliament? I hold back
from a conclusion as long as I can, that I may benefit by the
views of others. But it is perfectly plain that Salisbury is at a
discount, and that the government