of such severe condemnation as what they have already
furnished. Therefore, my idea is, we should keep the old alive and
warm. This is the meaning of my suggestion as to autumn work,
rather than that I expect a dissolution. It seems to me good
policy to join on the proceedings of 1876-9 by a continuous
process to the dissolution. Should this happen, which I think
likely enough about March, there will have been no opportunity
immediately before it of stirring the country. I will not say our
defeat in 1874 was owing to the want of such an opportunity, but
it was certainly, I think, much aggravated by that want.

II

(M191) It was on November 24 that Mr. Gladstone soon after eight in the
morning quitted Liverpool for Edinburgh, accompanied by his wife and Miss
Gladstone. "The journey from Liverpool," he enters, "was really more like
a triumphal procession." Nothing like it had ever been seen before in
England. Statesmen had enjoyed great popular receptions before, and there
had been plenty of cheering and bell-ringing and torchlight in individual
places before. On this journey of a bleak winter day, it seemed as if the
whole countryside were up. The stations where the train stopped were
crowded, thousands flocked from neighbouring towns and villages to main
centres on the line of route, and even at wayside spots hundreds
assembled, merely to catch a glimpse of the express as it dashed through.
At Carlisle they presented addresses, and the traveller made his first
speech, declaring that never before in the eleven elections in which he
had taken part, were the interests of the country so deeply at stake. He
spoke again with the same moral at Hawick. At Galashiels he found a great
multitude, with an address and a gift of the cloth they manufactured. With
bare head in the raw air, he listened to their address, and made his
speech; he told them that he had come down expressly to raise effectually
before the people of the country the question in what manner they wished
to be governed; it was not this measure or that, it was a system of
government to be upheld or overthrown. When he reached Edinburgh after
nine hours of it, the night had fallen upon the most picturesque street in
all our island, but its whole length was crowded as it has never been
crowded before or since by a dense multitude, transported with delight
that their hero was at last among them. Lord Rosebery, who was to be h