ew, and prevents them from understanding and
appreciating such men.

I

It must obviously be interesting, as we approach a signal crisis in his
advance, to know the kind of impression, right or wrong, made by a great
man upon those who came nearest to him. Friends like Aberdeen and Graham
had many years earlier foreseen the high destinies of their colleague.
Aberdeen told Bishop Wilberforce in 1855 that Gladstone had some great
qualifications but some serious defects. "The chief, that when he has
convinced himself, perhaps by abstract reasoning of some view, he thinks
that every one else ought at once to see it as he does, and can make no
allowance for difference of opinion."(120) About the same time Graham said
of him that he was "in the highest sense of the word _Liberal_; of the
greatest power; very much the first man in the House of Commons; detested
by the aristocracy for his succession duty, the most truly conservative
measure passed in my recollection.... He must rise to the head in such a
government as ours, even in spite of all the hatred of him." Three years
later Aberdeen still thought him too obstinate and, if such a thing be
possible, too honest. He does not enough think of what other men think.
Does not enough look out of the window. "Whom will he lead?" asked the
bishop.(121) "Oh! it is impossible to say! Time must show, and new
combinations." By 1863 Cardwell confidently anticipated that Mr. Gladstone
must become prime minister, and Bishop Wilberforce finds all coming to the
conclusion that he must be the next real chief.(122)

(M49) On the other side Lord Shaftesbury, to whom things ecclesiastical
were as cardinal as they were to Mr. Gladstone, ruefully reflected in 1864
that people must make ready for great and irrevocable changes. Palmerston
was simply the peg driven through the island of Delos: unloose the peg,
and all would soon be adrift. "His successor, Gladstone, will bring with
him the Manchester school for colleagues and supporters, a hot tractarian
for chancellor, and the Bishop of Oxford for ecclesiastical adviser. He
will succumb to every pressure, except the pressure of a constitutional
and conservative policy." "He is a dangerous man," was one of Lord
Palmerston's latest utterances, "keep him in Oxford and he is partially
muzzled; but send him elsewhere and he will run wild."(123) "The long and
short of our present position is," said Shaftesbury, "that the time has
arrived (_no