ver of books meritorious in aim
though too often slight in work--in short, with emotions and sentiments
sometimes a little in advance of definite ideas, yet a high representative
of the virtue, purity, simplicity, and sympathetic spirit of the
Tennysonian epoch. Tennyson himself was one of her idols, and Mr.
Gladstone was another. Bishop Wilberforce too was often of the company,
and the Duke of Argyll, who had married a daughter of the house. Her
admiration for Gladstone, says the son of the duchess, "was boundless, and
the last years of her life were certainly made happier by this friendship.
His visits to her were always an intense pleasure, and even when suffering
too much to receive others, she would always make an effort to appear
sufficiently well to receive him. I find in a letter from her written to
me in 1863, after meeting Mr. Gladstone when on a visit to her sister,
Lady Taunton, at Quantock, in Somersetshire, the following: 'The
Gladstones were there; he was quite delightful, pouring out such floods of
agreeable knowledge all day long, and singing admirably in the evening.
Nobody makes me feel more the happiness of knowledge and the wish for it;
one must not forget that he has the happiness of the peace which passeth
all understanding.' "(134) The Gladstones were constant visitors at the
duchess's various princely homes--Stafford House in the Green Park,
Trentham, Cliveden, and Chiswick on the Thames, Dunrobin on the Dornoch
Firth.

A little sheaf of pieces from Mr. Gladstone's letters to her may serve to
show him as he was, in the midst of his labours in the Palmerston
government--how little his native kindliness of heart and power of sympathy
had been chilled or parched either by hard and ceaseless toil, or by the
trying atmosphere of public strife.

_1859_

_Aug. 30._--I am much concerned to lose at the last moment the
pleasure of coming to see you at Trentham--but my wife, who was not
quite well when I came away but hoped a day's rest would make her
so, writes through Agnes to say she hopes I shall get back to-day.
The gratification promised me must, therefore, I fear, stand over.
I will write from Hawarden, and I now send this by a messenger
lest (as you might be sure I should not fail through carelessness)
you should think anything very bad had happened. Among other
things, I wanted help from you through speech about Tennyson. I
find _Maud_ takes a good