o come later. Meanwhile the
nation had got used to him. He had culture, imagination, fancy, and other
gifts of a born man of letters; the faculty of slow reflective brooding
was his, and he often saw both deep and far; he was artificial, but he was
no pharisee, and he was never petty. His magniloquence of phrase was the
expression of real size and spaciousness of character; as Goethe said of
St. Peter's at Rome, in spite of all the rococo, there was _etwas
grosses_, something great. His inexhaustible patience, his active
attention and industry, his steadfast courage, his talent in debate and
the work of parliament; his genius in espying, employing, creating
political occasions, all made him, after prolonged conflict against
impediments of every kind, one of the imposing figures of his time. This
was the political captain with whom Mr. Gladstone had contended for some
sixteen years past, and with whom on a loftier elevation for both, he was
to contend for a dozen years to come.

On a motion about the state of Ireland, proceeding from an Irish member
(March 16, 1868) Mr. Gladstone at last launched before parliament the
memorable declaration that the time had come when the church of Ireland as
a church in alliance with the state must cease to exist. This was not a
mere sounding sentence in a speech; it was one of the heroic acts of his
life. Manning did not overstate the case when he wrote to Mr. Gladstone
(March 28, '68): "The Irish establishment is a great wrong. It is the
cause of division in Ireland, of alienation between Ireland and England.
It embitters every other question. Even the land question is exasperated
by it. The fatal ascendency of race over race is unspeakably aggravated by
the ascendency of religion over religion." But there were many pit-falls,
and the ground hid dangerous fire. The parliament was Palmerstonian and in
essence conservative; both parties were demoralised by the strange and
tortuous manoeuvres that ended in household suffrage; many liberals were
profoundly disaffected to their leader; nobody could say what the majority
was, nor where it lay. To attack the Irish church was to alarm and
scandalise his own chosen friends and closest allies in the kindred church
of England. To attack a high protestant institution "exalting its mitred
front" in the catholic island, was to run sharp risk of awaking the
sleuth-hounds of No-popery. The House of Lords would undoubtedly fight, as
it did, to its last