all the kind words contained in
your letter, but most of all for the assurance, not the first I am happy
to say which has reached me, that many prayers are offered on my behalf. I
feel myself by the side of this arduous undertaking a small creature; but
where the Almighty sends us duties, He also sends the strength needful to
perform them." To Mr. Arthur Gordon, the son of Lord Aberdeen, he wrote
(Jan. 29, 1869):--

As regards my own personal position, all its interior relations
are up to this time entirely satisfactory. I myself, at the period
of the Aberdeen administration, was as far as the world in general
could possibly be, from either expecting or desiring it. I thought
at that time that when Lord Russell's career should end, the Duke
of Newcastle would be the proper person to be at the head of the
government. But during the government of Lord Palmerston, and long
before his health broke down, I had altered this opinion; for I
thought I saw an alteration both in his tone of opinion, and in
his vigour of administration and breadth of view. Since that time
I have seen no alternative but that which has now come about,
although I am sensible that it is a very indifferent one.

On December 29 he enters in his diary: "This birthday opens my sixtieth
year. I descend the hill of life. It would be a truer figure to say I
ascend a steepening path with a burden ever gathering weight. The Almighty
seems to sustain and spare me for some purpose of His own, deeply unworthy
as I know myself to be. Glory be to His name." In the closing hours of the
year, he enters:--

This month of December has been notable in my life as follows:
_Dec. 1809._--Born. 1827.--Left Eton. 1831.--Classes at Oxford.
1832.--Elected to parliament. 1838.--Work on Church and State
published. 1834.--Took office as lord of the treasury.
1845.--Secretary of state. 1852.--Chancellor of exchequer.
1868.--First lord. Rather a frivolous enumeration. Yet it would not
be so if the love of symmetry were carried with a
well-proportioned earnestness and firmness into the higher parts
of life. I feel like a man with a burden under which he must fall
and be crushed if he looks to the right or left or fails from any
cause to concentrate mind and muscle upon his progress step by
step. This absorption, this excess, this constant {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI AND O