is difficult. 22.--Worked six hours on my books, arranging and
re-arranging. The best brain rest I have had, I think, since
December last.

The brain rest was not for long. On Dec. 1 he tells Lord Granville that
Argyll is busy on Irish land, and in his views is misled by "the rapid
facility of his active mind." "It is rather awkward at this stage to talk
of breaking up the government, and that is more easily said than done." I
know no more singular reading in its way than the correspondence between
Mr. Gladstone and the Duke of Argyll; Mr. Gladstone trying to lead his
argumentative colleague over one or two of the barest rudiments of the
history of Irish land, and occasionally showing in the process somewhat of
the quality of the superior pupil teacher acquiring to-day material for
the lesson of to-morrow. Mr. Gladstone goes to the root of the matter when
he says to the Duke: "What I would most earnestly entreat of you is not to
rely too much on Highland experience, but to acquaint yourself by careful
reading with the rather extensive facts and history of the Irish land
question. My own studies in it are very imperfect, though pursued to the
best of my ability; but they have revealed to me many matters of fact
which have seriously modified my views, most of them connected with and
branching out of the very wide extension of the idea and even the practice
of tenant right, mostly perhaps _un_recognised beyond the limits of the
Ulster custom."

Then Lord Granville writes to him that Clarendon has sent him two letters
running, talking of the certainty of the government being broken up. "The
sky is very far from clear," Mr. Gladstone says to Mr. Fortescue (Dec. 3),
"but we must bate no jot of heart or hope." The next day it is Mr. Bright
to whom he turns in friendly earnest admonition. His words will perhaps be
useful to many generations of cabinet ministers:--

It is not the courageous part of your paper to which I now object,
though I doubt the policy of the reference to feebleness and
timidity, as men in a cabinet do not like what may _seem_ to imply
that they are cowards. It is your argument (a very over-strained
one in my opinion) against Fortescue's propositions, and your
proposal (so it reads) to put them back in order of discussion to
the second place _now_, when the mind of the cabinet has been upon
them for six weeks.... Had the cabinet adopted at this moment _a