ull age of premier."(273)

II

In words already quoted, Mr. Gladstone spoke of most of his life having
been given to working the institutions of his country. Of all these
institutions--House of Commons, Lords, cabinet, church, stern courts of
law--that which he was most apt to idealise was the throne. His sense of
chivalry and his sense of an august tradition continuously symbolised by a
historic throne, moved him as the sight of the French Queen at Versailles
had moved the majestic political imagination of Burke a century before.
About the throne he sometimes used language that represented almost at its
highest the value set upon it in text-books of the constitution, and in
the current conventions of ceremonial speech.(274) Although what he called
the iron necessities of actual business always threw these conventions
into the background when the time came, yet his inmost feeling about the
crown and the person of its wearer was as sincere as it was fervid. In
business, it is true, he never yielded, yet even in his most anxious and
pressing hours he spared neither time nor toil in endeavours to show the
Queen why he could not yield. "Though decisions," he said, "must
ultimately conform to the sense of those who are to be responsible for
them, yet their business is to inform and persuade the sovereign, not to
overrule him." One writer describes the Queen as "superb in standing
sentry over the business of the empire." This is obsequious phrase-making.
But I will borrow the figure in saying what is more real, that Mr.
Gladstone from beginning to end stood sentry over the interests, whether
profound and enduring or trivial and fleeting, of the ancient monarchy of
this kingdom. None who heard it will ever forget the moving and energetic
passage in which when he was the doughty veteran of eighty years, speaking
against his own followers on some question of a royal annuity, he moved
the whole House to its depths by the passionate declaration, "I am not
ashamed to say that in my old age I rejoice in any opportunity that
enables me to testify that, whatever may be thought of my opinions,
whatever may be thought of my proposals in general politics, I do not
forget the service that I have borne to the illustrious representative of
the British monarchy."(275)

(M140) My readers have had opportunity enough of judging Mr. Gladstone's
estimate of the Queen's shrewdness, simplicity, high manners. Above all,
he constantly said ho