le's Christian character. I have
read his sermons, and if I had doubted--but I never did--they would
have removed the doubt. Indeed I think it a most formidable
responsibility, at the least, in these times to doubt any man's
character on account of his opinions. The limit of possible
variation between character and opinion, ay, between character and
belief, is widening, and will widen.

How could the leading mark of progress made in Mr. Gladstone's age be more
truly hit, how defined with more pith and pregnancy? How could the
illumination of his own vigorous mind in forty years of life and thought
be better demonstrated? It would even be no bad thing if those who are
furthest removed from Mr. Gladstone's opinions either in religion or
politics could lay this far-reaching dictum of his to heart. By many men
in all schools his lesson is sorely needed. Shrill was the clamour. Dr.
Pusey, in Mr. Gladstone's own phrase, was "rabid." He justified his anger
by reputed facts, which proved to be no facts at all, but the anger did
not die with the fable. Even Phillimore was disquieted. "It has cut very
deep indeed," he said. Mr. Gladstone, confident of his ground, was not
dismayed. "The movement against Dr. Temple is like a peculiar cheer we
sometimes hear in the House of Commons, vehement but thin."

No appointment proved so popular and successful as that of Bishop Fraser
to Manchester. He was the first person named by Mr. Gladstone for the
episcopate without some degree of personal knowledge. A remarkable
concurrence of testimony established the great breadth of his sympathies,
a trait much in his favour for the particular see of Manchester. Yet
strange to say when by and by Stanley died, Mr. Gladstone was a party to
trying to remove Fraser from the north to Westminster.

When in 1883 Mr. Gladstone was challenged as confining his recommendations
to the high church side, he defended himself to sufficient purpose. He had
a list made out of appointments to bishoprics, deaneries, and the most
important parishes:--

There have been thirty important appointments. Out of them I have
recommended eleven who would probably be called high churchmen
(not one of them, so far as I know, unsympathetic towards other
portions of the clergy) and nineteen who are not. On further
examination it will appear that the high churchmen whom I take to
be a decided majority of the clergy as well as a d