nd is shaking
hands with Count Schuvaloff, while Count Andrassy stands beside
them. Lord Russell is seated a little farther to the right;
behind him on the other side of the table is Lord Salisbury.
The figure on the extreme right is Mehemet Ali.]

In public or in private Disraeli never did a dishonorable action. He
never attacked the weak or the defenceless, but singled out the proudest
adversary. He never held malice. His impulses were always the most
generous, his ideas and his purposes of the largest. He desired in all
things the good of his country, and he sought it by what seemed to him,
whether or not he was mistaken, the surest and loftiest ways.

[Signature of the author.]

WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE

By JUSTIN MCCARTHY

(Born 1809)

[Illustration: Axes. [TN]]

William Ewart Gladstone, statesman, orator, and author, was born in
Rodney Street, Liverpool, on December 29, 1809. He is the fourth son of
Sir John Gladstone (1764-1851), a well-known, and it might almost be
said a famous, Liverpool merchant, who sat for some years in Parliament,
and was a devoted friend and supporter of George Canning. Mr. Gladstone
is of Scotch descent, on both sides, and has declared more than once in
a public speech that the blood that runs in his veins is exclusively
Scottish. He was educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford. He
became a student at Oxford in 1829, and graduated as a double
first-class, in 1831. He had distinguished himself greatly as a speaker
in the Oxford Union Debating Society, and had before that time written
much in the _Eton Miscellany_, which indeed he helped to found. He
appears to have begun his career as a strong opponent of all advanced
measures of political reform. In the Oxford Union he proposed a vote of
censure on the government of Lord Grey for introducing the great Reform
Bill which was carried in 1832, and on the Duke of Wellington, because
of his having yielded to the claims for Catholic emancipation. He also
opposed a motion in favor of immediate emancipation of the slaves in the
West Indian islands. He soon became known as a young man of promise, who
would be able to render good service to the Conservative party in the
great struggle which seemed likely to be forced upon them--a struggle,
as many thought, for their very existence. It was a time of intense
political emotion. Passion and panic alike prevailed. The first great
"leap in the dark