flexible as it was in seizing new points of
view and devising expedients to meet new circumstances, did not easily
enter into the characters of other men. Ideas and causes interested
him more than did personal traits; his sympathy was keener and
stronger for the sufferings of nations or masses of men than with the
fortunes of an individual man. With all his accessibility and
kindliness, he was at bottom chary of real friendship, while the
circle of his intimates became constantly smaller with advancing
years. So it befell that though his popularity among the general body
of his adherents went on increasing, and the admiration of his
parliamentary followers remained undiminished, he had in the House of
Commons few personal friends who linked him to the party at large, and
rendered to him those confidential services which count for much in
keeping all sections in hearty accord and enabling the commander to
gauge the sentiment of his troops.

Of parliamentary strategy in that larger sense, which covers
familiarity with parliamentary forms and usages, care and judgment in
arranging the business of the House, the power of seizing a
parliamentary situation and knowing how to deal with it, the art of
guiding a debate and choosing the right moment for reserve and for
openness, for a dignified retreat, for a watchful defence, for a
sudden rattling charge upon the enemy--of all this no one had a fuller
mastery. His recollection of precedents was unrivalled, for it began
in 1833 with the first reformed Parliament, and it seemed as fresh for
those remote days as for last month. He enjoyed combat for its own
sake, not so much from inborn pugnacity, for he was not disputatious
in ordinary conversation, as because it called out his fighting force
and stimulated his whole nature. "I am never nervous in reply," he
once said, "though I am sometimes nervous in opening a debate." No one
could be more tactful or adroit when a crisis arrived whose gravity he
had foreseen. In the summer of 1881 the House of Lords made some
amendments to the Irish Land Bill which were deemed ruinous to the
working of the measure, and therewith to the prospects of the
pacification of Ireland. A conflict was expected which might have
strained the fabric of the constitution. The excitement which quickly
arose in Parliament spread to the nation. Mr. Gladstone alone remained
calm and confident. He devised a series of compromises, which he
advocated in conciliatory