ns who could follow
the sense of the lines so as to appreciate their bearing on his
argument. But these sonorous hexameters--hexameters that seemed to
have lived on through nineteen centuries to find their application
from the lips of an orator to-day--the sense of remoteness in the
strange language and the far-off heathen origin, the deep and moving
note in the speaker's voice, thrilled the imagination of the
audience and held it spellbound, lifting for a moment the whole
subject of debate into a region far above party conflicts. Spoken by
any one else, the passage culminating in these Lucretian lines might
have produced little effect. It was the voice and manner, above
all the voice, with its marvellous modulations, that made the
speech majestic.

Yet one must not forget to add that with him, as with some other
famous statesmen, the impression made by a speech was in a measure due
to the admiring curiosity and wonder which his personality inspired.
He was so much the most interesting human being in the House of
Commons that, when he withdrew, many members said that the place had
lost half its attraction for them, and that the chamber looked empty
because he was not in it. Plenty of able men remained. But even the
ablest seemed ordinary when compared with the figure that had
vanished, a figure in whom were combined, as in no other man of his
time, an unrivalled experience, an extraordinary activity and
versatility of intellect, a fervid imagination, and an indomitable
will.

Though Mr. Gladstone's oratory was a main source of his power, both in
Parliament and over the people, the effort of detractors to represent
him as a mere rhetorician will seem absurd to the historian who
reviews his whole career. The rhetorician adorns and popularises the
ideas which have originated with others; he advocates policies which
others have devised; he follows and expresses the sentiments which
already prevail in his party. Mr. Gladstone was himself a source of
new ideas and new policies; he evoked new sentiments or turned old
sentiments into new channels. Neither was he, as some alleged,
primarily a destroyer. His conservative instincts were strong; he
cherished ancient custom. When it became necessary to clear away an
institution he sought to put something else in its place. He was a
constructive statesman not less conspicuously than were Pitt, Canning,
and Peel. Whether he was a philosophic statesman, basing his action on
large v