round him, he jammed his face, as
it were, down in his hands on the table and would not budge. Every
schoolboy knows, for we may here accurately use Macaulay's well-known
expression, every schoolboy knows the courage that this implies. And
even by the heedless generation of boyhood it was appreciated, for we
find an Etonian writing to his parents to ask that he might go to Oxford
rather than Cambridge, on the sole ground that at Oxford he would have
the priceless advantage of Gladstone's influence and example. Nor did
his courage ever flag. He might be right, or he might be wrong--that is
not the question here--but when he was convinced that he was right, not
all the combined powers of Parliament or society or the multitude could
for an instant hinder his course, whether it ended in success or in
failure. Success left him calm, he had had so much of it; nor did
failures greatly depress him. The next morning found him once more
facing the world with serene and undaunted brow. There was a man. The
nation has lost him, but preserves his character, his manhood, as a
model, on which she may form if she be fortunate, coming generations of
men. With his politics, with his theology, with his manifold graces and
gifts of intellect, we are not concerned to-day, not even with his warm
and passionate human sympathies. They are not dead with him, but let
them rest with him, for we can not in one discourse view him in all his
parts. To-day it is enough to have dealt for a moment on three of his
great moral characteristics, enough to have snatched from the fleeting
hour a few moments of communion with the mighty dead.
History has not yet allotted him his definite place, but no one would
now deny that he bequeathed a pure standard of life, a record of lofty
ambition for the public good as he understood it, a monument of
life-long labor. Such lives speak for themselves, they need no statues,
they face the future with the confidence of high purpose and endeavor.
The statues are not for them but for us, to bid us be conscious of our
trust, mindful of our duty, scornful of opposition to principle and
faith. They summon us to account for time and opportunity, they embody
an inspiring tradition, they are milestones in the life of a nation. The
effigy of Pompey was bathed in the blood of his great rival: let this
statue have the nobler destiny of constantly calling to life worthy
rivals of Gladstone's fame and character.
Unveil, then, that
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