rs may have
more influence in advancing the fortunes of a young man than in this
country; but I seldom have known valedictorians who have come up to
popular expectations; and most of them, though always respectable, have
remained in comparative obscurity.

Like the statesmen to whom I have alluded, Gladstone sprang from the
middle ranks, although his father, a princely Liverpool merchant, of
Scotch descent, became a baronet by force of his wealth, character, and
influence. Seeing the extraordinary talents of his third son,--William
Ewart,--Sir John Gladstone spared neither pains nor money on his
education, sending him to Eton in 1821, at the age of twelve, where he
remained till 1827, learning chiefly Latin and Greek. Here he was the
companion and friend of many men who afterward became powerful forces in
English life,--political, literary, and ecclesiastical. At the age of
seventeen we find him writing letters to Arthur Hallam on politics and
literature: and his old schoolfellows testify to his great influence
among them for purity, humanity, and nobility of character, while he was
noted for his aptness in letters and skill in debate. In 1827 the boy
was intrusted to the care of Dr. Turner,--afterward bishop of
Calcutta,--under whom he learned something besides Latin and Greek,
perhaps indirectly, in the way of ethics and theology, and other things
which go to the formation of character. At the age of twenty he entered
Christ Church at Oxford--the most aristocratic of colleges--with more
attainments than most scholars reach at thirty, and was graduated in
1831 "double-first class," distinguished not only for his scholarship
but for his power of debate in the Union Society; throwing in his lot
with Tories and High Churchmen, who, as he afterward confesses, "did not
set a due value on the imperishable and inestimable principles of human
liberty." With strong religious tendencies and convictions, he
contemplated taking orders in the Church; but his father saw things
differently,--and thus, with academic prejudices which most graduates
have to unlearn, he went abroad in 1832 to complete the education of an
English gentleman, spending most of his time in Italy and Sicily, those
eternally interesting countries to the scholar and the artist, whose
wonders can scarcely be exaggerated,--affording a perpetual charm and
study if one can ignore popular degradation, superstition, unthrift, and
indifference to material and moral pro