hers, towards their maturity and their strength."

He was passionately Phil-Hellene. Greece, he said in 1897, is not
a State "equipped with powerful fleets, large armies, and boundless
treasure supplied by uncounted millions. It is a petty Power, hardly
counting in the list of European States. But it is a Power representing
the race that fought the battles of Thermopylae and Salamis, and
hurled back the hordes of Asia from European shores."

Of the Christian populations in Eastern Europe which had the misfortune
to live under "the black hoof of the Turkish invader," he was the
chivalrous and indefatigable champion, from the days of the Bulgarian
atrocities in 1875 to the Armenian massacres of twenty years later.
"If only," he exclaimed, "the spirit of little Montenegro had animated
the body of big Bulgaria," very different would have been the fate
of Freedom and Humanity in those distracted regions. The fact that
Ireland is so distinctly a nation--not a mere province of Great
Britain--and the fact that she is economically poor, reinforced
that effort to give her self-government which had originated in
his late-acquired love of political freedom.

6. THE IDEA OF PUBLIC RIGHT.

Of the "Concert of Europe" as it actually lived and worked (however
plausible it might sound in theory) Gladstone had the poorest opinion,
and, indeed, he declared that it was only another and a finer name for
"the mutual distrust and hatred of the Powers." It had conspicuously
failed to avert, or stop, or punish the Armenian massacres, and
it had left Greece unaided in her struggle against Turkey. Lord
Morley has finely said of him that "he was for an iron fidelity
to public engagements and a stern regard for public law, which is
the legitimate defence for small communities against the great and
powerful"; and yet again: "He had a vision, high in the heavens, of
the flash of an uplifted sword and the gleaming arm of the Avenging
Angel."

I have now reached the limits of the task assigned me by the Editor,
and my concluding word must be more personal.

I do not attempt to anticipate history. We cannot tell how much
of those seventy years of strenuous labour will live, or how far
Gladstone will prove to have read aright the signs of the times,
the tendencies of human thought, and the political forces of the
world. But we, who were his followers and disciples, know perfectly
well what we owe to him. If ever we should be tempted to despond
a