gh a multitude of confusing minutiae he had neither
equal nor second.

The Disestablishment Bill passed easily through the Commons, but
was threatened with disaster in the Lords, and it was with profound
satisfaction that Mrs. Gladstone, most devoted and most helpful of
wives, announced the result of the division on the Second Reading.
Gladstone had been unwell, and had gone to bed early. Mrs. Gladstone
who had been listening to the debate in the House of Lords, said
to a friend, "I could not help it; I gave William a discreet poke.
'A majority of thirty-three, my dear.' 'Thank you, my dear,' he
said, and turned round, and went to sleep on the other side." After
a stormy passage through Committee, the Bill became law on the
26th of July.

So Gladstone's first great act of legislation ended, and he was
athirst for more. Such momentous reforms as the Irish Land Act, the
Education Act, the abolition of religious tests in the University,
the abolition of purchase in the Army, and the establishment of the
Ballot, filled Session after Session with excitement; and Gladstone
pursued each in turn with an ardour which left his followers out
of breath.

He was not very skilful in managing his party, or even his Cabinet.
He kept his friendships and his official relations quite distinct.
He never realized the force of the saying that men who have only
worked together have only half lived together. It was truly said
that he understood MAN, but not men; and meek followers in the
House of Commons, who had sacrificed money, time, toil, health,
and sometimes conscience, to the support of the Government, turned,
like the crushed worm, when they found that Gladstone sternly ignored
their presence in the Lobby, or, if forced to speak to them, called
them by inappropriate names. His strenuousness of reforming purpose
and strength of will were concealed by no lightness of touch, no
give-and-take, no playfulness, no fun. He had little of that saving
grace of humour which smoothes the practical working of life as much
as it adds to its enjoyment. He was fiercely, terribly, incessantly
in earnest; and unbroken earnestness, though admirable, exhausts
and in the long run alienates.

There was yet another feature of his Parliamentary management which
proved disastrous to his cause, and this was his tendency to what the
vulgar call hair-splitting and the learned casuistry. At Oxford men
are taught to distinguish with scrupulous care between pr