My Memory of Gladstone

The author offers a personal portrait of a prominent nineteenth-century statesman, combining close anecdotes, character sketch, and political reflections. He emphasizes the subject's prodigious energy, memory, oratorical stamina and industriousness, noting a wide intellectual range and facility with languages. Recollections describe formative schooling and university debating, early parliamentary entrance, and evolving religious commitments that temper an initial establishmentarianism toward sympathy for disestablishment in certain regions. The account highlights private habits, habitual capacity for sleep and long walks, devotion to principle informed by sincere faith, and occasional controversy over perceived political tortuosity.