conversing: "If they wish to judge of these, let them read what we say in Parliament, especially what I say, for I never speak lightly in Parliament. In our public despatches we are much hampered by the opinion of Europe, which we are bound to consider, and this is not favourable to Liberal institutions in Egypt. But they should read our speeches." He had turned to the table, for we were half-way across the room, and took up a paper which was on it, a despatch already signed, and which I felt sure was that which Wilson had told me he had helped to draft, and seemed on the point of showing it to me—and then refrained and put it down again. Once more his manner became natural and intimate. He thanked me again for my letters and all that I had told him, and begged me to let him hear if any new combination arose. His extreme kindness as he shook hands with me moved me greatly and I was near shedding tears, and went away feeling that he was a good as well as a great man, and wondering only how any one with so good a heart could have arrived at being Prime Minister. "El hamdu l'Illah. El hamdu l'Illah," I kept repeating to myself, "El nasr min Alah, wa fathon karibon."
Such was the Gladstone I saw unveiled for a moment that day—a man of infinite private sympathy with good, and of whom one would affirm it impossible he should swerve a hair's breadth from the path of right. But, alas, there was another Gladstone, the opportunist statesman, who was very different from the first, and whom I was presently to see playing in public "such fantastic tricks before high Heaven as make the angels weep." I will attempt a character, drawn from my observation of him, which was a close one, during the next ten years, of this very remarkable personality.
Gladstone, as I have said, was two personages. His human side was very charming. He had an immense power of sympathy, and what I may call a lavish expenditure of enthusiasm for such things as attracted him, and he had also a certain humility of attitude, often towards persons far inferior