AMONG the countrymen of Mr. Gladstone it will be long before even-minded views can be taken of his character, his genius, and his career. They will remember him as he appeared to them in the heat of passionate conflicts, like St. Michael in the eyes of one party, like Apollyon in the sight of the other; and the good and great imperfect man that he was is little likely to be shown in truth to either. Nor will his work be justly measured or the spirit of his life revealed by cold criticism from Germany and France. More than other public men of our time he needs to be studied with a sympathy dispassionate but warm, and with an interest impartially keen. If such a study is possible anywhere, it ought to be possible in America, and the purpose of this article is to make the attempt.

On the side of both father and mother Mr. Gladstone was of purely Scottish descent: "half Highland and half Lowland," as stated by himself; half Celtic and half Teutonic, as the significance of the fact may be better expressed. His remote paternal ancestors were lairds of considerable estate, but the ancient stem had thrown branches into trade, and the statesman sprang from one of those. John Gladstone, his father, began life and commercial experience at Leith, but removed to Liverpool at the age of twenty-two, and entered, in the corn trade, upon a career of great success. He passed in due time to the front rank of the merchant princes of the

rising city, and became a man of both weight and power, as much by the force of his character as by the measure of his wealth. When the oracles of Liverpool were questioned, as they often were, by heads of government and committees of Parliament, on matters of fact and policy touching finance and trade, John Gladstone was sure to be heard. His interests had passed far beyond the trade in corn. He was a sugar-planter, with great estates and many hundreds of slaves, in Jamaica and Demerara; he was an owner of ships; he had capital in banks, and varied ventures in many parts of the world. Nor did the powerful, pushing Scotchman confine the working of his energy to these moneygetting affairs. He was active and aggressive in the politics of the day, conspicuous in the hottest fighting, and continually exposed to the roughest handling in local caricature and abuse. He came to Liverpool, it is said, a Presbyterian and a Whig. He had grown to be a Churchman and a Tory of the stiffest creed. Political distinction was beyond the reach of such talents as he possessed, but as one of the pillars of the party his standing was marked, and he received a baronetcy for reward. He sat in Parliament twice (elected in 1818 and 1820), not for his own city, but for more pliant boroughs at Lancaster and Woodstock, and had little to say or do in the great assembly, so far as can now be seen.

Apparently, Sir John Gladstone was

a man of more force than fineness in the qualities that marked his character. Even seventy years ago the best of moral fibre could not reasonably be looked for in a British capitalist who drew profit from the labor of slaves. If the slaveowning of the elder Gladstone had been only a minor incident of his undertakings and kept in the background of his life, it might claim little notice; but it took importance from its magnitude, and from the prominence of his opposition to all measures in behalf of the slaves. He maintained the discipline of the lash on his plantations to the last, and his great Demerara estates acquired a sinister notoriety in the abolitionist reports of the day. At the end, when compensated emancipation was decreed by the British Parliament, he received more than £75,000 for the slaves that had been solely his own, besides large shares of payment that came to him through his partnership in other estates.

To this thrifty and resolute Scottish merchant of Liverpool there were born four sons, of whom the youngest was William Ewart, so named after one of the father's Scottish friends. The birth of William Ewart Gladstone occurred on the 29th of December, 1809. Before he reached the age of twelve he was sent to join two of his brothers at Eton, and from Eton he passed to Oxford in January, 1828, entering as a commoner of Christ Church. He came, no doubt, prepared by all the influences of his home, to accept the spirit of the university with a complete surrender to it of heart and mind. He had been reared in an atmosphere of political Toryism, the rank quality of which can easily be conceived. He was now brought into another of like kind, but more penetrating, because of the different elements, scholastic, ecclesiastical, and social, that were subtly distilled into it. Oxford was on the eve of the singular movement of Church revival to which its name was afterward given. The publi

cation of the Tracts for the Times was not yet begun, but much of the feeling that inspired them must have been already in the air. It is true that Mr. Gladstone has said, in A Chapter of Autobiography, that when he resided in Oxford, from 1828 to 1831, “no sign of it [the Tractarian Movement] had yet appeared; " but where Newman was preaching, where Pusey was teaching, and where students like Henry Manning and James Hope (the Hope-Scott of later times) were his close companions, there must have been currents in motion around him that set strongly toward the channels of the agitation of 1833. At all events, it is certain that young Gladstone became inspired at Oxford with a passion of belief in and devotion to the Church. By nature he was strongly inclined, it is clear, to religious feeling, and to the attitude of mind which makes religious faith easy. But there cannot be a doubt that the influence of the university turned most of his natural religious fervor into a kind of passionate Churchmanship, which became the dominant strain in his conservatism, and the dominating force in his life for many subsequent years. To understand this principal and most powerful effect upon him from Oxford is nearly to understand Mr. Gladstone, and perhaps to obtain a key to the most puzzling parts of his

career.

While everything in his history has gone to prove that he was formed by nature for the activities and contentions of public life, he felt at the university so strong an impulsion toward clerical duties that nothing but the strenuous opposition of his father, it is said, prevented his taking them up. Nevertheless, he prepared himself well, with the opportunities of Oxford, for his future parliamentary work. He was an excellent student, and grounded himself broadly in the learning which gave an endowment of relief to his laborious years. He made the most of the debating clubs,