Armitstead; escaping from
the crowds of hero-worshippers, and attending divine service sometimes
twice in the same day. He had not been idle in his temporary retreat.
When the day comes to record his doings before the accurate scales of
Omnipotent and Omniscient Justice, he will stand out from all other men
in the absolute use of every available second of his days of life. It
was clear that during his retreat, as during his hours of official work,
his mind had been busy on the same absorbing and engrossing subject. He
was armed with a considerable manuscript, and had evidently thought out
his sentences, his arguments, his statements of facts with intense
devotion and thought.
This is one of the things which distinguishes him from other public men
of his time. There are men I wot of--and not very big men either--who
are nothing without their audience. They deem their dignity abused if
there be not the crowded bench, the cheering friends, the prominent and
ostentatious place. Not so Mr. Gladstone. Perhaps it is the splendid
robustness of his nerves, perhaps the absorption in his subject to the
forgetfulness of himself; whatever it is, he faces this small,
_distrait_, perhaps even depressed, audience with the same zest as
though he were once again before that splendid gathering which met his
eyes on the memorable night when he brought in his Home Rule Bill.
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