And I have written more than once in these columns that the
greatest of all his characteristics is composure. This mighty, restless,
fiery fighter against wrong--this stalwart and unconquerable wrestler
for right, this Titan--I might even say this Don Quixote--who has gone
out with spear and sword to assault the most strongly-entrenched
citadels of human wrongs--who has faced a world in arms--this man has,
after all, at the centre of his existence, and in the depths of his
nature, a gospel which sustains him in the hours of defeat and gloom,
and makes him one of the most restless of combatants, and the most
tranquil.
[Sidenote: The grand old philosopher.]
Devotional, almost pietistic, introspective, accustomed, I have no
doubt, from that early training of domestic piety and sacerdotal
surroundings, to see all this gay, vast phantasmagoria of life the
antechamber to a greater, more enduring, and better world beyond those
voices, Mr. Gladstone--at least that is my reading of his
character--looks at everything in human existence with the power of
self-detachment from its garish moments and its transient interests.
Behind this constant warfare, underneath all this public passion and
sweeping resolves, there is a nether and unseen world of thought,
emotion, hope, and in that world there is ever calm.
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