that one man sows, but another reaps his harvest. His oratory has been credited with qualities and results which more truly spring from his rare personality. His proneness to use long, involved, Latinized sentences, his manner of utterance, heavy rather than weighty, his almost total lack of wit and humor, and the absence of epigram, make his speeches duller to hear and to read than the hearer of them suspects at the time, so captivating is the charm of that most expressive countenance, in which fire and profundity and exquisite sweetness interblend as in a kaleidoscope. None of his sayings have passed into proverbial use, as have those of many of his intellectual inferiors. As the friend of the masses, the champion of distressed peoples, anywhere and everywhere, from Naples, under King Bomba, or the Southern States of America to the tribes of the African Soudan, who have been "struggling, and rightfully struggling, to be free," Gladstone has done his loftiest and most congenial work, and has impressed two generations of his countrymen with an affectionate admiration, modified occasionally with some distrust of his soaring genius, as no other leader ever impressed them before.

With all the cares and endless duties of such a career Gladstone has never slackened his devotion to Homer, the classics generally, and theology. His contributions to literature are remarkable, chiefly as coming from a mind so apparently absorbed with practical politics. In completing the portraiture of the most striking figure in contemporary English history, it is notable that his aristocratic bias has been distinctly shown in his refusal to join in the cry against the House of Lords. He has frequently proclaimed his belief in "the principle of birth." Mr. Russell writes: "Mr. Gladstone is essentially and fundamentally a Conservative. . . . The Church, regarded as a divinely constituted society, has had no more passionate defender. . . . His oldworld devotion to the Throne has often and severely tried the patience of his Radical followers. . . Even the House of Lords, which has so often mutilated and delayed great measures on which he set his heart, still has a definite place in his respect, if not in his affection. Indeed, he attaches to the possession of rank, and what it brings with it, an even exag

gerated importance." As a fact, Gladstone has created more peers than the Tories have done in like time, and titled men have preponderated in his Cabinets, whose joint wealth has always exceeded that of Tory Cabinets. "In all the petty details of daily life, in his tastes, his habits, his manners, his way of living, his social prejudices, he is the stiffest of Conservatives. ... It is true he has sometimes been forced by conviction, or fate, or political necessity, to be a revolutionist on a large scale; to destroy an Established Church, to add two millions of voters to the electorate, to attack the parliamentary union of the kingdoms. But, after all, these changes were, in their inception, distasteful to their author. He has allowed us to see the steps by which he arrived at the belief that they were necessary, and with admirable candor has shown us that he started with quite opposite prepossessions."

After indicating the intense religiousness of Gladstone's nature, the biographer proceeds: "If we assign the first place in his character to his religiousness, we must certainly allow the second to his love of power. . . . Ambition has been part of his religion, for ambition means with him nothing else than resolute determination to possess that official control over the machine of State, which will enable him to fulfill his predestined part in the providential order, and to do, on the largest scale, what he conceives to be his duty to God and man."

AMERICA AN EXAMPLE TO ENGLAND.

If there be those in this country who think that American democracy means public levity and intemperance, or a lack of skill and sagacity in politics, or the absence of self-command and self-denial, let them bear in mind a few of the most salient and recent facts of history which may profitably be recommended to their reflection. We emancipated a million of negroes by peaceful legislation; America liberated four or five millions by a bloody civil war: yet the industry and exports of the Southern States are maintained, while those of our negro colonies have dwindled; the South enjoys all its franchises, but we have found no better method of providing for peace and order in Jamaica, the chief of our islands, than

by the hard and vulgar, even where needful, expedient of abolishing entirely its representative institutions.

The Civil War compelled the States, both North and South, to train and embody a million and a half of men, and to present to view the greatest, instead of the smallest, armed forces in the world. Here there was supposed to arise a double danger. First that, on a sudden cessation of the war, military life and habits could not be shaken off, and, having become rudely and widely predominant, would bias the country towards an aggressive policy, or, still worse, would find vent in predatory or revolutionary operations. Secondly, that a military caste would grow up with its habits of exclusiveness and command, and would influence the tone of politics in a direction adverse to republican freedom. But both apprehensions proved to be wholly imaginary. The innumerable soldiery was at once dissolved. Cincinnatus, no longer an unique example, became the common-place of every day, the type and mould of a nation. The whole enormous mass quietly resumed the habits of social life. The generals of yesterday were the editors, the secretaries and the solicitors of to-day. The just jealousy of the State gave life to the now-forgotten maxim of Judge Blackstone, who denounced as perilous the erection of a separate profession of arms in a free country. The standing army, expanded by the heat of civil contest to gigantic dimensions, settled down again into the framework of a miniature with the returning temperature of civil life, and became a power well nigh invisible, from its minuteness, amidst the powers which sway the movements of a society exceeding forty millions.

More remarkable still was the financial sequel to the great conflict. The internal taxation for Federal purposes, which before its commencement had been unknown, was raised, in obedience to an exigency of life and death, so as to exceed every present and every past example. It pursued and worried all the transactions of life. The interest of the American debt grew to be the highest in the world, and the capital touched five hundred and sixty millions sterling. Here was provided for the faith and patience of the people a touchstone of extreme severity. In England, at the close of the great French war, the propertied classes, who were supreme in

Parliament, at once rebelled against the Tory Government, and refused to prolong the Income Tax even for a single year. We talked big, both then and now, about the payment of our National Debt; but sixty-three years have since elapsed, all of them except two called years of peace, and we have reduced the huge total by about one-ninth; that is to say, by little over one hundred millions, or scarcely more than one million and a half a year. This is the conduct of a State elaborately digested into orders and degrees, famed for wisdom and forethought, and consolidated by a long experience. But America continued long to bear on her unaccustomed and still smarting shoulders the burden of the war taxation. In twelve years she has reduced her debt by one hundred and fifty-eight millions sterling, or at the rate of thirteen millions for every year. In each twelve months she has done what we did in eight years; her self-command, self-denial, and wise forethought for the future have been, to say the least, eightfold ours. These are facts which redound greatly to her honor; and the historian will record with surprise that an enfranchised nation tolerated burdens which in this country a selected class, possessed of the representation, did not dare to face, and that the most unmitigated democracy known to the annals of the world resolutely reduced at its own cost prospective liabilities of the State, which the aristocratic, and plutocratic, and monarchical government of the United Kingdom has been contented ignobly to hand over to posterity. And such facts should be told out. It is our fashion so to tell them, against as well as for ourselves; and the record of them may some day be among the means of stirring us up to a policy more worthy of the name and fame of England. -W. E. GLADSTONE.

IT is one of the romantic features of the history of England in the latter half of the nineteenth century that its foremost Conservative statesman should be a novelist of Jewish descent and of marked Jewish name and features- nay, more, that this literary statesman should display honorable pride in his ancestry, should be a personal favorite of his sove

reign, and should repay that attachment

by conferring upon her the grand title of Empress of India. Benjamin Disraeli was born in the heart of London on the 21st of December, 1804. His ancestors had been driven from Spain by the Inquisition, in the fifteenth century, had taken refuge in Venice, and thence had migrated to England in 1748. His father, Isaac D'Israeli, the well-known author of "The Curiosities of Literature" and similar works, finally withdrew from the synagogue. Benjamin, who had been duly circumcised, was afterward baptized at the age of twelve, the poet Samuel Rogers being his godfather. In his youth he was apprenticed to the law, but the scholarly atmosphere in which he was born exercised a more potent influence over him, and he engaged in literary pursuits. His brilliant