In his youth, as we have seen, he was anxious to become a clergyman, and if he had done so he would have become, in all human probability, one of the greatest Churchmen England has ever known. Down to his latest days, whenever he had a chance, he always sought relief from politics in classical study or in theological dispute. At this particular period of his career Mr. Gladstone no doubt sincerely believed that his political work was over. There seemed nothing particular for him to do, and according to all appearance the reign of the Tories was likely to be long. He had always a contempt, hardly even disguised, for Disraeli's flashy foreign policy, but he probably thought that at this time there was no great harm to be done, and, anyhow, not much to be accomplished by formal opposition. But those who believed that Mr. Gladstone had buried

his whole existence in a controversy conducted, so to speak, in the Roman catacombs, soon found how completely they had misunderstood the man and failed to take due account of the possibilities of the time.

CHAPTER XXVII.-
ACHILLES RECALLED

The moment was soon to come when Mr. Gladstone was to be seen in the front of the fight again. Like Achilles, he was soon to come with a rush forth from his tent and lead on the battle. It was the irony of fate, indeed. Who brought him out of his tent ? Was it an appeal from Lord Hartington or from Mr. Bright? Nothing of the kind. Neither Lord Hartington nor Mr. Bright brought back Mr. Gladstone to political leadership. Mr. Disraeli did it himself. Mr. Disraeli, all unconscious of what he was doing, brought back to the battle the great swordsman with whom he was

never quite able to compete. Mr. Disraeli's speeches and his action on the Bulgarian question summoned Mr. Gladstone in a moment away from his theological studies, and, before England well knew what was happening, he was there again to the front, the practical, although not yet the nominal, leader of the Liberal party. In the meantime the Government of Mr. Disraeli was not doing particularly well so far as domestic affairs were concerned. The Tory statesman had nothing striking to offer to the country. If Mr. Gladstone had tried to do too much, it seemed as if Mr. Disraeli were inclined to do too little. He appeared to prefer in domestic affairs to cling to the policy, supposed to be safe, of letting things alone. But this is seldom safe in England. People soon get tired of a Government which does little or nothing in do

mestic affairs. They want to have a sense of being kept alive by their rulers. It may seem strange, but to me it is perfectly certain that the outsider class who quarreled with Mr. Gladstone because he was always giving them a surprise soon began to grumble at Mr. Disraeli because he was giving them no surprise at all. Besides, it must be owned that he had suddenly got into stormy waters in foreign affairs. It was a time of trouble with Russia and with Turkey, and Mr. Disraeli was disposed to go much further with what we may call the Jingo policy than some of his own colleagues were willing to do. Probably, too, he was growing tired of a long Parliamentary career. He had had almost every success to which he could have aspired. The long day's task was all but done. On the 11th of August, 1876, he spoke for the last time in the House of Commons, and then he passed into the House of Lords as Lord Beaconsfield. He crowned his career by accepting for himself the title which was at one time offered to a far greater man, Edmund Burke, and which Burke had declined on the ground that splendid titles were then of little value to him. I heard Mr. Disraeli's last speech in the House of Commons, as I heard later on his last speech in the House of Lords. Each was a memorable occasion. The first was the closing of a great political career. The last was the closing of a great personal ambition.

Let me go back, however, to Mr. Gladstone's reappearance in the front of the political field. The circumstance that brought about this sudden event was the conduct of the Turkish Government in the province of Bulgaria. Bulgaria was probably one of the worst-governed places in the world. The Turkish Government ruled by its pashas, and its pashas made life intolerable for the people in Bulgaria. An insurrection broke out there, and the Sultan sent large numbers of BashiBazouks and other irregular troops to put down the rising. They did put it down, and with a vengeance. Their idea, if they can be supposed to have had any idea, seems to have been to make a desert and call it peace. There was simply a battue or massacre of Bulgarians. Reports began to filter into Constantinople of the wholesale slaughter of men, women, and children. The correspondent of the London " Daily News" in Constantinople inquired into these reports and found them only too true. The "Daily News" afterward sent out its brilliant Irish

American correspondent, the late Mr. MacGahan, to the scene of the slaughter, and Mr. MacGahan was able to verify with his own eyes the terrible truth of the reports. It had been contended by the friends of the Ottoman Government in England that there had been an armed insurrection, and that the insurgents were conquered in fair and open conflict. Mr. MacGahan saw with his own eyes whole villages whose streets, otherwise deserted, were covered with the bodies of slaughtered women and children.

Mr. Disraeli was singularly unhappy in his way of dealing at first with the terrible stories which came from the correspondent of the Daily News" at Constantinople. No doubt he did not believe in them. But he took no trouble to make any inquiries. His worst enemy could not suppose that he was a man indifferent to human suffering, or that if he thought there was anything in the stories he would have made fun of them. But he appears to have assumed at once that there could be nothing serious in any statement made by the foreign correspondent of a London Liberal newspaper. Therefore, when questioned in the House of Commons on the subject, he treated the whole matter in his

WILLIAM EDWARD FORSTER From a photograph by Messrs. Elliott & Fry, London. Mr. Forster was one of the ablest Liberal statesmen of recent years. He had most to do with the passing of the Education Bill in 1870 and the Ballot Bill in 1871. In 1880-2 he was Chief Secretary for Ireland. He was a son-in-law of Dr. Arnold, of Rugby. He died in 1886.

most audacious vein of persiflage and sarcasm. He described the reports as "coffee-house babble." He made fun of the massacres, and was especially sportive about the tortures. Oriental races, he boldly declared, were not in the habit of applying themselves to torture; they generally, he insisted, "terminated their connection with culprits in a more expeditious manner." Now, Mr. Disraeli in his earlier days had been in European Turkey and in Asia Minor. Being an Oriental himself by extraction and by sympathy, he must have read some books about Oriental history. He must have known, too, that the torture of enemies was very commonly practiced among Oriental races. Yet he stood up in the House of Commons and had the fatuity-it can be called nothing less-to insist that torture was hardly known in the East, and the bad taste to make jokes about the stories that were told of outraged and mutilated women. A tremendous effect was produced upon the whole country by the narratives of Mr. MacGahan and by the reports of Mr. Baring, the English Consul, who was sent out especially to Bulgaria to make inquiries, and whose official reports bore out only too well the investigations and the conclusions of the special

correspondent of the "Daily News." Mr. Bright effectively described the agitation which arose in England as an uprising of the English people. So it was, but where was the leader? Where, to quote the words of Walter Scott, "was Roderick; then one blast of Roderick's bugle-horn were worth ten thousand men "?

Roderick, that is Gladstone, came to the front and sounded a tremendous note upon his bugle-horn. He put himself in front of the agitation, and forgot for the time his polemics and his critical essays. He threw his whole soul into the movement against the Ottoman Government in Bulgaria. He made speeches and brought forward motions in the House of Commons. He addressed meetings all over the country. He was the principal orator at a great meeting held in St. James's Hall in London, one of the most enthusiastic meetings it has ever been my fortune to attend, and where he made one of the most powerful and impassioned and at the same time convincing speeches I have ever heard even from his lips. Even Mr. Carlyle came