JAMES PALACE
QUEEN AND PREMIER
GLADSTONE IN HIS STUDY, READING
MR. AND MRS. GLADSTONE, 1897
INTRODUCTORY.
There are few, even among those who differed from him, who would deny to
Mr. Gladstone the title of a great statesman: and in order to appreciate
his wonderful career, it is necessary to realize the condition of the
world of thought, manners and works at the time when he entered
public life.
In medicine there was no chloroform; in art the sun had not been
enlisted in portraiture; railways were just struggling into existence;
the electric telegraph was unknown; gas was an unfashionable light;
postage was dear, and newspapers were taxed.
In literature, Scott had just died; Carlyle was awaiting the publication
of his first characteristic book; Tennyson was regarded as worthy of
hope because of his juvenile poems; Macaulay was simply a brilliant
young man who had written some stirring verse and splendid prose; the
Brontes were schoolgirls; Thackeray was dreaming of becoming an artist;
Dickens had not written a line of fiction; Browning and George Eliot
were yet to come.
In theology, Newman was just emerging from evangelicalism; Pusey was an
Oxford tutor; Samuel Wilberforce a village curate; Henry Manning a young
graduate; and Darwin was commencing that series of investigations which
revolutionized the popular conception of created things.
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