'" He was the most intimate friend of
young Gladstone. They always took breakfast together, although they
boarded apart in different houses, and during the separation of
vacations they were diligent correspondents.
The father of William E. Gladstone, as we have seen, discovered
premonitions of future greatness in his son, and we may well ask the
question what impression was made by him upon his fellow school-mates at
Eton. Arthur Hallam wrote: "Whatever may be our lot, I am confident that
_he_ is a bud that will bloom with a richer fragrance than almost any
whose early promise I have witnessed."
James Milnes-Gaskell says: "Gladstone is no ordinary individual; and
perhaps if I were called on to select the individual I am intimate with
to whom I should first turn in an emergency, and whom I thought in every
way pre-eminently distinguished for high excellence, I think I should
turn to Gladstone. If you finally decide in favor of Cambridge, my
separation from Gladstone will be a source of great sorrow to me." And
the explanation of this latter remark is that the writer's mother wanted
him to go to Cambridge, while he wished to go to Oxford, because
Gladstone was going there.
Sir Francis Doyle writes: "I may as well remark that my father, a man of
great ability, as well as of great experience of life, predicted
Gladstone's future eminence from the manner in which he handled this
somewhat tiresome business.
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