As Mr. George
Russell rightly remarks, 'This was an act of Parliamentary Quixotism too
eccentric to be intelligible. It argued a fastidious sensitiveness of
conscience, and a nice sense of political propriety so opposed to the
sordid selfishness and unblushing tergiversation of the ordinary
place-hunter as to be almost offensive.' But as Mr. Gladstone was then,
so he has been all his life--the very Quixote of conscience. Judged by
every standard of human probability, he has ruined himself over and over
and over again. He is always ruining himself, and always rising, like
the Phoenix, in renewed youth from the ashes of his funeral pyre. As was
said in homely phrase some years ago, he 'always keeps bobbing up
again.' What is the secret of this wonderful capacity of revival? How
is it that Mr. Gladstone seems to find even his blunders help him, and
the affirmation of principles that seem to be destructive to all chance
of the success of his policy absolutely helps him to its realization?"
From a merely human standpoint it is inexplicable. But
'If right or wrong in this God's world of ours
Be leagued with higher powers,'
then the mystery is not so insolvable. He believed in the higher powers.
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