HIS FIRST BOOK
(_1838-1839_)
The union [with the State] is to the Church of secondary though
great importance. _Her_ foundations are on the holy hills. Her
charter is legibly divine. She, if she should be excluded from the
precinct of government, may still fulfil all her functions, and
carry them out to perfection. Her condition would be anything
rather than pitiable, should she once more occupy the position
which she held before the reign of Constantine. But the State, in
rejecting her, would actively violate its most solemn duty, and
would, if the theory of the connection be sound, entail upon itself
a curse.--GLADSTONE (1838).
According to Mr. Gladstone, a furore for church establishment came down
upon the conservative squadrons between 1835 and 1838. He describes it
as due especially to the activity of the presbyterian established church
of Scotland before the disruption, and especially to the 'zealous and
truly noble propagandism of Dr. Chalmers, a man with the energy of a
giant and the simplicity of a child.' In 1837, Mr. Gladstone says in one
of the many fragments written when in his later years he mused over the
past, 'we had a movement for fresh parliamentary grants to build
churches in Scotland. The leaders did not seem much to like it, but had
to follow. I remember dining at Sir R. Peel's with the Scotch
deputation. It included Collins, a church bookseller of note, who told
me that no sermon ought ever to fall short of an hour, for in less time
than that it was not possible to explain any text of the Holy
Scripture.'
In the spring of 1838, the mighty Chalmers was persuaded to cross the
border and deliver in London half a dozen discourses to vindicate the
cause of ecclesiastical establishments. The rooms in Hanover Square
were crowded to suffocation by intense audiences mainly composed of the
governing class. Princes of the blood were there, high prelates of the
church, great nobles, leading statesmen, and a throng of members of the
House of Commons, from both sides of it. The orator was seated, but now
and again in the kindling excitement of his thought, he rose
unconsciously to his feet, and by ringing phrase or ardent gesture
roused a whirlwind of enthusiasm such that vehement bystanders assure us
it could not be exceeded in the history of human eloquence.[98] In
Chalmers' fulminating energy, the mechanical polemics of an
appropriation clause in a parliamentary bill assume a passionate and
living air. He had warned his northern flock, 'should the disaster ever
befall us, of vulgar and upstart politicians becoming lords of the
ascendant, and an infidel or demi-infidel government wielding the
destinies of this mighty empire, and should they be willing at the
shrines of their own wretched partizanship to make sacrifice of those
great and hallowed institutions which were consecrated by our ancestors
to the maintenance of religious truth and religious liberty,--should in
particular the monstrous proposition ever be entertained to abridge the
legal funds for the support of protestantism,--let us hope that there is
still enough, not of fiery zeal, but of calm, resolute, enlightened
principle in the land to resent the outrage--enough of energy and
reaction in the revolted sense of this great country to meet and
overbear it.'
CHALMERS IN LONDON
The impression made by all this on Mr. Gladstone he has himself
described in an autobiographic note of 1897:--
The primary idea of my early politics was the church. With this was
connected the idea of the establishment, as being everything except
essential. When therefore Dr. Chalmers came to London to lecture on
the principle of church establishments, I attended as a loyal
hearer. I had a profound respect for the lecturer, with whom I had
had the honour of a good deal of acquaintance during winter
residences in Edinburgh, and some correspondence by letter. I was
in my earlier twenties, and he near his sixties [he was 58], with
a high and merited fame for eloquence and character. He subscribed
his letters to me 'respectfully' (or 'most respectfully') yours,
and puzzled me extremely in the effort to find out what suitable
mode of subscription to use in return. Unfortunately the basis of
his lectures was totally unsound. Parliament as being Christian was
bound to know and establish the truth. But not being made of
theologians, it could not follow the truth into its minuter
shadings, and must proceed upon broad lines. Fortunately these
lines were ready to hand. There was a religious system which, taken
in the rough, was truth. This was known as protestantism: and to
its varieties it was not the business of the legislature to have
regard. On the other side lay a system which, taken again in the
rough, was not truth but error. This system was known as popery.
Parliament therefore was bound to establish and endow some kind of
protestantism, and not to establish or endow popery.
In a letter to Manning (May 14, 1838) he puts the case more bluntly:--
Such a jumble of church, un-church, and anti-church principles as
that excellent and eloquent man Dr. Chalmers has given us in his
recent lectures, no human being ever heard, and it can only be
compared to the state of things--
Ante mare et terras et quod tegit omnia coelum.[99]
He thinks that the State has not cognisance of spirituals, except
upon a broad simple principle like that which separates popery from
protestantism, namely that protestantism receives the word of God
only, popery the word of God and the word of man alike--it is easy,
he says, such being the alternatives, to judge which is preferable.
He flogged the apostolic succession grievously, seven bishops
sitting below him: London, Winchester, Chester, Oxford, Llandaff,
Gloucester, Exeter, and the Duke of Cambridge incessantly bobbing
assent; but for fear we should be annoyed he then turned round on
the cathedrals plan and flogged it with at least equal vigour. He
has a mind keenly susceptible of what is beautiful, great, and
good; tenacious of an idea when once grasped, and with a singular
power of concentrating the whole man upon it. But unfortunately I
do not believe he has ever looked in the face the real doctrine of
the visible church and the apostolic succession, or has any idea
what is the matter at issue.
Mr. Gladstone says he could not stand the undisputed currency in
conservative circles of a theory like this, and felt that the occasion
ought to be seized for further entrenching the existing institution,
strong as it seemed in fact, by more systematic defences in principle
and theory. He sat down to the literary task with uncommon vigour and
persistency. His object was not merely to show that the state has a
conscience, for not even the newest of new Machiavellians denies that a
state is bound by some moral obligations, though in history and fact it
is true that
Earth is sick,
And Heaven is weary, of the hollow words
Which States and Kingdoms utter when they talk
Of truth and justice.[100]
But the obligation of conscience upon a state was not Mr. Gladstone's
only point. His propositions were, that the state is cognisant of the
difference between religious truth and religious error: that the
propagation of this truth and the discouragement of this error are among
the ends for which government exists; that the English state did
recognise as a fundamental duty to give an active and exclusive support
to a certain religion; and finally that the condition of things
resulting from the discharge of this duty was well worth preserving
against encroachment, from whatever quarter encroachment might threaten.
COMPOSITION OF HIS WORK
On July 23rd, the draft of his book was at last finished, and he
dispatched it to James Hope for free criticism, suggestions, and
revision. The 'physical state of the MS.,' as Mr. Gladstone calls it,
seems to have been rather indefensible, and his excuse for writing
'irregularly and confusedly, considering the pressure of other
engagements'--an excuse somewhat too common with him--was not quite so
valid as he seems to have thought it. 'The defects,' writes Hope, 'are
such as must almost necessarily occur when a great subject is handled
piecemeal and at intervals; and I should recommend, with a view to
remedying them, that you procure the whole to be copied out in a good
legible hand with blank pages, and that you read it through in this
shape once connectedly, with a view to the whole argument, and again
with a view to examining the structure of each part.'[101] Hope took as
much trouble with the argument and structure of the book as if he were
himself its author. For many weeks the fervid toil went on.
The strain on his eyesight that had embarrassed Mr. Gladstone for
several months now made abstinence from incessant reading and writing
necessary, and he was ordered to travel. He first settled with his
sister at Ems (August 15th), whither the proofs of his book with Hope's
annotations followed, nor did he finally get rid of the burden until the
middle of September. The tedium of life in hotels was almost worse than
the tedium of revising proofs, and at Milan and Florence he was strongly
tempted to return home, as the benefit was problematical; it was even
doubtful whether pictures were any less trying to his eyes than books.
He made the acquaintance of one celebrated writer of the time. 'I went
to see Manzoni,' he says, 'in his house some six or eight miles from
Milan in 1838. He was a most interesting man, but was regarded, as I
found, among the more fashionable priests in Milan as a _bacchettone_
[hypocrite]. In his own way he was, I think, a liberal and a
nationalist, nor was the alliance of such politics with strong religious
convictions uncommon among the more eminent Italians of those days.'
October found him in Sicily,[102] where he travelled with Sir Stephen
Glynne and his two sisters, and here we shall soon see that with one of
these sisters a momentous thing came to pass. It was at Catania that he
first heard of the publication of his book. A month or more was passed
in Rome in company with Manning, and together they visited Wiseman,
Manning's conversion still thirteen years off. Macaulay too, now
eight-and-thirty, was at Rome that winter. 'On Christmas Eve,' he says,
'I found Gladstone in the throng, and I accosted him, as we had met,
though we had never been introduced to each other. We talked and walked
together in St. Peter's during the best part of an afternoon. He is both
a clever and an amiable man....' At Rome, as the state of his eyesight
forbade too close resort to picture galleries and museums, he listened
to countless sermons, all carefully recorded in his diary. Dr. Wiseman
gave him a lesson in the missal. On his birthday he went with Manning to
hear mass with the pope's choir, and they were placed on the bench
behind the cardinals. At St. Peter's he recalled that there his first
conception of the unity of the church had come into his mind, and the
desire for its attainment--'an object in every human sense hopeless, but
not therefore the less to be desired, for the horizon of human hope is
not that of divine power and wisdom. That idea has been upon the whole,
I believe, the ruling one of my life during the period that has since
elapsed.' On January 19, he bade 'a reluctant adieu to the mysterious
city, whither he should repair who wishes to renew for a time the dream
of life.'
A few years later Mr. Gladstone noted some differences between English
and Italian preaching that are of interest:--
The fundamental distinction between English and Italian preaching
is, I think, this: the mind of the English preacher, or reader of
sermons, however impressive, is fixed mainly upon his composition,
that of the Italian on his hearers. The Italian is a man applying
himself by his rational and persuasive organs to men, in order to
move them; the former is a man applying himself, with his best
ability in many cases, to a fixed form of matter, in order to _make
it_ move those whom he addresses. The action in the one case is
warm, living, direct, immediate, from heart to heart; in the other
it is transfused through a medium comparatively torpid. The first
is surely far superior to the second in truth and reality. The
preacher bears an awful message. Such messengers, if sent with
authority, are too much identified with, and possessed by, that
which they carry, to view it objectively during its delivery, it
absorbs their very being and all its energies, they _are_ their
message, and they see nothing extrinsic to themselves except those
to whose hearts they desire to bring it. In truth, what we want is
the following of nature, and her genial development. (March 20,
Palm Sunday, '42.)
II
GOES ABROAD. BOOK PUBLISHED
It was the end of January (1839) before Mr. Gladstone arrived in London,
and by that time his work had been out for six or seven weeks.[103] On
his return we may be sure that his book and its fortunes were the young
author's most lively interest. Church authorities and the clergy
generally, so far as he could learn, approved, many of them very warmly.
The Bishop of London wrote this, and the Archbishop of Canterbury said
it. It is easy to understand with what interest and delight the average
churchman would welcome so serious a contribution to the good cause, so
bold an effort by so skilled a hand, by lessons from history, by general
principles of national probity and a national religion, and by
well-digested materials gathered, as Hooker gathered his, 'from the
characteristic circumstances of the time,' to support the case for
ecclesiastical privilege. Anglicans of the better sort had their
intellectual self-respect restored in Mr. Gladstone's book, by finding
that they need no longer subsist on the dregs of Eldonian prejudice, but
could sustain themselves in intellectual dignity and affluence by large
thoughts and sonorous phrases upon the nature of human society as a
grand whole.[104] Even unconvinced whigs who quarrelled with the
arguments, admitted that the tories had found in the young member for
Newark a well-read scholar, with extraordinary amplitude of mind, a man
who knew what reasoning meant, and a man who knew how to write.
The first chapter dealing with establishment drew forth premature
praise from many who condemned the succeeding chapters setting out high
notions as to the church. From both universities he had favourable
accounts. 'From Scotland they are mixed; those which are most definite
tend to show there is considerable soreness, at which, God knows, I am
not surprised; but I have not sought nor desired it.' The Germans on the
whole approved. Bunsen was exuberant; there was nobody, he said, with
whom he so loved [Greek: symphilosophein kai symphilologein]; people have too
much to do about themselves to have time to seek truth on its own
account; the greater, therefore, the merit of the writer who forces his
age to decide, whether they will serve God or Baal. Gladstone is the
first man in England as to intellectual power, he cried, and he has
heard higher tones than any one else in this land. The Crown Prince of
Prussia sent him civil messages, and meant to have the book translated.
Rogers, the poet, wrote that his mother was descended from stout
nonconformists, that his father was perverted to his mother's heresies,
and that therefore he himself could not be zealous in the cause; but,
however that might be, of this Mr. Gladstone might be very sure, that he
would love and admire the author of the book as much as ever. The Duke
of Newcastle expected much satisfaction; meanwhile declared it to be a
national duty to provide churches and pastors; parliament should vote
even millions and millions; then dissent would uncommonly soon
disappear, and a blessing would fall upon the land. Dr. Arnold told his
friends how much he admired the spirit of the book throughout, how he
liked the substance of half of it, how erroneous he thought the other
half. Wordsworth pronounced it worthy of all attention, doubted whether
the author had not gone too far about apostolical descent; but then,
like the sage that he was, the poet admitted that he must know a great
deal more ecclesiastical history, be better read in the Fathers, and
read the book itself over again, before he could feel any right to
criticise.[105]
ITS RECEPTION
His political leaders had as yet not spoken a word. On February 9th, Mr.
Gladstone dined at Sir Robert Peel's. 'Not a word from him, Stanley, or
Graham yet, even to acknowledge my poor book; but no change in manner,
certainly none in Peel or Graham.' Monckton Milnes had been to Drayton,
and told how the great man there had asked impatiently why anybody with
so fine a career before him should go out of his way to write books.
'Sir Robert Peel,' says Mr. Gladstone, 'who was a religious man, was
wholly anti-church and unclerical, and largely undogmatic. I feel that
Sir R. Peel must have been quite perplexed in his treatment of me after
the publication of the book, partly through his own fault, for by habit
and education he was quite incapable of comprehending the movement in
the church, the strength it would reach, and the exigencies it would
entail. Lord Derby, I think, early began to escape from the erastian
yoke which weighed upon Peel. Lord Aberdeen was, I should say,
altogether enlightened in regard to it and had cast it off: so that he
obtained from some the sobriquet (during his ministry) of "the
presbyterian Puseyite."' Even Mr. Gladstone's best friends trembled for
the effect of his ecclesiastical zeal upon his powers of political
usefulness, and to the same effect was the general talk of the town. The
common suspicion that the writer was doing the work of the hated
Puseyites grew darker and spread further. Then in April came Macaulay's
article in the _Edinburgh_, setting out with his own incomparable
directness, pungency, and effect, all the arguments on the side of that
popular antagonism which was rooted far less in specific reasoning than
in a general anti-sacerdotal instinct that lies deep in the hearts of
Englishmen. John Sterling called the famous article the assault of an
equipped and practised sophist against a crude young platonist, who
happens by accident to have been taught the hard and broken dialect of
Aristotle rather than the deep, continuous, and musical flow of his true
and ultimate master. Author and critic exchanged magnanimous letters
worthy of two great and honourable men.[106] Not the least wonderful
thing about Macaulay's review is that he should not have seen how many
of his own most trenchant considerations told no more strongly against
Mr. Gladstone's theory, than they told against that whig theory of
establishment which at the end of his article he himself tried to set up
in its place.
Praise indeed came, and praise that no good man could have treated with
indifference, from men like Keble, and it came from other quarters
whence it was perhaps not quite so welcome, and not much more dangerous.
He heard (March 19) that the Duke of Sussex, at Lord Durham's, had been
strongly condemning the book; and by an odd contrast just after, as he
was standing in conversation with George Sinclair, O'Connell with
evident purpose came up and began to thank him for a most valuable work;
for the doctrine of the authority of the church and infallibility in
essentials--a great approximation to the church of Rome--an excellent
sign in one who if he lived, etc. etc. It did not go far enough for the
Roman catholic Archbishop of Tuan; but Dr. Murray, the Archbishop of
Dublin, was delighted with it; he termed it an honest book, while as to
the charges against romanism Mr. Gladstone was misinformed. 'I merely
said I was very glad to approximate to any one on the ground of _truth_;
_i.e._ rejoiced when truth immediately wrought out, in whatever degree,
its own legitimate result of unity. O'Connell said he claimed half of
me.... Count Montalembert came to me to-day (March 23rd), and sat long,
for the purpose of ingenuously and kindly impugning certain statements
in my book, viz. (1) That the peculiar tendency of the policy of
romanism before the reformation went to limit in the mass of men
intellectual exercise upon religion. (2) That the doctrine of purgatory
adjourned until after death, more or less, the idea and practice of the
practical work of religion. (3) That the Roman catholic church restricts
the reading of the scriptures by the Christian people. He spoke of the
evils; I contended we had a balance of good, and that the idea of duty
in individuals was more developed here than in pure Roman catholic
countries.'
THE BOOK TOO LATE
All was of no avail. 'Scarcely had my work issued from the press,' wrote
Mr. Gladstone thirty years later, 'when I became aware that there was no
party, no section of a party, no individual person probably, in the
House of Commons, who was prepared to act upon it. I found myself the
last man on a sinking ship.' Exclusive support to the established
religion of the country had been the rule; 'but when I bade it live, it
was just about to die. It was really a quickened, not a deadened
conscience, in the country, that insisted on enlarging the circle of
state support.'[107] The result was not wholly unexpected, for in the
summer of 1838 while actually writing the book, he records that he 'told
Pusey for himself alone, I thought my own church and state principles
within one stage of being hopeless as regards success in this
generation.'
Another set of fragmentary notes, composed in 1894, and headed 'Some of
my Errors,' contains a further passage that points in a significant
direction:--
Oxford had not taught me, nor had any other place or person, the
value of liberty as an essential condition of excellence in human
things. True, Oxford had supplied me with the means of applying a
remedy to this mischief, for she had undoubtedly infused into my
mind the love of truth as a dominant and supreme motive of conduct.
But this it took long to develop into its proper place and
function. It may, perhaps, be thought that among these errors I
ought to record the publication in 1838 of my first work, _The
State in its Relation with the Church_. Undoubtedly that work was
written in total disregard or rather ignorance of the conditions
under which alone political action was possible in matters of
religion. It involved me personally in a good deal of
embarrassment.... In the sanguine fervour of youth, having now
learned something about the nature of the church and its office,
and noting the many symptoms of revival and reform within her
borders, I dreamed that she was capable of recovering lost ground,
and of bringing back the nation to unity in her communion. A
notable projection from the ivory gate,
'Sed falsa ad coelum mittunt insomnia manes.'[108]
From these points of view the effort seems contemptible. But I
think that there is more to be said. The land was overspread with a
thick curtain of prejudice. The foundations of the historic church
of England, except in the minds of a few divines, were obscured.
The evangelical movement, with all its virtues and merits, had the
vice of individualising religion in degree perhaps unexampled, and
of rendering the language of holy scripture about Mount Sion and
the kingdom of heaven little better than a jargon.... To meet the
demands of the coming time, it was a matter of vital necessity to
cut a way through all this darkness to a clearer and more solid
position. Immense progress has been made in that direction during
my lifetime, and I am inclined to hope that my book imparted a
certain amount of stimulus to the public mind, and made some small
contribution to the needful process in its earliest stage.
In the early pages of this very book, Mr. Gladstone says, that the union
of church and state is to the church of secondary though great
importance; _her_ foundations are on the holy hills and her condition
would be no pitiable one, should she once more occupy the position that
she held before the reign of Constantine.[109] Faint echo of the
unforgotten lines in which Dante cries out to Constantine what woes his
fatal dower to the papacy had brought down on religion and mankind.[110]
In these sentences lay a germ that events were speedily to draw towards
maturity, a foreshadowing of the supreme principle that neither Oxford
nor any other place had yet taught him, 'the value of liberty as an
essential condition of excellence in human things.'
WRITES _CHURCH PRINCIPLES_
This revelation only turned his zeal for religion as the paramount issue
of the time and of all times into another channel. Feeling the
overwhelming strength of the tide that was running against his view of
what he counted vital aspects of the church as a national institution,
he next flew to the new task of working out the doctrinal mysteries that
this institution embodied, and with Mr. Gladstone to work out a thing in
his own mind always meant to expound and to enforce for the minds of
others. His pen was to him at once as sword and as buckler; and while
the book on _Church and State_, though exciting lively interest, was
evidently destined to make no converts in theory and to be pretty
promptly cast aside in practice, he soon set about a second work on
_Church Principles_. It is true that with the tenacious instinct of a
born controversialist, he still gave a good deal of time to constructing
buttresses for the weaker places that had been discovered by enemies or
by himself in the earlier edifice, and in 1841 he published a revised
version of _Church and State_.[111] But ecclesiastical discussion was by
then taking a new shape, and the fourth edition fell flat. Of _Church
Principles_, we may say that it was stillborn. Lockhart said of it, that
though a hazy writer, Gladstone showed himself a considerable divine,
and it was a pity that he had entered parliament instead of taking
orders. The divinity, however, did not attract. The public are never
very willing to listen to a political layman discussing the arcana of
theology, and least of all were they inclined to listen to him about the
new-found arcana of anglo-catholic theology. As Macaulay said, this time
it was a theological treatise, not an essay upon important questions of
government; and the intrepid reviewer rightly sought a more fitting
subject for his magician's gifts in the dramatists of the Restoration.
Newman said of it, 'Gladstone's book is not open to the objections I
feared; it is doctrinaire, and (I think) somewhat self-confident; but it
will do good.'
III
A few sentences more will set before us the earliest of his transitions,
and its gradual dates. He is writing about the first election at
Newark:--
It was a curious piece of experience to a youth in his twenty-third
year, young of his age, who had seen little or nothing of the
world, who resigned himself to politics, but whose desire had been
for the ministry of God. The remains of this desire operated
unfortunately. They made me tend to glorify in an extravagant
manner and degree not only the religious character of the state,
which in reality stood low, but also the religious mission of the
conservative party. There was in my eyes a certain element of
Antichrist in the Reform Act, and that act was cordially hated,
though the leaders soon perceived that there would be no step
backward. It was only under the second government of Sir Robert
Peel that I learned how impotent and barren was the conservative
office for the church, though that government was formed of men
able, upright, and extremely well-disposed. It was well for me that
the unfolding destiny carried me off in a considerable degree from
political ecclesiasticism of which I should at that time have made
a sad mess. Providence directed that my mind should find its food
in other pastures than those in which my youthfulness would have
loved to seek it. I went beyond the general views of the tory party
in state churchism, ... it was my opinion that as to religions
other than those of the state, the state should tolerate only and
not pay. So I was against salaries for prison chaplains not of the
church, and I applied a logic plaster to all difficulties.... So
that Macaulay ... was justified in treating me as belonging to the
ultra section of the tories, had he limited himself to
ecclesiastical questions.
In 1840, when he received Manning's imprimatur for _Church Principles_,
he notes how hard the time and circumstances were in which he had to
steer his little bark. 'But the polestar is clear. Reflection shows me
that a political position is mainly valuable as instrumental for the
good of the church, and under this rule every question becomes one of
detail only.' By 1842 reflection had taken him a step further:--
I now approach the _mezzo del cammin_; my years glide away. It is
time to look forward to the close, and I do look forward. My life
... has two prospective objects, for which I hope the performance
of my present public duties may, if not qualify, yet extrinsically
enable me. One, the adjustment of certain relations of the church
to the state. Not that I think the action of the latter can be
harmonised to the laws of the former. We have passed the point at
which that was possible.... But it would be much if the state would
honestly aim at enabling the church to develop her own intrinsic
means. To this I look. The second is, unfolding the catholic system
within her in some establishment or machinery looking both towards
the higher life, and towards the external warfare against ignorance
and depravity.
INTERNAL CONFLICT
In the autumn of 1843, Mr. Gladstone explains to his father the relative
positions of secular and church affairs in his mind, and this is only a
few months after what to most men is the absorbing moment of accession
to cabinet and its responsibilities. 'I contemplate secular affairs,' he
says, 'chiefly as a means of being useful in church affairs, though I
likewise think it right and prudent not to meddle in church matters for
any small reason. I am not making known anything new to you.... These
were the sentiments with which I entered public life, and although I do
not at all repent of [having entered it, and] am not disappointed in the
character of the employments it affords, certainly the experience of
them in no way and at no time has weakened my original impressions.' At
the end of 1843 he reached what looked like a final stage:--
Of public life, I certainly must say, every year shows me more and
more that the idea of Christian politics cannot be realised in the
state according to its present conditions of existence. For
purposes sufficient, I believe, but partial and finite, I am more
than content to be where I am. But the perfect freedom of the new
covenant can only, it seems to me, be breathed in other air; and
the day may come when God may grant to me the application of this
conviction to myself.
FOOTNOTES:
[98] Hanna's _Life of Chalmers_, iv. pp. 37-46.
[99] Ovid, _Met._ i. 5.--Chaos, before sea and land and all-covering
skies.
[100] _Excursion_, v.
[101] _Memoirs of J. R. Hope-Scott_, i. p. 150, where an adequate
portion of the correspondence is to be found.
[102] He wrote an extremely graphic account of their ascent of Mount
Etna, which has since found a place in Murray's handbook for Sicily.
[103] Of the first edition some 1500 or 1750 copies were sold.
[104] _Memoirs of J. R. Hope-Scott_, i. p. 172.
[105] Carlyle wrote to Emerson (Feb. 8, 1839): One of the strangest
things about these New England Orations (Emerson's) is a fact I have
heard, but not yet seen, that a certain W. Gladstone, an Oxford crack
scholar, tory M.P., and devout churchman of great talent and hope, has
contrived to insert a piece of you (_first_ Oration it must be) in a
work of his own on _Church and State_, which, makes some figure at
present! I know him for a solid, serious, silent-minded man; but how
with his Coleridge shovel-hattism he has contrived to relate himself to
_you_, there is the mystery. True men of all creeds, it _would_ seem,
are brothers.--_Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson_, i. p. 217.
There is more than one reference to Emerson in Mr. Gladstone's book,
_e.g._ i. pp. 25, 130.
[106] The letters are given in full in _Gleanings_, vii. p. 106. See
also Trevelyan's _Macaulay_, chap. viii.
[107] Chapter of Autobiography, 1868.--_Gleanings_, vii. p. 115.
[108] _Aeneid_, vi. 896. But through the ivory gate the shades send to
the upper air apparitions that do but cheat us.
[109] Chapter i. p. 5.
[110] _Inferno_, xix. 115-7.
[111] It was translated into German and published, with a preface by
Tholuck, in 1843.