274 A Century of Family Letters [CHAP, xix 



quite comfortably. I believe your advice was quite right 

 about my keeping extra quiet when I do any desperate deed, 

 such as calling on Mrs . 



My mother, who was an ardent Unionist, was keenly 

 following the debates on the first Home Rule Bill. She 

 had been a staunch Whig-Liberal all her life, but the natural 

 tendency of old age towards Conservatism, perhaps made 

 it easier for her not to follow Gladstone when he sprung 

 Home Rule upon the Liberal party. She had never, how- 

 ever, made an idol of Gladstone. 



I was absorbed in the debate yesterday, Gladstone's 

 was a very fine speech with all the obstacles to the scheme 

 slurred over, and with a very unworthy comparison about 

 intimidation in England. I am glad he spoke so highly 

 of Albert Dicey's book. Trevelyan's * speech was grand, 

 and ParnelTs a mere personal attack and squabble, and 

 very bad even for him. I wonder how it will end. 



Emma Darwin to her son Leonard. 



THE GKOVE, Sunday [? March, 1886]. 



I am in a fever of anxiety that Chamberlain and Tre- 

 velyan don't give way, and then I think Gladstone must 

 collapse. I shall be very sorry for him however; to end his 

 political life with such a fiasco, when no doubt he had hopes 

 of doing good. . . . 



I strongly recommend The Life of Henrietta Kerr a 

 nun. It is curious to compare the mind of a real Catholic 

 and that of a semi-Catholic like Miss Sewell and the step 

 between is very broad. The book is very entertaining as 

 well as interesting. 



1 Sir George Trevelyan was then a Liberal Unionist. 



