78 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 



Bright was incapable not only of intrigue but of 

 stratagem. He would have resented being called " an 

 old parliamentary hand " as a blot on his moral nature. 

 Religion and morals do not necessarily run abreast 

 they do not shrink together or expand together. 

 Bright' s religion was nebulous ; his morality was 

 adamantine. Two leading factors, it has already been 

 remarked, go to make up religion reverence and an 

 ideal. With Mr. Gladstone there is more of precise 

 formula in his ideal than of passion in his reverence. In 

 Mr. Bright the reverence was impassioned the ideal 

 unfocussed. In another aspect of character they were 

 strangely unlike. The difference is fundamental; it is 

 the root difference between the naturally conservative 

 and the naturally liberal nature. Mr. Bright by tem- 

 perament thought his own way to his religion and 

 wished that others should think their way : this is 

 liberalism. Mr. Gladstone's religion was imposed 

 upon him, and by temperament he would willingly, had 

 it been in his power, have imposed it on others ; those 

 who accept from their fathers with the least hesitation 

 impose on their children with the greatest confidence : 

 this is conservatism. 



We can no more define the charm and solace of 

 poetry than we can the charm of music or painting or 

 sculpture (these are ultimate facts in the physiology of 

 nerve), but the three elements of poetry expression, 

 thought and feeling are possessed in full measure by 

 the selectest souls only by a Shakspere or a Burns. 

 Byron had poetic expression and poetic passion in 

 much larger degree than poetic thought. George 

 Eliot had the passion and the thought in excess of the 

 expression. The crowd of minor poets have musical 

 expression only. Many men and women have deep, 



