VARIOUS CORRESPONDENCE 157 



demeanour, his willingness to enter into other people's 



topics, his pliant force and alacrity of mind. On the 



Sunday afternoon Sir John Lubbock, our host, took us 



all up to the hill-top whence in his quiet Kentish village 



Darwin was shaking the world. The illustrious pair, 



born in the same year, had never met before. Mr. 



Gladstone, as soon as seated, took Darwin's interest in 



lessons of massacre for granted, and launched forth his 



thunderbolts with unexhausted zest. His great, wise, 



simple, and truth-loving listener, then, I think, busy 



on digestive powers of the drosera in his greenhouse, 



was intensely delighted. When we broke up, watching 



Mr. Gladstone's erect alert figure as he walked away, 



Darwin, shading his eyes with his hand against the 



evening rays, said to me in unaffected satisfaction, 



' What an honour that such a great man should come to 



visit me ! ' Too absorbed in his own overwhelming 



conflict with the powers of evil, Mr. Gladstone makes no 



mention of his afternoon call, and only says of the two 



days that he found a notable party, and made interesting 



conversation, and that he ' could not help liking ' one 



of the company, then a stranger to him. In his absence 



at church, we were talking of the qualities that send men 



forward and keep them back. ' I should like to know,' 



cried Huxley, ' what would keep such a man as that 



back,' pointing to where Mr. Gladstone had been sitting ; 



' why, put him in the middle of the moor, with nothing 



in the world but his shirt, and you could not prevent him 



from being anything he liked.' And Huxley was as far 



as possible from being a Gladstonian." 



On April 30, Gladstone gave notice of his 

 celebrated resolutions on the Eastern question. 

 The Liberal front bench, with one or two excep- 

 tions, did not approve of them, and not wishing 

 to go so far as to vote against him, asked Sir 

 John to move the " Previous Question," which 

 he agreed to do. Eventually, however, Mr. 

 Gladstone consented to modify his resolutions, 

 and so Sir John was spared a somewhat painful 

 duty. 



