subtracted politics, there would be nothing left. It was not so with
Mr. Gladstone.

To the great mass of his fellow-countrymen he was of course a statesman,
wildly worshipped by some, wildly detested by others. But, to those who
were privileged to know him, his politics seemed but the least part of
him. The predominant part, to which all else was subordinated, was his
religion; the life which seemed to attract him most was the life of the
library; the subject which engrossed him most was the subject of the
moment, whatever it might be, and that, when he was out of office, was
very rarely politics. Indeed, I sometimes doubt whether his natural bent
was toward politics at all. Had his course taken him that way, as it
very nearly did, he would have been a great churchman, greater perhaps
than any that this island has known; he would have been a great
professor, if you could have found a university big enough to hold him;
he would have been a great historian, a great bookman, he would have
grappled with whole libraries and wrestled with academies, had the fates
placed him in a cloister; indeed it is difficult to conceive the career,
except perhaps the military, in which his energy and intellect and
application would not have placed him on a summit. Politics, however,
took him and claimed his life service, but, jealous mistress as she is,
could never thoroughly absorb him.

Such powers as I have indicated seem to belong to a giant and a prodigy,
and I can understand many turning away from the contemplation of such a
character, feeling that it is too far removed from them to interest
them, and that it is too unapproachable to help them--that it is like
reading of Hercules or Hector, mythical heroes whose achievements the
actual living mortal can not hope to rival. Well, that is true enough;
we have not received intellectual faculties equal to Mr. Gladstone's,