cost. Most men are physically brave, and this nation is reputed to be
especially brave, but Mr. Gladstone was brave among the brave. He had
to the end the vitality of physical courage. When well on in his ninth
decade, well on to ninety, he was knocked over by a cab, and before the
bystanders could rally to his assistance, he had pursued the cab with a
view to taking its number. He had, too, notoriously, political courage
in a not less degree than Sir Robert Walpole. We read that George II,
who was little given to enthusiasm, would often cry out, with color
flushing into his cheeks, and tears sometimes in his eyes, and with a
vehement oath:--"He (Walpole) is a brave fellow; he has more spirit than
any man I ever knew."

Mr. Gladstone did not yield to Walpole in political and parliamentary
courage--it was a quality which he closely observed in others, and on
which he was fond of descanting. But he had the rarest and choicest
courage of all--I mean moral courage. That was his supreme
characteristic, and it was with him, like others, from the first. A
contemporary of his at Eton once told me of a scene, at which my
informant was present, when some loose or indelicate toast was proposed,
and all present drank it but young Gladstone. In spite of the storm of
objurgation and ridicule that raged around him, he jammed his face, as
it were, down in his hands on the table and would not budge. Every
schoolboy knows, for we may here accurately use Macaulay's well-known
expression, every schoolboy knows the courage that this implies. And
even by the heedless generation of boyhood it was appreciated, for we
find an Etonian writing to his parents to ask that he might go to Oxford
rather than Cambridge, on the sole ground that at Oxford he would have
the priceless advantage of Gladstone's influence and example. Nor did
his courage ever flag. He might be right, or he might be wrong--that is
not the question here--but when he was convinced that he was right, not