so he has been all his life--the very Quixote of conscience. Judged by
every standard of human probability, he has ruined himself over and over
and over again. He is always ruining himself, and always rising, like
the Phoenix, in renewed youth from the ashes of his funeral pyre. As was
said in homely phrase some years ago, he 'always keeps bobbing up
again.' What is the secret of this wonderful capacity of revival? How
is it that Mr. Gladstone seems to find even his blunders help him, and
the affirmation of principles that seem to be destructive to all chance
of the success of his policy absolutely helps him to its realization?"

From a merely human standpoint it is inexplicable. But

'If right or wrong in this God's world of ours
Be leagued with higher powers,'

then the mystery is not so insolvable. He believed in the higher powers.
He never shrank from putting his faith to the test; and on the whole,
who can deny that for his country and for himself he has reason to
rejoice in the verification of his working hypothesis?

'We walk by faith and not by sight,' he said once; 'and by no one so
much as by those who are in politics is this necessary.' It is the
evidence of things not seen, the eternal principles, the great invisible
moral sanctions that men are wont to call the laws of God, which alone
supply a safe guide through this mortal wilderness.

'Men of a thousand shifts and wiles, look here!
See one straightforward conscience put in pawn
To win a world; see the obedient sphere
By bravery's simple gravitation drawn!