into a divinity for our worship--He who calls the weary and the mourner
to eternal rest hath been pleased to remove him from our eyes.

"The degrees of inscrutable wisdom are unknown to us; but if ever there
was a man for whose sake it was meet to indulge the kindly though frail
feelings of our nature--for whom the tear of sorrow was to us both
prompted by affection and dictated by duty--that man was
George Canning."

After Hallam, Selwyn and other contributors to the _Miscellany_ left
Eton, at midsummer, 1827, Mr. Gladstone still remained and became the
mainstay of the magazine. "Mr. Gladstone and I remained behind as its
main supporters," writes Sir Francis Doyle, "or rather it would be more
like the truth if I said that Mr. Gladstone supported the whole burden
upon his own shoulders. I was unpunctual and unmethodical, so were his
other vassals; and the '_Miscellany_' would have fallen to the ground
but for Mr. Gladstone's untiring energy, pertinacity and tact."

Although Mr. Gladstone labored in editorial work upon the _Miscellany_,
yet he took time to bestow attention upon his duties in the Eton
Society of the College, learnedly called "The Literati," and vulgarly
called "Pop," and took a leading part in the debates and in the private
business of the Society. The Eton Society of Gladstone's day was a
brilliant group of boys. He introduced desirable new members, moved for
more readable and instructive newspapers, proposing new rules for better
order and more decorous conduct, moving fines on those guilty of
disorder or breaches of the rules, and paying a fine imposed upon
himself for putting down an illegal question. "In debate he champions
the claims of metaphysics against those of mathematics, and defends
aristocracy against democracy;" confesses innate feelings of dislike to