disliked mathematics, and that he intended to concentrate his time and
attention upon the classics. This was a great blow to his father, who
replied that he did not think a man was a man unless he knew
mathematics. The dutiful son yielded to his father's wishes, abandoned
his own plan, and applied himself with energy and success to the study
of mathematics. But for this change of study he might not have become
the greatest of Chancellors of the Exchequer.

Gladstone's instructors at Oxford were men of reputation. Rev. Robert
Biscoe, whose lectures on Aristotle attracted some of the best men to
the university, was his tutor; he attended the lectures of Dr. Burton on
Divinity, and of Dr. Pusey on Hebrew, and read classics privately with
Bishop Wordsworth. He read steadily but not laboriously. Nothing was
ever allowed to interfere with his morning's work. He read for four
hours, and then took a walk. Though not averse to company and suppers,
yet he always read for two or three hours before bedtime.

Among the undergraduates at Oxford then, who became conspicuous, were
Henry Edward Manning, afterwards Cardinal Archbishop; Archibald Campbell
Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury; Sidney Herbert, Robert Lowe, Lord
Sherbrooke, and Lord Selborne. "The man who _took_ me most," says a
visitor to Oxford in 1829, "was the youngest Gladstone of Liverpool--I
am sure a very superior person."

Gladstone's chosen friends were all steady and industrious men, and many
of them were more distinctively religious than is generally found in the
life of undergraduates. And his choice of associates in this respect was
the subject of criticism on the part of a more secularly minded student
who wrote, "Gladstone has mixed himself up with the St. Mary Hall and
Oriel set, who are really, for the most part, only fit to live with