Again: "Thanks for your letter. I have been pretty hard at work, and
have done a good deal, especially on V. Something yet remains. I must
make inquiry about the law of excommunication.... I have made a very
stupid classification, and have now amended it; instead of faith,
discipline and practice, what I meant was the rule of faith, discipline,
and the bearing of particular doctrines upon practice.

"I send back also I and II that you may see what I have done."

The work was successfully issued in the autumn of 1838, and passed
rapidly through three editions. How it was received it would be
interesting to inquire. While his friends applauded, even his opponents
testified to the ability it displayed. On the authority of Lord
Houghton, it is said that Sir Robert Peel, the young author's political
leader, on receiving a copy as a gift from his follower, read it with
scornful curiosity, and, throwing it on the floor, exclaimed with truly
official horror: "With such a career before him, why should he write
books? That young man will ruin his fine political career if he persists
in writing trash like this." However, others gave the book a heartier
reception. Crabb Robinson writes in his diary: "I went to Wordsworth
this forenoon. He was ill in bed. I read Gladstone's book to him."

December 13, 1838, Baron Bunsen wrote: "Last night at eleven, when I
came from the Duke, Gladstone's book was lying on my table, having come
out at seven o'clock. It is a book of the time, a great event--the first
book since Burke that goes to the bottom of the vital question; far
above his party and his time. I sat up till after midnight, and this
morning I continued until I had read the whole. Gladstone is the first
man in England as to intellectual power, and he has heard higher tones