CHAPTER VI.
GLADSTONE THE SURVIVAL.
[Sidenote: From the past.] What I like most about Mr.Gladstone is his antique spirituality.

The modern politician is smart, alive, pert, up-to-date; knows everything about registration; hires a good agent; can run a caucus, and receive a deputation.

With us, as yet, the modern politician has not wholly abandoned religious faith--as he has done among our neighbours on the Continent--and has not come to regard this solid earth of ours as the one standing-place in a universe alone worthy the consideration of intelligent men.

But the English politician is so far suffused with the spirit of modernity as to prefer the newspaper to the book, to regard more closely registration records than the classics, and generally is wide awake rather than steeped in subtler and profounder forms of sagacity and knowledge.

The Prime Minister is a Survival.