With all his extraordinary adaptiveness, he stands in many respects in sharpest contrast to his environment.

I can never forget, as I look at him, all those years he spent in that vanished epoch which knew nothing of evolution or of science at all, and was content to regard a knowledge of the classics as the beginning and the end of a gentleman's education.
After reading the life of Lord Aberdeen, I was brought back in spirit to all those years during which Mr.Gladstone was a member of the Tory party, and lived in an atmosphere of proud, scholarly exclusiveness--of distrust of the multitude--of ecclesiasticism in the home, in the forum, and as the foundation of all political controversy.

When, therefore, Mr.
Gladstone is going through a crisis, it is intensely interesting to me to watch him and to see how he carries himself amid it all; and then it is that this thought occurs to me of how differently and clearly he stands out from all his colleagues and surroundings.
[Sidenote: A reminiscence.] Different things suggest early associations to different people.

Mrs.
Solness, in the "Master Builder," could think only of her dolls when she was telling the story of the fire that left her childless for ever.

I have heard of a great lady who cannot see a shell without recalling the scenes of her dead youth before her.