Everyone who knew the great old Philosopher of Athens, will remember that he had his familiar _daemon_, and that he believed himself to have constant communication with him.

If I remember rightly, there is a good deal about that _daemon_ in his "Phaedo"-- that wonderful story to which I have just alluded, and which lives so vividly in my memory.

Sometimes I think that Mr.Gladstone has the same superstition.

He has moments--especially if there be the stress of the sheer brutality of obstructive and knavish hostility--when he seems to retire into himself--to transfer himself on the wings of imagination to regions infinitely beyond the reach, as well as the ken, of the land in which the Lowthers, the Chamberlains, and the Bartleys dwell.

At such moments he gives one the impression of communing with some spirit within his own breast--a familiar _daemon_, whose voice, though still and silent to all outside, shouts louder than the roar of faction or the shouts of brutish hate.