The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1880-11-18
The Key to GaIdstone's Character and
Career.

The anonymous essayist, while CRITICS.
ing the English premier with fairness,
freedom and even severity, still speaks
of him as perhaps, taking him all in
all, the most remarkable man that the
English-speaking race has produced in
this century," The key of MIR. Glad
stones career is given in the statement:
"He is a Scotchman who has been
called to deal with and govern English
men," We quote as follows:
Mr.. Gladstone is Scotchman on
both his fathers and mothers side, and
half Highland chat is to say, Celtic)
Scotchman. He is with the insignifi-
cant exception of Lord Butte, who was
a mere royal favorite), the first Prime
Minister of England who has come from
the northern half of the island. He is,
indeed, the first Scotchman, except
Brougham, who has ever played a
leading part in England politics Boiling
broke, Walpole, Pulteney, Chatham,
Lord North, Charles James Fox, Will
lam Pitt, Lord Liverpool Canning, Lord
Grey, Lord Althorp, Lord Melbourne,
Sir Robert Peel. Lord Derby, were all
of them Englishmen by blood. The
Duke of Wellington and Lord Palmers-
ton, though nominally Irish, were really
Englishmen. Burke was an Irishman,
and Burke's career unlike as, in many
respects, he is to Mr. Gladstone) strik-
ingly illustrates some of the features of
the Celtic character. This Scottish
strain in Mr.. Gladstone has had two re-
markable effects. 1t has kept him from
ever quite understanding and being in
full sympathy with the ordinary English
character, and it has prevented the En-
glish from ever quite understanding
him. 1t is not merely because Scotland
is Liberal that he is welcomed there with
such transports of enthusiasm. 1t is be-
cause, in spite of the contrast between
his High Churchism and their Presbyte-
rianism, the Scotch enter into and enjoy
his modes of thinking and feeling in a
way which Englishmen, and especially
Englishmen of the upper class, do not
and cannot. He is not typical Scotch
man, but his intellect belongs so much
more to the Scottish than to the En-
glish type that the average educated
Englishman is perplexed, even fright
ened, by features he cannot account for,
because he finds nothing in them like
himself. Let us see how this comes out.
1.-The distinguishing note of Mr..
Gladstone's nature is the combination
in it of extraordinary intellectual activi-
ty with extraordinary emotional
warmth. For fifty years he has given
himself no rest. When he is not study
ing, he is talking or writing, and that
not merely upon public affairs, but upon
theology, history, scholarship, art, or
social topics. His apprehension is
wonderfully quick. Long training
enables him to seize in moment the
salient points of a question; his mind
falls to work upon them, spins a web
of argument, clothes the argument
with words-words that come fast as
the snow-fakes driven before a storm.
While he is piercing to the heart of
subject he is also working around it,
discovering a multitude of reasons for
and against each OF the views which, in
succession presents itself-a string of
limitations and qualifications under
when each of the propositions he ac-
cepts must be stated. This ingenuity
orfertility of mind gives his speeches
and writings an air of complexity Which
many people find bewildering. They
often call it subtilty. But he is not I'M
duly subtile-that is to say, addicted to
fine distinctions of thought. In one of
his pieces of sustained. argument each
sentence or paragraph is sufficiently
clear; it is the perspective OF the whole
which confuses the mind of a listener
who cannot recollect the relation which
all these windings and turnings and by
paths bear to the main direction of the
track along which he is being led.
Together with this manifoldness of
mind, he has, like most men, whose in
tellectual interests are keen, fondness
for abstract principles ard passion for
working them logically out. Where
other men see only scattered facts
he d1scerns a principle, enjoys it,
follows it boldly. In person with
less wide experience of the world and
less complete mastery of facts, this ten
dency would be dangerous. Even he
is sometimes led by it to discern a prin-
ciple where none discernible by other
eyes exists, to lay upon a minor princi-
pie more than it will bear, to travel
faster and farther toward some mo-
mentous practical conclusion than his
audience or his party are prepared to
follow. still it is splendid faculty.
the sure index Of penetrating intellect
a weapon with which, when wisely used
brilliant execution can be done in debate.
Now let US see how these powers of
thought are welded by his emotionalnat-
ure. Active, marvelously active, as his in
telligence is, it is not so remarkable as is
the intensity of feeling which he throws
into everything he does. He is all
aglow, and always aglow. Any one
meeting him in company, or hearing
him speak for the first time, would
think that the subject he might happen
to be descanting on was one which had
been uppermost in his thoughts for
years, such is the earnestness of his
manner. When the same person heard
him again and again equally fervent
upon other subjects, he would naturally
take this fervor for mere oratorical
habit or device. At last our observer
would perceive that it is neither but the
spontaneous expression of nature
which throws its whole weight upon
what it touches, and which has such
reservoir of force behind as never to
suffer from this continual drain. 1t is
this power of concentration, of being
wholly absorbed by what is for the mo-
ment before him, that is perhaps the
main source of his effectiveness.
j. Harvey Reed, the senior men,
Der Of large Boston insurance firm.