kaleidoscope of oratory,—­they place the familiar ones in new positions, and produce new pictures ad infinitum.  Sometimes a genius, urged by a great impulse, may dash out in an untried course of thought; but this is not always a safe venture,—­the next effort of the kind may prove a failure.  No man can be sure of himself or his ground without previous and patient labor, except in reply to an antagonist and when familiar with his subject.  That was the power of Fox and Pitt.  What gave charm to the speeches of Peel and Gladstone in their prime was the new matter they introduced before debate began; and this was the result of laborious study.  To attack such matter with wit and sarcasm is one thing; to originate it is quite another.  Anybody can criticise the most beautiful picture or the grandest structure, but to paint the one or erect the other,—­hic labor, hoc opus est.  One of the grandest speeches ever made, for freshness and force, was Daniel Webster’s reply to Hayne; but the peroration was written and committed to memory, while the substance of it had been in his thoughts for half a winter, and his mind was familiar with the general subject.  The great orator is necessarily an artist as much as Pascal was in his Pensees; and his fame will rest perhaps more on his art than on his matter,—­since the art is inimitable and peculiar, while the matter is subject to the conditions of future, unknown, progressive knowledge.  Probably the most effective speech of modern times was the short address of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg; but this was simply the expression of the gathered forces of his whole political life.

In the month of July, 1837, Mr. Gladstone was married to Miss Catherine Glyn, daughter of Sir Stephen Richard Glyn, of Hawarden Castle, in Flintshire, Wales,—­a marriage which proved eminently happy.  Eight children have been the result of this union, of whom but one has died; all the others have “turned out well,” as the saying is, though no one has reached distinguished eminence.  It would seem that Mr. Gladstone, occupying for forty years so superb a social and public station, has not been ambitious for the worldly advancement of his children, nor has he been stained by nepotism in pushing on their fortunes.  The eldest son was a member of Parliament; the second became a clergyman; and the eldest daughter married a clergyman in a prominent position as headmaster of Wellington College.

It would be difficult to say when the welfare of the Church and the triumph of theological truth have not received a great share of Mr. Gladstone’s thoughts and labors.  At an early period of his parliamentary career he wrote an elaborate treatise on the “State in its relation to the Church.”  It is said that Sir Robert.  Peel threw the book down on the floor, exclaiming that it was a pity so able a man should jeopardize his political future by writing such trash; but it was of sufficient importance to furnish Macaulay a subject for one of his most careful