The last participation of Gladstone in public affairs was in connection with the Armenian massacres in 1896. He addressed meetings throughout the country and aroused public feel ing, as he had done in 1876 over the Bulgarian atrocities. In 1898, on the 19th of May, he died in the eighty-ninth year of his life. He lies buried in the statesmen's corner of Westminster Abbey.
Gladstone was the greatest of the long line of Victorian political leaders and prime ministers. His only rival was Disraeli; but he had moral qualities which Disraeli lacked, and these more than made up for the superior brilliancy of the other, who looked with some contempt on Glad stone's principles and seriousness. Gladstone has been called an opportunist, and it is true that he more than once changed his position and went over to those against whom he had fought pre viously; but for any one who has.studied Glad stone's career carefully these changes were not without a law of their own in Gladstone's intel lectual development. Each change bore a rela tion to a previous change, and viewing his career in the large we perceive a steady, gradual, and consistent progress. This is more than can be said of Disraeli, who, reversing his position quite as completely as Gladstone, did it to serve his own private ambitions. Gladstone cared too lit tle for power, refused office too often, and in creased the anger of his constituents too readily by disregarding their wishes in matters of for eign and domestic policy, for it to be thought that he would ever have sacrificed his convictions to insure his own success. It was against his in clinations that he had entered public life in the first place. If once in the battle he stayed there, it was from a sense of duty characteristic of his moral seriousness. He always preferred his leisure, and more than once he withdrew from public affairs only to reenter the arena at the first recall.
Little has been said of Gladstone's literary labors, which were enormous. He was a scholar of the old type, caring only for literature and nothing for natural science. Many of his ideas were antiquated, for in literature he always re mained the Tory, whatever he became in poli tics; that is to say, he believed in the principle of authority. To him the Bible was always the word of God and the law of Moses the law of Moses, while Homer was a real man describing real historic events. Still it is well- to remember that Gladstone stood for an attitude toward the classics and the Scriptures which is associated with the high influence these works_ of antiquity have had for the race's civilization. There is something to be said for Gladstone's conserva tism, perhaps even as against his radicalism in politics.
As to what Gladstone accomplished with his reforms in politics, it is too early to pass a com plete judgment. The work which occupied him during the whole of the third period of his life is yet unfinished. His Irish land bills were tial measures only, and the principle of Home Rule needs still to be applied to show whether Gladstone was right or not in believing that therein lay the panacea for Irish evils. 1t is as
a reformer in finance and as a defender of the liberties of all classes of the English people that he stands forth most strikingly in history. Free trade, equal taxation, popular education, man hood suffrage, these are the great causes with whose beneficial results he is identified to his greatest glory. It is in his foreign policy that he was weakest. Domestic questions inter ested him almost to the exclusion of foreign matters, excepting when a race or a nation was suffering from oppression or tyranny. The wrong doings of the Turks in particular called forth his denunciation, and he was always preaching, as it were, a holy war against the Moslem. He con tributed to the independence and union of Italy by his letter about the political crimes of the rulers of the Two Sicilies. Mention has been made of his efforts on behalf of Bulgaria and the Armenians. On the other hand, because he cared nothing for foreign policies as such, or for England's na tional prestige, he incurred the opprobrium of the people through what appeared to be his neglect of Gordon at Khartum, his submission to the Boers in South Africa, his willingness to submit to arbitration with the United States, and other matters in all of which he was content if he could avoid war and maintain an honorable peace. Personally Gladstone was a man full of charm and grace in his early years, and full of dignity and grandeur in his old age. The lead ing figure in Parliament for so many years, Justin McCarthy spoke well when he said that the House of Commons was no longer the same place without him.
Gladstone contributed articles on literary and political topics to the Quarterly Review and other magazines. Most of these were published under the title, Gleanings from Past Years (8 vols., 1879-90).
In 1839 Gladstone married Catherine, the elder daughter of Sir Stephen Richard Glynne of Hawarden Castle. She died on June 14, 1900. Four sons and four daughters were born, of whom the eldest, William Henry Gladstone, died in 1891, after sitting in Parliament from 1865 to 1885; Stephen Edward Gladstone is rector of Ha warden ; the youngest son, Herbert John, became member of Parliament in 1880. The youngest daughter, Helen, became principal of Newnham College, Cambridge.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Smith, Life of Gladstone(Lon don, 1879) ; Archer, William Ewart Gladstone and his Contemporaries (London, 1883) ; itus sell, Biography of W. E. Gladstone (London, 1891) ; Leech, W. E. Gladstone: Life in Speeches and Public Letters (London, 1893) ; Robbins, Early Public Life of Mr. Gladstone (London, 1894) ; McCarthy, The Story of Gladstone's Life (London, 1897) ; Reid, The Life of Gladstone (London, 1898) ; Bryce, Gladstone: His Charac teristics as Man and Statesman (New York, 1898) ; Williamson, 1V. E. Gladstone, Statesman and Scholar (London, 1898) ; Paul, The Life of W. E. Gladstone (London, 1001) ; Morley, Life of TVilXlara Ewart Gladstone (3 vols., London, 1902).