III
End Of The Year At Hawarden
Two days after a departure from Glasgow which he calls royal, the unwearied warrior made his way through scenes of endless stir all along the journey, back to his temple of peace at Hawarden (December 8). There he at once resumed his habits of daily industry, revising proofs of speeches “reaching 255 pages!” placing books and reading them—Catullus, Hodgson's Turgot, somebody on Colour Sense, somebody else on Indian finance, Jenkins on Atheism, Bunbury's Geography—and so forth. Also, “wrote on mythology and on economics; together rather too much. I am not very fit for composition after 5 p.m.” Meanwhile Christmas arrived, and then the eve of his birthday, with its reflections—reflections of one—
“Who though thus endued as with a sense
And faculty for storm and turbulence
Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans ...
Where what he most doth value must be won.”
December 28. ... And now I am writing in the last minutes of the seventh decade of my life. This closing is a great event. The days of our life are three score years and ten. It is hardly possible that I should complete another decade. How much or how little of this will God give me for the purposes dear to my heart? Ah! what need have I of what I may term spiritual leisure, to be out of the dust and heat and blast and strain, before I pass into the unseen world. But perhaps this is a form of self-love. For the last three and a half years I have been passing through a political experience which is, I believe, without example in our parliamentary history. I profess to believe it has been an occasion when the battle to be fought was a battle of justice, humanity, freedom, law, all in their first elements from the very root, and all on a gigantic scale. The word spoken was a word for millions, and for millions who for themselves cannot speak. If I really believe this, then I should regard my having been morally forced into this work as a great and high election of God. And certainly I cannot but believe that He has given me special gifts of strength on the late occasion, especially in Scotland.... Three things I would ask of God over and above all the bounty which surrounds me. This first, that I may escape into retirement. This second, that I may speedily be enabled to divest myself of everything resembling wealth. And the third—if I may—that when God calls me He may call me speedily. To die in church appears to be a great euthanasia, but not at a time to disturb worshippers. Such are some of an old man's thoughts, in whom there is still something that consents not to be old.
Among the other books that he had been reading was the biography of one of the closest of his friends, and in the last hours of this annus mirabilis he writes:—
Read the Life of Bishop Wilberforce. It is indeed an edifying book. I knew him, admired him, loved him living. But the laying out of his full character from early days onwards tells me much I did not know, and lifts upwards my conception of him both in greatness and in goodness.