FROM TENNYSON’S “LOCKSLEY HALL”.
For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;
Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain’d a ghastly dew
From the nations’ airy navies grappling in the central blue;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro’ the thunder-storm;
Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer, and the battle-flags were furl’d
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.
So I triumph’d ere my passion sweeping thro’ me left me dry,
Left me with the palsied heart, and left me with the jaundiced eye;
Eye, to which all order festers, all things here are out of joint:
Science moves, but slowly slowly, creeping on from point to point:
Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion creeping nigher,
Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire.
Yet I doubt not thro’ the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widen’d with the process of the suns.
By permission from “The Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate,” Macmillan & Co., New York and London, 1893.
A DAY WITH GLADSTONE
FROM THE MORNING AT HAWARDEN TO THE EVENING AT THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
By H. W. Massingham of the “London Chronicle.”
I am often asked what is the secret of Mr. Gladstone’s extraordinary length of days and of the perfection of his unvarying health. It may be partly attributed to the remarkable longevity of the Gladstone family, a hardy Scottish stock with fewer weak shoots and branches than perhaps any of the ruling families of England. But it has depended mainly on Mr. Gladstone himself and on the undeviating regularity of his habits. Most English statesmen have been either free livers or with a touch of the bon vivant in them. Pitt and Fox were men of the first character; Melbourne, Palmerston, and Lord Beaconsfield were of the last. But Mr. Gladstone is a man who has been guilty of no excesses, save perhaps in work. He rises at the same hour every day, uses the same fairly generous, but always carefully regulated, diet, goes to bed about the same hour, pursues the same round of work and intellectual and social pleasure. An extraordinarily varied life is accompanied by a certain rigidity of personal habit I have never seen surpassed. The only change old age has witnessed has been that the House of Commons work has been curtailed, and that Mr. Gladstone has not of late years been seen in the House after the dinner hour, which lasts from eight till ten, except on nights when crucial divisions are expected. With the approach of winter and its accompanying chills, to which he is extremely susceptible, he seeks the blue skies and dry air of the Mediterranean coasts and of his beloved Italy. With this exception his life goes on in its pleasant monotony. At Hawarden, of course, it is simpler and more private than in London. In town to-day Mr. Gladstone avoids all large parties and great crushes and gatherings where he may be expected to be either mobbed or bored or detained beyond his usual bed-time.