My letter was posted with the one to you, though written, I think, the night before, so that it must have been stopped and opened by some postmaster whom the direction attracted, and who, like yourself, exaggerated its importance. There are truths so prosaic, so dense, so dull, that one can hardly state them without suggesting the idea of something subtler or more interesting beyond. Of course, to one who spends his time in watching and trying to understand the progress of political life and thought, no public event could equal the late progress from Dalmeny to Downing Street, and no prouder thing could happen than to be able to serve Mr. Gladstone's policy. Indeed, if I was not lured by his genius, his persistent friendship, and a curious sympathy in many deep questions, I should be, now, by qualities never so apparent as in the last few days, by the power of grasping principle in one hand and policy in the other, without clashing, which was shown in the opium speech, and just before, in the speech on the liability of employers. I don't know whether I could ever have been of use abroad, in other circumstances, if my nearest relation was not Foreign Secretary,[[23]] for there is only one place for which I could pretend to any special fitness. But as to trying to qualify as a candidate for anything at home, you would soon be satisfied that it is impossible, if I had a good opportunity of talking—if we climb a mountain, a very high mountain, or cross a broad and stormy lake some day.[[24]] But I think I must remind you of the old lady at Carlisle in Forty-Five, who shut herself up in terror of the Highlanders, and, not being pursued, grew impatient, and cried out: "When are they going to begin?"

I am a little disturbed at the highly ingenious and easy solution of the great party[[25]] question. It is dangerous, at any time, to multiply sources of weakness. Now there is a source of future weakness in the idea of power assumed only for a term limited and defined. A Parliament near its end becomes helpless and unable to act. When the period fixed, or supposed to be fixed, is approaching, power will slip away. Disappointed people, men impatient of having to wait, hungry, jealous, reluctant supporters, will gravitate in other directions, will promote rivalry, will speed the parting chief, will magnify the rising sun. By having only Free and Easies, you establish a festive Centre elsewhere, and the world, revolving in an improper orbit, may lose its way. There has been, in this direction, a slight waste of capital....

*****

June 9, 1880

Your card came just after my letter was posted. I shall be at Munich on Friday, and have written to Hallam Tennyson, poste restante; but I hope to waylay them at the station. It will be pleasant to pilot the great man through Munich, or on the road to Achensthal, and I will do my best....

I hope you will not quarrel with John Morley, for he seems to be making the Pall Mall the best Liberal paper in England. But he has so many points of antagonism to Mr. Gladstone that I am afraid. He is a sceptic; his studies are all French, eighteenth century; in political economy he is a bald Cobdenite, and will do scant justice to the political aspects of the French treaty; he is a friend of Lytton's, and I suspect, of the peccant Strachey;[[26]] he has the obstinacy of a very honest mind. But I perceive that I am getting to be a bore....

Tegernsee June 21, 1880

The Tennysons came and went, I am sorry to say, prematurely. They spent two days with us, and would have gone by Achensee to Innsbruck, but the rain sent them back to Munich, where they took the train for Italy. You will be surprised to learn that the Poet made a favourable impression on my ladies and children. He was not only a gracious Poet, but he told us lots of good stories, read aloud without pressure, walked repeatedly with M., and seemed interested in the books he carried to his room. Lady Acton took him to Kreuth and round the lake, and liked him well. Yet our ways were very strange to him, and he must have felt that he stood on the far verge of civilisation, without the enjoyments proper to savage life. Even I was tamed at last. There was a shell to crack, but I got at the kernel, chiefly at night, when everybody was in bed. His want of reality, his habit of walking on the clouds, the airiness of his metaphysics, the indefiniteness of his knowledge, his neglect of transitions, the looseness of his political reasonings—all this made up an alarming cheval de frise.

But then there was a gladness—not quickness—in taking a joke or story, a comic impatience of the external criticism of Taine and others found here, coupled with a simple dignity when reading ill-natured attacks, a grave groping for religious certainty, and a generosity in the treatment of rivals—of Browning and Swinburne, though not of Taylor—that helped me through. He was not quite well, in consequence of the damp and of the mountain fare.

I write for news to your hotel at Venice, the weather having been against the Dolomites.