One hundred years ago
MR. GLADSTONE completed yester- day his eighty fourth year, and is now older than any of our Monarchs or any of our Prime Ministers, — in short, than any one who could in any sense have been regarded as a ruler of England. Yet to him certainly the strength which has ilot only carried him well past fourscore, but well past fourscoie with the burden of a great Government upon his shoulders, has not been labour and sorrow, but labour and exhilaration. In spite of his age, he is probably less unequal to the unprecedented exertions which he is exacting from the House of Commons than the average Member, and after the "ten minutes' holiday," as Punch called it, which he accorded to the Commons at Christmas, he returned, with the other Members at noon on Wednesday, looking as cheery and debonair as ever. Indeed, the chief shortcoming in Mr. Gladstone's vigour would seem to be that he hardly per- haps realises as well as he did when he was younger, how heavy the burden which he carries, is. It is something, no doubt, to be able to sustain a great responsibility, but we are not sure that it is so well not to be fully conscious of its great pressure and the momentum with which it might descend upon any other mind. Yet that he hardly does feel this we gather from his easy manner of deal- ing with the inordinate labours he is exacting from the House of Commons, the light heart with which he answers
for our naval sufficiency, and the sang froid with which he confronts the prospect of bringing back the abuses of
the old Poor-law. Is there not an anaes- thetic strain in "old experience" as well as a prophetic strain? Does it not dead- en legitimate anxieties at least as much as it stimulates the instincts by which we forecast the future?
The Spectator 30 December 1893
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