It seems pretty certain that Mr. Gladstone is really determined
to give up the leadership of the Liberal party for the present, though not, apparently, to absent himself from the House. Yet it will be hardly possible, with Mr. Gladstone present on the first Liberal bench, for any one else to lead, and we doubt if he, with his eager and somewhat contentious Par- liamentary habit of mind,—' contentious' is praise, when applied to a great party-leader, — will find it possible to leave to another the task which he has so long and so skilfully discharged. Rumour seems to point to the Marquis of IIartington as the nearest equivalent for a leader we are likely to have, for a time, if Mr. Gladstone insists on his eccentric plan. But how is the worthy Marquis to hammer out his criticisms on the Government, with the full conscious- ness of that great and fluent supply of efficient criticism within a few places .of him? And how is Mr. Gladstone to sit still while that sensible young lord is leisurely pulling his trigger and miss- ing fire, conscious, as the ex-Premier will be, of the excellence of the powder at his own dispoial, and the certainty of his own aim ? We suppose the Marquis will have to comfort himself with the consolation suggested as the only possible one by Mrs. Cadwallader to Mr. Brooke, that if he is on the right side, "be may ask a blessing on his humming and hawing." But Mr. Gladstone can ask no such blessing on his silence.
