Dr. Stanley preached an eloquent sermon on betel Palmerston at
Westminster Abbey last Sunday. He spoke of his great goat- ties as being singularly attainable by other men, except perhaps his wonderful physique. This may be true if we do not call his aristocratic position a great quality, but undoubtedly without it Lord Palmerston, able as he was, would never have won his way into the fast rank of statesmen. Then the power of throwing off responsibility and never reproaching himself for a false step once deliberately taken may be an enviable, but can scarcely be said to be a common or easily attainable gift for the statesmen of this generation. It was one of those gifts which belonged to the great school of statesmen who thought of political combinations as of a game of chess, but which does not belong to that scrupulous, eager, and anxious type of politicians represented in Mr. Gladstone. Lord Palmerston was a great man, with many noble qualities, but there was a certain diffi- culty in paying a high tribute to him in a sermon at all. He doubtless believed in Christianity, but there was little if anything in him of that class of virtues by which the Christian is distin- guished from the manly and generous Pagan.
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