More  than  twenty  years  before  he  had  formally
resigned  the  leadership  of  the  Liberal  party  on
the  ground  that  he  was  outworn  and  could  no
longer  continue  the  fight.  Yet  on  the  first  mo-
ment when  a  great  public  crisis  aroused  the
attention  of  the  civilized  world  he  had  come
back,  almost  as  a  matter  of  course,  to  take  his
place  at  the  head  of  the  struggle.  It  could  not,
therefore,  be  wondered  at  if  many  men  in  the
House  of  Commons,  seeing  the  extraordinary  vi-
tality of  the  Prime  Minister,  should  have  thought
that  there  was  no  greater  reason  why  he  should
give  up  political  life  at  the  age  of  eighty-four  than
there  had  proved  to  be  when  for  a  short  time  he
forsook  it  at  the  age  of  sixty-four.
The  truth  is  that  we  had  all  grown  into  the
way  of  regarding  Mr.  Gladstone  as  a  sort  of  being
endowed  with  immortal  youthful  ness  and  vitality.
The  outer  public,  even  the  majority  of  members
of  the  House  of  Commons,  did  not  know  that  the
sight  of  those  luminous  eyes  had  been  fading  and
dimming  and  that  the  statesman's  hearing  power
had  been  giving  way  so  much  as  to  make  official
work  a  serious  trial  to  him.  We  heard  his  voice,
we  noted  his  energy  of  movement  and  gesture,


3Q2  THE    STORY   OF   GLADSTONE'S    LIFE

we  were  delighted  by  his  thrilling  eloquence,  and
we  could  not  understand  all  in  a  moment  why
he  should  wish  to  retire  from  the  field  of  his
fame.
