entitled to his own opinion, even though unable to account

for it. This, at least, must be my plea, for to me, Mr.
Gladstone was more or less a Dr. Fell. Neither in his public

nor in his private capacity had I any liking for him. Nobody
cares a button for what a 'man in the street' like me says or

thinks on subject matters upon which they have made up their
minds. I should not venture, even as one of the crowd, to

deprecate a popularity which I believe to be fast passing
away, were it not that better judges and wiser men think as I

do, and have represented opinions which I sincerely share.
'He was born,' says Huxley, 'to be a leader of men, and he

has debased himself to be a follower of the masses. If
working men were to-day to vote by a majority that two and

two made five, to-morrow Gladstone would believe it, and find
them reasons for it which they had never dreamt of.' Could

any words be truer? Yes; he was not born to be a leader of
men. He was born to be, what he was - a misleader of men.

Huxley says he could be made to believe that two and two made
five. He would try to make others believe it; but would he

himself believe it? His friends will plead, 'he might
deceive himself by the excessivesubtlety of his mind.' This

is the charitable view to take. But some who knew him long
and well put another construction upon this facile self-

deception. There were, and are, honourable men of the
highest standing who failed to ascribe disinterested motives

to the man who suddenly and secretly betrayed his colleagues,
his party, and his closest friends, and tried to break up the

Empire to satisfy an inordinate ambition, and an insatiable
craving for power. 'He might have been mistaken, but he

acted for the best'? Was he acting conscientiously for the
best in persuading the 'masses' to look upon the 'classes' -

the war cries are of his coining - as their natural enemies,
and worthy only of their envy and hatred? Is this the part

of a statesman, of a patriot?
And for what else shall we admire Mr. Gladstone? Walter

Bagehot, alluding to his egotism, wrote of him in his
lifetime, 'He longs to pour forth his own belief; he cannot

rest till he has contradicted everyone else.' And what was
that belief worth? 'He has scarcely,' says the same writer,

'given us a sentence that lives in the memory.'
Even his eloquentadvocate, Mr. Morley, confesses surprise at

his indifference to the teaching of evolution; in other
words, his ignorance of, and disbelief in, a scientific

theory of nature which has modified the theological and moral
creeds of the civilised world more profoundly than did the

Copernican system of the Universe.
The truth is, Mr. Gladstone was half a century behind the age

in everything that most deeply concerned the destiny of man.
He was a politician, and nothing but a politician; and had it

not been for his extraordinary gift of speech, we should
never have heard of him save as a writer of scholia, or as a

college don, perhaps. Not for such is the temple of Fame.
Fama di loro il mondo esser non lassa.

Whatever may be thought now, Mr. Gladstone is not the man
whom posterity will ennoble with the title of either 'great'

or 'good.'
My second reason for mentioning Frederick Thistlethwayte was

one which at first sight may seem trivial, and yet, when we
look into it, is of more importance than the renown of an ex-

Prime Minister. If these pages are ever read, what follows
will be as distasteful to some of my own friends as the above

remarks to Mr. Gladstone's.
Pardon a word about the writer himself - it is needed to

emphasise and justify these OBITER DICTA. I was brought up
as a sportsman: I cannot remember the days when I began to

shoot. I had a passion for all kinds of sport, and have had
opportunities of gratifying it such as fall to the lot of

few. After the shootings of Glenquoich and Invergarry were
lost to me through the death of Mr. Ellice, I became almost

the sole guest of Mr. Thistlethwayte for twelve years at his
Highland shooting of Kinlochmohr, not very far from Fort

William. He rented the splendid deer forest of Mamore,
extensive grouse moors, and a salmon river within ten

minutes' walk of the lodge. His marriage and his
eccentricities of mind and temper led him to shun all

society. We often lived in bothies at opposite ends of the
forest, returning to the lodge on Saturday till Monday

morning. For a sportsman, no life could be more enjoyable.
I was my own stalker, taking a couple of gillies for the

ponies, but finding the deer for myself - always the most
difficult part of the sport - and stalking them for myself.

I may here observe that, not very long after I married,
qualms of conscience smote me as to the justifiability of

killing, AND WOUNDING, animals for amusement's sake. The
more I thought of it, the less it bore thinking about.

Finally I gave it up altogether. But I went on several years
after this with the deer-stalking; the true explanation of

this inconsistency would, I fear, be that I had had enough of
the one, but would never have enough of the other - one's

conscience adapts itself without much difficulty to one's
inclinations.

Between my host and myself, there was a certain amount of
rivalry; and as the head forester was his stalker, the

rivalry between our men aroused rancorous jealousy. I think
the gillies on either side would have spoilt the others'

sport, could they have done so with impunity. For two
seasons, a very big stag used occasionally to find its way

into our forest from the Black Mount, where it was also
known. Thistlethwayte had had a chance, and missed it; then

my turn came. I got a long snap-shot end on at the galloping
stag. It was an unsportsmanlike thing to do, but considering

the rivalry and other temptations I fired, and hit the beast
in the haunch. It was late in the day, and the wounded

animal escaped.
Nine days later I spied the 'big stag' again. He was nearly

in the middle of a herd of about twenty, mostly hinds, on the
look-out. They were on a large open moss at the bottom of a

corrie, whence they could see a moving object on every side
of them. A stalk where they were was out of the question. I

made up my mind to wait and watch.
Now comes the moral of my story. For hours I watched that

stag. Though three hundred yards or so away from me, I could
through my glass see almost the expression of his face. Not

once did he rise or attempt to feed, but lay restlessly
beating his head upon the ground for hour after hour. I knew

well enough what that meant. I could not hear his groans.
His plaints could not reach my ears, but they reached my

heart. The refrainvaried little: 'How long shall I cry and
Thou wilt not hear?' - that was the monotonous burden of the

moans, though sometimes I fancied it changed to: 'Lord how
long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph?'

The evening came, and then, as is their habit, the deer began
to feed up wind. The wounded stag seemed loth to stir. By

degrees the last watchful hind fed quietly out of sight.
With throbbing pulse and with the instincts of a fox - or

prehistoric man, 'tis all the same - I crawled and dragged
myself through the peat bog and the pools of water. But

nearer than two hundred yards it was impossible to get; even
to raise my head or find a tussock whereon to rest the rifle

would have started any deer but this one. From the hollow I
was in, the most I could see of him was the outline of his

back and his head and neck. I put up the 200 yards sight and
killed him.

A vivid description of the body is not desirable. It was
almost fleshless, wasted away, except his wounded haunch.