Biographical studies ed by RH Hutton Author:Walter Bagehot Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: that can be thought of. These successive changes do credit to Mr. Gladstone's good sense; they show that he has a susceptible nature, that he will not live out o... more »f sympathy with his age. But what must be the effect of such changes upon any mind, especially on a delicate and high-toned mind. They tend, and must tend, to confuse the first principles of belief; to disturb the best landmarks of consistency; to leave the mind open to attacks of oratorical impulse; to foster the catching habit of advocacy; to weaken the guiding element in a disposition which was already defective in that element. The ' movement of 1833,' as Father Newman calls it, has wrecked many fine intellects, has broken many promising careers. It could not do either for Mr. Gladstone, for his circumstances were favourable, and his mental energy was far too strong; but it has done him harm, nevertheless ; it has left upon his intellect a weakening strain and a distorting mark. Mr. Gladstone was a likely man to be enraptured with the first creed with which he was thrown, and to push it too far. He wants the warning instincts. Some one said of him formerly, ' He may be a good Christian, but he is an atrocious pagan;' and the saying is true. He has not a trace of the protective morality of the old world, of the modus in rebus, the p.ta.ov, the shrinking from an extreme, which are the prominent characteristics of the ethics of the old world, which are still the guiding creed of the large part of the world that is, —scarcely altered after two thousand years. And this much we may concede to the secular moralists—unless a man have from nature a selective tact which shuns the unlimited, unless he have a detective instinct which unconsciously but sensitively shrinks from the extravagant, he will never enjoy a placid life, ...« less