Like the statesmen to whom I have alluded, Gladstone sprang from the middle ranks, although his father, a princely Liverpool merchant, of Scotch descent, became a baronet by force of his wealth, character, and influence.  Seeing the extraordinary talents of his third son,—­William Ewart,—­Sir John Gladstone spared neither pains nor money on his education, sending him to Eton in 1821, at the age of twelve, where he remained till 1827, learning chiefly Latin and Greek.  Here he was the companion and friend of many men who afterward became powerful forces in English life,—­political, literary, and ecclesiastical.  At the age of seventeen we find him writing letters to Arthur Hallam on politics and literature:  and his old schoolfellows testify to his great influence among them for purity, humanity, and nobility of character, while he was noted for his aptness in letters and skill in debate.  In 1827 the boy was intrusted to the care of Dr. Turner,—­afterward bishop of Calcutta,—­under whom he learned something besides Latin and Greek, perhaps indirectly, in the way of ethics and theology, and other things which go to the formation of character.  At the age of twenty he entered Christ Church at Oxford—­the most aristocratic of colleges—­with more attainments than most scholars reach at thirty, and was graduated in 1831 “double-first class,” distinguished not only for his scholarship but for his power of debate in the Union Society; throwing in his lot with Tories and High Churchmen, who, as he afterward confesses, “did not set a due value on the imperishable and inestimable principles of human liberty.”  With strong religious tendencies and convictions, he contemplated taking orders in the Church; but his father saw things differently,—­and thus, with academic prejudices which most graduates have to unlearn, he went abroad in 1832 to complete the education of an English gentleman, spending most of his time in Italy and Sicily, those eternally interesting countries to the scholar and the artist, whose wonders can scarcely be exaggerated,—­affording a perpetual charm and study if one can ignore popular degradation, superstition, unthrift, and indifference to material and moral progress.  He who enjoys Italy must live in the past, or in the realm of art, or in the sanctuaries where priests hide themselves from the light of what is most valuable in civilization and most ennobling in human consciousness.

Mr. Gladstone returned to England in the most interesting and exciting period of her political history since the days of Cromwell,—­soon after the great Reform Bill had been passed, which changed the principle of representation in Parliament, and opened the way for other necessary reforms.  His personal eclat and his powerful friends gave him an almost immediate entrance into the House of Commons as member for Newark.  The electors knew but little about him; they only knew that he was supported by the Duke of Newcastle and preponderating Tory interests, and were carried away by his youthful eloquence—­those silvery tones which nature gave—­and that strange fascination which comes from magnetic powers.  The ancients said that the poet is born and the orator is made.  It appears to me that a man stands but little chance of oratorical triumphs who is not gifted by nature with a musical voice and a sympathetic electrical force which no effort can acquire.