thinking, and indeed exercises great influence on his mode of thinking.  His rhetoric, though often good of its kind, darkens and perplexes the logic which it should illustrate.  Half his acuteness and diligence, with a barren imagination and a scanty vocabulary, would have saved him from almost all his mistakes.  He has one gift most dangerous to a speculator, a vast command of a kind of language, grave and majestic, but of vague and uncertain import; of a kind of language which affects us much in the same way in which the lofty diction of the Chorus of Clouds affected the simple-hearted Athenian.

  [Greek:  o gae tou phthegmatos, os hieron, kai semnon, kai teratodes.]

When propositions have been established, and nothing remains but to amplify and decorate them, this dim magnificence may be in place.  But if it is admitted into a demonstration, it is very much worse than absolute nonsense; just as that transparent haze, through which the sailor sees capes and mountains of false sizes and in false bearings, is more dangerous than utter darkness.  Now, Mr. Gladstone is fond of employing the phraseology of which we speak in those parts of his works which require the utmost perspicuity and precision of which human language is capable; and in this way he deludes first himself, and then his readers.  The foundations of his theory which ought to be buttresses of adamant, are made out of the flimsy materials which are fit only for perorations.  This fault is one which no subsequent care or industry can correct.  The more strictly Mr. Gladstone reasons on his premises, the more absurd are the conclusions which he brings out; and, when at last his good sense and good nature recoil from the horrible practical inferences to which this theory leads, he is reduced sometimes to take refuge in arguments inconsistent with his fundamental doctrines, and sometimes to escape from the legitimate consequences of his false principles, under cover of equally false history.

It would be unjust not to say that this book, though not a good book, shows more talent than many good books.  It abounds with eloquent and ingenious passages.  It bears the signs of much patient thought.  It is written throughout with excellent taste and excellent temper; nor does it, so far as we have observed, contain one expression unworthy of a gentleman, a scholar, or a Christian.  But the doctrines which are put forth in it appear to us, after full and calm consideration, to be false, to be in the highest degree pernicious, and to be such as, if followed out in practice to their legitimate consequences, would inevitably produce the dissolution of society; and for this opinion we shall proceed to give our reasons with that freedom which the importance of the subject requires, and which Mr. Gladstone, both by precept and by example, invites us to use, but, we hope, without rudeness, and, we are sure, without malevolence.