I hope you are none the worse for your great effort.  You know it interests me to hear what you are about if you have time and inclination to write.  I saw your friend, Mr. Asquith, last night:  very nice and not at all puffed up with his great office [Footnote:  The Home Office.].  The fortunes of the Ministry seem very doubtful.  There is a tendency to follow Lord Rosebery in the Cabinet.  Some think that the Home Rule Bill will be pushed to the second reading, then dropped, and a new shuffle of the cards will take place under Lord Rosebery:  this seems to me very likely.  The Ministry has very little to spare and they are not gaining ground, and the English are beginning to hate the Irish and the Priests.

I hope that all things go happily with you.  Tell me some of your thoughts.  I have been reading Mr. Milner’s book with great satisfaction—­most interesting and very important.  I fear that I have written you a dull and meandering epistle.

Ever yours,

B. Jowett.

Balliol college, Feb. 13,1893.  My dear Margaret,

I began at ten minutes to twelve last night to write to you, but as the postman appeared at five minutes to twelve, it was naturally cut short.  May I begin where I left off?  I should like to talk to you about many things.  I hope you will not say, as Johnson says to Boswell, “Sir, you have only two subjects, yourself and me, and I am heartily sick of both.”

I have been delighted with Mr. Asquith’s success.  He has the certainty of a great man in him—­such strength and simplicity and independence and superiority to the world and the clubs.  You seem to me very fortunate in having three such friends as Mr. Asquith, Mr. Milner and Mr. Balfour.  I believe that you may do a great deal for them, and they are probably the first men of their time, or not very far short of it.

Mr. Balfour is not so good a leader of the House of Commons in opposition as he was when he was in office.  He is too aggressive and not dignified enough.  I fear that he will lose weight.  He had better not coquette with the foolish and unpractical thing “Bimetallism,” or write books on “Philosophic Doubt”; for there are many things which we must certainly believe, are there not?  Quite enough either for the highest idealism or for ordinary life.  He will probably, like Sir R. Peel, have to change many of his opinions in the course of the next thirty years and he should be on his guard about this, or he will commit himself in such a manner that he may have to withdraw from politics (about the currency, about the Church, about Socialism).