SATURDAY, MAY 28, 1898.

Evening Post, Volume LV, Issue 125, 28 May 1898, Page 4

SATURDAY, MAY 28, 1898.

THE HONOURED DEAD. + To-day the body of William Ewart Gladstone is to be laid to rest among the tombs of Britain's great dead. It was characteristic of the deceased statesman that he should wish his funeral to be as simple and as unostentatious as possible. His personal desire was to be buried quietly in Hawarden churchyard, and such a desire would naturally have been held sacred were it not that the whole British Empire feels that nothing short of a solemn public funeral, and a memorial in Westminster Abbey, could adequately express the depth of the nation's respect for his memory. The body has consequently been lying in state at Westminster Hall, watched day and night by sorrowing friends, while thousands of people have reverentially come to pay a last tribute of respect to the man they wished to honour. Among the pall-bearers at the funeral will be the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, and the leaders of the Liberal and Conservative Parties in either House of Parliament. This list in itself is evidence of the unusual reverence felt for the dead leader, and, so far as we know, there is tio previous instance on record of the Heir (o the Throne acting as a bearer to a Commoner. It is only mete aud right that Gladstone should receive these external marks of honour, for they are strong proofs to the people at large that native Worth and natural kingliness of character can raise a man to a height which forces even the most rigid of ceremouialists to rank him with the highest. The complete unanimity of the Empire in its recognition of the goodness and greatness of the man is seen in the association of rival political chiefs in the work of bearing him to his last resting-place. The ashes of Mr. Gladstone will repose in the centre of the north transept of the Abbey — the spot usually known as the " Statesmen's Corner," in distinction from the opposite transept or " Poets' Corner." In the Statesmen's Corner already lie the great Earl of Chatham and his even more tamous sou William Pitt ; three great Cannings—George, from whom Gladstone learnt his first lessons in politics, the Earl who ruled India so wisely, and the great Ambassador who was so long "the voice of England in the East;" Fox, " the greatest debater. the world ever saw;" Palmerston, the brilliant Foreign Minister ; and Henry Grattan, the ardent upholder of Irish rights. Near Palmerston's grave there is a vacant spot, where the bones of Gladstone will probably rest, and looking hard at the spot is Boehm's bust of the " Primrose Sphinx," long Gladstone's rival in debate and in the Councils of his Sovereign. These are the men whose graves and monuments will be closest to the tomb of Gladstone, but many of his contemporaries and friends also lie in the same great church — Browning and Tennyson in the Poets' Corner, and Charles Darwin in the nave, among others. Of them all there is not one who has a oleauer and more upright record than Gladstone— none who had a higher aim or was more strenuous in his efforts to raise the tone of public life. Future generations will look upon his tomb as the memorial of a man who did more to make democracy a success than any other man who has ever lived, and that solely because he taught it that success depended on righteousness, and not upon personal or class selfishness. Of the children he leaves behind him there is not one that has so far shown the combined force of intellect and will which raised the father so high above the rest of his generation. The Hawarden parson, Stephen, is a devout Churchman, an able preacher, and may possibly, if he seeks it, reach high preferment ; but he would never make the ideal Archbishop his father would have done. There has always been a hope among the followers of the Grand Old Man that his son Herbert would be able to take up the threads of his labours and carry on the work his father had begun, but somehow or other a sense of disappointment baa resulted from the attempts the young politician has made. There can be little doubt that he is greatly handicapped by his name ; so much is expected from hint on account of it that most people are apt to overlook the fact that were his father's name less great he would himself be considered a man of great promise and some attainments. Mr. Herbert Gladstone has represented Leeds or West Leeds for 18 years in Parliament, and has made his mark in the administrative work entrusted to him in the various Liberal Governments during that period, but yet he cannot be said to be a power in his Party or in the country. Perhaps now, when the Empire is echoing with the name of Gladstone, and when the Liberal- Party is so completely disorganised, another Gladstone may spring to the van and lead it to victory again. Such • a contingency is far from impossible, especially as the British Liberal Parly is being ruiued b}' the fossilised ineptitude of its official leaders. One other of Mr. Gladstone's children deserves notice for the prominent part she has always taken in the cause of tho higher education of women. Miss Helen Gladstone's name will be remembered by English-speaking women the world over, not only as Vice-Principal of Newnham College, but as one of the strongest and ablest advocates of woman's right to education on equal terms with man. The dead statesman leaves great children behind him, but his own pre-eminence seems for the time to dwarf them into iusignificance.