GLADSTONE AT THE DINNERTABLE.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7636, 8 January 1887, Page 3

GLADSTONE AT THE DINNERTABLE.

(From ttieNew York Matt and Express. There arc few men at liis time of lifi who work so hard and endure so much ai the late Premier, but he is one of tin most cheery of men. You will meet bin at a dinner-table, after delivering somi great speech in ■ the House of Commons and will look at him in vain for soni( signs of exhaustion, physical or mental or any of those attitudes of -weary absorp tion which great thinkers or .great public men aro apt , to fall into . in society, whether unconsciously or deliberately, and at which their admirers gaze with bated ' breath. Mr. Gladstone in society is just as much a centre of attraction and a spectacle oi exuberant energy and brilliancy as in the House of Commons. He talks incessantly anddelightfully,nevermentionin<;"shop." His eyes sparkle, his old face lights up with animation,, and he laughs the loud, joyous laugh of a schoolboy. His conversation flits with the lightest of wings over a' whole, world of subjects. The other evening at a dinner he touched ■ upon the following thpmes :— -The latest excavations oi Dr Petrie,. of Egypt, with a picturesque detail or two about Babylonian and Egyption- domestic life ; Aiphonse Daudet's Sappho, giving a text for some vehement remarks apout the degeneracy of French novelistio literature since the realistic came into vogue j Norwegian fishing costumes ; Sarah Bernhardt and Mary Anderson as women and as actresses, with a decided preference for Mary as tholirst and Sarah as the second; anecdotes of Lord Brougham, Taglioni, Charles Dickens, Louis Phillippe, Tom Sayers, Garibaldi ; whether the flowing grace of the Greek chiton was preferable after all to the inviting prettiness of a small waist; the meanness of muzzling dogs, 'a mention, of old china (of which Mr Gladstone is a connoisseur and collector), leading to an account of the Duke d'Aumale's bric-a-brac, .that leading to a sketch of the beautiful palace of Chatillon ; that to a chat about Mine, de Sevigne,- and that "to a regret that the English hayo not the faculty of making memoirs ' as attractive as the French, and that again to a correction, with personal testimony, of some of' Greville's mistakes ; a bubbling, effervescing stream, coming from' the springs of a heart as fresh as in the springtime of young manhood. Somebody has compared Mr* Gladstone's heart and intellect to a winter pear which blooms and ripens under the.snotys of. age. ••' • *