GLADSTONE'S MANY FACES.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2280, 29 September 1899, Page 4

GLADSTONE'S MANY FACES.

No one could stand before a good portrait of Gladstone without feeling that he was in the presence of an extraordinary man. Yet '.he greates painter could only represent one ot the many moods of that ever-changing an most expressive countenance. Few men have had so many faces, and the wonderful play of his features contributed very largely to the effectiveness of his speaking. It was a countenance eminently fitted to express enthusiasm, pathos, profound melancholy, commanding power and lofty disdain ; there were moments when it could take an expression of intense cunning, and it often darkened into a scowl of passionate ancer. In repose it did not seem to me good. With its tightly compressed lips and fierce, abstracted gaze it seemed to express not only extreme determination, but also great vindictjveness, a quality, indeed, by no means wanting in his nature, though it was, I think, more frequently directed against classes or parties than against individuals. He had a wonderful eye—a bird of prey ey< —fierce, luminous, and restless. "When he differed from you," a great friend ar.d admirer of his once said to me, " thera were moments when he would give you a glance aB if he would stab you to the heart." There was something, indeed, in his eye in which more than one experienced judge saw dangerous symptoms of possible insanity. Its piercing glance added greatly to his eloquence, and was, no doubt, one of the chief elements of that strong personal magnetism which he undoubtedly possessed. Its power was, I believe, partly due to a rare physical peculiarity. Boehm, the sculptor, wiio was one of the best observers of the human face I have ever known, and who saw much of Gladstone and carefully studied him for a bust, was convinced of this. He told me that he was once present when an altercation between him and a Scotch professor took place, and that the latter started up from the table to make an angry reply when he suddenly stopped as if paralysed or fascinated by the glance of Gladstone, and Boehm noticed that the pupil of Gladstone's eye was visibly dilating and the eyelid round the whole circle of the eye drawing back, as may be «een in a bird of prey.