EDITORIAL NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXIII, Issue 7215, 20 May 1898, Page 1

EDITORIAL NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Across the globe there ha 9 come the tidings that the most conspicuous figure in the history of the nineteenth century has passed away. "Mr Gladstone died at five o'clock to-day." So runs the briff message that tells that a great heart is still, that a voice whose marvellous power ii had enthralled countless thousands is hushed in death, and that one whose life 1 was devoted to the up-lifting of mankind * " the wide world o'er " has gone to his eternal re3t. At such a moment there come spontaneously to recollection the - lines which Sir Walter Scott wrote in memory of William Pitt j which MrGlad- ■ stone subsequently applied to Sir Robert Peel, perhaps a greater statesman, and which are now applicable in turn to Mr 1 Gladstone, the greatest of all Brltain'slong 3 line of distinguished men : " Now is the stately column broke, The beacon light is quenched in smoke ; The trumpet's silver voice is still; ' The warder silent on the hill." No surprise will be occasioned by the announcement of the death of the Commoner who twice refused elevation at f the hands of his Sovereign from the ranks " of the People to the roll of Lords. But ■ though the bulletins of the. past few days I had prepared everyone for the final shock, still the intelligence will be received with . world-wide sorrow, for all the world has lost one who has been its best, its truest, and its noblest friend. A patriotic and 3 devoted servant of Great Britain, Mr ' Gladstone may be said to have been a cosmopolitan. Wherever Liberty was ! struggling to raise her head Mr Gladstone's voice and hand were ever found at her service. In all sincerity and truth may it be said that he has left the world better than he found it. No man has contributed more than he to the attain- ' ment of the higher and better state to which the world has risen during the century now drawing to a close. Others have been great, have achieved glorious work, but it may without much dispute be said that William Ewart Gladstone has been the greatest man of an age that has produced many men of brilliant parts and witnessed many brilliant accomplishments alike in the arts of peace and war. This is not the place nor this the occasion for a critical review of the life-work of the " deceased statesman, nor for an analytical examination of the causes which led to the many and startling contradictions with which the record of his life is strewn. To . the historian calmly viewing events free from every feeling that may warp the judgment that higher duty belongs. Today our task is but to pay our humble tribute to the memory of one who was great, and whose greatness shines forth the more brightly because of the purity 1 and devotion to duty which characterised a long and illustrious life. That Mr Gladstone was not immaculate none will deny ; that his career was not free from errors all will admit, but they were errors of judgment which must have caused him pain and regret. Looking back over the remarkable life—remarkable alike for its duration and the magnitude of its workit is singular how little can be found in it to condemn and how much to admire. We have made full reference elsewhere to > Mr Gladstone's political career, but no account of his life, however brief and ephemeral, would be complete without some notice of his literary and scholastic attainments. "As a star that draws near to the sun is obscured but is still a star," so the star of his literary attainments was overshadowed by ths brilliancy of his political genius. But it would well bear the strain of isolation, for had not the dead statesman been the central figure of the political history of his age his name ' would have been written high above all others in the anuals of its literature. Nor i did his many-faceted genius cease here. Every cause he espoused was the nobler for his help, every subjecb that he touched , was left the better for his touching, every theory he approached was clarified by his handling, every deed which claimed him as the doer was strong and faithful in the 1 doing. The great calm brain, the clean conscience, the steady hand and eye of pure living, and the spirit of his own vivid personality minted into the pure gold of thought and word and action even ' the uuyielding metal which defied the hand and brain of great men He was essentially a fighter, a man whose very impulses leaped through the intermediate stress and storm of circumstance straight ' to conclusions truer and richer often than the goal of studied thought. He loved Life—not for its pleasures only, or as the coward loves it, because he fears death—bub for its very essence, for its eternal tragedies and its eternal joys, and, even when the shadowy portals gloomed through the mists of death, the patient and unwavering eyes faced the new problem with the same confident faith with which they had met other mysteries of life. He whispered, the cables tell us, the opening, phrases of the Lord's Prayer and a sentence or two in French—some inspiration of the dying intellect perchance or fragment of unfinished work which the world will now never welcome. And then In the pitiful silence which closes ever round the daily tragedy of death, the tired hero of half a century of , history rounded off his earthly work. One [ can imagine the spirit in which he would approach the episode of death,, a spirit so i ably expressed by Browning in his grand t lines—- ' " I was ever a fighter, so - one fight more, The best and the last! I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore, And bade me creep past. No ! let me taste tha whole of it, fare like my peers The heroes of old, 1 Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life s ■ arrears ' Of pain, darkness and cold. [ Anil with God be the rest." j