That, however, was not the opinion of the Saturday Review,
which produced on this subject, last Saturday, the most malignant and disreputable article which we ever remember to have read in a paper of high general ability and culture. It was called" Mr. Glad- stone Descends into the Gutter," spoke of him as having voluntarily taken a "mud bath," with the intention of drawing out on "homoso- pathic principles" his " peccant humours," and after two columns of coarse abuse, ended in these words,—" the leader who in the blind lust for adulation submits to the greasy hug of the panderer to obscenity and the accomplice of blasphemy and the avowed advocate of Fenianism, which Finlen is, mast not be surprised if he alienates the confidence of friends, and while exasperating the acrimony of enemies, repels the sympathies of the serious and reit-acting." We say deliberately that the man who wrote that is
discharging for the educated classes of society precisely the same kind of evil and prurient function which it is stated that Mr. Finlen performed for vulgarer people as the advocate of the Judge and Jury Club. Such an article in such a journal impresses us as almost a national calamity, certainly strikes the public press as a reason for the deepest professional shame at a slur on their calling and repute.
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