Mr. Gladstone on Monday made a pleasant little speech at
the distribution of prizes to the Hawarden and Buckley Horticultural Society, which held its annual show in the grounds of Hawarden Castle. He dwelt on his own personal inability to examine the specimens produced at the show with any adequate minuteness on account of failing eyesight, though it was" useful enough," he said, "for many purposes ; " and he dwelt on the services he had rendered in Parliament to the multiplication of small holdings, whether for the pur- poses of gardens, or for more strictly agricultural purposes, evidently regretting, though without anything like bitterness, that his almost life-long Parliamentary service had come to an end, and that he had no longer the right to add "the mystic letters" M.P. to his name, which he had possessed for more than sixty-two years. But he possesses an even rarer and far more unusual distinction in place of it, the distinction of accepting the privations of age with a serenity and cheer- fulness such as very seldom follow so great a career as his, when all its keenest excitements are at an end. It is the most convincing of evidences that a great career has not been per- vaded by ambition, when at its close the mind acquiesces in. the inevitable resignation of influence and of noble endeavour, without either repinings or melancholy.
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