We received lately for review from the publishers a book
by a Mr. Peter Wright. Our recollections of a former book by the author disposed us to discard it promptly, and this determination was confirmed on finding that it contained scandalous imputations upon Mr. Gladstone's moral character, so gross as to seem also contemptibly stupid. But by referring to it now we shall give the book no extra advertisement since Mr. Gladstone's sons have stigmatized the writer, in a letter plainly written with the best advice, . as a liar, coward and fool. On receiving an evasive answer they have challenged him to come into the Law Courts. In justice to the pub- lishers it must be said that they promptly apologized for their carelessness in allowing the offensive passage to be added by the author to the proofs which they had probably passed. Mr. Wright seems to us to have piled. offence upon offence by his mixture of ignorance, of venom and of meanness towards two dead men—Lord. Milner as well as Mr. Gladstone. Of course, nobody who knew Mr. Gladstone would read the paragraph without an indignant scam for the writer. No one who knows the present generation of Mr. Gladstone's family would withhold his sympathy for the acute pain so wantonly inflicted, and we should like to associate ourselves with that sympathy.
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