It was the only foible I detected in him.

He was very much interested in America, and asked many questions about our politics.

Two things, he said, in the future of America, seemed to him ominous of evil: the condition of our civil service, and the amount of our Western lands going into mortmain through the gifts to the great railway systems.
It would be, perhaps, unjustifiable to form a firm opinion on a man of Gladstone's calibre from the few days of our intercourse, even in the freedom and openness of mind of a mountain walk, politics and Parliament forgotten; but the final impression he gave me was that of a man, on the whole, immensely greater than I had taken him to be, but with conflicting elements of greatness which neutralized each other to a certain extent.

He had in him the Platonist, the Statesman, and the Theologian, of each enough for an ordinary man, and one crowded the other in action.

The Platonist crowded the Statesman, and, at certain dangerous moments, the broad humanitarian feeling overlooked the practical dangers of the critical juncture in which he had to act.