He never realised, any more than Carlyle, the vast amount of practical administrative work which such a man as Gladstone achieved, or on the other hand the immense weight carried in Parliament by practical ability and experience, as distinguished from brilliancy and rhetoric.

The history which he liked, and to which he confined himself, was antecedent to the triumph of Parliament over the Crown.

Warren Hastings, he used to say, conquered India; Burke would have hanged him for doing it.

The House of Lords acquitted Hastings; and so far from criticising the doubtful policy of the war with France in 1793, Burke's only complaint of Pitt was that he did not carry it on with sufficient vigour.

The distinction between talkers and doers is really fallacious.