[3] Some of them are veterans of the former strife. They can
turn, like the present writer, to the thumbed diaries of that great
combat,[4] and can recall the great scenes of that prolonged
Parliamentary agony with a sense of treading again some well-worn road.
Others are new to the issue, and can only hear, like "horns of Elf-land
faintly blowing," some faint echo from the dawn of consciousness.
But young or old, we must again set forth on our travels, and this
time--
"It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles."
It will be the memory of the "Great Achilles" that will sustain us. For
this task comes to Liberals as a sacred trust from Mr. Gladstone. It is
from him that they have learnt that race-hatred is poison, and that the
only true union between nations is--in a phrase that has outlived the
silly laughter of the shallow--the "Union of Hearts."[5] It is Mr.
Gladstone's work that they design to accomplish. It is the memory of
his passionate and sustained devotion through the last twenty years of
that glorious life that has thrown a halo round this cause, and still
gilds it with a "heavenly alchemy."
But, before we "smite the sounding furrows," our first duty is to
survey once more the seas over which we shall have to voyage.
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