MR. GLADSTONE
light as in the sketch with the blue book which I had rubbed in. Seizing the canvas, it took me but a second to move the easel to a position near, and directly in front of, Mr. Gladstone's chair. By looking down upon him the view became perfect, and I commenced deliberately and carefully to put in the details. I knew that the slumber was profound, and that it would last for at least thirty minutes, and there was no danger of disturbing it with any noise that I might make, because of his deafness. So I was quite composed and happy, and worked away merrily. The eyes had been sufficiently indicated at first, so I confined my attention to the forms of the head and face, and to the mouth, which, mirabile dictu, was pursed up as it had been when reading the pages of the book. Before the nap was over the portrait was completed, and it was not touched again. There was the head on a tall, bare canvas, and the lines of a book, and a finger. Moving the easel back to its first position in front of the other window, it did not take long to sketch in the position of the desk with the papers on it, and to indicate the high window, and the lawn sloping upwards to the ancient ruin on the hill. The details of the background were added afterwards, the bookcase, I believe, in Edward Clifford's drawing-room in Kensington Square.
And so ended a long series of portraits and sketches of the most famous man of his century.
Mr. Gladstone was a tall and strong man; his massive head surpassed in character and in beauty that of all other men of his time. The mobility of his features and his comprehensive range of expression seconded, in the most extraordinary degree, a voice as resonant as a bell, clanging in command or appealing in rhythmic and silvery tones. No tragedian that I have seen, from the young American
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