MR. GLADSTONE
else. There is in the word "massive" a meaning that goes deeper than mere mass. Mr. Gladstone's massiveness resembled chiselled granite. Sir William Harcourt was also massive, but that was mere flesh.
There was nothing more than that which is common to most sound and strong men in Bismarck's head, save two features, one of which was unnatural, and the other merely a decoration. His head was round and solid, his nose short and insignificant, his mouth and chin strong, his forehead full, but not high. The two chief features were not features at all, but abnormalities—for his eyes, round and full, projected unpleasantly from their sockets, and the hairs of his eyebrows stood out like quills on a fretful porcupine. Gladstone, on the other hand, without any abnormality in particular, was, in old age, whatever he may have been in youth, as a whole, super-normal. The forehead was not high, and sloped backwards from the frontal bones that overhung the eye-sockets, where dark and piercing eyes were deep set. The head was very broad and full at the temples, a marked characteristic of most politicians and statesmen—in Balfour the distance from the ears to the top of the head is unusually great, but the head is narrow—Gladstone's nose was large and masterful, the mouth firm, and the chin broad, and not prominent. But the style of the bone structure was quite different from that of other men, in that all the fine points which are usually thought to be associated with genius or talent were in him pronounced, rather than exaggerated.
The iris was fringed with a conspicuous arcus senilis. I have known but one other like it, and that in a comparatively young man.
His large brain must have been composed of memory
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