MR. HENRY GLADSTONE asked me to paint two portraits of Lord Armitstead, his father's old friend. It was during the first winter of the war that the work was carried out.
I found the picturesque invalid reclining in a chair in one of the upper rooms of the house, where he spent the whole day in reading, and seeing now and then his friends. Lord Armitstead was a tall man of striking appearance. His hair and beard were white and long, his face handsome, and his profile marked and finely drawn. His interest in everything that was going on was still eager and at times intense, and although he was supposed to be reading while I painted, the greater part of each sitting was taken up by conversation, which displayed not only great strength of mind, but the rare generosity of recognizing past errors in his own political views and theories, admitting frankly that events then ensuing were not at all in consonance with his long-cherished aspirations. It seemed to delight him to imagine the mind of Mr. Gladstone, whose thoughts he had absorbed during so many years of friendly association, contemplating through his own, as a kind of reflex, the surprising progress of the Liberal Party in the direction of State Socialism, and he often declared that had Mr. Gladstone lived, he would have strongly disapproved of the Radical tendencies of the day. He foreshadowed, with a
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