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programme the act of a self-seeking adventurer? Was Gladstone's unexpected adop tion of the policy of Irish Home Rule prompted by impulses of reckless ambition, by the hope of stealing meanly a march on political rivals? The biographer must hold the scales even. He must look before and after, and close his ears to party resentments of the hour. He must abide by the just and generous principles which move a critical friend's judgment. Wherever he honestly can, a friend allows the benefit of the doubt; he extenuates nothing, nor sets down aught in malice. Brutus claimed that the record of Caesar's life in the Capitol presented the dictator's "glories wherein he was worthy" by the side of the dictator's "offences wherein he was unworthy." Neither were the merits Under-estimated nor were the defects overemphasised. Brutus's simple words suggest the nicely adjusted scales in which the moral blemishes of great men should be Weighed by the biographer. The aim of biography is not the moral edification which