Excerpt from A Short Life of William Ewart Gladstone: With Extracts From His Speeches and Writings At the moment when this great career has reached its culminating phase, it has seemed to the author that a concise popular account Of its various stages might prove interesting, and could hardly fail to prove instructive. In the following pages the aim has been, not so much to trace with minute precision each successive step, as to furnish material for a fairly accurate general estimate Of Mr. Gladstone's varied labors as Statesman, orator, and author; and to portray as graphically as we may that noble and Opulent personality which lies behind them all. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.