The leading statesman of nineteenth-century Britain, a figure who bestrode the political world like a Colossus, is ''Gladstone'' to modern biographers. In order to signal the difference between Wheeler''s approach and those of earlier biographers, the subject of this book is known as William, his baptismal name. His autobiographical fragments of 1892 included a disclaimer: ''I do not indeed intend in these notes to give a history of the inner life, which I think has with me been extraordinarily dubious, vacillating, and (above all) complex''. William Gladstone: The Heart and Soul of a Statesman is about the spiritual dimension of his complex inner life. In tracing the movements of his heart and soul, the book works from the inner to the outer aspects of a rich and varied life, from William''s daily disciplines of prayer and reflection to his earnest attempts to follow the precepts of Christianity through action in the public realm and in private philanthropy, and in the writing of nume
