Mary Gladstone on John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

“Fri. a long talk with Ld. Acton in the garden, an hour and ½, mostly about various people and rather amusing. He has a shrewd eye for character, and yet charitable.”

“He [Lord Acton] gave Herbert and me the History of Liberty, a sketch of it, most interesting. It is extraordinary the way he tingles with it to his fingers ends and yet can sit patient and quiet over wife and children and wait and wait another year before he writes it. What an extraordinary man.”