My own impressions of Mr. Gokhale derived from close association were, firstly, his extraordinary capacity for work; secondly, his splendid parts combined to great industry; thirdly, his stern devotion to duty, and fourthly, his profound and defailed knowledge of subjects. He knew all about the subject that he took up a rare gift among politians, carried to a very high degree by Mr. Gokhale. There was a curious fastidiousness about Mr. Gokhale; he had an amount of impatience of Sluggards. He was the first orator of his time in India. He was fastidious in the political weapons he employed and never resorted to anything mean and underhand, in what had been called the game, a tortuous game of politics. Mr. Gokhale had both intellectual and physical courage the highest courage. He had contempt for meanness and injustice, a burning love of country and great belief in destiny.
In talent and character, he was extraordinary, combining in a singular degree the visionary qualities of the Indian life. Even in India, where saints are not uncommon, Gokhale's saintliness shone with a peculiar lustre, for not only was he utterly disinterested in his pursuits of patriotic ends, caring nothing for wealth and station, but his rare spiritual intensity was united to a subtlety of mind, a quiet grasp of detail, and a gift for action, qualities that are not usually associated with the devotional temperament of the East.
That he was a great orator, I can well believe, for his use of English was exact and brilliant and entirely free from the redundancy and magniloquence which is sometimes
