ABSTRACT
Justin McCarthy was an Irish journalist and, later, politician. He began work with the Cork Examiner in Ireland. Having moved to England, he was first based in Liverpool with the Northern Daily Times. In 1860 he relocated to London, writing for the Morning Star until 1868. He was at first a supporter of Charles Stewart Parnell and became Vice-Chairman of the Home Rule Party in 1880. McCarthy had known Gladstone for many years, meeting him for the first time in October 1853, when the latter went to Manchester to attend the unveiling of a statue of Sir Robert Peel. Gladstone led the life of a student at Eton. He was especially fond of the classics; and, although he never became a great classical scholar, in the sense of German scholarship, he had a keen, almost an impassioned, interest in the great masterpieces of Greece and Rome.
