Sir Robert was going off in search of another second, and was with difficulty driven from his purpose by the threat of an application to a magistrate. The most plausible explanation is that he was maddened by the clamorous cheers of his quondam friends and followers:

'Non me tua fervida terrent

Dicta, ferox: Dii me terrent-'

the Dii being understood in the theatrical sense the gods that thunder their applause or censure from the gallery. It must be remembered also that there was twice over some foundation for the charge so pointedly levelled at him, of having acted like the Turkish admiral who steered the fleet under his command straight into the harbour of the enemy; and that Mr. Disraeli was in his happiest vein. This was the night (May 15, 1846) when he declared Peel's life to be 'one great appropriation clause,' termed the Treasury Bench 'political pedlars that bought their party in the cheapest market and sold us in the dearest;' and compared the conversion of the Peelites to that of the Saxons by Charlemagne, who, according to the chronicle, were converted in battalions and baptized in platoons.'

Sheil's mode of accounting for Mr. Disraeli's want of spirit and freshness after Peel's death is well known. He compared him to a dissecting surgeon or anatomist without a corpse. His best speeches and two or three of them are of rare excellence-were those which he spoke when, as leader of the young England party, he first opened the trenches against Peel. His later and more elaborate speeches are deficient in substance, soundness, spontaneity and flow. They neither convince nor move. As Cicero says of Epicurus, Nil magnificum, nil generosum sapit.' They do not make his hearers wiser or better; nor would he gain by it if they did. It is only when his fertile fancy supplies

an allusive pleasantry, or when he can indulge his genius for sarcasm, that he brightens up or seems at home. Rogers said of Lord Aberdeen's (the Premier) dancing, when obliged to stand up with an ambassadress, that he danced as if he was hired for the purpose and was not sure of being paid. Mr. Disraeli has commonly spoken since 1846 as if he was under an engagement to do a given amount of work for his party, and was not sure of their approval when he had completed it.

What his biographer deems the most presentable bit of his rhetoric is the warning to the Manchester School: that there is no reason why they should form an exception to that which history has mournfully recorded; why they, too, should not fade like the Tyrian dye, and moulder like the Venetian palaces.' But surely some happier passages might be discovered by those who cared to look for them. He made a capital hit in his speech at Manchester:

'As I sat opposite the Treasury Bench, the Ministers reminded me of one of those marine landscapes not very unusual on the coasts of South America. You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest. But the situation is still dangerous. There are occasional earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumbling of the sea.'

'Genuine Saxon, by the soul of Hengist!' was the exulting shout of Cedric on hearing the name of a Saxon knight who had been victor in the lists. Genuine Saxon!' will be the exclamation of every critical listener to Mr. Bright. His look, his tone, his choice of words and illustrations, his stubborn independence, his boldness, his pugnacity, are all redolent of race. A Foxite adduced Pitt's preference of Latin compounds as an all-sufficient proof of habitual ambiguity. Apply a similar test to Mr. Bright and no further proof will be needed of his straightforwardness. His diction is

drawn exclusively from the pure wells of English undefiled. Milton and the Bible are his unceasing study. There was a time when it was rare to find him without 'Paradise Lost' in his hand or his pocket. The use of scriptural imagery is a marked feature of his orations, and no imagery can be more appropriately employed to illustrate his views; for Mr. Bright, in all his grand efforts, rises far above the loaded unwholesome atmosphere of party politics into the purer air and brighter skies of patriotism and philanthropy. may differ about his means or measures, but no one can differ about the aim when he puts forth his strength to raise Ireland or India in the scale of civilisation, to mitigate the evils of war, or to promote the spread of toleration and Christian charity throughout the world. He wound up a speech on Ireland in these words :

We

'The noble Lord (Palmerston), towards the conclusion of his speech, spoke of the cloud which rests at present over Ireland. It is a dark and heavy cloud, and its darkness extends over the feelings of men in all parts of the British Empire. But there is a consolation which we may all take to ourselves. An inspired king, and bard, and prophet, has left us words which are not only the expression of a fact, but which we may take as the utterance of a prophecy. He says, "To the upright there ariseth light in the darkness." Let us try in this matter to be upright. Let us try to be just. That cloud will be dispelled. The dangers which surround us will vanish, and we may yet have the happiness of leaving to our children the heritage of an honourable citizenship in a united and prosperous empire.'

The speech in which he is commonly thought to have reached the culminating point of his oratory, the one to which he himself reverts with most pleasure, is that deprecating a continuance of the Crimean war. The most successful passage was this—

'I do not suppose that your troops are to be beaten in actual conflict with the foe, or that they will be driven into

the sea; but I am certain that many homes in England in which there now exists a fond hope that the distant one may return-many such homes may be rendered desolate when the next mail shall arrive. The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings. There is no one, as when the first-born were slain of old, to sprinkle with blood the lintel and the two sideposts of our doors, that he may spare and pass on; he takes his victims from the castle of the noble, the mansion of the wealthy, and the cottage of the poor and the lowly, and it is on behalf of all these classes that I make this solemn appeal.'

Although Mr. Bright is a ready speaker, he is understood (like the great orators of Greece and Rome) to devote much time and labour to the preparation of his orations; which may account for their comparative fewness and brevity. His voice is all that could be desired as an orator, and his delivery is impressive, although so distinct, slow, and calm as to sound more like recitation than declamation, and it is suspected that his more ambitious passages are fairly written out on the paper which he holds with seeming carelessness in his hand.

6

One of the best specimens of his racy humour is the speech in which he introduced the cave of Adullam, and, in allusion to the alliance between two of the principal occupants, Mr. Lowe and Mr. Horsman, said: This party of two reminds me of the Scotch terrier, which was so covered with hair that you could not tell which was the head and which was the tail of it.' epithets are as adhesive as Mr. Disraeli's; as when he termed that right honourable gentleman the mystery man' of his party. There was point as well as quaintness in one of his arguments against the Crimean

war:

His

The property-tax is the lever, or the weapon, with which the proprietors of land and houses in this kingdom will have

to support the "integrity and independence" of the Ottoman Empire. Gentlemen, I congratulate you that every man of you has a Turk upon his shoulders.'

His eloquence is (or was) more convincing than persuasive; and the House of Commons for many years rarely went willingly along with him. He defied and confronted, instead of conciliating, an opponent; and when he encountered what he thought prejudices and others might think principles, his massive understanding passed over them like a steam-roller crushing and pulverising stones.

The unadorned eloquence' of Richard Cobden, the fellow-labourer of John Bright in the same high mission, has left its indelible mark on British legislation, but the House of Commons was not the arena in which its persuasive and convincing qualities were most triumphantly displayed.

The first place among living competitors for the oratorical crown will be conceded without a dissenting voice to Mr. Gladstone. It is Eclipse first and all the rest nowhere. He may lack Mr. Bright's impressive diction, impressive by its simplicty, or Mr. Disraeli's humour and sarcasm; but he has made ten eminently successful speeches to Mr. Bright's or Mr. Disraeli's one. His foot is ever in the stirrup: his lance is ever in the rest. He throws down the gauntlet to all comers. Right or wrong, he is always real, natural, earnest, unaffected, and unforced. He is a great debater, a great parliamentary speaker: with a shade more imagination, he would be a great orator. Much that we have said of Sir Robert Peel might be repeated of Mr. Gladstone. Inferior to the founder of his school in judgment and self-control, he is superior in moral courage, warmth, range, grasp, fertility, versatility, passion, power. If he has committed mistakes which Peel would not have committed, he has achieved triumphs which Peel could not have achieved. He