employed. But it is not only as a legislator that Mr. Cross has proved himself a pillar of State; he has been an addition of the greatest consequence to the debating power of the Treasury bench in the lower House. The speech which he delivered last session on Mr. Gladstone's Resolutions became as much a parliamentary landmark as the speech itself was a masterly indication of the landmarks of British interests. It was referred to continually during the recess. With regard to matters which lie in his own particular department, Mr. Cross possesses not only the ability to construct measures, but he has the faculty of expounding their provisions with convincing clearness, and can defend them with force. To listen to him in the House is always a pleasure, and it may be safely said that he is one of the most popular personalities of that assembly. He pretends not to be an orator, and the highspirited terms which he infuses into some of his speeches places them often far above the level of merely good speaking. For instance, in the speech which he made lately on the Vote of Credit, he was much more than declamatory, he was picturesque; and his invective was full of masculine vigour. When he exclaimed, "There has been a lying spirit abroad in the land," he took the majority of the House by storm, nor could any subsequent lecturing on the part of such a very inconsiderable person as Mr. Goschen remove the telling impression. Honest, direct, and clear in every respect, an Englishman to the backbone, Mr. Cross advances to the table, and, whether conducting a bill through committee, or replying to an attack of the Opposition, by his frank address and genial bonhommie at once engages the attention of the House. Were the present Government to fall to-morrow, the Home Secretary could not but remain one of the most cherished personalities of the House of Commons, and be looked to as a statesman from whom great and enduring things were expected in the future.

VII.

MR. LOWE,

As a personality of the House of Commons Mr. Lowe has always been interesting, but probably not popular. There is an angularity about him which seems to defy every rounding and grace-bestowing influence. He has the fatal want of "sweetness and light." Plentifully endowed with cleverness, he is sadly deficient in sympathy; in other words, he is a man of head, not of heart. His theory seems always to have been that, so long as a man could prove himself to be acutely critical and rigidly rationalise he had established an indisputable claim to be a ruler and a statesman. The famous match-tax will never be forgotten in England. Deliberately to plan the propping-up of a deficient Budget at the expense of the widow and orphan was a revelation of cynicism so deadly that we cannot conceive a greater damage to the character of any minister. The sin only became of deeper dye, by the printing of all those labels with their childish mottoes. Mr. Lowe is

neither nominally nor literally "a professor;" but it is difficult to question the propriety of the sarcastic epithet which was applied to him. Notwithstanding his excessive cleverness, the academic atmosphere perpetually pervades him. Never do his views on any commanding subject seem to rise to grandeur commensurate with it. He inveighs against the Abyssinian Expedition on account of a fly which is to eat the whole British army. He boasts with exquisite self-complacency of having saved £50,000 to the nation in a transaction which involved the loss of three millions; he objects to the Queen being made an Empress because we shall probably lose India! In a word, it cannot be denied that Mr. Lowe is little more than a clever critic with a caustic faculty of expressing himself. We are aware that a far more flattering opinion is held about him by his admirers; but for the life of us, we have never been able to discern either in his speeches or in his acts a trace of that boldness of conception and wide-reaching grasp which distinguishes the statesman from the mere doctrinaire and adroit administrator. The right hon. gentleman knows how to destroy, but he cannot create. With regard to his style as a parliamentary speaker, considering the strangely extravagant terms by which it has been characterised in some quarters, it is certainly disappointing. When you perceive the well-known figure with the snow-white hair and eye-brows on his legs, you wait for the delivery of some animating piece of oratory. Mr. Lowe places himself at the table in an attitude which irresistibly reminds you of an elderly school-boy called up to say his lessons. His arms hang passively by his sides, and there they remain until the end of his speeeh. The mode of delivery is quite in keeping. Nothing could be much tamer. The speech sounds like a recitation which, judging by the faltering accents of the reciter, has not been thoroughly got by heart. The voice is monotonous, and far from agreeable. What secrets of character that organ reveals! Mr. Lowe's voice, you would say, is that of a man with no passion and little enthusiasm. If he is in a satirical humour (which is generally the case), and vents some bitter jest, he will pause a moment, wag his head from side to side, and give a sort of sneering grin, which displays a set of exceedingly white teeth. When he sits down you may acknowledge thathe has said some smart things, and strung together a good many clever syllogisms, but you cannot feel that you have been captivated by an oration. Mr. Lowe was undoubtedly the maker of what was called at the time the "Cave of Adullam," which materially conduced to the overthrow of Lord Russell's Government; but it is probable that that political episode was more a thing of accident than of premeditation. Mr. Lowe certainly did not improve his reputation either with the country or the House of Commons by that unfortunate Retford speech. It was always said that the right hon. gentleman entertained more than a mere political antipathy to Lord Beaconsfield; if so, he surpassed himself in malignity on that occasion. But retribution was to follow and never did a minister have such an opportunity of annihilating a political adversary or use it with such effect as did the Premier in the

subsequent session of Parliament. But Mr. Lowe is irrepressible, and only lately he talked of its being advisable to "muzzle" a leading personality "in another place." It strikes us that it might be more in accordance with the fitness of things if the muzzle were first voluntarily placed on the mouth of the orator of Retford. Mr. Lowe would have made a greater figure in politics had he laid the truth to heart, that great questions of State are more often determined by sentiment and sympathy than by Cocker and Adam Smith,

VIII.

MR. HENLEY.

ONLY a short time ago the House of Commons lost one of its most marked personalities in the person of Mr. Henley. He was also its most venerable member, having arrived at the mature age of eighty-six, and having sat for Oxfordshire for, we believe, the long period of half a century. No member of the House was more absolutely respected, both for character and sound abilities. He seldom intruded himself npon the House in lengthy or formal speeches, but when he did so no man was listened to with more profound attention. All felt that whether his words were few or many, they would throw some new light on the question at issue, or extricate it from the entanglements in which it might have become involved. Perhaps Mr. Henley's special power was in dealing with measures passing through committee. He seemed to possess the critical and the constructive faculties in equal proportion, and therefore he could either pick a bad clause to pieces or render invaluable assistance to a Minister in putting a good one together. In this department of legislation his success may be said to have been quite unique; for, as a rule, the number of Amendments to a Bill which a Minister accepts is extremely small, and those which are pushed to a division are usually lost. The secret of Mr. Henley's individuality appeared to lie in his being the incarnation of sound sense and infallible judgment. With respect to all measures which more particularly appealed to the attention and sympathies of the country gentleman his services were incalculable, and will not soon be either forgotten or replaced. "A plain, blunt man" in his views and opinions, the member for Oxfordshire's manner of expressing himself was of the same description. He never made any pretensions to rhetorical skill, but dealt out wholesome truths with a curt directness of phrase which reminded one of the Duke of Wellington. He had the enviable gift of striking at the root of the matter in some felicitous sentence. His speaking was so utterly devoid of circumlocution that it could never be prosy, and he never bored with statistics nor vexed with over minuteThe last time we heard him he made one of his happiest hits, He was speaking on the "Ewlme scandal," and after pointing out with his nsual incisive terseness the iniquity of Mr. Gladstone's proceeding

ness.

in that affair, he concluded: "Let me tell the right hon. gentleman what the folks say about it in my part of the country. They say 'it ain't honest.' Mr. Henley took office as President of the Board of Trade in the Derby ministry of 1858, but retired along with Mr. Walpole when the Cabinet had decided to introduce a Reform Bill. His venerable figure, invariably seated next the friend whom we have just mentioned, will long be remembered as the beau ideal of a country gentleman. His exterior carried the same air of honest, homely simplicity and quiet independence that characterised his parliamentary speaking.

MOTLEY.

STANZAS.

I.

WHAT is life when life is charmless,
When its dearest ties are flown;
And the heart we held as harmless,
With a venom wounds our own?

2.

What is life when high ambition,
Soared in hope's ethereal realm,
When it sinks to the condition

Of a ship without a helm?

3.

Life is then a sad disaster,

And we would that we were dead;

Yet, while wishing, cling the faster

To each straw above our head.

4.

For it has a charm remaining

If, though stunned by many a blow,
We should find one heart containing
Some compassion on our woe.

CECIL MAXWell-Lyte.

A GHOST STORY.

BY W. T. GREENE.

THE thermometer marked 90° in the shade, and the apology for a breeze, that lazily flapped the full-set sails against the masts and spars, failed to raise the slightest ripple on the dark green waves that rolled with a long, monotonous undulation from the east, and literally rocked our vessel in the cradle of the deep. When this state of things had lasted three days, and skipper, crew, and passengers had begun to feel the hours hang wearily on their hands; when we had all grown tired of watching the Portuguese men-of-war, flying-fish, and other similar curiosities to be met with in the vicinity of the Equator, or, as the sailors term it, the Linewhich the second mate, by the way, had succeeded in rendering visible to our lady-passengers by the ingenious device of stretching a hair across the field of vision of his telescope-we naturally fell to quarrelling amongst ourselves. I say naturally, for we had nothing else to do the intense heat made us feel uncomfortable, spoiled our appetites, and would not let us sleep: cards had been voted a nuisance, and even bitter beer had palled at length upon our palates, so that a proposal of the skipper's to tell stories was hailed with general acclamation.

But who was to begin?

"Captain Porter, undoubtedly: and pray let us have a good ghost story, Captain, please," exclaimed Miss Crawford.

"Ridiculous!" chorused three other ladies who were tant-soitpeu jealous of the monopoly of attentions engrossed on most occasions by that young lady: "Ridiculous! why there is no such thing in the world as a ghost!"

"And why not?" quietly demanded the skipper: "we all believe in a future existence, do not we? and such being the case, why should it be thought impossible that under certain circumstances, of rare occurrence I admit, the spirits of the departed should be permitted to present themselves, in the old familiar semblance, to those whom they had left behind?"

"Why?" replied young Woodward, another of the passengers, because, Captain Porter, it is unreasonable to suppose that Providence would reverse the laws of nature for the purpose of frightening a few old women and children."

66

Just so," returned the skipper; "but I am so far from admitting that the apparition of the dead to the living is a violation of any natural law, that I am persuaded their appearance is regulated