and a delight and fascination to his
friends. He took up the witless and unhappy Cochrane, shook him, and
dropped him sprawling and mutilated, in about as limp a condition as the
late Lord Wolmer--I call him late in the sense of a person politically
dead--when that distinguished nobleman was called to account for his
odious calumny on the Irish members.

[Sidenote: Baiting the lion.]

At last, however, the Cochranes and the rest of the gang that had
thought it fine fun to bait an old man were silenced; but even yet the
ordeal of Mr. Gladstone was only beginning. I have seen many disgusting
sights in my time in the House of Commons; but I never saw anything so
bad as this scene. Mr. Gladstone looked--as I thought--wan and rather
tired. He had been down to Brighton; and I have a profound disbelief in
these short hurried trips to the seaside. But Mr. Gladstone seems to
like them, and haply they do him good. He looked as if the last trip had
rather tired him out. Or was it that he had had to sit for several hours
the day before at a Cabinet Council? These Cabinet Councils must often
be a great trial to a leader's nerves; for all Councils in every body in
the world mean division of opinion, personal frictions, ugly outbursts
of temper, from which even the celestial minds of political leaders are
not entirely free. Anyhow Mr. Gladstone looked pale, fagged, and even a
little dejected. You--simple man--who are only acquainted with human
nature in its brighter and better manifestations, would rush to the
conclusion that the sight of the greatest man of his time in his
eighty-fourth year, thus wan, wearied, pathetic, would appeal to the
imaginations or the hearts of even political opponents. Simple man, you
know nothing of the ruthless cruelty which dwells in political breasts,
of the savagery which lies in the depths of the horse-jockey squire or
the overdressed youth--anxious to distinguish himself, if it be only by
throwing mud at a stately column--you have no idea of these things.

[Sidenote: The lion lashes out.]

Time after time--again and again--in this form and in that--the Tories,
young and old, experienced and senseless, rose to try and corner Mr.
Gladstone. Mr. Frank Lockwood, examining a hostile witness in the
divorce court, could not have been more persistent than the Lowthers,
and the Cranbornes, and even Mr. Balfour. But he was equal to them
all--met them man after man, question after question, and, though he h