there are in this leader of a fierce
democracy, and can imagine that ofttimes his communings may, perchance,
be silent prayer.

[Sidenote: In contrast with Lowther.]

As I have said, there have been many such moments in those days in
Parliament. Mr. Gladstone can be severe--wrathful--even cruel. It is not
often that he is so, but sometimes he has, in sheer self-defence, to
notice the dogs that yelp at his heels, and to lash out and maul them so
as to keep off the rest. Nobody will forget how, in a few words, Mr.
Gladstone mercilessly and for ever crushed that impudent young
gentleman, who is titled and considered to-day largely because Mr.
Gladstone was the patron of his sanctimonious father. Mr. Jesse Collings
hides under a painfully extorted smile the agonies he endures on the few
occasions when Mr. Gladstone deems it worth his while to scornfully
refer to his apostasy. But, speaking generally, Mr. Gladstone uses his
giant powers with extraordinary benignity and mercifulness, and is
almost tender with even his bitterest opponents. When, therefore, Mr.
Gladstone was being baited by beef-headed Lowther, he for the most part
looked simply pained; and took refuge in that far-off self-absorption
which enabled him to forget the odious reality in front of him. And
assuredly, if you looked at the face of Gladstone, and then at the face
of Lowther, and thought of the different purposes of the two men, you
could not be surprised that Mr. Gladstone should desire to forget the
existence of Mr. Lowther. Mr. Lowther's face, with its high cheek-bones,
its heavy underhung lip, like the national bulldog in size, and in its
impression of brutal, dull, heavy tenacity--its grotesque
good-humour--its unrelieved coarseness--brings out into higher contrast
and bolder relief the waxen pallor, the beautifully chiselled features,
the dominant benignity and refinement of the face of Mr. Gladstone. And,
then, think that the one man is fighting to maintain, and the other to
put an end, and for ever, to the hateful, bloody, and, it might almost
be said, bestial struggle of centuries; and you can understand the
feeling of overwhelming loathing which sometimes rises in the breasts of
those who see the two men pitted against each other.

[Sidenote: For Jimmy was leader.]

For this was what it had come to in the House of Commons. It was Jimmy
Lowther against Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Balfour occasionally dropped in a
perfunctory word; now and then even t