in everything that is going on. Some people may regard this as a very
common gift. It is nothing of the kind. I know no place in the world
which is a severer test of a man's tenacity of purpose, than the House
of Commons. I suppose it is because we see the men more publicly there
than elsewhere; but I know no place where there are so many ups and
downs of human destiny as in the House of Commons--no place, at all
events, where one is so struck with the changes, and transformations of
human destinies. The man who, in one or two Sessions, is on his legs
every moment--who takes a prominent part in every debate--who has become
one of the notabilities of the House--in a year or two's time has sunk
to a silent dweller apart from all the eagerness and fever of debate,
sinks into melancholy and listlessness, and is almost dead before he has
given up his Parliamentary life. Staying power is the rarest of all
Parliamentary powers; Labby has plenty of staying power.

[Sidenote: Sir Charles Dilke.]

Another figure which the new House of Commons is gradually beginning to
understand is Sir Charles Dilke. He is one of the men who seem to have
no interest in life outside politics. When one thinks that he has
wealth, an immense number of subjects in which he can find instruction
and occupation, that he is familiar with the languages, literature, and
life of several countries, it is hard to understand how he could have
had the endurance to go through the hurricane of abuse and persecution
which he has had to encounter in the last seven years. There are traces
in his face of the intense mental suffering through which he has passed;
there are more lines about the eyes than should be in the case of a man
who is just fifty. But, otherwise, he positively looks younger than he
did when he was a Cabinet Minister. There is colour where there used to
be nothing but deadly pallor--freshness where the long and terrible
drudgery of official life had left a permanent look of fag and
weariness. Sir Charles Dilke has taken up the broken thread of his life
just as if nothing had occurred in that long period of exile and
suffering. He is never out of his place: attends every sitting as
conscientiously as if he were in office and responsible for everything
that is going on; and has his eye on subjects as wide apart as the
parish councils and Newfoundland, army reform and the occupation of
Uganda. It is curious to see, too, how he is regaining that ascen