At last the Old Man had come to a contrast between the action of the
Tory Government of 1885 and the Liberal with regard to the treatment of
prisoners in Ireland. The history of that period is one upon which Mr.
Gladstone is now able to speak without feeling; but he dragged out from
that period and its hidden recesses the whole story of the negotiations
between Parnell and Lord Carnarvon, and all the other circumstances that
make that one of the most remarkable epochs in the history of English
parties. He was now sweeping all before him. This Lord Randolph felt,
and it was almost timorously he rose to make an interruption. The Old
Man courteously gave way; but it was only to jump up again and pour on
his young opponent a tide of ridicule and answer which overwhelmed him.
Higher and higher he soared with every succeeding moment, and stranger
and more impressive became the aspect of the House. There is nothing
which becomes that assembly so much as those moments of exaltation
during which it is under the absolute spell of some great master of its
emotions. Then a death-like stillness falls upon it--you can almost hear
the same heavy-drawn sighs as those that in a Paris opera-house tell of
all the passion, the flood of memory and regret, and the dreams which
are evoked by the voice of a Marguerite before her final expiation--of a
Juliet before her final immolation. Laughter and cheers there were in
abundance during this portion of Mr. Gladstone's speech; but the general
demeanour was one of deadly stillness and rapt emotion--the stillness
one can imagine on that Easter morning when De Quincey went forth and
washed the fever from his forehead with the dew of early day.

[Sidenote: An episode.]

And in the midst of it all there came one of the most pathetic little
episodes I have seen in the House of Commons of recent years. Mr.
Gladstone has somewhat changed his habits in one respect. There was a
time when he rarely came to the House to deliver a great speech without
a little bottle--such as one sees containing pomade on the
dressing-table of the thin-haired bachelor. Of late, the pomade-bottle
has disappeared. The G.O.M. is now content to take the ordinary glass of
water. It is very seldom that he requires even that amount of sustenance
during his great speeches. However, he had been doing a good deal that
day--he had already made a long speech to his supporters in the Foreign
Office--and he required a glass of water. He