honourably pledged to carry out. Unselfish,
straightforward, unpretentious, kindly, Mr. MacCarthy brought into more
vivid contrast the personal venom--the ruthless hunger for vengeance and
the humiliation of his enemies--which came out with almost painful
vividness from the speech to which we had just ceased to listen. Mr.
Gladstone, sitting opposite, attentive and watchful, was evidently much
pleased at the heartiness of Mr. MacCarthy's acceptance of his great
measure.

[Sidenote: Sir George Trevelyan.]

The night wound up with the very best speech I have ever heard Sir
George Trevelyan deliver. Sir George had to answer violent, fierce,
almost malignant assault; but he did so without ever uttering a harsh
word--without losing one particle of his courteous and admirable
self-control--he raised the debate of a great issue to the high place of
difference of principles and convictions, instead of personal bickerings
and hideous and revolting personal animosities. It is the vice of Sir
George Trevelyan as a speaker that he over-prepares--writing out, as a
rule, nearly every word he has to utter, and often some of the very best
speeches I have heard him deliver have been spoiled by giving the fatal
sense of being spoken essays. The speech was carefully prepared, and, so
far as I could observe, was even written out; but its grace of diction,
its fine temper, above all, its manly explanation of a change of view
and its close-knit reasoning, made it really one of the very finest
addresses I have heard in the course of many years' debating.

[Sidenote: Toryism of the gutter.]

And, then, if you wanted to appreciate Sir George Trevelyan the more,
you had only to wait for a few moments to hear the man who followed him.
I am told on pretty good authority that, next to Lord Randolph
Churchill, the favourite orator of the Tory provincial platform is Sir
Ashmead Bartlett. I can well believe it. The empty shibboleths--the loud
and blatant voice--the bumptious temper--that make the commoner form of
Tory--all are there. He is the dramatically complete embodiment of all
the vacuous folly, empty-headed shoutings, and swaggering patriotism
which make up the stock-in-trade of most provincial Tories. Poor Mr.
Balfour was caught by Sir Ashmead before he had time to escape, and in
sheer decency had to remain while his servile adulator was pouring on
him buckets of butter, which must have appalled and disgusted him.
Indeed, the effect of the