rst few notes of the deep voice are reassuring. The opening sentences
also have that full roll which nearly always is inevitable proof that
the great swelling opening will carry him on to the end; and yet there
is anxiety. Those who know him well cannot help observing that there is
just a slight trace of excitement, nervousness, and anxiety in the voice
and manner. He has evidently been put out by the lateness of the hour to
which the speech has been postponed. There is beside him a vast mass of
notes, and then, before he reaches that, there is the long speech to
which he has just listened, many points of which it is impossible to
leave unnoticed. And so the first ten minutes strike me as rather
poor--poor, I mean, for Mr. Gladstone--and my heart sinks. In memory I
go back to that memorable and unforgettable speech on that terrible
night in 1886, when, with dark and disastrous defeat prepared for him in
the lobbies the moment he sat down, Mr. Gladstone delivered a speech,
the echoes of whose beautiful tones--immortal and ineffaceable--still
linger in the ear. And now the moment of Nemesis and triumph has come,
and is he going to fall below the level of the great hour?

Ah! these fears are all vain. The exquisite cadence--the delightful
bye-play--the broad, free gesture--the lofty tones of indignation and
appeal--but, above all, the even tenderness, composure, and charity that
endureth all things--all these qualities range through this magnificent
speech. Thus he wishes to administer to Sir Henry James a well-merited
rebuke for his terrible and flagitious incitements, and, with uplifted
hands, and in a voice of infinite scorn, Mr. Gladstone turns on Sir
Henry, and overwhelms him, amid a tempest of cheers from the delighted
Irishry and Liberals.

[Sidenote: Chamberlain touched.]

But there is another and an even more extraordinary instance of the
power, grace, and mastery of the mighty orator. The G.O.M. had made an
allusion to that pleasant and promising speech of young Austen
Chamberlain, of which I have spoken already. Just by the way, with that
delightful and unapproachable lightness of touch which is the
unattainable charm of Mr. Gladstone's oratory, he alluded to the speech
and to Mr. Chamberlain himself. "I will not enter into any elaborate
eulogy of that speech," said Mr. Gladstone. "I will endeavour to sum up
my opinion of it by simply saying that it was a speech which must have
been dear and refreshing to a fa