sh members years and years ago; in short, he entered upon a survey of
the whole controversy. There were countless interruptions from the Irish
Benches--not in the least because the Irish members cared for Joe's
attacks, but because such a roundabout discussion was altogether a
revolutionary departure from all previous precedents; and would have
been held distinctly out of order by any of the predecessors of Mr.
Mellor in the chair. That good-natured and easy-going official, however,
gave Mr. Chamberlain his head; and so, for an hour, he poured forth a
stream of clever, biting, but mean and irrelevant vituperation.

[Sidenote: The G.O.M.'s greatest speech.]

It was well that it should have been so; for to this speech the House of
Commons owes one of the most remarkable and historic scenes in its long
history. Every reader of Parliamentary reports knows what it means to
speak at eight o'clock. By that time, three out of five at least of the
members of the House have gone to their dinners in all quarters of
London, and the assembly is given up to the faddists and the bores, who
never get another opportunity of delivering themselves. Nothing,
therefore, could have been more unexpected than a speech from Mr.
Gladstone at such an hour, and especially a speech which, in the opinion
of many, leaves far behind anything he ever did. But, indeed, it is
probable that Mr. Gladstone himself had no notion when the sitting
began, or even a few minutes before he rose, that he would say anything
very special. It is one of the peculiarities of this extraordinary man
to be always surprising you. His infinite variety, his boundless
resource, seem to be without any limitations. By this time, you would
have expected that one who had listened to him for nearly twenty years
would imagine that he had no further oratorical worlds to conquer, and
that he certainly would not have waited to his eighty-fourth year to do
something better than ever he had done before. But so it was. In
passion, in destructive sarcasm, in dramatic force, in the rush and
resistless sweep of language, Mr. Gladstone was more potent in the
dinner hour of that Thursday night than he was ever at any other single
moment in his almost sixty years of triumphant oratory.

[Sidenote: His powers as a mimic.]

Observers are divided as to his temper when he rose. Some onlookers,
observing the tremendous force of voice and language--the broad, ample,
and frequent gestures--the trem