sday night. Their
prosings were perhaps welcome to the House; but it was a curious thing
to see an assembly, as yet in its very infancy, so bored as to find
refuge in every part of the building, except the hall appropriated to
its deliberations. Mr. Chaplin is always to the front on such occasions;
pompous, prolix, and ineffably dull. Mr. Herbert Gardner made his debut
as the Minister for Agriculture, and did it excellently.

[Sidenote: Keir-Hardie.]

Mr. Keir-Hardie is certainly one of the most curious forms which have
yet appeared on the Parliamentary horizon. He wears a small cap--such as
you see on men when they are travelling; a short sack coat; a pair of
trousers of a somewhat wild and pronounced whiteish hue; and his beard
is unkempt and almost conceals his entire face. The eyes are deep-set,
restless, grey--with strange lights as of fanaticism, or dreams. He
rather pleasantly surprised the House by his style of speech. Something
wild in a harsh shriek was what was looked for; but the wildest of
Scotchmen has the redeeming sense and canniness of his race--always
excepting Mr. Cunninghame Graham, whose Scotch blood was infused with a
large mixture of the wild tribe of an Arab ancestress; and Mr.
Keir-Hardie--speaking a good deal like Mr. T.W. Russell--made a foolish
proposal in a somewhat rational speech. But he was unlucky in his
backers. The Liberal benches sate--dumb though attentive, and not
unamiable. Mr. Gladstone gazed upon the new Parliamentary phenomenon
with interest, but the only voices that broke the silence of the
reception were the strident tones of Mr. Howard Vincent, of Sheffield,
and Mr. Johnston, of Ballykilbeg. Now Howard Vincent is known to all men
as one of the people who speak in season and out of season, when once
they mount their hobby. The other day I heard of a bimetallist who was
so fond of discussing bimetallism that the railway carriage, in which he
went to town every morning, was always left vacant for him; nobody could
stand him any longer. Similar is the attitude of the House of Commons to
Howard Vincent. Fair Trade is his craze. He proposes it at Tory
Conferences--much to the dismay of Tory wire-pullers; he gets it into
the most unlikely discussions in the House of Commons; and all the world
laughs at him as though he were to propose the restoration of slavery,
or chaos come again. Poor Mr. Johnston only cares about the Pope, and
cheers Mr. Hardie simply as a possible obstruction