le incident; and though Mr. Gladstone
carried it off with that indomitable courage of his, which doesn't know
what a confession of defeat means, one could see that he did not like
it; and for the rest of the evening there was a visible gloom in the
Liberal ranks.

[Sidenote: Happy again.]

But May 31st brought the Derby, and with the Derby there came upon the
Tory Benches one of those moments of temptation which the natural man is
utterly unable to resist. The amendments followed each other in rapid
succession; division came on top of division; and in them all the
Liberals jumped back to their old superiority of numbers. In the earlier
part of the day, when the fortunes of Isinglass were still undetermined,
the majorities were enormous; and though there was a certain falling off
when sporting gentlemen began to get back from the dusty Downs, the
average was well kept up; and it was with a distinct rise in the
temperature of Liberal hopes and confidence that this stage was reached.
On the following day the lowness of the voice in the Old Man was a
little more perceptible, and when it got to midnight, he seemed
painfully fagged and exhausted. It was, perhaps, because he was in that
mood that he made some concessions to the Unionists, which have been
somewhat resented. But as these concessions, according to Mr. Gladstone
himself, only carried out what the Government had intended from the
first, these things may be passed. They had reference chiefly to
prohibition of raising in Ireland anything like a military force--even
in the shape of a militia or volunteer force. On June 2nd, there was one
of those transformations in which the Old Man is constantly surprising
friends and foes. He was alert, vigorous, watchful of everything that
went on, and the voice rose to its old strength and resonance. It was
during that afternoon that there was a slight indication for the first
time throughout the progress of the whole Bill of any dissatisfaction on
the part of the Irish members. Mr. Byrne--one of the Unionist gang of
lawyers--proposed a ridiculous amendment, the effect of which would have
been that the Irish Legislature would not have had the right to give a
license for a fowling-piece, or to arm their police to meet a rising of
the Orangemen.

[Sidenote: Mr. Sexton intervenes.]

It was then that Mr. Sexton intervened with a word of warning against
such a restriction. In burning though carefully restrained language, Mr.
Sexto