Members
think there is a look of unusual excitement on his face, that its air is
angry; and the Unionists take comfort from the idea that this step is
against his judgment. But, then, it is a matter for the House itself and
not for the decision of the chair, and so we go ahead. Mr. Morley is put
up by Mr. Gladstone to read the words of the resolution. The Old Man
himself is composedly writing that letter to the Queen which it is still
his duty daily to indite. Mr. Morley's face betrays under all its
studied calm, the excitement of the hour, and he reads every separate
announcement with a certain dramatic emphasis that brings out all the
hidden meaning; and the document is one, the reading of which lends
itself to dramatic effect and to dramatic manifestations. For each
clause winds up with the same words, at "ten of the clock," until these
words come to sound something like the burden of a song--the refrain of
a lament--the iteration of an Athanasian curse against sinners and
heretics. The House sees all this; and each side manifests emotion
according to its fashion. The Irish cheer themselves hoarse in triumph;
the Tories answer back as defiantly and loudly; and so we enter, with
clang of battle, with shouts and cheers, and hoarse cries of joy or of
rage, into the second great pitched battle on Home Rule.

CHAPTER XV.

MR. DILLON'S FORGETFULNESS.

[Sidenote: Mr. Dillon.]

Everybody who has ever met Mr. Dillon knows that he has a singularly
even and equable temper, except at the moments when he has been stung to
passion by the sight of some bitter and intolerable wrong. When,
therefore, Mr. Chamberlain made him the subject of a fierce attack on
account of a past utterance, he was dealing with a man who was as little
influenced by such attacks as anybody could well be. For days Mr.
Chamberlain had been trying to bait Mr. Dillon into speech; and for days
Mr. Dillon had positively refused to be drawn. At last it seemed to some
friends of Mr. Dillon that if he did not speak his attitude might be
misunderstood, and that he would be supposed to entertain, as part of a
settled policy, what he had really uttered on the spur of the moment and
under the influence of intolerable wrong and provocation. But when in
the last days of June Mr. Chamberlain made his attack, and Mr. Dillon
had listened to it and asked for dates, Mr. Dillon thought that the
matter would not be worth further attending to, and relapsed into his