the first of Lord Ribblesdale in the fields of party
oratory.

[Sidenote: A striking personality.]

The Duke of Argyll has changed a good deal in physical appearance during
the last twenty years. There was a time when he was was robust and
squat, a rather stout little man, with a slightly strutting manner, head
thrown back, and very fine and spacious forehead; a head of hair as
luxurious and drooping as that of Mary Magdalene. The form has
considerably shrunk with advanced years, but not with any disadvantage,
for the face, pinched and lined though it appears, has a finer and more
intellectual look than that of earlier days. Wrong-headed--perhaps very
self-conceited--at all events, entirely left behind by the advancing
democratic tide, the Duke of Argyll is yet always to me a sympathetic
and striking figure. If he thinks badly, at least he thinks originally.
His thoughts are his own, and nobody else's; and though he is a bitter
controversialist, at least he feels the weight and gravity of the vast
questions on which he pronounces. Above all things, he has a touch of
the divine in his oratory. He is, indeed, almost the last inspired
speaker left in the House of Lords. There is another speaker, of whom
more presently, with extraordinary gifts, with also true oratorical
powers, capable of producing mighty effects; but with Lord Rosebery the
light is very clear and very dry; there is none of the softness and
brilliancy, and poetic and imaginative insight which are to be found in
the speeches of the Duke of Argyll. On September 6th the Duke used very
vehement and some very whirling language about Mr. Gladstone; his
reading of history was all wrong; his policy for Ireland was--to put it
plainly--brutal. But what cannot be forgiven to a man who has still
such a beautiful voice--who still gesticulates so beautifully--and,
above all, who is capable of rising to the height of some of the
passages in the speech on this particular Wednesday? For instance, what
could have been more beautiful than that passage in which he put the
argument that Ireland was too near to be treated in the same way as a
distant colony--the passage in which he spoke of seeing from the Scotch
Highlands the sun shining on the cornfields and cottage windows of
Antrim?

[Sidenote: Rosebery's great triumph.]

On September 7th a very great event happened in the House of Lords. The
mental mastership of that assembly was transferred from one man to
another,