ted to that very creature of clay was
this: "Here is a man who is my Foreign Secretary; as such, he has every
day of his life to deal with questions which affect my interests in the
most direct way; to fight for my purse, my future, my Empire; and he has
to do so with his brain matched against the brains of the astutest men
in the world--the diplomatic representatives of other Powers. And all
this he has to do with the sense that behind the smooth language of
diplomacy, the unbroken and even voices of diplomatic representatives,
there stand ironclads and mighty armies--bloodshed, wholesale, and
hideous death--the tiger spirit and powers of war. And I see that the
man who has all these complex problems to solve--these trained gamblers
to watch--these sinister Powers to confront and think of--is a man of
cold temper, of frigid understanding, of a power of calm calculation in
face of all the perils and all the emotions and all the sentiment of the
perplexing Irish problems; and to him Home Rule has come as a set, sober
choice of possible policies for the interest of our Empire." Such an
attitude--exalted by the even, though powerful, the cold, though
penetrating voice--the face impassive and inscrutable--the eye, steady,
unmoving, and unreadable--all this, I say, was just the kind of thing to
produce an immense impression on those who are ready only to accept Home
Rule as the policy that pays best.

[Sidenote: Even the Peers impressed.]

And certainly the House of Lords was wonderfully impressed by this
attitude. There was no applause, except now and then from those skeleton
ranks that lay behind Lord Rosebery, but then there was in the whole air
that curious and almost audible silence--to use a conscious
paradox--which conveys to the trained ear clearer sounds of absorption
and attention than the loudest cheers. And then you began to forget the
badinage of the earlier sentences--you forgave the frigidity and
self-repression--you became strongly fascinated by the mobile face,
inscrutable eyes, and the voice penetrated to your innermost ear; he
gave you an immense sense of a clear, masterful, and resolute mind and
character. And, finally, towards the end, when, to a certain extent,
Lord Rosebery let himself go, there was a ring not of ordinary emotion,
but of the passion of a great Minister who was fully conscious of the
Imperial and supreme responsibility of a Foreign Minister, who was able
to look great and even complex