laration on foreign policy: "I called the New World into existence,
to redress the balance of the Old." And the language does not contain a
more magnificent or perfect image than that in which he likens a strong
nation at peace to a great man-of-war lying calm and motionless till the
moment for action comes, when "it puts forth all its beauty and its
bravely collects its scattered elements of strength, and awakens its
dormant thunder."

Lord John Russell entered the House of Commons in 1813, and left it in
1861. He used to say that in his early days there were a dozen men there
who could make a finer speech than any one now living; "but," he used to
add, "there were not another dozen who could understand what they were
talking about." I asked him who was, on the whole, the best speaker he
ever heard. He answered, "Lord Plunket," and subsequently gave as his
reason this--that while Plunket had his national Irish gifts of
fluency, brilliant imagination, and ready wit very highly developed,
they were all adjuncts to his strong, cool, inflexible argument. This,
it will be readily observed, is a very rare and a very striking
combination, and goes far to account for the transcendent success which
Plunket attained at the Bar and in the House, and alike in the Irish and
the English Parliament. Lord Brougham said of him that his eloquence was
a continuous flow of "clear statement, close reasoning, felicitous
illustration, all confined strictly to the subject in hand; every
portion, without any exception, furthering the process of conviction;"
and I do not know a more impressive passage of sombre passion than the
peroration of his first speech against the Act of Union: "For my own
part, I will resist it to the last gasp of my existence, and with the
last drop of my blood; and when I feel the hour of my dissolution
approaching, I will, like the father of Hannibal, take my children to
the altar and swear them to eternal hostility against the invaders of
their country's freedom."

Before the death of Pitt another great man had risen to eminence, though
the main achievement of his life associates him with 1832. Lord Grey was
distinguished by a stately and massive eloquence which exactly suited
his high purpose and earnest gravity of nature, while its effect was
enormously enhanced by his handsome presence and kingly bearing. Though
the leader of the popular cause, he was an aristocrat in nature, and
pre-eminently qualified for the g