reat object was to show the
conservative party how their leader was hoodwinking and bewildering
them, and this I have the happiness of believing that in some
degree I effected; for while among some there was great heat and a
disposition to interrupt me when they could, I could _see_ in the
faces and demeanour of others quite other feelings expressed. But
it was a most difficult operation, and altogether it might have
been better effected. The House has not I think been so much
excited for years. The power of his speech, and the importance of
the issue, combined with the lateness of the hour, which always
operates, were the causes. My brain was strung very high, and has
not yet quite got back to calm, but I slept well last night. On
Thursday night [_i.e._ Friday morning] after two hours of sleep, I
awoke, and remembered a gross omission I had made, which worked
upon me so that I could not rest any more. And still, of course,
the time is an anxious one, and I wake with the consciousness of
it, but I am very well and really not unquiet. When I came home
from the House, I thought it would be good for me to be mortified.
Next morning I opened the _Times_, which I thought _you_ would buy,
and _was_ mortified when I saw it did not contain my speech but a
mangled abbreviation. Such is human nature, at least mine. But in
the _Times_ of to-day you will see a very curious article
descriptive of the last scene of the debate. It has evidently been
written by a man who must have seen what occurred, or been informed
by those who did see. He by no means says too much in praise of
Disraeli's speech. I am told he is much stung by what I said. I am
very sorry it fell to me to say it; God knows I have no wish to
give him pain; and really with my deep sense of his gifts I would
only pray they might be well used.

THE TWO ANTAGONISTS

The writer in the _Times_ to whom the victorious orator here refers
describes how, 'like two of Sir Walter Scott's champions, these
redoubtable antagonists gathered up all their force for the final
struggle, and encountered each other in mid-career; how, rather equal
than like, each side viewed the struggle of their chosen athletes, as if
to prognosticate from the war of words the fortunes of two parties so
nicely balanced and marshalled in apparentl