of the
Party was Lord Randolph. That ingenious man possessed a deadly knack of
"drawing" Gladstone, as the boys say. He knew the great man's
"vulnerable temper and impetuous moods,"[34] and delighted in exercising
them. He pelted Gladstone with rebukes and taunts and gibes, and the
recipient of these attentions "rose freely." There was something rather
unpleasant in the spectacle of a man of thirty playing these tricks upon
a man of seventy; but one could not deny that the tricks were extremely
clever; and beyond doubt they did a vast deal to consolidate the
performer's popularity out of doors. It is not too much to say that, by
allowing himself to be drawn, Gladstone made Lord Randolph.

The most formidable enemy of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons
was Parnell; and, when he joined forces with the Fourth Party and their
adherents, the conjunction was disastrous to Liberalism. He figures in
Lord Morley's "Life" of Gladstone as a high-souled and amiable patriot.
I always thought him entirely destitute of humane feeling, and a bitter
enemy of England. I remember the late Lord Carlisle, then George Howard
and Member for East Cumberland, gazing at Parnell across the House and
quoting from _The Newcomes_--"The figure of this garcon is not
agreeable. Of pale, he has become livid." A lady who met him in a
country house wrote me this interesting account of him:

"I cannot exaggerate the impression he made on me. I never before felt
such power and magnetic force in any man. As for his eyes, if he looks
at you, you can't look away, and, if he doesn't, you are wondering how
soon he will look at you again. I'm afraid I have very little trust in
his goodness--I should think it a very minus quantity; but I believe
absolutely in his strength and his power of influence. I should be sorry
if he were my enemy, for I think he would stop at nothing."

At the General Election of 1880, Irish questions were completely in the
background. The demand for Home Rule was not taken seriously, even by
Mr. John Morley,[35] who stood unsuccessfully for Westminster. Ireland
was politically tranquil, and the distress due to the failure of the
crops had been alleviated by the combined action of Englishmen
irrespective of party. But during the summer of 1880 it was found that
the Irish landlords were evicting wholesale the tenants whom famine had
impoverished. To provide compensation for these evicted tenants was the
object of a well-meant but ha