already left, she for a party at the admiralty, he walking home to
Downing Street. At the admiralty they told her of bad news from Ireland
and hurried her away. Mr. Gladstone arrived at home a few minutes after
her. When his secretary in the hall told him of the horrible thing that
had been done, it was as if he had been felled to the ground. Then they
hastened to bear what solace they could, to the anguish-stricken home
where solace would be so sorely needed.

The effect of this blind and hideous crime was at once to arrest the
spirit and the policy of conciliation. While the Irish leaders were locked
up, a secret murder club had taken matters in hand in their own way, and
ripened plots within a stone's throw of the Castle. No worse blow could
have been struck at Mr. Parnell's policy. It has been said that the
nineteenth century had seen the course of its history twenty-five times
diverted by actual or attempted crime. In that sinister list the murders
in the Phoenix Park have a tragic place.

The voice of party was for the moment hushed. Sir Stafford Northcote wrote
a letter of admirable feeling, saying that if there was any way in which
Mr. Gladstone thought they could serve the government, he would of course
let them know. The Prince of Wales wrote of his own horror and indignation
at the crime, and of his sympathy with Mr. Gladstone in the loss of one
who was not only a colleague of many merits, but a near connection and
devoted friend. With one or two scandalous exceptions, the tone of the
English press was sober, sensible, and self-possessed. "If a nation," said
a leading journal in Paris, "should be judged by the way in which it acts
on grave occasions, the spectacle offered by England is calculated to
produce a high opinion of the political character and spirit of the
British people." Things of the baser sort were not quite absent, but they
did not matter. An appeal confronted the electors of the North-West Riding
as they went to the poll at a bye-election a few days later, to "Vote for
----, and avenge the death of Lord Frederick Cavendish!" They responded by
placing ----'s opponent at the head of the poll by a majority of two
thousand.

The scene in the House had all the air of tragedy, and Mr. Gladstone
summoned courage enough to do his part with impressive composure. A
colleague was doing some business with him in his room before the
solemnity began. When it was over, they resumed it, Mr. Gladstone making