ew more sentences will end this chapter in Mr. Gladstone's life. As we
have seen, an election took place in the closing days of December 1890.
Mr. Parnell flung himself into the contest with frantic activity. A fierce
conflict ended in the defeat of his candidate by nearly two to one.(281)
Three months later a contest occurred in Sligo. Here again, though he had
strained every nerve in the interval as well as in the immediate struggle,
his candidate was beaten.(282) Another three months, then a third election
at Carlow,--with the same result, the rejection of Mr. Parnell's man by a
majority of much more than two to one.(283) It was in vain that his
adherents denounced those who had left him as mutineers and helots, and
exalted him as "truer than Tone, abler than Grattan, greater than
O'Connell, full of love for Ireland as Thomas Davis himself." On the other
side, he encountered antagonism in every key, from pathetic remonstrance
or earnest reprobation, down to an unsparing fury that savoured (M161) of
the ruthless factions of the Seine. In America almost every name of
consideration was hostile.

Yet undaunted by repulse upon repulse, he tore over from England to
Ireland and back again, week after week and month after month, hoarse and
haggard, seamed by sombre passions, waving the shreds of a tattered flag.
Ireland must have been a hell on earth to him. To those Englishmen who
could not forget that they had for so long been his fellow-workers, though
they were now the mark of his attack, these were dark and desolating days.
No more lamentable chapter is to be found in all the demented scroll of
aimless and untoward things, that seem as if they made up the history of
Ireland. It was not for very long. The last speech that Mr. Parnell ever
made in England was at Newcastle-on-Tyne in July 1891, when he told the
old story about the liberal leaders, of whom he said that there was but
one whom he trusted. A few weeks later, not much more than ten months
after the miserable act had opened, the Veiled Shadow stole upon the
scene, and the world learned that Parnell was no more.(284)

Chapter VI. Biarritz. (1891-1892)

Omnium autem ineptiarum, quae sunt innumerabiles, haud sciam an
nulla sit major, quam, ut illi solent, quocunque in loco,
quoscunque inter homines visum est, de rebus aut difficillimis aut
non necessariis argutissime disputare.--CICERO.

Of all the numberless sorts of bad taste and wan