and
again a fervid note thrilled the ear and lifted all hearts. But
political oratory is action, not words--action, character, will,
conviction, purpose, personality. As this eager muster of men
underwent the enchantment of periods exquisite in their balance
and modulation, the compulsion of his flashing glance and animated
gesture, what stirred and commanded them was the recollection of
national service, the thought of the speaker's mastering purpose,
his unflagging resolution and strenuous will, his strength of thew
and sinew well tried in long years of resounding war, his
unquenched conviction that the just cause can never fail. Few are
the heroic moments in our parliamentary politics, but this was
one."

I will not trench upon politics in these letters; but I may hazard the
belief that could those who rejected this noble effort, by the greatest
statesman of the age, to assuage the everlasting Irish conflict, have
looked into the future, few of them but would have supported it with
relief and thanksgiving.

It is generally perhaps a blessing that the curtain that covers the future
is impenetrable; but in this case, had it been lifted for us to gaze upon
the appalling future, Gladstone's last effort for the peace of his country
would surely not have been permitted to miscarry.

Your loving old
G.P.

33

MY DEAR ANTONY,

Two other living writers I will now commend to you, and then I shall
have done.

The parents of Mr. Belloc, with a happy prevision, anticipated by some
decades the _entente cordiale_, and their brilliant son felicitously
manifests in his own person many of the admirable qualities of both
races. In England he is reported to be forcefully French, and it may be
surmised that when in France he is engagingly British. Fortunately for
our literature, it is in the language of his mother that he has found his
expression. Many are the beautiful utterances scattered through his
charming works: two of the most picturesque deal with the greatness of
France; the subject of one is the Ancient Monarchy, and of the other
the Great Napoleon:--

"So perished the French Monarchy. Its dim origins stretched out
and lost themselves in Rome; it had already learnt to speak and
recognised its own nature when the vaults of the Thermae echoed
heavily to the slow footsteps of the Merovingian kings.

"Look up the vast valley of dead men crowned,