closely, though it was seldom that passion
so far escaped as to make the contrast visibly dramatic. Usually he was
cold, grave, deliberate, repelling advances with a sort of icy
courtesy. He hardly ever lost his temper in the House of Commons,
even in his last session under the sarcasms of his former friends,
though the low, almost hissing tones of his voice sometimes betrayed an
internal struggle. But during the electoral campaign in Kilkenny, in
December 1890, when he was fighting for his life, he was more than
once so swept away by anger that those beside him had to hold him
back from jumping off the platform into the crowd to strike down some
one who had interrupted him. Suspended for a moment, his mastery of
himself quickly returned. Men were astonished to observe how, after
some of the stormy passages at the meetings of Irish members held in
one of the House of Commons committee-rooms in December 1890, he
would address quietly, perhaps lay his hand upon the shoulder of, some
one of the colleagues who had just been denouncing him, and on whom
he had poured all the vitriol of his fierce tongue. As this could
not have been good-nature, it must have been either calculated
policy or a pride that would not accept an injury from those whom he
had been wont to deem his subjects. Spontaneous kindliness was never
ascribed to him; nor had he, so far as could be known, a single intimate
friend.

Oratory is the usual avenue to leadership in a democratic movement,
and Mr. Parnell is one of the very few who have arrived at power
neither by that road nor by military success. So far from having by
nature any of the gifts or graces of a popular speaker, he was at
first conspicuously deficient in them, and became at last effective
only by constant practice, and by an intellectual force which asserted
itself through commonplaceness of language and a monotonous delivery.
Fluency was wanting, and even moderate ease was acquired only after
four or five years' practice. His voice was neither powerful nor
delicate in its modulations, but it was clear, and the enunciation
deliberate and distinct, quiet when the matter was ordinary, slow and
emphatic when an important point arrived. With very little action of
the body, there was often an interesting and obviously unstudied
display of facial expression. So far from glittering with the florid
rhetoric supposed to characterise Irish eloquence, his speeches were
singularly plain, bare, and dry