sat
on the Treasury Bench wrapped in the silence of a Civil Lord of the
Admiralty. Now his time was come, and he threw himself into the
enjoyment of opportunity with almost pathetic vigour. It was eleven
o'clock when he rose, and the debate must needs stand adjourned at
midnight. When twelve o'clock struck, Sir Ellis was still in the full
flow of his turgid eloquence. His speech was constructed on the
principle of, and (except, perhaps, in the matter of necessity)
resembled, the long bridge in Cowper's "Task"--

That with its wearisome but needful length
Bestrides the wintry flood.

The scene and the atmosphere were sufficiently Arctic to bear out the
comparison. The audience had long since fallen away, like leaves in
wintry weather. In ordinary circumstances Sir Ellis, an old
Parliamentary Hand, would have wound up his speech, and so made an end
of it, just before the stroke of midnight gave the signal for the
Speaker's leaving the chair.

There were, however, two reasons, the agony of whose weight must have
pressed sorely on the orator. One was the recollection of an incident in
his career still talked of in the busy circles round Sheffield. One
night in yesteryear he was announced to deliver a speech at a meeting
held in Nottingham. "For greater accuracy"--as the Speaker says, when,
coming back from the House of Lords on the opening day of a Session, he
reads the Queen's Speech to hon. members who have two hours earlier
studied it in the evening papers--Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett had written out
his oration and supplied it to the Sheffield paper whose recognition of
his status as a statesman merits reward. Proceedings at the Nottingham
meeting were so protracted, and took such different lines from those
projected, that the orator of the evening, when his turn came, found the
night too far advanced for his ordered speech, which would in other
respects have been beside the mark. He accordingly, impromptu, delivered
quite another speech, probably better than the one laboriously prepared
in the seclusion of the closet. In the hurry and excitement of the
moment he forgot to warn the Sheffield editor, with the consequence that
the other speech was printed in full and formed the groundwork of a
laudatory leading article.

[Illustration: SIR ELLIS ASHMEAD-BARTLETT.]

That was one thing that agitated the mind of Sir Ellis, and probably
gave a profounder thrill to his denunciation of Mr. Gladstone's iniquity
in the ma