nd some friends who
sat near him thought his charity had led him a little too far.

The Sussex squire was of a fine nature--simple, ever ready to be moved
by generous impulses. There were two men coming across the moonlight
orbit of his Parliamentary life whose conduct he detested, and whose
influence he feared. One was Mr. Parnell, the other Mr. Bradlaugh. Yet
when the Commission acquitted Mr. Parnell of the charges brought against
him by the forged letters, Sir Walter Barttelot sought him out in the
Lobby, publicly shook hands with him, and congratulated him upon the
result of the inquiry. When Mr. Bradlaugh lay on his death-bed, on the
very night the House of Commons was debating the resolution to expunge
from the Order Book the dictum that stood there through eleven years,
declaring him ineligible either to take the oath or to make affirmation,
Sir Walter Barttelot appealed to the House unanimously to pass the
motion, concluding his remarks with emphatic expression of the hope that
"God would spare Mr. Bradlaugh's life."

[Illustration: "SHADOWS."]

Sir Walter never recovered from the blow dealt by the death of his son
in Africa, aggravated as the sorrow was by the controversy which
followed. Of late years he spoke very little; but in the Parliaments of
1874-80 and 1880-85 he was a frequent participator in debate. He was no
orator, nor did he contribute original ideas to current discussion.
Moreover, what he had to say was so tortured by the style of delivery
that it lost something of whatever force naturally belonged to it.

I have a verbatim note taken fifteen years ago of a speech delivered in
the House of Commons by Sir Walter, which faintly echoes an oratorical
style whose master is no longer with us. It lacks the inconsequential
emphasis, the terrific vigour of the gesture, and the impression
conveyed by the speaker's intense earnestness, that really, by-and-by,
he would say something, which compelled the attention of new members and
strangers in the gallery. But if the reader imagines portentous pauses
represented by the hyphens, and the deepening to tragic tones of the
words marked in italics, he may in some measure realize the effect.

The speech from which this passage was taken was delivered in debate
upon a resolution moved by Mr. Forster on the Cattle Plague Orders.
Whenever in the passage Mr. Forster is personally alluded to it is
necessary, in order to full realization of the scene, to picture Sir