new to the House of Commons twenty-two years ago, and
when Mr. Auberon Herbert (to-day a sedate gentleman, who writes good
Tory letters to the _Times_) seconded the motion in a speech of almost
hysterical vehemence, there followed a scene that stands memorable even
in the long series that succeeded it in the following Parliament. Mr.
James Lowther was profoundly moved; whilst as for Mr. Cavendish
Bentinck, his feelings of loyalty to the Throne were so overwrought
that, as was recorded at the time, he went out behind the Speaker's
chair, and crowed thrice. Amid the uproar, someone, anticipating the
action of Mr. Joseph Gillis Biggar on another historic occasion, "spied
strangers." The galleries were cleared, and for an hour there raged
throughout the House a wild scene. When the doors were opened and the
public readmitted, the Committee was found placidly agreeing to the vote
Sir Charles Dilke had challenged.

Mr. George Dixon is one of the members for Birmingham, as he was twenty
years ago, but he wears his party rue with a difference. In 1873 he
caused himself to be entered in "Dod" as "an advanced Liberal, opposed
to the ratepaying clause of the Reform Act, and in favour of an
amendment of those laws which tend to accumulate landed property." Now
Mr. Dixon has joined "the gentlemen of England," whose tendency to
accumulate landed property shocks him no more.

[Illustration: MR. GEORGE DIXON.]

Sir William Dyke was plain Hart Dyke in '73; then, as now, one of the
members for Kent, and not yet whip of the Liberal Party, much less
Minister of Education. Mr. G. H. Finch also then, as now, was member for
Rutland, running Mr. Beach close for the prize of modest obscurity.

[Illustration: MR. W. HART DYKE.]

In the Session of 1873 Mr. Gladstone was Prime Minister, sixty-four
years of age, and wearied to death. I well remember him seated on the
Treasury Bench in those days, with eager face and restless body.
Sometimes, as morning broke on the long, turbulent sitting, he let his
head fall back on the bench, closing his eyes and seeming to sleep; the
worn face the while taking on ten years of added age. In the last two
Sessions of the Salisbury Parliament he often looked younger than he had
done eighteen or nineteen years earlier. Then, as has happened to him
since, his enemies were those of his own household. This Session--of
1873--saw the birth of the Irish University Bill, which broke the power
of the strongest Ministr