he detail to become dull.
We are perfectly confident, that, beyond those two classes, no speaker
can ever expect to retain the ear of the House. Our theory, however, is
not the favourite one with that crowd, whose diatribes nightly fill the
columns of the newspapers; where bitterness is perpetually mistaken for
pungency, and petulance for power, dryness for business and commonplace
for conviction. But failure is the inevitable consequence; the archer
showers his shafts in vain; they are pointed with lead, and they always
fall blunt on the ground. Some of the noisiest haranguers of our time
utterly "waste their sweetness on the desert air," their hearers drop
away with fatal rapidity, and the orator is reminded of his triumph only
by the general flight of his auditory. Then comes some favourite of the
House: the coffee-room is thinned in its turn; the benches are crowded
once more; and some statesmanlike display consoles the House for its
lost time. Addington's habits were those of a student, and he brought
them with him into parliament. In the House of Commons, there are nearly
as many classes of character, as there are in life outside the walls.
There are the men made for the operations of public life, bold, active,
and with an original sense of superiority. Another class is made for
under-secretaries and subordinates, sharp, and ingenious men, the real
business-men of the House. Another class, perfectly distinct, is that of
the matter-of-fact men, largely recruited from among opulent merchants,
bankers sent from country constituencies, and others of that calibre,
who are formidable on every question of figures, are terrible on
tariffs, and evidently think, that there is no book of wisdom on earth
but a ledger. Then come the country gentlemen, generally an excellent
and honest race, but to whom a life in London, in the majority of
instances, has a strong resemblance to a life in the Millbank
Penitentiary; driven into parliament, by what is called a "sense of
their position in the country," which generally means the commands of
their wives, &c., &c., their sojourn within the circuit of the
metropolis is a purgatory. They sicken of the life of lounging through
London, where they are nothing, and long to get back to the country
where they are "magistrates;" generally too old to dance, the
fashionable season has no charms for them: even the clubs seem to them
a sort of condemned cell, where the crowd, guilty of unpardonable