favour with the abstract or collective working man,
who somehow manages to do the voting. They seem to have admired his
force, size, and manliness. 'Eh, but ye're a wiselike mon ony way,' says
a hideous old woman (as he ungratefully calls her), which, he is told,
is the highest of Scottish compliments to his personal appearance. This
friendly feeling, and the encouragement of his supporters, and the
success of his speeches, raised his hopes by degrees, and he even 'felt
a kind of pride in it,' though 'it is poor work educating people by
roaring at them.' Towards the end he even thinks it possible that he may
win, and, if so, 'it will be an extraordinary triumph, for I have never
asked one single person to support me, and I have said the most
unpopular things to such an extent that my supporters told me I was
over-defiant, or, indeed, almost rude.'

However, it was not to be. Whether, as his friends said, he was too good
for the place, or whether less complimentary reasons alleged by his
opponents might be justified, he was hopelessly behind at the polls. He
received 1,086 votes; Mr. Jenkins, 4,010; and Mr. Yeaman, 5,207--or
rather more than both his opponents together. Fitzjames comforts himself
by the reflection that both he and Mr. Jenkins had shown their true
colours; that the respectable people had believed in him 'with a
vengeance,' and that the working men were beginning to like him. But Mr.
Jenkins's views were, and naturally must be, the most popular.
Fitzjames's chief supporter gave a dinner in his honour, when his health
was drunk three times with boundless enthusiasm, and promises were made
of the heartiest support on a future occasion. The fulfilment of the
promises was not required; and Fitzjames, in spite of occasional
overtures, never again took an active part in a political contest.

In 1881, Lord Beaconsfield wrote to Lord Lytton: 'It is a thousand
pities that J. F. Stephen is a judge; he might have done anything and
everything as leader of the future Conservative party.' Lord
Beaconsfield was an incomparably better judge than I can pretend to be
of a man's fitness for such a position. The opinion, too, which he thus
expressed was shared by some of Fitzjames's friends, who thought that
his masculine force of mind and downrightness of character would have
qualified him to lead a party effectively. I shall only say that it is
idle to speculate on what he might haw done had he received the kind of
traini