the country
with it, save when the incendiary Radical has shrieked? If there was
envy in the soul of Timothy, it was addressed to the fine occasions
offered to the Tory speaker for vindicating our ancient principles and
our sacred homes. He admired the tone to be assumed for that purpose: it
was a good note. Then could the Tory, delivering at the right season the
Shakesperian 'This England...' and Byronic--'The inviolate Island...'
shake the frame, as though smiting it with the tail of the gymnotus
electricus. Ah, and then could he thump out his Horace, the Tory's
mentor and his cordial, with other great ancient comic and satiric
poets, his old Port of the classical cellarage, reflecting veneration
upon him who did but name them to an audience of good dispositions. The
Tory possessed also an innate inimitably easy style of humour, that
had the long reach, the jolly lordly indifference, the comfortable
masterfulness, of the whip of a four-in-hand driver, capable of flicking
and stinging, and of being ironically caressing. Timothy appreciated it,
for he had winced under it. No professor of Liberalism could venture
on it, unless it were in the remote district of a back parlour, in
the society of a cherishing friend or two, and with a slice of lemon
requiring to be refloated in the glass.

But gifts of this description were of a minor order. Liberalism gave the
heading cry, devoid of which parties are dogs without a scent, orators
mere pump-handles. The Tory's cry was but a whistle to his pack, the
Radical howled to the moon like any chained hound. And no wonder,
for these parties had no established current, they were as hard-bound
waters; the Radical being dyked and dammed most soundly, the Tory
resembling a placid lake of the plains, fed by springs and no
confluents. For such good reasons, Mr. Timothy rejoiced in the happy
circumstances which had expelled him from the shores of his native isle
to find a refuge and a vocation in Manchester at a period when an orator
happened to be in request because dozens were wanted. That centre of
convulsions and source of streams possessed the statistical orator, the
reasoning orator, and the inspired; with others of quality; and yet
it had need of an ever-ready spontaneous imperturbable speaker, whose
bubbling generalizations and ability to beat the drum humorous could
swing halls of meeting from the grasp of an enemy, and then ascend on
incalescent adjectives to the popular idea of