bellowings of the man from Sheffield could be
seen in the bent back, the depressed face, the general air of limpness
which overcame the Tory leader--as helpless, dejected, bent double, he
looked steadily at the green bench underneath him, and concealed from
the House as much as possible the tell-tale horror of his face.

[Sidenote: A portrait of Michael Davitt.]

On an assembly which had been jaded and almost tortured by this
tremendous display, it was Mr. Davitt's fortune to come with his first
speech in Parliament. For hour after hour he had sate, very still, with
deeply-lined face, but with a restless and frequent twist of the heavy
dark moustache, that spoke of the intense nervous strain to which this
weary waiting was subjecting him. Davitt is a man whose face would stand
out in bold relief from any crowd of men, however numerous or
remarkable. He has a narrow face, with high cheek-bones, and the thick,
close black whiskers, beard and moustache, make him look almost as dark
as a Spaniard. The eyes are deep-set, brilliant, restless--with infinite
lessons of hours of agony, of loneliness, torture in all the million
hours which filled up his nine years of endless and unbroken gloom in
penal servitude. The frame is slight, well-knit--the frame of a sturdy
son of the people--kept taut and thin by the restless nervous soul
within. An empty sleeve hanging by his side tells the tale of work in
the factory in childhood's years, and of one of the accidents which too
often maim the children of the poor in the manufacturing districts of
England. The voice is strong, deep, and soft; the delivery slow,
deliberate, the style of the English or American platform rather than of
the Irish gathering by the green hillside.

[Sidenote: Dartmoor.]

Altogether, never did there stand before this British assembly in all
its centuries of history, a figure more interesting, more picturesque,
more touching, above all, more eloquent of a mighty transformation--of a
great new birth and revolution in the history of two nations. Go back in
memory to the day, when with cropped hair--with the broad-arrowed coat,
the yellow stockings--this man dragged wearily the wheelbarrow in the
grim silences under the sinister skies of Dartmoor, with warders to
taunt, or insult, or browbeat the Irish felon-patriot--with the very
dregs and scum of our lowest social depths for companions and
colleagues--and then think of this same man standing up before the
su