ulousness that sometimes underlies the
swell of passion--the deadly and startling pallor of the face--thought
that he was suffering from excitement almost touching and perhaps
affrighting to behold; while others thought that the chief and most
impressive feature of this perfect tornado of triumphant eloquence, was
the perfect calm that lay in the heart and bosom of all that storm.
There are two things which will tell you of the omnipotence of an
orator--one is the effect of his speech on foes as well as friends, and
the other is its effect upon himself. Both these evidences were present,
for the Tories seemed to have been swept away by the cyclone as
resistlessly as the Liberals and the Irish, and the Tory paeans in honour
of the Old Man which were to be found in the Tory organs next day only
echoed the bounteous and generous recognition of his matchless powers
which one heard from Tories in the lobbies throughout the evening. And
as to the effect of the speech on Mr. Gladstone himself, it was to bring
out a dramatic and mimetic power on which he very rarely ventures, and
which in anybody but a perfect master of the House of Commons might
descend into bad taste and bad tact. I know that Mr. Gladstone is really
triumphant when he brings these qualities into requisition. I remember
the last time he used them with any approach to the abundance of this
occasion was when he was making the great speech which preceded his
defeat in 1885 and the fall of his Government. On that occasion I
remember very well that the Old Man puckered up his forehead into a
thousand wrinkles, turned and twisted that very wonderfully mobile mouth
of his--with its lips so full with strength and at the same time so
sensitive with all the Celtic passion of his Highland ancestry--until
sometimes you almost thought it a pity he had not taken to the Lyceum
and some of the great parts in which Mr. Henry Irving has made his fame.
There was another occasion which dwells in my memory. It was on one of
the nights of the debate on the Coercion Bill. He was describing the
promises of equal laws to Ireland, with the restrictions on Irish
liberty which were contained in the Bill, and as he described
restriction he gradually raised the fingers on one hand, then turned
them spiral fashion until he had pointed the index finger to the roof---
as though he were describing the ascent of a funambulist to the top of
spiral stairs. It was at once eloquent and grotesque, and