upied by the sons of Wales; while outside in
the outer lobbies surged a wild, tumultuous, excited crowd, eagerly
demanding admission from everybody who could be expected to have the
least chance of giving it. Every Welshman in the world seemed to have
got there. I saw Mr. Ellis Griffiths--an impassioned and brilliant Welsh
orator who ought to be in the House; my friend, whom I used to know as
Howell Williams, and I now have to call Mr. "Idris," as if he were an
embodied mineral water, and many others. The secret was that the night
was devoted to the Suspensory Bill for the Established Church in Wales,
and anybody who knows Welshmen, will know that this is a question on
which Welsh blood incontinently boils over. Terse, emphatic,
business-like Mr. Asquith put the case for Disestablishment on the plain
and simple ground that the Established Church was the church of the rich
minority, and that the overwhelming majority of the Welsh representation
had been returned over and over again to demand Disestablishment.

[Sidenote: The cynical Gorst.]

Sir John Gorst has an icy manner and generally the air of a man who has
not found the world especially pleasant, and delights to take rather a
pessimistic view of things. His great argument was that if this Bill
were carried, young men would not find enough of coin to tempt them into
the Church, and that accordingly it would languish and fade away. To
such a prosaic view of the highest spiritual vocation, the unhappy
Tories listened with ill-concealed vexation, and Gorst once more
increased that distrust of his sincerity in Toryism which perhaps
accounts for the small progress he has made in the ranks of his party.

[Sidenote: Randolph again.]

Throughout the night the debate languished, though there was an
excellent speech from Mr. Stuart Rendel on behalf of the Welsh party.
This was practically the only speech from that side; for perceiving that
the game of the Tories was to talk against time, the Welshmen wisely
declined to aid them, and sate dumb, unless when they snorted defiance
at some absurd claim or fanciful exaggeration on the other side. At ten
minutes past ten, however, quite a different complexion was given to the
whole debate by the rise of Lord Randolph Churchill. He had not yet
recovered his old mastery of himself or the House; but his appearance
was very different from what it was a few nights earlier. There was no
longer that constant trembling of the hands which