indignation:--"Do you call that
amusing, Browning? _I call it devilish_."[18]

FOOTNOTES:

[17] This was written before the 19th of May, 1898, on which day "the
world lost its greatest citizen;" but it has not been thought necessary,
here or elsewhere, to change the present into the past tense.

[18] I give this story as I received it from Mr. Browning.

XV.

CONVERSATION--_continued_.

More than thirty years have passed since the festive evening described
by Sir George Trevelyan in _The Ladies in Parliament_:--

"When, over the port of the innermost bin,
The circle of diners was laughing with Phinn;
When Brookfield had hit on his happiest vein.
And Harcourt was capping the jokes of Delane."

The sole survivor of that brilliant group now[19] leads the Opposition;
but at the time when the lines were written he had not yet entered the
House of Commons. As a youth of twenty-five he had astonished the
political world by his anonymous letters on _The Morality of Public
Men_, in which he denounced, in the style of Junius, the Protectionist
revival of 1852. He had fought a plucky but unsuccessful fight at
Kirkcaldy; was making his five thousand a year at the Parliamentary Bar;
had taught the world international law over the signature of
"Historicus," and was already, what he is still, one of the most
conspicuous and interesting figures in the society of London. Of Sir
William Harcourt's political alliances this is not the place nor am I
the person to treat:

"Let the high Muse chant loves Olympian:
We are but mortals, and must sing of Man."

My theme is not Sir William Harcourt the politician, but Sir William
Harcourt the man, the member of society--above all, the talker. And,
although I have thus deliberately put politics on one side, it is
strictly relevant to my purpose to observe that Sir William is
essentially and typically a Whig. For Whiggery, rightly understood, is
not a political creed but a social caste. The Whig, like the poet, is
born, not made. It is as difficult to become a Whig as to become a Jew.
Macaulay was probably the only man who, being born outside the
privileged enclosure, ever penetrated to its heart and assimilated its
spirit. The Whigs, indeed, as a body have held certain opinions and
pursued certain tactics which have been analyzed in chapters xix. and
xxi. of the unexpurgated _Book of Snobs_. But those opinions and those
tactics have been mere acciden