er strong nor
musical, and sometimes apt to sound hollow (for the chest was weak),
was managed with great skill; action and gesture were used sparingly
but effectively, and the tall well-built figure and strongly-marked,
somewhat Roman features, with their haughty and distant air,
deepened the impression of power, courage, and resolution which was
characteristic of the whole man.

The qualities of oratory I have described may seem better fitted to a
comparatively sober and sedate assembly like the House of Lords than
to a changeful and excitable assembly like the House of Commons. Yet,
in point of fact, Cairns spoke better in the Commons than he did
afterwards in the Lords, and would have left an even higher oratorical
reputation had his career in the popular House been longer and his
displays more numerous. The reason seems to be that the heat of that
House warmed his somewhat chilly temperament, and roused him to a more
energetic and ardent style of speaking than was needed in the Upper
Chamber, where he and his friends, commanding a large majority, had
things all their own way. In the House of Commons he confronted a
crowd of zealous adversaries, and put forth all the forces of his
logic and rhetoric to overcome them. In the more languid House of
Lords he was apt to be didactic, sometimes even prolix. He overproved
his own case without feeling the need, which he would have felt in the
Commons, of overthrowing the case of the other side; his manner wanted
animation and his matter variety. Still, he was a great speaker,
greater as a speaker upon legal topics, where a power of exact
statement and lucid exposition is required, than any one he left
behind him.

Why, it may be asked, with these gifts, and with so much firmness and
energy of character, did he not play an even more conspicuous part in
politics, and succeed, after Lord Beaconsfield's death, to the
chieftaincy of the Tory party? The answer is to be found partly in the
prejudice which still survives in England against legal politicians,
partly in certain defects of his own personality. Although sincerely
pious, and exemplary in all the relations of domestic life, he was
ungenial and unbending in social intercourse. Few equally eminent men
of our time have had so narrow a circle of personal friends. There was
a dryness, a coldness, and an appearance of reserve and hauteur about
his manner which repelled strangers, and kept acquaintanceship from
ripening into