eive a blow; and as he piled
up the agony of his speech, he stooped lower and lower, driving his
right hand down at the end of each period with a sledge-hammer force
until the blow landed, not on the public conscience or the loyalty of
the Empire, but on the white hat of one, Mr Charley, who sat directly
below him and who in a second was bonneted to the very shoulders. Now Mr
Charley wore a very tall white hat and it was his habit to wear his hair
rather long, and as he struggled to release himself from the obscurity
into which he had been plunged, the lining of the tall white hat turned
inside out and his long hair rose with it until he appeared to be
expanding himself like some elastic snake. One gentleman on the front
bench below the gangway actually fell from his seat and rolled upon the
floor, and the House laughed itself almost into hysteria, whilst the
hapless orator stood waving in apologetic dumb show. Now here was a
tragedy indeed: to have the dream of a whole lifetime at last actually
realised and concrete and then to see it go to ruin in that way. So
swift a transition from the very height of triumph to the very gulf!
When our laugh was over I am sure there was not one of us who did
not profoundly sympathise with the sufferer, and Mr Newdigate never
attempted to speak again at least in my time. He and Mr Whalley were the
two members of the House who were the stern and unfaltering enemies of
the Jesuits. They saw the emissaries of Jesuitry everywhere and were
unceasing in denouncing all their wicked wiles, but it was notorious
that each cast an eye askance upon the other and each was rather
inclined to be persuaded to believe that his pretended fellow-crusader
was a Jesuit in disguise.

On the night on which Disraeli's government fell he gave the House of
Commons a last proof of his unconquerable "cheek and pluck." The Marquis
of Hartington had delivered a speech which everybody knew to have sealed
the fate of the party in power, but the great Jew statesman rose up
imperturbable and audacious to the last "There is, sir," he said in that
veiled voice of his which sounded as if it were struggling through dense
fog and could indeed only have been made audible throughout the chamber
by a trained master in elocution--"there is in war a manoeuvre which is
well known. First the cavalry advance creating dust and waving sabres,
then a rattle of musketry is heard along the line, and next the big guns
are brought into p