e for six long years.

To this catastrophe gentlemen at that time respectively known as Mr.
Vernon Harcourt and Mr. Henry James appreciably contributed. They
worried Mr. Gladstone into dividing between them the law offices of the
Crown. But this turn of affairs came too late to be of advantage to the
nation. The only reminders of that episode in their political career are
the title of knighthood and a six months' salary earned in the recess
preceding the general election of 1874.

Mr. Disraeli's keen sight recognised the game being played on the Front
Bench below the gangway, where the two then inseparable friends sat
shoulder to shoulder. "I do not know," he slyly said, one night when the
Ministerial crisis was impending, "whether the House is yet to regard
the observations of the hon. member for Oxford (Vernon Harcourt) as
carrying the authority of a Solicitor-General!"

[Illustration: "MEMBER FOR DUNGARVAN."]

Of members holding official or ex-official positions who will gather in
the House of Commons this month, and who were in Parliament in 1873, are
Mr. Goschen, then First Lord of the Admiralty, and Liberal member for
the City of London; Lord George Hamilton, member for Middlesex, and not
yet a Minister; Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, member for Reading, and Secretary to
the Admiralty; Mr. J. Lowther, not yet advanced beyond the Secretaryship
of the Poor Law Board, and that held only for a few months pending the
Tory rout in 1868; Mr. Henry Matthews, then sitting as Liberal member
for Dungarvan, proud of having voted for the Disestablishment of the
Irish Church in 1869; Mr. Osborne Morgan, not yet on the Treasury Bench;
Mr. Mundella, inseparable from Sheffield, then sitting below the
gangway, serving a useful apprenticeship for the high office to which he
has since been called; George Otto Trevelyan, now Sir George, then his
highest title to fame being the Competition Wallah; Mr. David Plunket,
member for Dublin University, a private member seated on a back bench;
Sir Ughtred Kay-Shuttleworth, just married, interested in the "First
Principles of Modern Chemistry"; and Mr. Stansfeld, President of the
Local Government Board, the still rising hope of the Radical party.

[Illustration: SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN.]

[Illustration: SIR W. LAWSON.]

Members of the Parliament of 1868 in the House to-day, seated on back
benches above or below the gangway, are Colonel Gourley, inconsolable at
the expenditure on Royal yachts; Mr. Hanbur