d practically disappeared. And as I say, I took one
turn out of Fleet Street and I found a room full of it.

.....

At the top of the room was a chair in which Johnson had sat. The
club was a club in which Wilkes had spoken, in a time when even the
ne'er-do-weel was virile. But all these things by themselves might be
merely archaism. The extraordinary thing was that this hall had all the
hubbub, the sincerity, the anger, the oratory of the eighteenth century.
The members of this club were of all shades of opinion, yet there was
not one speech which gave me that jar of unreality which I often have in
listening to the ablest men uttering my own opinion. The Toryism of this
club was like the Toryism of Johnson, a Toryism that could use humour
and appealed to humanity. The democracy of this club was like the
democracy of Wilkes, a democracy that can speak epigrams and fight
duels; a democracy that can face things out and endure slander; the
democracy of Wilkes, or, rather, the democracy of Fox.

One thing especially filled my soul with the soul of my fathers. Each
man speaking, whether he spoke well or ill, spoke as well as he could
from sheer fury against the other man. This is the greatest of our
modern descents, that nowadays a man does not become more rhetorical
as he becomes more sincere. An eighteenth-century speaker, when he got
really and honestly furious, looked for big words with which to crush
his adversary. The new speaker looks for small words to crush him with.
He looks for little facts and little sneers. In a modern speech the
rhetoric is put into the merely formal part, the opening to which nobody
listens. But when Mr. Chamberlain, or a Moderate, or one of the harder
kind of Socialists, becomes really sincere, he becomes Cockney. "The
destiny of the Empire," or "The destiny of humanity," do well enough
for mere ornamental preliminaries, but when the man becomes angry and
honest, then it is a snarl, "Where do we come in?" or "It's your money
they want."

The men in this eighteenth-century club were entirely different; they
were quite eighteenth century. Each one rose to his feet quivering with
passion, and tried to destroy his opponent, not with sniggering, but
actually with eloquence. I was arguing with them about Home Rule; at
the end I told them why the English aristocracy really disliked an Irish
Parliament; because it would be like their club.

.....

I came out again into Fleet Street at night, a