or of the secret councils of the Fourth
Party, whereby Sir Stafford was gradually eclipsed? Good memoirs must
ever be the cumulation of gossip. Gossip (alas!) has been killed by the
Press. In the tavern or the barber's-shop, all secrets passed into every
ear. From newspapers how little can be culled! Manifestations are there
made manifest to us and we are taught, with tedious iteration, the
things we knew, and need not have known, before. In my research, I have
had only such poor guides as Punch, or the London Charivari and The
Queen, the Lady's Newspaper. Excavation, which in the East has been
productive of rich material for the archaeologist, was indeed suggested
to me. I was told that, just before Cleopatra's Needle was set upon the
Embankment, an iron box, containing a photograph of Mrs. Langtry,
some current coins and other trifles of the time, was dropped into the
foundation. I am sure much might be done with a spade, here and there,
in the neighbourhood of old Cromwell House. Accursed be the obduracy
of vestries! Be not I, but they, blamed for any error, obscurity or
omission in my brief excursus.

The period of 1880 and of the two successive years should ever be
memorable, for it marks a great change in the constitution of English
society. It would seem that, under the quiet regime of the Tory Cabinet,
the upper ten thousand (as they were quaintly called in those days,) had
taken a somewhat more frigid tone. The Prince of Wales had inclined to
be restful after the revels of his youth. The prolonged seclusion
of Queen Victoria, who was then engaged upon that superb work of
introspection and self-analysis, More Leaves from the Highlands, had
begun to tell upon the social system. Balls and other festivities, both
at Court and in the houses of the nobles, were notably fewer. The vogue
of the Opera was passing. Even in the top of the season, Rotten Row, I
read, was not impenetrably crowded. But in 1880 came the tragic fall of
Disraeli and the triumph of the Whigs. How great a change came then
upon Westminster must be known to any one who has studied the annals of
Gladstones incomparable Parliament. Gladstone himself, with a monstrous
majority behind him, revelling in the old splendour of speech that not
seventy summers nor six years' sulking had made less; Parnell, deadly,
mysterious, with his crew of wordy peasants that were to set all Saxon
things at naught--the activity of these two men alone would have made
this