g to the end of each debate, during
the entire session of Parliament. He seems absolutely insensible to
fatigue. "I happened," said a member of the House, writing to a friend,
last summer, "to follow Lord Palmerston, as he left the cloak-room, the
other morning, after a late sitting, and, as I was going his way, I
thought I might as well see how he got over the ground. At first he
seemed a little stiff in the legs; but when he warmed to his work he
began to pull out, and before he got a third of the way he bowled along
splendidly, so that he put me to it to keep him in view. Perhaps in a
few hours after that long sitting and that walk home, and the brief
sleep that followed, the Premier might have been seen standing bolt
upright at one end of a great table in Cambridge House, receiving a
deputation from the country, listening with patient and courteous
attention to some tedious spokesman, or astonishing his hearers by
his knowledge of their affairs and his intimacy with their trade or
business." On a previous night, I had seen Lord Palmerston in his seat
in the House from 4 P.M. until about 2 A.M., during a dull debate, and
was considerably amused when he rose at that late or early hour, and
"begged to suggest to honorable gentlemen," that, although he was
perfectly willing to sit there until daylight, yet he thought something
was due to the Speaker, (a hale, hearty man, sixteen years his junior,)
and as there was to be a session at noon of that day, he hoped the
debate would be adjourned. The same suggestion had been fruitlessly made
half a dozen times before; but the Premier's manner was irresistible,
and amid great laughter the motion prevailed. The Speaker, with a
grateful smile to the member for Tiverton, immediately and gladly
retired, but the indefatigable leader remained at his post an hour
longer, while the House was sitting in Committee on Supplies.

But his Parliamentary duties by no means fill up the measure of his
public labors. Deputations representing all sorts of interests wait
on him almost daily, his presence is indispensable at all Cabinet
consultations, and as Prime Minister he gives tone and direction to
the domestic and foreign policy of the English government. How much is
implied in these duties and responsibilities must be apparent to all who
speak the English language.

Now what is the secret of this vigorous old age, after a life spent in
such arduous avocations? Simply this, that a constituti