or his sleepy expression.  Not a man in the House has his wits more thoroughly about him.  Ever ready to extricate his colleagues from an awkward difficulty, to evade a dangerous question,—­making, with an air of transparent candor, a reply in which nothing is answered,—­to disarm an angry opponent with a few conciliatory or complimentary words, or to demolish him with a little good-humored raillery which sets the House in a roar; equally skilful in attack and retreat:  such, in a word, is the bearing of this gay and gallant veteran, from the beginning 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.