Lord Beaconsfield’s excellence in conversation lay rather in studied epigrams than in impromptu repartees.  But in his old electioneering contests he used sometimes to make very happy hits.  When he came forward, a young, penniless, unknown coxcomb, to contest High Wycombe against the dominating Whiggery of the Greys and the Carringtons, some one in the crowd shouted, “We know all about Colonel Grey; but pray what do you stand on?” “I stand on my head,” was the prompt reply, to which Mr. Gladstone always rendered unstinted admiration.  At Aylesbury the Radical leader had been a man of notoriously profligate life, and when Mr. Disraeli came to seek re-election as Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer this tribune of the people produced at the hustings the Radical manifesto which Mr. Disraeli had issued twenty years before.  “What do you say to that, sir?” “I say that we all sow our wild oats, and no one knows the meaning of that phrase better than you, Mr. ——.”

A member of the diplomatic service at Rome in the old days of the Temporal Power had the honour of an interview with Pio Nono.  The Pope graciously offered him a cigar—­“I am told you will find this very fine.”  The Englishman made that stupidest of all answers, “Thank your Holiness, but I have no vices.”  “This isn’t a vice; if it was you would have it.”  Another repartee from the Vatican reached me a few years ago, when the German Emperor paid his visit to Leo XIII.  Count Herbert Bismarck was in attendance on his Imperial master, and when they reached the door of the Pope’s audience-chamber the Emperor passed in, and the Count tried to follow.  A gentleman of the Papal Court motioned him to stand back, as there must be no third person at the interview between the Pope and the Emperor.  “I am Count Herbert Bismarck,” shouted the German, as he struggled to follow his master.  “That,” replied the Roman, with calm dignity, “may account for, but it does not excuse, your conduct.”

But, after all these “fash’nable fax and polite annygoats,” as Thackeray would have called them, after all these engaging courtesies of kings and prelates and great ladies, I think that the honours in the way of repartee rest with the little Harrow boy who was shouting himself hoarse in the jubilation of victory after an Eton and Harrow match at Lord’s in which Harrow had it hollow.  To him an Eton boy, of corresponding years, severely observed, “Well, you Harrow fellows needn’t be so beastly cocky.  When you wanted a Head Master you had to come to Eton to get one.”  The small Harrovian was dumfounded for a moment, and then, pulling himself together for a final effort of deadly sarcasm, exclaimed, “Well, at any rate, no one can say that we ever produced a Mr. Gladstone.”

XX.

TITLES.