Mr. Gladstone entered Parliament when he was not quite twenty-three, at the General Election of 1832, and it is evident from a perusal of his early speeches in the House of Commons, imperfectly reported in the third person, and from contemporary evidence, that, when due allowance is made for growth and development, his manner of oratory was the same as it was in after-life.  He was only too fluent.  His style was copious, redundant, and involved, and his speeches were garnished, after the manner of his time, with Horatian and Virgilian tags.  His voice was always clear, flexible, and musical, though his utterance was marked by a Lancastrian “burr.”  His gesture was varied and animated, though not violent.  He turned his face and body from side to side, and often wheeled right round to face his own party as he appealed for their cheers.

“Did you ever feel nervous in public speaking?” asked the late Lord Coleridge.

“In opening a subject, often,” answered Mr. Gladstone; “in reply, never.”

It was a characteristic saying, for, in truth, he was a born debater, never so happy as when coping on the spur of the moment with the arguments and appeals which an opponent had spent perhaps days in elaborating beforehand.  Again, in the art of elucidating figures he was unequalled.  He was the first Chancellor of the Exchequer who ever made the Budget interesting.  “He talked shop,” it was said, “like a tenth muse.”  He could apply all the resources of a glowing rhetoric to the most prosaic questions of cost and profit; could make beer romantic and sugar serious.  He could sweep the widest horizon of the financial future, and yet stoop to bestow the minutest attention on the microcosm of penny stamps and the monetary merits of half-farthings.  And yet, extraordinary as were these feats of intellectual athletics, Mr. Gladstone’s unapproached supremacy as an orator was not really seen until he touched the moral elements involved in some great political issue.  Then, indeed, he spoke like a prophet and a man inspired.  His whole physical formation seemed to become “fusile” with the fire of his ethical passion, and his eloquence flowed like a stream of molten lava, carrying all before it in its irresistible rush, glorious as well as terrible, and fertilizing while it subdued.  Mr. Gladstone’s departure from the House of Commons closed a splendid tradition, and Parliamentary Oratory as our fathers understood it may now be reckoned among the lost arts.

XIII.

CONVERSATION.

We have agreed that Parliamentary Oratory, as our fathers understood that phrase, is a lost art.  Must Conversation be included in the same category?  To answer with positiveness is difficult; but this much may be readily conceded—­that a belief in the decadence of conversation is natural to those who have specially cultivated Links with the Past; who grew up in the traditions of Luttrell and Mackintosh,