the massive form of the Member for Rochdale.  It looked as if the unhappy Member for West Birmingham had undergone a sort of transformation, and had, like Mr. Anstey’s hero in “Vice Versa,” gone back to the tiny form and slight face of his boyhood.  Mr. Potter, however, is merciful, and having asserted his rights, he surrendered them again gracefully to Mr. Chamberlain; and the perky countenance of the gentleman from Birmingham once more looked down from the heights of the third bench.  It would take Mr. Chamberlain a long time to do so graceful an act to anybody else.

[Sidenote:  “Ugander.”]

But on the Monday night nobody need have been very particular as to what seat he occupied; for nothing could have been much more dull than the whole proceedings.  I make only one or two observations upon Uganda.  And first, why is it that so few members of the House of Commons can pronounce that word correctly?  Mr. Chamberlain,—­if there be anything illiterate to be done, he is always prominent in doing it—­Mr. Chamberlain never mentions the word without pronouncing it “Ugand_er_.”  Mr. Courtney for a long while did not venture on the word; and therein he acted with prudence.  It is a curious fact with regard to Mr. Courtney that when he first came into the House he had a terrible difficulty with his “h’s.”  In his case it was not want of culture, for he was a University man, and one of the most accomplished and widely-read men in the House of Commons.  But still there it was; he was weak on his “h’s.”  He has, however, by this time overcome the defect.  Mr. Labouchere talks classic English; was at a German university; has been in every part of the world; has written miles of French memorandums; has sung serenades in Italian; and, if he were not so confoundedly lazy, would probably speak more languages than any man in Parliament.  But yet he cannot pronounce either a final “g” or allow a word to end in a vowel without adding the ignoble, superfluous, and utterly brutal “er.”  When he wishes to confound Mr. Gladstone, he assaults about “Ugand_er_”; when the concerns of our great Eastern dependency move him to interest, he asks about “Indi_er_”; and he speaks of the primordial accomplishments of man as “readin’” and “writin’.”

[Sidenote:  Sir Edward Grey.]

Ugand_er_ gave Sir Edward Grey his first opportunity of speaking in his new capacity of Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs.  There are some men in the House of Commons whose profession is written in the legible language of nature on every line of their faces.  You could never, looking at Mr. Haldane, for instance, be in doubt that he was an Equity barrister, with a leaning towards the study of German philosophy and a human kindliness, dominated by a reflective system of economics.  Mr. Carson—­the late Solicitor-General for Ireland, and Mr. Balfour’s chief champion in the Coercion Courts—­with a long hatchet face, a sallow complexion, high cheek-bones, cavernous cheeks and eyes—­is the living