from the Irish Benches—­not in the least because the Irish members cared for Joe’s attacks, but because such a roundabout discussion was altogether a revolutionary departure from all previous precedents; and would have been held distinctly out of order by any of the predecessors of Mr. Mellor in the chair.  That good-natured and easy-going official, however, gave Mr. Chamberlain his head; and so, for an hour, he poured forth a stream of clever, biting, but mean and irrelevant vituperation.

[Sidenote:  The G.O.M.’s greatest speech.]

It was well that it should have been so; for to this speech the House of Commons owes one of the most remarkable and historic scenes in its long history.  Every reader of Parliamentary reports knows what it means to speak at eight o’clock.  By that time, three out of five at least of the members of the House have gone to their dinners in all quarters of London, and the assembly is given up to the faddists and the bores, who never get another opportunity of delivering themselves.  Nothing, therefore, could have been more unexpected than a speech from Mr. Gladstone at such an hour, and especially a speech which, in the opinion of many, leaves far behind anything he ever did.  But, indeed, it is probable that Mr. Gladstone himself had no notion when the sitting began, or even a few minutes before he rose, that he would say anything very special.  It is one of the peculiarities of this extraordinary man to be always surprising you.  His infinite variety, his boundless resource, seem to be without any limitations.  By this time, you would have expected that one who had listened to him for nearly twenty years would imagine that he had no further oratorical worlds to conquer, and that he certainly would not have waited to his eighty-fourth year to do something better than ever he had done before.  But so it was.  In passion, in destructive sarcasm, in dramatic force, in the rush and resistless sweep of language, Mr. Gladstone was more potent in the dinner hour of that Thursday night than he was ever at any other single moment in his almost sixty years of triumphant oratory.

[Sidenote:  His powers as a mimic.]

Observers are divided as to his temper when he rose.  Some onlookers, observing the tremendous force of voice and language—­the broad, ample, and frequent gestures—­the tremulousness that sometimes underlies the swell of passion—­the deadly and startling pallor of the face—­thought that he was suffering from excitement almost touching and perhaps affrighting to behold; while others thought that the chief and most impressive feature of this perfect tornado of triumphant eloquence, was the perfect calm that lay in the heart and bosom of all that storm.  There are two things which will tell you of the omnipotence of an orator—­one is the effect of his speech on foes as well as friends, and the other is its effect upon himself.  Both these evidences were present, for the Tories seemed to have been swept away by the