member as the sewage catacombs of London to the ordinary citizen.  But all this has been changed; and now the dinner to ladies at the House of Commons has become, like the afternoon tea, one of the best recognized of London’s social festivities.  And so great is the run on these dinners that it takes a week’s—­or even two weeks’—­notice to secure a table.  Mr. Cobbe—­a stern and unbending Radical, with a hot temper and unsparing tongue—­might have been seen one of those June days with a menacing frown upon his rugged Radical forehead, and by-and-bye in serious converse with the Speaker.  And the cause of his anger was that he had found all the dining-tables ordered for two weeks ahead.

[Sidenote:  A wild scene.]

Speaking on the Freemasons, on June 22nd, Mr. Gladstone related the interesting autobiographical fact that he himself was not a Freemason, and never had been; and, indeed, having been fully occupied otherwise—­this delicate allusion to that vast life of never-ending work—­of gigantic enterprises—­of solemn and sublime responsibilities, was much relished—­he never had had sufficient curiosity to make any particular inquiries as to what Freemasonry really was.  I don’t know what came over Mr. Balfour—­some people thought it was because he expected to detach some Freemason votes from the Liberal side; but he was guilty of what I admit is an unusual thing with him—­an intentional, a gross, an almost shameful misrepresentation of Mr. Gladstone’s words.  Making the same interesting personal statement as Mr. Gladstone, that he was not himself a Freemason, he went on to suggest that Mr. Gladstone had made a comparison between a fraudulent Liberator Society and the Freemasons.  At this thrust there was a terrible hubbub in the House, and that fanaticism with which the Mason holds to his institution was aroused; indeed, for a little while, the scene was Bedlam-like in its passion and anarchy.  In the midst of it all, facing the violent howls of the excited Tories, pale, disturbed, hotly angry underneath all the composure of language and tone, Mr. Gladstone exposed the shameful and entirely groundless misrepresentation.  Mr. Balfour’s better angel intervened; he got ashamed of himself, and at once apologized.  But the hurricane of passion which had been let loose was not to be so easily appeased; and when, presently, Mr. John Morley put an end to the ridiculous and irrelevant discussion which threatened to land the House of Commons into the consideration of the arcana of a Freemason’s Lodge, there burst from the Tory benches one of the fiercest little storms of remonstrance I have ever heard.  When the closure is proposed, there is but one way of expressing emotion.  Under the rules of the House, the motion must be put without debate.  So when the word of doom is pronounced by the Minister, all that remains is for the Speaker or Chairman to refuse or accept the motion; and if he accept the motion, he simply rises, and, uttering the fateful words,