Of the remaining speeches I need say little.  Lord Brassey, in a few manly and straightforward words, expressed his entire sympathy with the principle of the Bill; Lord Cowper gave another very melancholy and inaudible performance.  And then came one of the most remarkable speeches the House of Lords has heard for some time.  From the Treasury Bench there stood a tall, slight, and rather delicate figure.  The face, long, large-featured, hatchet-shaped, was surmounted with a mass of curling-hair; altogether, there was a suggestion of what Disraeli looks like in that picture of him as a youth which contrasts so strangely and sadly with the figure and the face we all knew in his later days.  This was Lord Ribblesdale.  Lord Ribblesdale holds an office in the Royal Household in the present Administration.  Up to a short time ago, he was unknown in even the teeming ranks of noble litterateurs; but an article he wrote on a conversation with the late Mr. Parnell gave indications of a bright and apt pen, a great power of observation, and a shrewd, impartial mind.  On Sept. 4th, he surprised the House by showing also the possession of very rare and very valuable oratorical powers, His speech was excellent in diction, was closely and calmly reasoned, and produced an extraordinary effect, even on the Tory side, which, beginning by a stony silence, and a certain measure of curiosity—­ended by giving an impression of being moved, and even awed a little by this speech.  Altogether a very remarkable performance; we have not heard the last now that we have heard the first of Lord Ribblesdale in the fields of party oratory.

[Sidenote:  A striking personality.]

The Duke of Argyll has changed a good deal in physical appearance during the last twenty years.  There was a time when he was was robust and squat, a rather stout little man, with a slightly strutting manner, head thrown back, and very fine and spacious forehead; a head of hair as luxurious and drooping as that of Mary Magdalene.  The form has considerably shrunk with advanced years, but not with any disadvantage, for the face, pinched and lined though it appears, has a finer and more intellectual look than that of earlier days.  Wrong-headed—­perhaps very self-conceited—­at all events, entirely left behind by the advancing democratic tide, the Duke of Argyll is yet always to me a sympathetic and striking figure.  If he thinks badly, at least he thinks originally.  His thoughts are his own, and nobody else’s; and though he is a bitter controversialist, at least he feels the weight and gravity of the vast questions on which he pronounces.  Above all things, he has a touch of the divine in his oratory.  He is, indeed, almost the last inspired speaker left in the House of Lords.  There is another speaker, of whom more presently, with extraordinary gifts, with also true oratorical powers, capable of producing mighty effects; but with Lord Rosebery the light is very clear and very dry; there is none of