which offended some too sensitive critics.  Indeed, it might have seemed for some time as if Lord Rosebery got up with the idea of treating the whole business as the merest unreality of comedy; and had resolved to signify this by refusing to treat either the House or the Bill or himself seriously.  In face of the tragedies of the Irish sphinx—­with all its centuries of brooding sorrow behind it, this was not a tone which commended itself to the judicious.  But, then, this was a too hasty criticism.  The light and almost chaffing introduction was necessary in the highest interests of art; for, as I have said, the House was depressed, and it was in no mood to listen to an orator whose creed appeared to it the merest rank treason.  It was necessary to get the House into something like receptiveness of mood before coming to serious business; when that was done, it was time enough to seek to impress it.

[Sidenote:  An oratorical tour de force.]

And this is just what happened.  Everybody was in really good spirits by the time Lord Rosebery ten minutes on his legs; Lord Selborne’s unctuous dronings had disappeared into the irrevocable and vast distances; in short, the moribund Chamber was alive, vivacious, and receptive.  And when he had got them to this point Lord Rosebery took the serious part of his work seriously in hand.  Not that he attempted lofty appeal.  On the contrary, rarely throughout the speech did he raise his voice above that clear, penetrating, but eminently self-restrained tone which is the tone of a man of good society, discussing the loftiest and most complex problem with the easy and disillusioned composure of the experienced and slightly cynical man of the world.  Nay, Lord Rosebery offended some of his critics by openly avowing the creed of the man of the world in dealing with the whole problem.  He was careful to disown enthusiasm, or fanaticism, or even willingness in the service of Home Rule.  It was with him simply a frigid matter of policy, a policy to which he had been driven by the resistless evidence of facts, the resistless logic of reason.

[Sidenote:  A deep-laid purpose.]

This frankly was an attitude which grated slightly on the sensitive nerves of the many to whom Ireland’s emancipation—­with all the sobbing centuries which lie behind it—­is a fanaticism, a faith, a great creed; but the point to be really considered is whether this was the tone to adopt for the purpose of carrying out the desired end.  And I am inclined to think—­and some of the hottest Irishmen I know agree with me—­that this was the very way Lord Rosebery should have spoken.  And after all it was wonderfully impressive—­even to me with all I feel about the Irish question.  For the image it presented—­set forth by the physical aspect of the orator—­was such as I can imagine to be wonderfully impressive to that dull, unimaginative, and unsentimental personage—­the man of the shifting ballast, whose almost impenetrable