one of the fiercest and most rancorous party conflicts of our time.  To this mood Mr. Gladstone attuned the closing words of his speech.  The words came slowly, quietly, gently, sinking at times almost to a whisper.  What fantasies could not one’s mind play as one listened to these words.  There was underneath the language, the looks, the voice, the tragic thought that this was a message rather from the shadow-land beyond the grave than from this rough, noisy, material world.  Imagine yourself in a country church, the sole visitor in the ghostly silence and the solemn twilight, with spectres all around you in the memorials of the dead and memories of the living, and then fancy the organist silently stealing, also alone, to the organ, and giving out to the evening air some beautifully solemn anthem with all the sadness of death, and none of the exultant joy of resurrection, and then you will get some faint idea of the pent-up emotion which filled every sympathetic heart in the great assembly as the Old Man finally came to the closing words of his great speech.  It was not so much a peroration as an appeal, a message, a benediction.

At first, when the Old Man sat down, the pause followed that speaks of emotion too deep for prompt expression, and then once again a rush to their feet by the Irishry and the Liberals, loud cheering, and the waving of hats, and all those other manifestations of vehement feeling which alone Mr. Gladstone is privileged to receive.  The Tories had kept very quiet; had conducted themselves on the whole very well.  Once or twice came a high sniff of disgust, and now and then a younger member could not restrain himself from an exclamation.  But, altogether, the Opposition was under the same spell as the rest of the House, and listened patiently to the end.

[Sidenote:  Mr. Sexton.]

I may pass over all that occurred on that Monday evening, with the single exception of the very remarkable speech of Mr. Sexton.  It was well known that Mr. Sexton had taken a prominent part in laying before Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues the views of the Irish party as to what would constitute a satisfactory Bill to the Irish people; and Mr. Sexton was authorised by his colleagues to state their views to the House.  This he did slowly, deliberately, without the least attempt at oratory, but in language extraordinarily lucid, delicately shaded, touching on points with exquisite art.  And what he said came to this; that the Bill was a good Bill; that in his opinion it could be accepted by the Irish people as a satisfactory settlement of their demands; but that in two points it needed careful watching, and perhaps considerable amendment:  the financial settlement and the future of the Land Question.

[Sidenote:  Mr. Balfour.]