out into higher contrast and bolder relief the waxen pallor, the beautifully chiselled features, the dominant benignity and refinement of the face of Mr. Gladstone.  And, then, think that the one man is fighting to maintain, and the other to put an end, and for ever, to the hateful, bloody, and, it might almost be said, bestial struggle of centuries; and you can understand the feeling of overwhelming loathing which sometimes rises in the breasts of those who see the two men pitted against each other.

[Sidenote:  For Jimmy was leader.]

For this was what it had come to in the House of Commons.  It was Jimmy Lowther against Mr. Gladstone.  Mr. Balfour occasionally dropped in a perfunctory word; now and then even tried to raise the standard of revolt against Mr. Lowther; and, of course, had finally to accept the consequences of Mr. Lowther’s acts.  Joe was there too; much more active in sympathy with Jimmy than Mr. Balfour.  With all his faults, there is a certain saving refinement in Mr. Balfour—­it is not a refinement that has restrained him from being cruel with the hysteric violence of the effeminate, but it is a refinement that preserves him from the mere Newmarket horseplay of Jimmy Lowther, and the thin rancour of a Brummagem drummer.  Joe, I say, was there, ready to back up Jimmy in his worst exploits, but, after all, Jimmy was the leader.  In this mighty struggle—­not merely for the reconciliation of England and Ireland, but for the existence of Parliamentary institutions—­the stakes are no smaller—­the gentlemen of England were represented by Mr. Lowther, and the rude democracy by Mr. Gladstone.  Democrats need not feel much ashamed of the contrast.

[Sidenote:  The apotheosis of Jimmy.]

But there Jimmy Lowther was, gulping and obstructing, obstructing and gulping.  The deadly and almost animal dulness of the performance I must insist on again and again.  Mr. Lowther does not speak—­he is as inarticulate as one of the prize bulls which, I doubt not, he delights to view at Islington what time the Agricultural Hall opens its portals to fat men and fat beasts.  He cannot stand on his legs for five minutes together without saying half-a-dozen times, “I repeat what I have already said;” he has no ideas, no language, nothing except sheer bull-headed power of standing on his legs, and occupying a certain amount of time.  Everybody knows that Lowtherism reached its climax on Saturday, March 11th.  On that day, men, who had held high office, were not ashamed to resort to so mean and palpable an obstructive expedient as to put on paper twenty-two questions to their successors in office.  The previous Friday had been bad enough.  That was the day which tried Mr. Gladstone more, perhaps, than any day for many a year; and, indeed, it tried others as much as he, though not everybody bore it with the same iron and inflexible courage.  There were large absences—­some of the Irish away at conventions in Ireland, others