[Sidenote:  And the grit.]

It must have been a disappointment to him—­it was certainly a disappointment to his many friends—­that he was not a member of the Ministry which he did so much to bring into existence.  But the very day the House met after the formation of the Government, Labby was in his old place on the front bench below the gangway as if nothing had occurred—­just as ready as ever to take his share in the proceedings of the House of Commons.  And every succeeding evening saw him in his place—­listening with commendable piety to the exhortations of Holy Writ—­given forth in the fine resonant voice of Archdeacon Farrar—­ready to seize a point—­to take advantage of a situation, eagerly interested in everything that is going on.  Some people may regard this as a very common gift.  It is nothing of the kind.  I know no place in the world which is a severer test of a man’s tenacity of purpose, than the House of Commons.  I suppose it is because we see the men more publicly there than elsewhere; but I know no place where there are so many ups and downs of human destiny as in the House of Commons—­no place, at all events, where one is so struck with the changes, and transformations of human destinies.  The man who, in one or two Sessions, is on his legs every moment—­who takes a prominent part in every debate—­who has become one of the notabilities of the House—­in a year or two’s time has sunk to a silent dweller apart from all the eagerness and fever of debate, sinks into melancholy and listlessness, and is almost dead before he has given up his Parliamentary life.  Staying power is the rarest of all Parliamentary powers; Labby has plenty of staying power.

[Sidenote:  Sir Charles Dilke.]

Another figure which the new House of Commons is gradually beginning to understand is Sir Charles Dilke.  He is one of the men who seem to have no interest in life outside politics.  When one thinks that he has wealth, an immense number of subjects in which he can find instruction and occupation, that he is familiar with the languages, literature, and life of several countries, it is hard to understand how he could have had the endurance to go through the hurricane of abuse and persecution which he has had to encounter in the last seven years.  There are traces in his face of the intense mental suffering through which he has passed; there are more lines about the eyes than should be in the case of a man who is just fifty.  But, otherwise, he positively looks younger than he did when he was a Cabinet Minister.  There is colour where there used to be nothing but deadly pallor—­freshness where the long and terrible drudgery of official life had left a permanent look of fag and weariness.  Sir Charles Dilke has taken up the broken thread of his life just as if nothing had occurred in that long period of exile and suffering.  He is never out of his place:  attends every sitting as conscientiously as if he were in office and responsible for everything that