[Sidenote:  In the Empyrean.]

At last the Old Man had come to a contrast between the action of the Tory Government of 1885 and the Liberal with regard to the treatment of prisoners in Ireland.  The history of that period is one upon which Mr. Gladstone is now able to speak without feeling; but he dragged out from that period and its hidden recesses the whole story of the negotiations between Parnell and Lord Carnarvon, and all the other circumstances that make that one of the most remarkable epochs in the history of English parties.  He was now sweeping all before him.  This Lord Randolph felt, and it was almost timorously he rose to make an interruption.  The Old Man courteously gave way; but it was only to jump up again and pour on his young opponent a tide of ridicule and answer which overwhelmed him.  Higher and higher he soared with every succeeding moment, and stranger and more impressive became the aspect of the House.  There is nothing which becomes that assembly so much as those moments of exaltation during which it is under the absolute spell of some great master of its emotions.  Then a death-like stillness falls upon it—­you can almost hear the same heavy-drawn sighs as those that in a Paris opera-house tell of all the passion, the flood of memory and regret, and the dreams which are evoked by the voice of a Marguerite before her final expiation—­of a Juliet before her final immolation.  Laughter and cheers there were in abundance during this portion of Mr. Gladstone’s speech; but the general demeanour was one of deadly stillness and rapt emotion—­the stillness one can imagine on that Easter morning when De Quincey went forth and washed the fever from his forehead with the dew of early day.

[Sidenote:  An episode.]

And in the midst of it all there came one of the most pathetic little episodes I have seen in the House of Commons of recent years.  Mr. Gladstone has somewhat changed his habits in one respect.  There was a time when he rarely came to the House to deliver a great speech without a little bottle—­such as one sees containing pomade on the dressing-table of the thin-haired bachelor.  Of late, the pomade-bottle has disappeared.  The G.O.M. is now content to take the ordinary glass of water.  It is very seldom that he requires even that amount of sustenance during his great speeches.  However, he had been doing a good deal that day—­he had already made a long speech to his supporters in the Foreign Office—­and he required a glass of water.  He called out for it, and, at once, there was a rush from the Treasury Bench to the lobby outside.  But, before this could be done, the very pleasant little episode to which I have alluded took place.  There stood opposite Mr. Jackson, the late Chief Secretary, an untouched glass of water.  When he heard the cry of the Old Man, Mr. Jackson—­who has plenty of Yorkshire kindliness, as well as Yorkshire bluffness—­at once took up the glass that stood before him, and handed it across the table.