[Sidenote:  In penal servitude.]

The keen, playful, and penetrating wit of Mr. Birrell did not do anything for Mr. Dunbar Barton.  Mr. Barton is—­as he properly boasted—­the descendant of some of that good Protestant stock that, in the days of the fight over the destruction of the Irish Parliament, stood by the liberties of Ireland.  He is a nephew of Mr. Plunket—­he inherits the talent which is traditional in the Plunket family, and is said not to be without some of the national spirit that still hides itself in odd nooks and corners of estranged Irish minds.  But he has none of the saving grace of his country or family.  A solemn voice that seems to come from the depths of some divine despair, and from the recesses of his innermost organs, together with a certain funereal aspect in the close-shaven face, gives him an air that suggests the cypress and the cemetery.  But with deadly want of humour, he spoke of the possibility of his spending the remainder of a blameless life in penal servitude, and was deeply wounded when the uproarious and irreverent House refused to take the possibility seriously.

[Sidenote:  Mr. Stansfeld.]

The following Friday was made memorable by a fine speech from Mr. Stansfeld.  Full of activity, with undimmed eye, with every mental faculty keen and alert, with every lofty and generous aspiration as fresh as in the days of hot and perilous youth, Mr. Stansfeld yet appears something of a survival in the House of Commons.  His appearance, his style of speech, even the framework of his thought, seem to belong to another—­in some respects a finer and more passionate period than our own.  The long hair combed straight back—­the strong aquiline nose—­the heavy-lined and sensitive mouth—­the subdued tenderness and wrath of the eyes—­even the somewhat antique cut of the clothes—­suggest the days when the storm and stress of the youthful century were still in men’s souls, and were driving them to conspiracy, to prison, to scaffold, to barricades, to bloody fields.  There is also a deliberation in the delivery—­a sonorousness in the phraseology—­that has something of a bygone day.  But all this adds to the impressiveness of the address.  The fervour is all there, the unalterable conviction, the lofty purpose.  There is reason for the warm note of welcome which comes from the Irish benches; for this man—­perhaps disappointed—­perchance not too well used—­stands up to defend his principles with the same utter forgetfulness of self which belongs only to the finest and the truest natures.

[Sidenote:  Commercial culture.]

Mr. Chamberlain has not a wide range of ideas, and his small stock has not been increased by anything like extensive reading.  The House was relieved to find after his return to Westminster on the 10th of April that he had just begun to read Tennyson.  It is always easy to know when Mr. Chamberlain is making the acquaintance of an author for the first time.  Strictly business-like in even his reading,