he apparently first thinks of reading a book when he has somewhere seen a quotation from it which might be worked into a speech; the next and almost immediate process is to transfer it to one of his speeches.  This is one of the many differences between him and the exhaustless brain and universal reading of Mr. Gladstone.  It was, therefore, not much of a surprise to those who had watched Mr. Chamberlain for years, to see that he was making a very bad and poor speech on the second reading of the Home Rule Bill—­a speech certainly far inferior to that which he had delivered on the first reading.  He had exhausted the poor soil; he had really no more to say.  He was unfortunately helped by Mr. Gladstone, who, instead of listening in silence to attacks grown stale by their infinite repetition, attempted to correct some of Mr. Chamberlain’s statements.  This was especially the case in reference to the famous speech in which Mr. Parnell is spoken of as passing “through rapine to dismemberment.”  Mr. Chamberlain wished to insist that the language had been applied to all the Irish leaders:  Mr. Gladstone insisted that they were applied to Mr. Parnell alone.  This controversy between the Prime Minister and Mr. Chamberlain gave a little life to a speech that hitherto had been falling desperately flat, and as such the interruption was a tactical mistake.

[Sidenote:  De mortuis.]

But it brought with curious unexpectedness a scene not without pathos and significance.  In the midst of the thrust and ripost of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Chamberlain, a strange and yet familiar voice was heard to shout out, “They put all the blame on Parnell because he is dead.”  It was a startling—­even an embarrassing interruption.  The memory of Parnell is still dear to the vast majority of the old comrades who were compelled to separate themselves from him in the Great Irish Disruption.  At the time when Mr. Gladstone made the speech quoted, Mr. Parnell was the loved leader of the whole Irish people and a united Irish party; and the speech was made at a moment particularly solemn and glorious in the strange life and career of Parnell.  The great controversy between the English and the Irish leader, which Mr. Chamberlain had raked up from the almost forgotten past, took place at the moment when Mr. Parnell had gone from town to town and county to county in Ireland, in the midst of vast and enthusiastic receptions—­imperial demonstrations—­with salvoes of cheers, enthusiasm, and auroral hope such as have taken place so often in Irish history on the eve of some mighty victory or hideous disaster.  And, then, immediately after came Parnell’s imprisonment, which he bore so well—­the suppression of the National Land League, and the era of unchecked and ferocious coercion in which the good intentions and kindly feelings of Mr. Forster finally were buried.  To separate themselves from Mr. Parnell at that great moment in his and their life, was a thing which none of Parnell’s old comrades could do; and when this startling interruption came, it was the spoken utterance of many of their thoughts brought back by Mr. Chamberlain’s venomous tongue in painful reverie over a glorious but dead moment, and a tragically wrecked and superb career.