Tuesday.—­If anyone looking on at House of Commons at three o’clock this afternoon had predicted that within an hour it would be teeming with life, brimming over with human interest, he would have been looked upon with cold suspicion.  NOLAN had taken the floor, and was understood to be expressing his deliberate opinion on merits of Irish Local Government Bill.  He was certainly saying something, but what it might be no man could tell.  LYON PLAYFAIR, who is up in all kinds of statistics, tells me 120 words per minute is the average utterance of articulate speech.  NOLAN was doing his 300, and sometimes exceeded that rate.  Not a comma in a column of it.  A humming-top on the subject would have been precisely as instructive and convincing.  Some twenty Members sat there fascinated by the performance.  It was not delivered in a monotone, in which case one could have slept.  NOLAN was evidently arguing in incisive manner, shirking no obstacle, avoiding no point in the Bill, or any hit made by previous speaker.  His voice rose and fell with convincing modulation.  He seemed to be always dropping into an aside, which led him into another, that opened a sort of Clapham Junction of converging points.  One after the other, the Colonel, with full steam up, ran along; when he reached terminus of siding, racing back at sixty miles an hour; and so up and down another.  Only guessed this from modulation of his voice and the intelligent nodding of the head with which he compelled the attention of ATTORNEY-GENERAL for IRELAND.  For just over half an hour he kept up this pace, and, saving a trot for the avenue, fell back into his seat gasping for breath, having concluded a sentence nine hundred words long worked off in three minutes by the astonished clock.

[Illustration:  THE GLADSTONIAN BAGMAN.

["I regard myself as a commercial traveller.”—­Speech by Sir William Harcourt at Bristol, May 11, 1892.]]

[Illustration:  “T.W.”]

An interval of T.W.  RUSSELL, with one of his adroitly-argued, lucidly-arranged speeches.  Then Mr. G. and transformation scene.  House filled up as if by magic.  In ten minutes not a seat vacant on floor; Members running into Side Gallery, nimbly hopping over Benches, to get on front line so as to watch as well as hear the last and the greatest of the old Parliamentarians.  As suddenly and swiftly as the House had filled, the limp lay figure of the Debate throbbed with life.  Scene of the kind witnessed only once or twice in Session.  Six hundred pair of eyes all turned eagerly upon figure standing at Table, denouncing with uplifted arm, and voice ringing with indignation, the iniquities of the MARKISS, safely absent, and of his nephew, Prince ARTHUR, serenely present.

A great speech; an achievement which, if it stood alone, sufficient to make a reputation.  And yet, when result of Division announced, it was found that majority of an iniquitous Government had run up to 92!