Parliamentary management was his forte.  There have been various rocks on which men have shattered their barks in their attempts to sail successfully into the harbours of parliamentary management.  There is the great Senator who declared to himself that personally he will have neither friend or foe.  There is his country before him and its welfare.  Within his bosom is the fire of patriotism, and within his mind the examples of all past time.  He knows that he can be just, he teaches himself to be eloquent, and he strives to be wise.  But he will not bend;—­and at last, in some great solitude, though closely surrounded by those whose love he has neglected to acquire,—­he breaks his heart.

Then there is he who is seeing the misfortune of that great one, tells himself that patriotism, judgement, industry, and eloquence will not suffice for him unless he himself can be loved.  To do great things a man must have a great following, and to achieve that he must be popular.  So he smiles and learns the necessary wiles.  He is all for his country and his friends,—­but for his friends first.  He too must be eloquent and well instructed in the ways of Parliament, must be wise and diligent; but in all that he does and all that he says, he says he must first study his party.  It is well with him for a time;—­but he has closed the door of his Elysium too rigidly.  Those without gradually become stronger than his friends within, and so he falls.

But may not the door be occasionally opened to an outsider, so that the exterior force be diminished?  We know how great is the pressure of water, and how the peril of an overwhelming weight of it may be removed by opening the way for a small current.  There comes therefore the Statesman who acknowledges to himself that he will be pregnable.  That, as a Statesman, he should have enemies is a matter of course.  Against moderate enemies he will hold his own.  But when there comes one immoderately forcible, violently inimical, then to that man he will open his bosom.  He will tempt him into his camp with an offer of high command any foe that may be worth his purchase.  The loyalty of officers so procured must be open to suspicion.  The man who has said bitter things against you will never sit at your feet in contented submission, nor will your friend of any standing long endure to be superseded by such converts.

All these dangers Sir Timothy had seen and studied, and for each of them he had hoped to be able to provide an antidote.  Love cannot do all.  Fear acknowledges a superior.  Love desires an equal.  Love is to be created by benefits done, and means gratitude, which we all know to be weak.  But hope, which refers itself to benefits to come, is of all our feelings the strongest.  And Sir Timothy had parliamentary doctrines concealed in the depths of his own bosom more important even than these.  The Statesman who falls is he who does much, and thus injures many.  The Statesman who stands the longest is he who does nothing and injures no one.  He soon knew that the work which he had taken in hand required all the art of the great conjurer.  He must be possessed of tricks so marvellous that not even they who sat nearest to him might know how there were performed.