Presently, with the help of a kind stranger on my right, who was occasionally making shorthand notes, I got a few bearings.  That was the Treasury Bench, where Lord North sat (he was wide awake, now).  And there was the Government side.  He pointed out Barrington and Weymouth and Jerry Dyson and Sandwich, and Rigby in the court suit of purple velvet with the sword thrust through the pocket.  I took them all in, as some of the worst enemies my country had in Britain.  Then my informant seemed to hesitate, and made bold to ask my persuasion.  When I told him I was a Whig, and an American, he begged the favour of my hand.

“There, sir,” he cried excitedly, “that stout young gentleman with the black face and eyebrows, and the blacker heart, I may say,—­the one dressed in the fantastical costume called by a French name,—­is Mr. Charles Fox.  He has been sent by the devil himself, I believe, to ruin this country.  ’Ods, sir, that devil Lord Holland begot him.  He is but one and twenty, but his detestable arts have saved North’s neck from Burke and Wedderburn on two occasions this year.”

“And what has happened to-day?” I asked, smiling.

The stranger smiled, too.

“Why, sir,” he answered, raising his voice above the noise; “if you have been in London any length of time, you will have read the account, with comment, of the Duke of Grafton’s speech in the Lords, signed Domitian.  Their Lordships well know it should have been over a greater signature.  This afternoon his Grace of Manchester was talking in the Upper House about the Spanish troubles, when Lord Gower arose and desired that the place might be cleared of strangers, lest some Castilian spy might lurk under the gallery.  That was directed against us of the press, sir, and their Lordships knew it.  ’Ad’s heart, sir, there was a riot, the house servants tumbling everybody out, and Mr. Burke and Mr. Dunning in the boot, who were gone there on the business of this house to present a bill.  Those gentlemen are but just back, calling upon the commons to revenge them and vindicate their honour.  And my Lord North looks troubled, as you will mark, for the matter is like to go hard against his Majesty’s friends.  But hush, Mr. Burke is to speak.”

The horse fell quiet to listen, and my friend began to ply his shorthand industriously.  I leaned forward with a sharp curiosity to see this great friend of America.  He was dressed in a well-worn suit of brown, and I recall a decided Irish face, and a more decided Irish accent, which presently I forgot under the spell of his eloquence.  I have heard it said he had many defects of delivery.  He had none that day, or else I was too little experienced to note them.  Afire with indignation, he told how the deputy black rod had hustled him like a vagabond or a thief, and he called the House of Lords a bear garden.  He was followed by Dunning, in a still more inflammatory mood, until it seemed as if all the King’s friends in the Lower House must desert their confederates in the Upper.  No less important a retainer than Mr. Onslow moved a policy of retaliation, and those that were left began to act like the Egyptians when they felt the Red Sea under them.  They nodded and whispered in their consternation.