The temper in which Lord Aberdeen conducted all his political intercourse during this period of promise was one of unchanging courage and hopefulness. He was one of the most active and ready among the supporters of Mr. Gladstone, and he found an untiring and invaluable companion in his charming wife. At that time we used to hold political gatherings in private houses as well as in public halls, and I have taken part in more than one Home Rule demonstration held in the private dwellings of some of Mr. Gladstone's colleagues in office. We used to have many social meetings for the purpose of bringing Englishmen and Irishmen into close association. Even Parnell himself was prevailed upon to abandon for the time his rule of seclusion from society, and to meet Mr. Gladstone and Lord Spencer and other leading Englishmen at private dinner parties. Lord Aberdeen was one of the most conspicuous and one of the most attractive figures in these political and social gatherings, and I could not, indeed, recall that period to memory for a moment without finding his figure photographed prominently in it. It was an interesting sight during all that time to see some of the most extreme and most aggressive members of the Irish Parliamentary party mingling in social life with British peers and magnates who only a few years before would probably have regarded those Irish members as traitors to the Queen and fitting inmates of the prison cell. On the other hand, too, it must be said that only a very few years before the Irish Nationalist member who was known to make his appearance in the London drawing-rooms of English aristocracy would have been set down by the majority of his countrymen as a flunkey in spirit and a traitor to his cause. There was a time not long before when an Irish Nationalist member would have needed some courage to enable him to meet his constituents on election day if the local papers had made it known that he was in the habit of showing himself in the drawing-rooms of English peers. All this sudden and complete change had been brought about by the genius and policy of Gladstone when he came to see the true meaning and the true claims of the demand for Irish Home Rule. My memory goes back with a somewhat melancholy pleasure to those days of hope and confidence when the true union of Great Britain and Ireland seemed actually on the verge of consummation. Nor have I the slightest doubt that the lessons taught during that season will have their full influence once again when the period of reaction is over, and that Gladstone's policy of 1886 will come to life again before very long and will accomplish its work once for all.