Before the Irish Church was robbed, I was nominated to the Deanery of Tuam; but, Mr. Disraeli resigning, I was defrauded of my just right by Mr. Gladstone, and my wife, Lady ---- ----, the only surviving child of an Earl, was sadly disappointed, but there is a just Judge above. The letter of nomination is still in my possession. I am, dear Sir, Yours faithfully, ---- ----, D.D. and LL.D. One is often asked if Gladstone had any sense of humour. My simple and sufficient reply is that, when he had read this letter, he returned it to my hands with a knitted brow and flashing eyes, and this indignant question: "What does the fellow mean by quoting an engagement entered into by my predecessor as binding on me?" The good fortune, which had so signally attended Gladstone's campaign against Lord Beaconsfield, seemed to desert him as soon as the victory was won. The refusal of the House to follow his lead in Bradlaugh's case put heart of grace into his opponents, who saw thus early in the new Parliament a hopeful opening for vicious attack. The Front Opposition Bench, left to its own devices, would not have accomplished much, but it was splendidly reinforced by the Fourth Party--a Party of Four--Lord Randolph Churchill, Sir Henry Drummond-Wolff, Sir John Gorst, and Mr. Arthur Balfour. Some light has been cast by recent memoirs on the mutual relations of the Four; but beyond question the head and front of the Party was Lord Randolph. That ingenious man possessed a deadly knack of "drawing" Gladstone, as the boys say. He knew the great man's "vulnerable temper and impetuous moods,"[34] and delighted in exercising them. He pelted Gladstone with rebukes and taunts and gibes, and the recipient of these attentions "rose freely." There was something rather unpleasant in the spectacle of a man of thirty playing these tricks upon a man of seventy; but one could not deny that the tricks were extremely clever; and beyond doubt they did a vast deal to consolidate the performer's popularity out of doors. It is not too much to say that, by allowing himself to be drawn, Gladstone made Lord Randolph. The most formidable enemy of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons was Parnell; and, when he joined forces with the Fourth Party and their adherents, the conjunction was disastrous to Liberalism. He figures in Lord Morley's "Life" of Gladstone as a high-souled and amiable patriot. I always thought him entirely destitute of humane feeling, and a bitter enemy of England. I remember the late Lord Carlisle, then George Howard and Member for East Cumberland, gazing at Parnell across the House and quoting from _The Newcomes_--"The figure of this garcon is not agreeable. Of pale, he has become livid." A lady who met him in a country house wrote me this interesting account of him: