"A public life, which has literally embraced the first half of this century, and which last night was most gracefully concluded, deserved an ampler and richer tribute than our new Foreign Secretary seemed able to bestow." Nothing could be colder, meaner, and certainly more foreign to the heartiness of English generosity than the chip-chip phrases of Lord Malmesbury. It is such men as the Marquis of Lansdowne who are the true strength of the House of Lords. He is a true Englishman. In fifty years of political life his name has never been mixed with aught mean or jobbing. In the most tempestuous times, his voice has been heard amongst the loudest for right. In days when to be a reformer was to take rank a little above a fanatic and a public despoiler, the Marquis of Lansdowne struck at rotten boroughs. He has ever been a patriot in the noblest sense. And there was nobody but cold-mouthed Malmesbury to touch upon his doings? So it is! Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, A great-sized monster of ingratitudes: Those scraps are good deeds past. But the political deeds of the Marquis of Lansdowne are written in the history of his country. After the wear of fifty years, not one spot rests upon his robes. His coronet borrows worth and lustre from the true, manly, English brain that beats--(and in the serene happiness of honoured age may it long continue to beat!)--beneath it. [Sidenote: _Educating the House of Lords_] [Illustration: APPROPRIATE FIRST CITIZEN: "I say, Bill--I wonder what he calls hisself?" SECOND DITTO: "Blowed if I know!--but I calls him a Bloated Haristocrat."] As for peers in general, _Punch's_ views may be gathered from his scheme for the Reform of the House of Lords issued in the same year:-- It is an indisputable truth that there can be no such being as a born legislator. As unquestionable is the fact that there may be a born ass. We are not proving that fact--only stating it--_pace_ your word-snapper on the look-out for a snap. But your born ass may be born to your legislator's office, and command a seat in the house of legislators by inheritance, as in not a few examples, wherein the coronet hides not the donkey's ears. The object of a Reform in the House of Lords should be to keep the asinines of the aristocracy out of it: so that the business of the country may be no more impeded by their braying, or harmed by their kicking. Nobody is a physician by birth. Even the seventh son of a seventh son must undergo an examination before he is allowed to prescribe a dose of physic for an old woman. But any eldest son, or other male relation, of a person of a certain order is chartered, as such, to physic the body corporate: which is absurd.