We carried our Bill in 1884, and as the General Election of 1885 drew on, it was touching to feel the labourer's gratitude to all who had helped him in the attainment of his rights. By that time Gladstone had lost a great deal of his popularity in the towns, where Chamberlain was the hero. But in the rural districts the people worshipped Gladstone, and neither knew nor cared for any other politician. His was the name to conjure with. His picture hung in every cottage. His speeches were studied and thumbed by hard hands till the paper was frayed into tatters. It was Gladstone who had won the vote for the labourer, and it was Gladstone who was to lead them into the Land of Promise. "Three Acres and a Cow," from being a joke, had passed into a watchword, though Gladstone had never given it the faintest sanction. And the labourers vaguely believed that the possession of the vote would bring them some material benefit. So they voted for Gladstone with solid enthusiasm, and placed their Mirage in his return to power. But alas! they only realized a new and a more tragical disappointment. In January, 1886, an amendment to the Address embodying the principle of "Three Acres and a Cow" was carried against the Tory Government; Gladstone became Prime Minister, and the disconsolate labourers found that the Mirage had cheated them once again. It is not easy to depict the sorrow and mortification which ensued on this discovery. The vote, after all, was only a Dead Sea apple. The energies which were to have been bestowed on the creation of better surroundings for English labourers were suddenly transferred to the creation of an Irish Parliament, and in wide areas of rural population the labourers sank back again into hopelessness and inactivity. Once bit, twice shy. They had braved the wrath of their employers and all the banded influences of the Hall and the Vicarage in order to vote Liberal in December, 1885. They had got nothing by their constancy; and in six months, when they were again incited to the poll, they shook their heads and abstained. The disillusionment of the labourers gave the victory of 1886 to the Tories, and kept the Liberals out of power for twenty years. II _MIST_ "Mistiness is the Mother of Wisdom." If this sarcastic dogma be true, we are living in a generation pre-eminently wise. A "season of mists" it unquestionably is; whether it is equally marked by "mellow fruitfulness" is perhaps more disputable.