And it was not to be wondered at that a speech so delivered--a mere soliloquy--should fail to be impressive. It was too far and away unreal--had too little actuality to reach the poor humble breasts that were panting for excitement and exhortation. But once throughout it all was there a touch of that somewhat sardonic humour that sometimes delights even Lord Salisbury's political foes. Replying to the very clever speech of Lord Ribblesdale, Lord Salisbury described the speech as a confession, and all confessions, he added, were interesting, from St. Augustine to Rousseau, from Rousseau to Lord Ribblesdale. That, I say, was the solitary gleam. For the rest, it was an historical essay--with very bad history and worse conclusions; and the whole spirit was as bad as it could be. The Irish were still the enemy such as they appear in the bloody pages of Edmund Spenser, or in the war proclamations and despatches of Oliver Cromwell; and yet I cannot feel that Lord Salisbury's language could be resented as, say, the same language would be from Mr. Chamberlain. It all sounded so like the dreamings of a student and recluse--discussing the problem without much passion--without even malignity--but with that strange frankness of the unheard and unechoed musings of the closet. [Sidenote: A muttered soliloquy.] Finally, the speech also had the narrowness, shallowness, and unreality of the hermit's soliloquy. In the main, there was no insight. A logic-chopper, a dialectician--even in some respects a musing philosopher--such Lord Salisbury is; but breadth, depth, clear vision--of that there was not a trace in the whole speech. And then you went back in memory to the other speech--so clear, so broad-directed, yet uttered by a man who looked straight before him and all around him--who felt the presence in his every nerve of that assembly there which he was addressing; who lived and saw instead of dreaming--and you could come to no other conclusion than that of the two leaders of the House of Lords, the young man was the statesman and the man of action as well as the orator, and that it was worth the spending even all the weary hours of this past week in the House of Lords to learn so much of these great protagonists in our Parliamentary struggles. [Sidenote: Anti-climax.]