Sir John Gorst is one of the men who have again been brought much into evidence by the turn events have taken. I remember the time when he first made a Parliamentary figure. It was in the days when Lord Randolph Churchill started out on his great and meteoric career, at the beginning of the Parliament of '80. Sir John Gorst was, in many respects, the cleverest of the brilliant little group--at least, at the work which they were then doing. He is cold-blooded, quick, and dexterous, and, above all things, he has supreme pessimism and cynicism. To him, all political warfare is a somewhat squalid struggle, in which everybody is dishonest, and everybody playing for his own hand. It is an advantage in some respects to take that view; it saves a man from anything like unduly passionate convictions--enables him to keep cool even in trying circumstances. I have seen Sir John as cold as ice in the very height and ecstasy of the most passionate moments in the fierce Parliament of 1880 to 1885, and a man who remains so cool is sure to be able to strike his blows deliberately and home. My poor friend, Mr. Mundella, sometimes forgets this. When Sir John Gorst accused him of slighting somebody--I don't know who; and, really, it doesn't matter, for Sir John Gorst knew very well that the charge was entirely unfounded--when, I say, Sir John did this, up jumped honest Mr. Mundella to indignantly deny that he had ever done anything of the kind. Of course, he hadn't, and Sir John Gorst knew that as well as Mr. Mundella. But then, ten minutes were wasted in the encounter; and even ten minutes are not despised by Jimmy and his compeers. [Sidenote: T.W. Russell.] At last, this was got over, and the time came for T.W. Russell. There are few men in the House of Commons who excite such violent dislike on Liberal and Irish Benches as this pre-eminently disagreeable personality. The dislike is well founded. It is not because Mr. Russell is rancorous, or has strong opinions; it is because nobody has any faith in his sincerity. For many years of his life he was a paid teetotal lecturer. Teetotalism is a counsel of perfection, and teetotallers are estimable men, but the paid platform advocate of teetotalism is never a very attractive personality. This tendency to shout, and thump the table, and work up the agony--this eternal pitching of the voice to the scream that will terrify the groundlings, appal the sinner, and bring down the house--all these things produce a style of oratory which is about as disagreeable as anything in the shape of oratory can be. Above all things, it is difficult to take the itinerant lecturer seriously, with his smoking meal at home as a reward for his philanthropic efforts. The whole thing produces on the mind the impression of a clap-trap performance, with no heart or soul underneath all its ravings, bellowings, and dervish-like contortions.