The late Lord Goschen would grasp himself firmly by the lapel of his coat, as though (to quote a well-known parliamentary writer) "otherwise he might run away and leave matters to explain themselves."[365] [364] Wraxall's "Memoirs," vol. iii. p. 402. [365] "Men and Manners in Parliament," p. 109. (Further on the writer describes the peculiarities of another member who used to fold his arms tightly across his chest when he spoke. Thereafter a constant struggle went on, the arms restlessly battling to get free, and the speaker insisting that they should remain and hear the speech out, p. 130.) Parliamentary eloquence to-day makes up in quantity for what it lacks in quality. The number of members who follow the advice of the Psalmist and earn a reputation for wisdom by a continual policy of eloquent silence[366] has dwindled to vanishing point, since to speak in Parliament has come to be regarded as part of a member's duty to his constituents. In Gladstone's first session, in 1833, less than 6000 speeches were made in the House of Commons; fifty years later the number had increased to 21,000; to-day the steadily growing bulk of each volume of the "Parliamentary Debates" testifies to the swelling flood of oratory which is annually let loose within the precincts of Parliament. And if La Rochefoucauld's maxim be true, that we readily pardon those who bore us, but never those whom we bore, the House of Commons has need of a most forgiving spirit to listen patiently to so much of what can only be described as _vox et praeterea nihil_. [366] "Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise; and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding." The level of eloquence is, no doubt, higher in the House of Lords than elsewhere. Peers include a greater number of orators among their numbers; opportunities for a display of their talents are more rare; their powers are not dissipated in prolonged debates, as in the Commons, but are reserved for full-dress occasions. In neither House nowadays is there any exhibition of that old-fashioned rhetoric, florid and flamboyant, which was once so popular. What Mackintosh calls "an elevated kind of after-dinner conversation," such as Lord Salisbury affected so successfully, is the form taken by modern parliamentary eloquence. There are no appeals to sentiment, no quotations from the classics, no bombastic declamations.[367] The House of Commons is still "a mob of gentlemen, the greater part of whom are neither without talent nor information,"[368] and with such an audience learned generalities are out of place. Passion has to a large extent given way to business, and in Parliament to-day are rarely heard those "splendid common-places of the first-rate rhetorician," which Lord Morley considers necessary to sway assemblies.