"His day is pretty well over, I fancy," said Mrs Jefferson, eagerly scenting an opportunity for a brilliant display of political knowledge. "That Irish business has settled him. They call him the greatest statesman of the age! A man at dinner last night was lauding him up to the skies. There was quite a battle about him. We showed, however, that, putting his talking powers aside, he really is no statesman--only a grasping selfish old bungler, who cares nothing for his country except it keeps him in office, and has done nothing really great or good during his whole career. They make a fuss about the Education Act, but the credit of passing that belongs to Foster. As for the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, that is a disgraceful business--a robbery of the dead who had left their money to support a faith they believed in. He is responsible--to my thinking--for all the anarchy, confusion and misery in that poor unhappy Ireland. I believe," and she leant forward and dropped her voice, "I believe that at heart the man is more than half a Romanist. See how he has favoured the High Church party, and if ever he gives a clerical appointment it is always to a Ritualist priest. They don't call themselves _clergymen_ now. Well," and she drew herself up once more, "I, for one, wouldn't like to have his sins on my shoulders. I should think he ought to be haunted by as many victims as Napoleon Buonaparte. What with financial humbug, war taxes--the blunders of the Alabama business--the disgrace and bloodshed of the Transvaal affair and the Egyptian war--crowned by the undying and never to be forgotten shame of Gordon's sacrificed life, I wonder he can lay down his head at night and sleep. When he heard of that hero Gordon's death he should have taken a pistol and blown out his blundering brains. But perhaps," she added more calmly, "he was afraid of meeting his victims until he couldn't help himself. However, he might have gone into one of those `retreats' his favourite Ritualists are so fond of, and spared England any more blunders and follies."