The Fourth Party at the beginning of their career went a step further than the regular Leaders of the Opposition whom they, only half in jest, affected to supersede. Her Majesty's Ministers, in accordance with custom, went down to Greenwich for a whitebait dinner at the end of the Session, the Leaders of the Opposition being content with a festive gathering on the eve of the opening of Parliament. The Fourth Party, equal to both occasions, not only convivially foregathered at the opening of the Session, but had their whitebait dinner at the end. In 1880, the year of their birth, they, never afraid of creating a precedent, invited an outsider to join the feast. This was Mr. Labouchere, Mr. Bradlaugh's standard-bearer, whom they had been fighting hand to hand all through the turbulent Session. But it is a poor heart that never rejoices, and in their young days the Fourth Party were merry grigs. [Sidenote: COUNTY GUY.] Some time ago inquiry was made in the columns of a country paper as to the origin of the cognomen "County Guy," as attached to Lord Hartington. I happen to know that the phrase, much in vogue seventeen or eighteen years ago, appeared in the series of papers entitled "Under the Clock," published weekly in the _World_. It was suggested by Sir Walter Scott's well-known lines:-- Bird, breeze, and flower proclaim the hour: But where is County Guy? Lord Hartington was at the time Leader of the Opposition, vice Mr. Gladstone, convinced that "at my time of life"--he was sixty-five when he wrote--his public work was finished, and he had earned the right to spend his declining years in the comparative leisure of his library. Even the eminence of the position, and the hitherto unbroken habit of the Leader of a party being in his place when questions began, did not overcome Lord Hartington's constitutional inability to come up to time. It was characteristic of him that he scorned the opportunity provided for quietly dropping into his place, without fixing attention upon his delayed arrival. He might have entered from behind the Speaker's Chair and taken his seat without any but those in the immediate neighbourhood noting the moment of his appearance on the scene. He always walked in from the doorway under the clock, in full view of the House, usually with one hand in his pocket, his hat swinging in the other hand, lounging towards his seat as if he were rather five minutes too soon than half an hour too late. When, in the last Parliament, he returned to the Front Opposition Bench as Leader of the Liberal Unionists, he observed precisely the same custom. He was invariably late, even at critical epochs, and always walked in by the front door.