If you lose confidence in yourself, the world is certain to pretty soon follow your example.

And so it is now with Mr.Balfour, for when he stood up to speak on March 27th there was the sight--which must have made his soul sink to even profounder depths of depression--of members leaving the House in troops and rushing to the lobby, the library, or the smoke-room, rather than listen to a debater whose rise a few months ago would have meant a general and excited incursion of everybody that could hear.

Starting thus, Mr.Balfour made the worst of a bad case, his speech was a failure, and as the American would put it, a fizzle; in short, a ghastly business.
[Sidenote: The G.O.M.'s outburst.] It was in the midst of this debate that Mr.Gladstone made his magnificent and unexpected outburst.

He had been paying attention to the debate--but very quietly, and not at all in a way that suggested an idea of intervening in it.

It was, too, about nine o'clock when Mr.Gladstone stood up, and anybody acquainted with the House of Commons knows that nine o'clock is in the very crisis of that dinner hour which nightly makes the House of Commons a waste and a wilderness.