It was, he said, a speech "impressive and entrancing"-- two most happily-chosen epithets to describe it.

And then Lord Randolph told a little bit of personal history which was interesting.

In all his Parliamentary career, this was the first time he had been called upon to immediately follow a speech of Mr.Gladstone.

He would willingly have abandoned the opportunity, for it was a speech which no man in the House of Commons was capable of confronting.

After it, everything else was bound to fall flat, dull, and unimpressive.