Sir George had to answer violent, fierce, almost malignant assault; but he did so without ever uttering a harsh word--without losing one particle of his courteous and admirable self-control--he raised the debate of a great issue to the high place of difference of principles and convictions, instead of personal bickerings and hideous and revolting personal animosities.

It is the vice of Sir George Trevelyan as a speaker that he over-prepares--writing out, as a rule, nearly every word he has to utter, and often some of the very best speeches I have heard him deliver have been spoiled by giving the fatal sense of being spoken essays.

The speech was carefully prepared, and, so far as I could observe, was even written out; but its grace of diction, its fine temper, above all, its manly explanation of a change of view and its close-knit reasoning, made it really one of the very finest addresses I have heard in the course of many years' debating.
[Sidenote: Toryism of the gutter.] And, then, if you wanted to appreciate Sir George Trevelyan the more, you had only to wait for a few moments to hear the man who followed him.
I am told on pretty good authority that, next to Lord Randolph Churchill, the favourite orator of the Tory provincial platform is Sir Ashmead Bartlett.

I can well believe it.

The empty shibboleths--the loud and blatant voice--the bumptious temper--that make the commoner form of Tory--all are there.