Those who know him well cannot help observing that there is just a slight trace of excitement, nervousness, and anxiety in the voice and manner.

He has evidently been put out by the lateness of the hour to which the speech has been postponed.

There is beside him a vast mass of notes, and then, before he reaches that, there is the long speech to which he has just listened, many points of which it is impossible to leave unnoticed.

And so the first ten minutes strike me as rather poor--poor, I mean, for Mr.Gladstone--and my heart sinks.

In memory I go back to that memorable and unforgettable speech on that terrible night in 1886, when, with dark and disastrous defeat prepared for him in the lobbies the moment he sat down, Mr.Gladstone delivered a speech, the echoes of whose beautiful tones--immortal and ineffaceable--still linger in the ear.