4-2 'Die Clnb Room. Q APRIL, 



Sir Francis. I have no doubt that there is a vast deal of both to be 

 found on the floor of any assemblage in the land. But I think ignorance 

 of your lordship's powers is by no means common. You have too 

 strong a sense of your senatorial duty, to let any topic pass without a 

 speech, and the first half dozen words you utter, are quite enough to 

 satisfy all your hearers of the speaker's faculties. (Confounded old 

 fool.) (aside.) 



Lord Friezland. My dear Sir Francis, there is not a man on either 

 side of either house, whose opinion is more valuable. Your judgment 

 of men and things is with me decisive. I acknowledge I have a pecu- 

 liarly clear mode of coming to the point, a singular quickness in detect- 

 ing the weak points of my adversary's argument ; and if I must say so, a 

 remarkably forcible, impressive, and eloquent mode of delivering my 

 own. As we are here in confidence, I allow I sometimes realize to myself 

 more than all my recollections of Charles Fox. But envy, Sir Francis 

 a prophet is not honoured in his own country there is a cursed quan- 

 tity of conceit in this world, and it always makes a point of fleering at 

 eminent men. 



Sir Francis. My lord, you certainly do the world a little injustice in 

 this point. I don't believe that there is a single member of either Peers 

 or Commons who envies you. (Inveterate blunderer ! aside.) But to 

 what has our failure been due in the beginning of the session ? I 

 thought the minister fairly thrown over; he had evidently been at his 

 wit's end from the close of the year. His anxiety was even ludi- 

 crously palpable. Galloping from one county to another, showing his 

 face, where no face could be more unwelcome, at every noble lord's and 

 honourable friend's who had a roof over his head, and a copse large 

 enough to cover half a dozen pheasants ; dining here, dancing there, 

 shooting in this place, speech-making in the other ; flying about with 

 more than the activity, and more if possible than the bows of Sir Henry 

 Halford, and for nearly the same purposeto feel the pulse of every 

 man foolish enough to come within reach of his fingers. And what was 

 the fruit ? After all, a beggarly account of empty benches ; a pitiful 

 parade, with three fourths of it made up of the Treasury people, the 

 whole awkward squad of the Downing-Street police. We had him at 

 our feet ; how in the name of every thing burlesque, did we ever suffer 

 him to get on his legs again ? 



Lord Friezland. Ask Megrim. I wash my hands of the business : 

 we had conferences and confabulations enough to have settled ten 

 empires. The unfortunate Piccadilly Duke was so harassed, by our 

 perpetual divans in his house, that at last, after trying to yawn us out 

 night after night without effect, his only resource was to order an 

 abatement of the supper. He reduced his table with such rapidity, that 

 before the week was out, we talked politics over a single bottle of port, 

 and a beef-steak ; and it was not until we were run down to a salad, 

 and toast and water, that we beat a retreat, and left the fates of nations 

 to themselves. The business then fell into Megrim's hands, who of 

 course botched it. 



Sir Francis. The fittest man in the world for the purpose : I should as 

 soon expect truth from an American captain, as success from anything 

 touched by the hand of Harry Megrim. That fellow's public life might 

 be headed page by page with its several failures. He takes up the African 

 question ; and from that moment clouds gather upon it. He takes up the 

 Law Reform ; from that moment, the chance of Reform is extinguished. 



