listeners as he recounted the many virtues that survived to perpetuate the memory of the dead; and when he had concluded with a soul-touching allusion to the grief of the Queen, one felt that the strain of eloquence which had just ceased was of that order which could never be given to others in written words."
Of Lord Palmerston's speech in reply to Mr. Disraeli, the Australian parliamentarian is somewhat contemptuous. "Your Mr. Cowper," he observes, with an adroit hit at a very capable rival Sydney politician, "might have said all that the Prime Minister of England said, and said it with quite as much oratorical effect. But there was this difference between Lord Palmerston's commonplaces and Mr. Cowper's: the old English Minister knew exactly the limits within which he must confine himself, and seemed perfectly to know the temper of his audience and the state of feeling outside."
The minor lights that attempted to shine that evening, notably Sir Robert Peel (Sir Robert fils, of course), struck him as beneath contempt.
On a subsequent evening he attended the House of Commons in order to hear a debate of special interest to himself and his colonial readers. It was
