looking elsewhere—to the lighted entrance of the Lower House. The ministers who sat in the Commons were about to leave, after a night of unusual national interest.
The multitude had gathered thickly, swollen by every passer-by who, drawn into the vortex, had hung on the outskirts of the concourse, and stopped in turn to pause and stare, and hear the gossip of St. Stephen's. There had been, as it was known, a powerful and heated debate, a political crisis of decisive eminence—of some peril, moreover, to the country, from a rash war policy which had been urged upon the existing ministry, which must, it had been feared, have resigned to escape stooping to measures forced on it by the opposition; the false position had been avoided by the genius of one man alone; the government had stood firm, and had vanquished its foes, through the mighty ability of its chief statesman; one who, more fortunate than Pitt in the brilliant success of his measures, at home and abroad, was often called, like Pitt, the Great Commoner.
Yet it was a title, perhaps, that scarcely suited him, for he was patrician to the core; patrician in pride, in name, in blood, and in caste, though he disdained all coronets. You could not have lowered him; also, you could not have ennobled him. He was, simply and intrinsically, a great man. At the same time, he was the haughtiest of aristocrats; too haughty, by all the Bourbon and Plantagenet blood of his line, ever
