little on passing topics of political interest—rather alluding, with modesty and terseness, to the contests and victories of a former day. But still, in the few words there was the swell of the old clarion—the wind of the Paladin's horn which woke Fontarabian echoes.
It is astonishing how capricious, how sudden are the changes in value of a public man. All depends upon whether the public want, or believe they want, the man; and that is a question upon which the public do not know their own minds a week before; nor do they always keep in the same mind, when made up, for a week together. If they do not want a man—if he do not hit the taste, nor respond to the exigency of the time—what- ever his eloquence, his abilities, his virtues, they push him aside, or cry him down. Is he wanted?—does the mirror of the moment reflect his image?—that mirror is an intense magnifier; his proportions swell—they become gigantic. At that moment the public wanted some man; and the instant the hint was given, "Why not Guy Darrell?" Guy Darrell was seized upon as the man wanted. It was one of these times in our Parliamentary history when the public are out of temper with all parties—when recognized leaders have contrived to damage themselves—when a Cabinet is shaking, and the public neither care to destroy nor to keep it; a time, too, when the country seemed in some clanger, and when, mere men of business held unequal to the emergency, whatever name suggested associations of vigor, eloquence, genius, rose to a premium above its market-price in times of tranquillity and tape. Without effort of his own—by the mere force of the undercurrent—Guy Darrell was thrown up from oblivion into note. He could not form a cabinet—certainly not; but he might help to bring a cabinet together, reconcile jarring elements, adjust disputed questions, take in such government some high place, influence its councils, and delight a public weary of the oratory of the day with the eloquence of a former race. For the public is ever a laudator, temporis acti, and whatever the authors or the orators immediately before it, were those authors and orators Homers and Ciceros, would still shake a disparaging head, and talk of these degenerate days, as Homer himself talked ages before Leonidas stood in the Pass of Thermopylae or Miltiades routed Asian armaments at Marathon. Guy Darrell belonged to a former race. The fathers of those young Members rising now into fame, had quoted to their sons his pithy sentences, his vivid images; and added, as Fox added when quoting Burke, " but you should have heard and seen the man!"
Heard and seen the man! But there he was again!—come
