appearing along with other symptoms of prepared effort. Randolph Churchill pursued this branch of the art in rather a vulgar style. " Vineries and pineries," and " an old man in a hurry," were characteristic specimens. Lord Salisbury dropped naturally into literary epigram or alliteration, as when he spoke of the "dreary drip of dilatory declamation." But this was not high art. Mr. Gladstone's phrases "dim and distant future," "a strategical movement to the rear," "Political Economy banished to Saturn," "the resources of civilisation not exhausted," etc., were destitute of literary merit, and were, as a rule, political weapons forged by himself but turned against him by his opponents. John Morley's " mending or ending" was a useful jingle, but hardly a phrase. We have fallen, in later times, to the level of "terminological inexactitude" and "rare and refreshing fruit," which are not literary nuggets but political tags. The Parliamentary or platform speaking of the last twenty-five years has, I believe, not thrown up a single phrase that is destined to survive. I was myself the author of one when I described the function of the Foreign Press correspondent as "the intelligent anticipation of events before they occur." But, though I see it frequently quoted, I can detect no merit in the saying.
Repartee.I have searched my memory to think if in the same period there have been any notable illustrations of that which is the most useful subsidiary adjunct of Parliamentary eloquence, viz., retort and repartee. Mr. Gladstone once said that the finest repartee that he had ever heard in the House of Commons was the reply of Lord John Russell to Sir Francis Burdett, who, after turning Tory and joining the Carlton Club, had sneered at the cant of patriotism. "I quite agree," replied Lord John, "that the cant of patriotism is a bad thing. But I can tell him a worse, namely, the recant of patriotism." To my mind one of the readiest and at the same time most finished examples of Parliamentary repartee that were ever heard in the House of Commons, was the retort of Sir Robert Peel in 1848 to Feargus O'Connor, who, charged with being a Republican, had denied it, and said
