twice, and had a long conversation with him each time, or more accurately speaking, I listened to long characteristic utterances from him. He spoke of the Young Ireland Party, of O'Connell, of English prisons and prison reformers, of colonisation, of Tennyson and Browning, of Peel, Gladstone, Bright, and Spurgeon, of Australian democracy, and a hundred other things. He sat on the floor and smoked, and he laughed outright with a terrible kind of full-heartedness at his own grand sarcasms. But I confess I could almost as well explain the meaning of thunder and lightning as the meaning of what he said. Still I was deeply charmed, and am treasuring up an invitation to spend another hour with him. Here again it did me good to see how well you were remembered. The second time I saw him he told me he had written to you and reproached himself for not having written before. On that second occasion too he did me the honour to say he had been thinking over my defence of our democratic institutions, and that he thought I was right after all. It would never do to let the old fogies of officialism direct the energies of a young country.
"I have not seen John Stuart Mill. He has been spending the winter in France. He called at my lodgings twice and wrote me a very kind letter when leaving England. I look forward to meeting him with much interest.
"I think I have been pretty successful in the special duties of my mission. I have addressed some very large meetings—one meeting of 6,000 or 7,000 persons. In every instance I have succeeded in fixing the attention of my audience for more than two hours—a pretty good trial of their patience; and in every instance I have been well received.—Always yours,
"Henry Parkes."
I did not interrupt the story of the Heales Ministry with an incident which interested me deeply, and which I am unwilling to altogether omit. In 1860 the Council of the University passed a Statute prohibiting the professors from sitting in Parliament. The professors were convinced that this statute was ultra vires, and I had no doubt that it was narrow and ungenerous. I sought to induce Parliament to
