8. Holman Hunt, at Shrewsbury, on Art in its Relation to the Church.

9. Lord Rosebery, at Edinburgh, on the Eastern Policy of the Government.

10. Sir William Priestley, at Liverpool, urging Government aid toward scientific instruction. 11. Mr. J. Burns, Mr. Broadhurst, Rev. H. P. Hughes and others, at Hyde Park, on the Armenian Massacres.

12. Mr. Asquith, at East Fife, on the Future of the Liberal Party.

John Redmond, M.P., at Dublin, on Irish
Affairs.

Geoffrey Drage, M.P., at Blyth, on Poor Law
Reform.

13. Sir Michael Hicks Beach, at Darlington, on Domestic Politics.

14. Mr. Curzon, at Glasgow, on the Foreign Policy of Great Britain.

Mr. Bryce, at Whitechapel, on the Solution of the Armenian Question.

15. Sir Edward Clarke, at York, on the Venezuelan and Armenian Questions.

Sir G. Trevelyan, at Glasgow, on Lord Rosebery's
Resignation and the Armenian Situation.

P. Stanhope, M.P., at Manchester, on Lord
Rosebery and English Foreign Policy.

W. Woodall, M.P., at Leicester, on Foreign
Competition and Technical Education.
Lord Cromer, at Cairo, on the Conquest of
Khartoum.

16. Mr. Asquith, at Edinburgh, in support of the Radical Candidate for the Lord-Rectorship. 19. Mr. Asquith, at Galashiels, on the Political Outlook.

The Bishop of Rochester, the Bishop of Hereford, the Mayor of Belfast, Rev. J. E. C. Welldon, Sir Arthur Arnold, Mr. F. S. Stevensou, M.P., Earl Beauchamp, Professor Ramsey, Rev. Dr. Clifford and others, at St. James's Hall, on the Armenian Situation.

THE LATE LORD KENSINGTON.

(Photograph by Dickinson and Foster.)

20. Earl Rosebery, at Colchester, on the solution of the Armenian Question.

21. Lord C. Beresford, at Birmingham, on the union of Conservatives and Liberal Unionists. Mr. Walter Long, at Edinburgh, on Agricultural Improvements.

Sir Henry Roscoe, at the College of Preceptors, on the Education Bill.

Mr. Asquith, at Leeds, on Education.

22. Mr. Goschen, at Birmingham, on International Prejudice.

The Bishop of Peterborough, at Northampton,
on His Impressions of Russia.

Sir Charles Dilk, at Fishmongers' Hall, on
Our Merchant Navy.

26. Earl Spencer, at Worcester, on the Cyprus Convention.

THE LATE MR. W. H. WRENCH, C.M.G. British Consul and Commercial Attaché to the Embassy at Constantinople.

(Photograph by Abdullah Frères, Constantinople.) 27.

Mr. Labouchere, at Northampton, on the
Leadership of the Opposition.

Lord Dufferin, at Belfast, on the Political
outlook.

Mr. Chamberlain, at Birmingham, on the Value of Debating Societies.

Lord C. Beresford, at the Constitutional Club, on the British Occupation of Egypt.

28. Lord Londonderry, at Gateshead, on Domesti: Politics.

Sir Philip Magnus, at Bolton, on the True
Cause of the Growth of German Trade.
The Bishop of London, at Hampton, on
Diminishing the Temptations to Drink.
Justin McCarthy, M.P., at the Crystal Palace,
on the History of the Queen's Reign.
Mr. Laurier, at Quebec, on the Canadian Fast
Steamship Service.

29. Sir M. Hicks Beach, at Bristol, on the Federation of Unionist and Conservative Clubs.

30. Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, at Stirling, on England and the European Powers.

Sir John Gorst, at Manchester, on Museums and
Art Education.

Archbishop Temple, at the Mansion House, on
Temperance.

OBITUARY.

Oct. 1. Edward Hudson, solicitor.

Prince you Schönburg-Hartenstein, Vice-Pre

sident Austrian Upper-House.

Colonel Robert Guthrie-Craig, 67.

2. Mrs. Emmi Darwin, widow of Charles Darwin,

88.

William Foxton, 65.

3. William Morris, poet 62.

Canon Edward Hawkins, 96.

D. Tudor Evans, journalist, 76.

5. Byron Reed, M.P.

Dr. J. A. Moloney, African traveller, 33.

6. Francis Pattrick, President, Magdalene, Cambridge.

George H. West, journalist, 45.

General Sir James Abbott, 89.

7. Lord Kensington.

Sir Edward Hunter-Blair, 79.

J. A. Beith.

General Trochu, First Governor of Paris, 81. Edward Bumpus, bookseller, 64.

George du Maurier, 62.

9. Baron F. von Mueller, Austrian explorer, 71. Thos. Rowley Hill.

Cardinal de Ruggiero, 80.

Sir James Naesmyth.

Lord Congleton, 87.

12. Sir William Fitz-Herbert, 88.

13. W. H. Wrench, British Consul at Constantinople.

14. Francis Wakefield, author of "A Saxon Remedy for Irish Discontent."

15. Rev. John S. Jones, Chairman of the Exeter

Synod, 55.

16. Henry Trimen, late Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Ceylon, 52.

17. Colonel Walter Raleigh Gilbert, C.B., 83. Sir Edward Bates, 80.

Admiral C. L. D. Waddilove, 68.

George Arthur Fripp, R.W.S., 83.
Henry Abbey, theatrical manager.

18. C. M Shane, Inspector General of Hospitals, 76. 19. Sir James Ramsden, 74.

William Roigers, Founder of the British Liuguistic Reform Society.

Rev. Anthony Holliday.

Chief Justice William A. Richardson, 75.

20. Rev. W. M. Campion, President of Queen's

College. Cambridge, 75.

M. Tisserand, Director of the Paris Observatory, 51.

William H. White, F.R.I.B.A., 58.

21. James H. Greathead, civil engineer.

22. Field-Marshal von Matteek.

General P. y Lacy, Marques de Novaliches, 2.

23. Charles F. Crisp, late Speaker in the U. S.

House of Representatives, 51.

24. Sir Albert A. D. Sassoon, 78.

Wm. D. Allen, of H. Bessemer, L't.l.

25.

Rev. Carr J. Glyn, 98.

of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst, 73.

Surgeon-General William Muuro, 72.

31. Jan Verhas, painter, 63.

DEATHS ANNOUNCED.

Miss Julia Goddard, Sept. 30.
Francis Playford, 72.

General William Cavaye, 94.

Cavalier Edward W. St. H. Stanford, ex-Sicilian
Consul-General iu Calcutta, 73.

M. D. Ordinaire, journalist, 70.

M. Auguste Trécul, botanist, 78.
M. Conti, publisher.

Rear-Admiral Fourier, 57.

Rev. Canon Hector Arlsom, 80.
Surgeon-General Darley Bergine, 70.

Hugging this consolation to my heart, and reflecting that in all probability we shall never be fated to encounter the disaster of seeing Sir William Harcourt Prime Minister of England, I will endeavour to deal with the subject in the spirit of all my Character Sketchesviz., that of seeing an individual, not as he appears to his critics at his worst, but as he appears to himself at his best. At the same time it would be impossible adequately to appreciate the effort that must be made in order to live up to this excellent ideal by devoting the whole sketch to an exposition of Sir William Harcourt as he seems to himself at his best. For this would be so very good that the casual reader would utterly fail to understand how it is that among the rank and file of the Liberal Party there should be so intense a feeling of dismay at the mere prospect of having to regard Sir William Harcourt as their chief.

In this sketch I shall deal with Sir William Harcourt as a regenerate politician. It is necessary to do so in order that the Liberal Party may continue to preserve some degree of self-respect. What the unregenerate Harcourt was-or, rather, how he appeared to me in those unregenerate days when, in Northumberland Street, I lived in the Palace of Truth, and said such things of leading politicians as seemed calculated to do them good, and to promote in them a growth of that humble and contrite spirit which is so much to be desired, if not in the statesman, at least in the saint-may be gathered from the following reprint of an article I published in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1886 :

A PROFESSIONAL CONSCIENCE.

The question was debated the other day whether it was advantageous that the leader of a party should be a conscientions politician. It was maintained by one who might himself, had he possessed more of the saving salt of personal ambition, have been sitting in Mr. Gladstone's seat during Mr. Gladstone's absence, that it was much better the leader of a party should have no more conscience than a barrister-that is to say, he should have merely a professional conscience, which will assure him that he does right when he obtains a verdict for the wrong, according to the rules of the game. A leader in the House, it was said, must be above all things a tactician. He must have all his faculties concentrated on the manoeuvring of the moment. Entrusted with the guidance of a more or less undisciplined mob of two or three hundred M.P.'s, he must be master of the arts of management, and be able to say with the utmost alacrity exactly what course should be taken in the interests of the party in any and every fresh combination of circumstances. A conscientious politician in such a position has two things to think of: first, What does my

is not accurately recorded by the historian. All that is known is that if he had a large conscience once, he now has one EO small that it has no place in practical politics. As for the advantage of this, even from the tactical point of view, there is room to doubt. It may be well to have your politician in these days of chopping and changing winds built like White's famous boats, which, with their double helm, can veer with any eddying gust; but it has its disadvantages. Some degree of stability is necessary even in party leaders. It is the weight of the tail which enables a kite to rise.

If by any accident the tail is cut, the kite, after a series of evolutions in the air almost as sudden and as frantic as

some recent changes of what we suppose we must call Sir W. Harcourt's judgment, makes a headlong plunge to the ground.

THE LACKING SENSE OF CONTINUITY.

His friends would have more confidence in Sir W. Harcourt if they ever could be sure that he believed what he said, and a sweet peace would steal into their minds unknown before if he attained sufficient consciousness of the continuity of his existence not to maintain in private propositions exactly opposed to those which he proclaimed in public. It is not the first qualification for a pilot who is wanted to weather the storm, this capacity of boxing the compass, nor is the ship likely to make much progress towards her destination when her captain's only rule of seamanship is to spread his sails and run before the wind, no matter from what quarter it may blow. Sir W. Harcourt has never been known to profess any conviction which he was not ready to change on demand. Even when inwardly he has cursed the necessity which compelled him to execute so rapid a curve, he has obeyed. No one was ever so pledged against Home Rule-so determined to crush Home Rule. But Mr. Gladstone gave the word, and "Hey, presto!" behold the doughty champion of the Union transformed into the eloquent and even fervent advocate of an Irish Parliament. He may have made up for his complaisance before the public by damning Home Rule up hill and down dale to his colleagues and his friends; but if so those shrieks of private freedom only emphasise the disgrace of his public humiliation. It would, however, be unjust to Sir W. Harcourt. not to admit that this astonishing facility of conversion may in part be due to the fact that he was trained for the bar. He is not. the only Home Secretary, by any means, who has shown to the world that a barrister who is briefed by the refresher of the portfolio of the Home Office, and a retaining fee of £5,000 a year, can execute a right-about-face with as much alacrity

as if even in the House of Commons he were still the conscienceless automaton in horsehair wig and silken gown which pleads at the bar that black is white and wrong is right, according to its brief.

HOW HE BEGAN POLITICAL LIFE.

It is not so many years ago-by the almanack, although looking back across three Parliaments it seems as if it were almost as distant as the Deluge-when Sir William Harcourt, finding that Mr. Gladstone had made disastrous shipwreck of his career, displayed a marked inclination to pose as a frondeur. Before the General Election of 1874 he made speeches which seemed to foreshadow his development into a premature and overgrown Labouchere, so Radical was he and cynical. After the election he somewhat changed his pose. If not exactly a Conservative, he became highly ecclesiastical as a Low Church politician, and electrified the House by posing with Mr. Disraeli, as Sir Wilfrid Lawson cruelly remarked, as the Melancthon and the Luther of the new Reformation that was

to purge the Church of England of Ritualism and restore the primitive Protestantism of the Establishment. In his new capacity he essayed to cross swords with Mr. Gladstone as a Canonist, and paid the penalty of his rashness. The Public Worship Regulation Act, for which he expressed such extravagant admiration, is almost forgotten; but it ought to be had in everlasting remembrance as an illustration of the wisdom which the cynics and "men of the world" bring to the regulation of Divine service. Mr. Labouchere and Mr. Bradlaugh drawing up rules for the Salvation Army would hardly be a more grotesque, spectacle than was afforded by Mr. Disraeli and his valiant henchman in that sudden crusade against Popery in masquerade.

A LIBERAL DISRAELI.

MR. GLADSTONE'S SANCHO PANZA.

He was the great Sancho Panza of the Don Quixote Gladstone; and his merry jests enlivened a battle that otherwise would have been all too deadly earnest. He deserves credit for never having been befooled even for a moment by the theatricality of the Suez shares; and he maintained in public an unprecedented and astounding consistency for four years, during which he did doughty service for his party and his cause as the most Gladstonian of Gladstonians. But even then he was distrusted. Gossip said that he abused Mr. Gladstone in private as vehemently as he applauded him in public -that was in 1878; and Ginx's Baby even put the story in print, in a story in which he lampooned the right hon. gentleman as much as Mr. Mallock has recently lampooned Mr. Chamberlain. The great defect of Sir W. Harcourt's pious oratory as a defender of Bulgarian liberty and champion of Afghan independence is that which often vitiates the effect of the sermons of the insincere: he overdid the unction.

To the ordinary Liberal politician the incident only deepened antecedent impressions of Sir W. Harcourt's shiftiness; and dark rumours were current in the provinces that secret overtures had been made by the Minister of the day with a view to the transfer of "Historicus" from the Liberal to the Constitutional side. They failed, said malignant Radicals, only because it was no use carrying coals to Newcastle. One Disraeli was sufficient to furnish forth a party with an abundant lack of principle. They had no need of a secondhand Dizzy. So Sir William Harcourt abode with the Liberals, and avenged himself on the other side by blazing forth in a perfect broadside of epigrams and savage jokes, which gained him no small distinction in the fierce campaign that began with the Bulgarian atrocities, and ended with the establishment in office of Sir William Harcourt as Home Secretary of Mr. Gladstone's penultimate Administration. During the whole of these memorable years, of which Mr. Gladstone was the leader, Sir William Harcourt was the slogger of the fight. He laid on amain with his quarterstaff, and delighted the hearts of the Gladstonians by the fervour with which he laid on his sarcasm and plied his rhetoric to prove that Lord Beaconsfield was leading his country incontinently to the devil, and that the only way of salvation was by an alliance with Russia for the development of the oppressed nationalities.

THE CHAMELEON OF POLITICS. It is somewhat difficult to describe the exact shade of Sir William Harcourt's Liberalism. He is the chameleon or politics, whose hue changes from day to day, according to the opinions of those with whom he has for the time made alliance. It is somewhat startling to pick up one of his old speeches delivered as far back as 1880, before the General Lord Election which hurled Beaconsfield from place and power, and to discover that at that time Sir William Harcourt regarded himself as a moderate Liberal: "one of those miserable Whigs who led an abject and servile life under the tyranny of Mr. Chamberlain." Whatever moderation there may have been in Sir William Harcourt's Liberalism in those days, it has long ago disappeared, and his latest performances in the House were such as to excite the admiration of Mr. Labouchere, and to excite the amusement, not to say dismay, of such moderate men as Mr. John Morley. Though Sir William Harcourt has ceased to be a "miserable Whig," and has developed into a Home Ruler and National Leaguer of the most approved Irish pattern, he has never been able to emancipate himself from the in

fluence of Mr. Chamberlain.

HIS RELATIONS TO MR. CHAMBERLAIN.

In the Cabinet, when the Land Purchase and Home Rule Bills were in process of gestation, Sir William Harcourt was Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's henchman, and after Mr. Chamberlain shook the dust off his feet and departed from the Administration, Sir William Harcourt refrained from following his example only because he had determined to stand or fall by the Grand Old Man, whether right or wrong; and thus it was that we had two politicians before the country at the same time who held the same principles, one of whom was in the Cabinet and the other out. When the Government was defeated and the Tories came into power, political observers watched with some curiosity to see whether Sir William Harcourt would remain faithful in adversity to his fallen chief. Nothing would have been more characteristic of him than to have gone over bag and baggage to the Liberal Unionists, with whom it was believed he entirely agreed, and

whose criticisms of the policy adopted by the Cabinet of which Sir William Harcourt was a member nowhere met with more cordial assent than from Sir William Harcourt himself.

HIS FIRST LEADERSHIP.

Fortunately-so strangely ordered are the affairs of man -Mr. Gladstone's need of rest in Bavaria decided the question as to Sir William Harcourt's position. As usual, he must have been in twenty minds as to what to do, when Mr. Gladstone's departure opened the door to immediate promotion, which seemed to secure for him the title of heir presumptive to the Liberal leadership. Some Radicals thought Mr. Morley should have been at once installed as Mr. Gladstone's lieutenant to lead the party in Mr. Gladstone's absence. Had their counsels been followed we should probably ere this have seen the alliance between Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Chamberlain publicly avowed; and we should have had oceans of eloquence poured forth upon the world to prove that Home

THE LIBERAL FRONT BENCH IN 1882.

Rule was a delusion and a snare, and that the only wise men and true patriots were those who would have nothing to do with any measure which did not bear the true Birmingham stamp. Wiser counsels prevailed. Sir William Harcourt was installed in the vacant seat, and for the rest of the Session he led the party. The natural pomposity of the man found full expression in the new position; and whatever may have been the case with his colleagues and his followers, it is safe to say that the few weeks during which Sir William led the Opposition were among the sweetest of all his parliamentary life.

HIS PERSONAL QUALITIES.

Strange though it may seem to those who only know the public career of Sir William Harcourt, he is cordially liked by his friends. A vehement and impatient young Radical once leclared with emphatic vulgarity that Sir William Harcourt was a "beast." "It may be so," said the experienced politician to whom the observation was addressed, "it may be so, but never forget he is a good beast." He is kind-hearted, and in the unreserve of familiar intercourse there is no trace of that slightly grandiose manner which he mistakes for dignity. His chief weakness is the consequence of his lack of sincere conviction. He is always more or less playing a rôle, and, like many actors, he often tends to overdo his part. When he denounced Mr. Parnell, no one could have been more

vehement than he was; but now that his cue is to be on Mr. Parnell's side, he makes speeches from which even the most thorough-going Liberal Home Rulers would recoil. In politics in the House of Commons he is usually supposed to be a man of the world, but when he goes down to the provincial platform and harangues dissenters he is almost as eminent a pietist as Mr. Joseph Chamberlain himself, whose famous dissertation concerning his Nonconformist ancestors will not be soon forgotten. The pious fervour with which Sir William Harcourt speaks is marvellous, and no Methodist local preacher can excel him in quoting texts on occasions. But all this exuberant piety failed to save him from the assault of Mr. Alfred Dyer, the Quaker, who went down to Derby to do battle against Sir William Harcourt as the incarnation of ungodly indifference to the misdeeds of Mrs. Jefferies and her class. As a man, Sir William Harcourt, although a somewhat doughty knight in speech, is said to be lacking in that fearlessness which is almost indispensable in rulers in these present trying times.

HOME SECRETARY, 1880-85.

It was his lot to be Home Secretary when Mr. Gladstone was endeavouring to govern Ireland by coercive methods: and unless rumour lies more than it is wont to do, there was no member of the Ministry whose life was rendered more miserable to him by the threats of dynamitards than was Sir William Harcourt's. The speed with which he rushed the Explosives Act through the House of Commons was much commented on at the time, and there were not wanting those who declared that they had never seen a Home Secretary in such a fright. Possibly they were mistaken, or they might not have had much experience of Home Secretaries. Sir William Harcourt's situation was a difficult one, and the constant fear of assassination told at last upon even the iron nerve of Cromwell.

GOOD ADVICE.

Probably it will never be the fate of this country to have Sir William Harcourt as Prime Minister, and it is doubtful whether we shall ever again see him as leader of the House of Commons; but the future is so dark, and the prospects of parties so involved, that he would be a bold man who would prophesy that one who is so ready of tongue and who has such freedom from conviction as Sir William Harcourt will not find himself very near the top of the tree; although it is more probable than not that he may yet have to yield the attainment of his supreme ambition to his friend at Birmingham. His chances, however, would be none the worse if he could convince the British householder that he intended in the future to cultivate a little more assiduously the virtues of disinterestedness and sincerity.

Seeing that Sir William Harcourt is now acclaimed by some of the stalwarts amongst us, even by such a man as Mr. H. J. Wilson of Sheffield, as a Chief whom they would be glad to see at their head, it would seem we may take the flattering unction to our souls that the admonition with which this article of 1886 concluded has been taken to heart, and that we have now to deal with a new man who has found salvation, and therefore can be dealt with more sympathetically than would otherwise have been possible. At the same time, there is such a strong tendency on the part of the old Adam