Edward Grey.

Ugander gave Sir Edward Grey his first opportunity of speaking in his new capacity of Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. There are some men in the House of Commons whose profession is written in the legible language of nature on every line of their faces. You could never, looking at Mr. Haldane, for instance, be in doubt that he was an Equity barrister, with a leaning towards the study of German philosophy and a human kindliness, dominated by a reflective system of economics. Mr. Carson—the late Solicitor-General for Ireland, and Mr. Balfour's chief champion in the Coercion Courts—with a long hatchet face, a sallow complexion, high cheek-bones, cavernous cheeks and eyes—is the living type of the sleuth-hound whose pursuit of the enemy of a Foreign Government makes the dock the antechamber to the prison or the gallows. Sir Edward Grey, with his thin face, prominent Roman nose, extraordinarily calm expression, and pleasant, almost beautiful, voice, shows that the blood of legislators flows in his veins; he might stand for the highest type of the young English official. He has not spoken often in the House of Commons—not often enough; but he is known on the platform and at the Eighty Club. He has the perfect Parliamentary style, with its virtues and defects, just as another young member of the House—Mr. E.J.C. Morton—has the perfect platform manner, also with its virtues and defects. Sir Edward Grey speaks with grace, ease, with that tendency to modest understatement, to the icy coldness of genteel conversation, which everybody will recognize as the House of Commons style. This means perfect correctness, especially in an official position; but, on the other hand, it lacks warmth. It is only Mr. Gladstone, perhaps, among the members of the House of Commons—old or new—who has power of being at once, easy, calm, perfect in tone, and full of the inspiring glow of oratory.

The agriculturists are not very happy in their representatives. A debate on agriculture produces on the House the same effect as a debate on the Army. It is well known that the party of all the Colonels is enough to make any House empty; and a debate on agriculture is not much better. The farmer's friends are always a dreadfully dull lot; and they usually lag some half-century behind the political knowledge of the rest of the world. It would have been impossible for anybody but the county members to attempt a serious discussion on Protection or Bimetallism as cures for all the evils of the flesh; but that is what the agricultural members succeeded in doing on a certain Monday and Tuesday night. Their prosings were perhaps welcome to the House; but it was a curious thing to see an assembly, as yet in its very infancy, so bored as to find refuge in every part of the building, except the hall appropriated to its deliberations. Mr. Chaplin is always to the front on such occasions; pompous, prolix, and ineffably dull. Mr. Herbert Gardner made his début as the Minister for Agriculture, and did it excellently.

Mr. Keir-Hardie is certainly one of the most curious forms which have yet appeared on the Parliamentary horizon. He wears a small cap—such as you see on men when they are travelling; a short sack coat; a pair of trousers of a somewhat wild and pronounced whiteish hue; and his beard is unkempt and almost conceals his entire face. The eyes are deep-set, restless, grey—with strange lights as of fanaticism, or dreams. He rather pleasantly surprised the House by his style of speech. Something wild in a harsh shriek was what was looked for; but the wildest of Scotchmen has the redeeming sense and canniness of his race—always excepting Mr. Cunninghame Graham, whose Scotch blood was infused with a large mixture of the wild tribe of an Arab ancestress; and Mr. Keir-Hardie—speaking a good deal like Mr. T.W. Russell—made a foolish proposal in a somewhat rational speech. But he was unlucky in his backers. The Liberal benches sate—dumb though attentive, and not unamiable. Mr. Gladstone gazed upon the new Parliamentary phenomenon with interest, but the only voices that broke the silence of the reception were the strident tones of Mr. Howard Vincent, of Sheffield, and Mr. Johnston, of Ballykilbeg. Now Howard Vincent is known to all men as one of the people who speak in season and out of season, when once they mount their hobby. The other day I heard of a bimetallist who was so fond of discussing bimetallism that the railway carriage, in which he went to town every morning, was always left vacant for him; nobody could stand him any longer. Similar is the attitude of the House of Commons to Howard Vincent. Fair Trade is his craze. He proposes it at Tory Conferences—much to the dismay of Tory wire-pullers; he gets it into the most unlikely discussions in the House of Commons; and all the world laughs at him as though he were to propose the restoration of slavery, or chaos come again. Poor Mr. Johnston only cares about the Pope, and cheers Mr. Hardie simply as a possible obstruction to Mr. Gladstone. Ill-omened welcomes these for a friend of Labour.

Sir John Gorst occupies a curious position in his own party. He is one of their very ablest debaters; always speaks forcibly and to the point; rarely makes a mistake; and has a wonderfully good eye for the weak points in the armoury of his opponents. He was the really strong man in the old Fourth Party combination; but somehow or other he does not get on with his friends, and has been left without Cabinet office at a time when many inferior men have been able to get ahead of him. He has a cold, cynical manner; suggests usually the clever lawyer rather than the sympathetic politician; and altogether seems at odds with the world and with himself. He made a bold bid, however, for labour legislation; placed himself in a different position from the rest of his colleagues; and altogether made one of those speeches which are listened to in amused curiosity by political opponents, and in ominous silence and with downcast looks by political friends. Mr. Balfour's face was a study; but it was a study in the impassibility which politicians cultivate when they desire to conceal their hatred of a political friend. It is on the same side of the House that the really violent and merciless animosities of the Parliamentary life prevail. I should think that Sir John Gorst is the object of about as bitter a hatred among his own gang as any man in the House.