his adherents went on increasing, and the admiration of his
parliamentary followers remained undiminished, he had few intimate
friends, few men in the House of Commons who linked him to the party
at large and rendered to him those confidential personal services
which count for much in keeping a party in hearty accord and
enabling the commander to gage the sentiment of his troops. Thus
adherents were lost who turned into dangerous foes--lost for the
want not so much of tact as of a sense for the need and use of tact
in humoring and managing men.

If, however, we speak of parliamentary strategy in its larger sense,
as covering familiarity with parliamentary forms and usages, the
powers of seizing a parliamentary situation and knowing how to deal
with it, the art of guiding a debate and choosing the right moment
for reserve and for openness, for a dignified retreat, for a
watchful defense, for a sudden rattling charge upon the enemy, no
one had a fuller mastery of it. His recollection of precedents was
unrivaled, for it began in 1833 with the first reformed Parliament,
and it seemed as fresh for those remote days as for last month. He
enjoyed combat for its own sake, not so much from any inborn
pugnacity, for he was not disputatious in ordinary conversation, as
because it called out his fighting force and stimulated his whole
nature. "I am never nervous in reply," he once said, "though I am
sometimes nervous in opening a debate." And although his
impetuosity sometimes betrayed him into imprudence when he was taken
unawares, no one could be more wary or guarded when a crisis arrived
whose gravity he had foreseen. In the summer of 1881 the House of
Lords made some amendments to the Irish Land Bill which were deemed
ruinous to the working of the measure, and therewith to the
prospects of the pacification of Ireland. A conflict was expected