amazingly like another--they all have the earth-spots. They smell, too;
they smell of brimstone. Soaring is impossible among that faction; but
this they can do, they can furnish the Tory his opportunity to soar.
When hear you a thrilling Tory speech that carries the country with it,
save when the incendiary Radical has shrieked? If there was envy in the
soul of Timothy, it was addressed to the fine occasions offered to the
Tory speaker for vindicating our ancient principles and our sacred homes.
He admired the tone to be assumed for that purpose: it was a good note.
Then could the Tory, delivering at the right season the Shakesperian
'This England . . .' and Byronic--'The inviolate Island . . .'
shake the frame, as though smiting it with the tail of the gymnotus
electricus. Ah, and then could he thump out his Horace, the Tory's
mentor and his cordial, with other great ancient comic and satiric poets,
his old Port of the classical cellarage, reflecting veneration upon him
who did but name them to an audience of good dispositions. The Tory
possessed also an innate inimitably easy style of humour, that had the
long reach, the jolly lordly indifference, the comfortable masterfulness,
of the whip of a four-in-hand driver, capable of flicking and stinging,
and of being ironically caressing. Timothy appreciated it, for he had
winced under it. No professor of Liberalism could venture on it, unless
it were in the remote district of a back parlour, in the society of a
cherishing friend or two, and with a slice of lemon requiring to be
refloated in the glass.

But gifts of this description were of a minor order. Liberalism gave the
heading cry, devoid of which parties are dogs without a scent, orators
mere pump-handles. The Tory's cry was but a whistle to his pack, the
Radical howled to the moon like any chained hound. And no wonder, for
these parties had no established current, they were as hard-bound waters;
the Radical being dyked and dammed most soundly, the Tory resembling a