seen amongst the benches appropriated to those more select strangers who
obtain the Speaker's order of admission. There, Randal heard the great
men of that day, and with the half-contemptuous surprise at their fame,
which is common enough amongst clever, well-educated young men, who know
not what it is to speak in the House of Commons. He heard much slovenly
English, much trite reasoning, some eloquent thoughts, and close
argument, often delivered in a jerking tone of voice (popularly called
the parliamentary twang), and often accompanied by gesticulations that
would have shocked the manager of a provincial theatre. He thought how
much better than these great dons (with but one or two exceptions), he
himself could speak,--with what more refined logic, with what more
polished periods, how much more like Cicero and Burke! Very probably he
might have so spoken, and for that very reason have made that deadest of
all dead failures,--a pretentious imitation of Burke and Cicero. One
thing, however, he was obliged to own,--namely, that in a popular
representative assembly, it is not precisely knowledge which is power,
or if knowledge, it is but the knowledge of that particular assembly,
and what will best take with it; passion, invective, sarcasm, bold
declamation, shrewd common-sense, the readiness so rarely found in a very
profound mind,--he owned that all these were the qualities that told;
when a man who exhibited nothing but "knowledge," in the ordinary sense
of the word, stood an imminent chance of being coughed down.

There at his left--last but one in the row of the ministerial chiefs--
Randal watched Audley Egerton, his arms folded on his breast, his hat
drawn over his brows, his eyes fixed with steady courage on whatever
speaker in the Opposition held possession of the floor. And twice Randal
heard Egerton speak, and marvelled much at the effect that minister
produced. For of those qualities enumerated above, and which Randal had
observed to be most sure of success, Audley Egerton only exhibited to a