George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[378] fashion of Louis XV. painted by her husband in oils, and on her mantel-piece two little childish drawings by the Queen when they were taught together. After this series of expeditions we went down to the seaside and sat under the fine old oaks on the lawn until twelve o'clock, when, with not a little reluctance, I bade them good by, charged with messages of remembrance and kindness from each of them for you . . . .

My return to London was through a rich and beautiful country, but at the end rose the huge, black, shapeless city. . . . . Ellen received me most affectionately, . . . . and Twisleton with his usual heartiness broke out, ‘You must go and hear the great debate tonight, in the Commons.’ It was on the Divorce Bill, and had been put off from Monday last, when he knew I had made arrangements to go, and been disappointed. So, after some hesitation on my part, and a little urging on his, I determined to go. The Twisletons were to dine with Lord Say and Sele,¹ but I had declined the invitation; so I hurried to the Athenaeum for a bachelor's dinner, and there found Kinglake and Rawlinson, to whom were soon added Hayward and Stirling. We pushed our tables together and had a jolly dinner, at which I left them and went to the House of Commons. I gave my card to the doorkeeper, and desired him to send it in to the Speaker, —our old friend Denison,—who had told me I should have the seat of ‘a distinguished foreigner’ last Monday night; and I was not a little surprised and pleased to find he had just sent out an order to the same effect for to-night. So that I walked right in.

The debate had been opened, and Gladstone soon rose, the person I had mainly come to hear. He spoke about three quarters of an hour, and was much cheered. His manner is perfectly natural, almost conversational, and he never hesitates for the right word, or fails to have the most lucid and becoming arrangement of his argument. If anything, he lacked force. But his manner was so gentlemanlike, and so thoroughly appropriate to a great deliberative body, that I could not help sighing to think we have so little like it in our legislatures. When he had finished, Stirling, who had been sitting with me some time, took me out, to avoid the tediousness of the next speaker, and carried me to see the magnificent library-rooms, and the fine terrace over the Thames, some hundred feet long, where I found plenty of lazy members, lounging and smoking. After my return I heard Napier, of Dublin, the Attorney-General, Stanley, and Lord Palmerston; all worth hearing, and two or three others who were not. Before the