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low each to the other went through the slow decorous motions with the composed dignity of high-bred youth and maiden. Roland had been well drilled by his mother, and Alfa without apparent effort subdued her vivacity to the requirements of the measure. At the end of the first figure the onlookers, who had followed every gesture with Gipsy zest, applauded loudly. Neither the applause nor the performance was to Ethan's liking. His malignity had a vain side to it. Still fiddling he trod the steps of the dance, quite accurately and with much agility but without the proper restraint. Beside the others' decent bearing his seemed the imitative antics of a monkey. Unconscious however of his inferiority he continued fiddling and skipping, while trying in vain to catch Alfa's applauding eye; until in the midst of his self-satisfied dissatisfaction he looked towards the opposite bank, and perceived that even his mother seemed to be unaware of his intrusion into the pas de deux. He fell at once out of his vainglory, flung down his bow and rent the strings with his hands. With the cessation of the music the dance ceased. Roland stopped amid the elaborate evolution of a courtly bow to stare at the fiddler. "They have played dat damned Gaujo tune," said Ethan wrathfully; "they shall never no more play for me."

"As you please," answered Roland loftily; for the glare of the Gipsy's eyes seemed to single him out.

Then he turned again towards where Alfa had stood. But it was too late to finish the incomplete bow, if that was his design; the girl had gone into her tent; the blanket that she had let fall before the door was already settling its folds. Ethan came nearer to renew the altercation.

"What has the Gaujo to do dancing with the Romany chy? Let him dance with his own dear sweet precious stiff

Gaujies, like the fire-poker jigging round the tongs."

Roland turned away. His slight glance which seemed scarcely to touch the Gipsy yet found a sensitive place in him and goaded him to a more furious volubility. But Roland put that aside, bethought himself, took half-a-crown from his pocket and threw it to Ethan, saying, “That's for the fiddler"; then turned again finally and strode off carelessly up the bank. Ethan pounced upon the coin and seemed about to hurl it after the giver like a materialized harder-hitting curse; but the feel of it made him think better of his purpose. He pocketed the half-crown, but did not for that spare the residue of his fluent malignity. Which however, since it did not reach the ear to which it was specially addressed, may be classed among the things, not necessarily futile, that have never been uttered.

Next day Roland on his way to Linby, which by the bye lies in the opposite direction to Pinxton, crossed the Grives low down where the trees are thick, but yet within sight of the Gipsies' camp. The tents were gone; there was no sound either of playing or dancing. That being so he did what he had predetermined not to do, went up to the camping-ground. He could distinguish the trodden area of each tent-place, the round of grass charred by their fire, the sward on which Alfa had danced with him. He looked on this so particularly as to fancy that he could distinguish between the daisies signed with his footmark and those bearing her lighter impress. That was all; there was no squalid litter of things rotten, worn out or useless, to mark the place where some half-wild folk had passed a night or two. He went by. He forgot Ethan; an important oversight.

It got about during the day that there had been deer-stealing that night

on Papplewick forest, and that stout old Tom Booth, the Nottingham deerstealer, and Michael Earp, commonly called All-fours, of Kirkby, had been taken up on suspicion. For the next week the Newstead keeper, the Papplewick constable and particularly Abel Marrot were busily going to and fro, searching and questioning; and in the end Basil Lee and Ethan Lovett were caught at Youlgreave in Derbyshire and together with Booth and All-fours were

brought before the local magistrates. Booth was outspokenly indignant that he should be suspected of so unsportsmanlike a deed as to poach in the close season. He was discharged for lack of evidence, as was All-fours without the offer of any, probably for the thrifty reason that his confinement would have thrown a large family on the parish; but the two Gipsies were committed for trial at the summer assizes.

(To be continued.)

HENRY LABOUCHERE. BY THE RIGHT HON. G. W. E. RUSSELL.

"When the Grand Old Man goes, our leader must be Le-bowcher." This fervent utterance of a convinced Radical, somewhere about the year 1882, supplies me with a fitting text.

My task, undertaken at the Editor's bidding, is not easy. The account of Mr. Labouchere which appeared in "Truth" immediately after his death was so clear, so full, and so well-informed, that it puts subsequent writers at a disadvantage. I cannot pretend to write Mr. Labouchere's early history, or to describe his habits in private life; nor can I even profess to have ever been an intimate friend. My connection with him was purely fortuitous; it was confined to the House of Commons, and began with the new Parliament of 1880. The saying which I have inscribed at the head of this paper sufficiently indicates the position which, quite early in the life of that Parliament, he acquired in Radical circles out of doors. Inside the House, we saw a different side of him; and the contrast between the Labouchere of the House and the Labouchere of the platform was at once amusing and instructive.

As a Harrow boy of fifteen, I had admired the gay audacity with which,

at the General Election of 1868, the democratic Labouchere upset the apple-cart of official Whiggery in Middlesex, though he lost his own seat by doing so; and it may be that some allusion of mine to that "unchartered freedom" first commended me to his kindly regard. At any rate, it is certain that from April 1880 onwards he always showed himself to me in his most accessible and obliging aspect. I will speak first of some slighter traits, and will then pass on to matters more important.

"The Christian member for Northampton" (as he delighted to call himself in contrast to his colleague, Mr. Bradlaugh) was not, at the time of which I speak, much known in general society. His social day was over, and I cannot suppose that he regretted it.

He was the oracle of an initiated circle, and the smoking-room of the House of Commons was his shrine. There, poised in an American rocking-chair and delicately toying with a cigarette, he unlocked the varied treasures of his well-stored memory, and threw over the changing scenes of life the mild light of his genial philosophy. It was a chequered experience that made him what he was. He had known men

and cities; had probed in turn the mysteries of the Caucus, the Green-room, and the Stock Exchange; had been a diplomatist, a financier, a journalist, and a politician. Under these circumstances, it was not surprising that his faith-no doubt originally robustin the rectitude of human nature and the purity of human motive should have undergone some process of degeneration. Still, it may be questioned whether, after all that he had seen and done, he really was the absolute and all-round cynic that he seemed to be. The palpable endeavor to make out the worst of everyone—including himself gave a certain flavor of unreality to his conversation; but, in spite of this drawback, he was an engaging talker. His language was racy and incisive, and he spoke as neatly as he wrote. His voice was pleasant, and his utterance deliberate and effective. He had a keen eye for absurdities and incongruities, a shrewd insight into affectation and bombast, and an admirable impatience of all the moral and intellectual qualities which constitute the Bore. He was by no means inclined to bow the knee too slavishly to an exalted reputation, and he analyzed with agreeable frankness the personal and political qualities of great and good men, even they that sate on the Liberal Front Bench. As an unmasker of political humbug he was supreme, but his dislike of that vice often led him into unreasonable depreciations. I well remember the peroration of Mr. Gladstone's speech in introducing the Irish Land Bill of 1881; and I think it deserves to be reproduced:

As it has been said that Love is stronger than Death, even so Justice is stronger than popular excitement, stronger than the passions of the moment, stronger even than the grudges, the resentments, and the sad traditions of the past. Walking in that light we cannot err. Guided by that light-that

Divine light-we are safe. Every step that we take upon our road is a step that brings us nearer to the goal, and every obstacle, even although for the moment it may seem insurmountable, can only for a little while retard, and never can defeat, the final triumph.

When the orator sat down we streamed into the Lobby, each man saying to his neighbor: "Wasn't that splendid?" "The finest thing he ever did!" "What a thrilling peroration!" "Yes" (in a drawl from Labouchere), "but I call it dd copy-book-y."

I have spoken of the flavor of unreality which was imparted to Labouchere's conversation by his affected cynicism. A similar effect was produced by his manner of personal narrative. Ethics apart, I have no quarrel with the man who romances to amuse his friends; but the romance should be so conceived and so uttered as to convey a decent sense of probability, or at least possibility. Labouchere's narratives conveyed no such Though amusingly told, they were so outrageously and palpably impossible that his only object in telling them must have been to test one's credulity. I do not mind having my leg pulled, but I dislike to feel the process too distinctly.

sense.

These arts of romantic narrative, only partially successful in the smoking-room, were, I believe, practised with great effect on the electors of Northampton. Labouchere was never happier than in describing the methods by which he had fobbed off some inconvenient enthusiast, or thrown dust in the eyes of a too curious inquirer. His accounts of his dealings with his constituents had, I suppose, a good deal in common with his experiences as President of a South American Republic or Commander of a Revolutionary force; but they were exHe used to detremely entertaining. clare that he had originated the hon

orific title of "Grand Old Man," and his setting of the scene was as follows: Mr. Bradlaugh had been expelled from the House, and straightway went down to Northampton for re-election, his colleague, "the Christian member" for the borough, accompanying him. What ensued at the first meeting may be told as Labouchere used to tell it. "I said to our enthusiastic supporters: 'Men of Northampton, I come to you with a message from the Grand Old Man. (Cheers.) I went to see him before I left London; I told him of my errand here; and he laid his hand on my shoulder, saying, in his most solemn tone, "Bring him back with you, Henry; bring him back."" That carried the election." I daresay it did; and the picture of Mr. Gladstone fondling Labouchere and calling him "Henry" can never be obliterated from the mental gaze of anyone who knew the two men.

There was a good deal of impishness in Labouchere's nature. He was of the family of Puck, and "Lord! what fools these mortals be!" probably expressed his attitude towards his fellowcreatures. But it was noticeable that his impishness never degenerated into rudeness. There is as clear a difference between gentlemanlike fun and vulgar fun as between champagne and swipes. Labouchere was a gentleman to the backbone, and had all the courtesy which one would have expected from his antecedents. I remember that, in the stormy days of January 1881, when the Prime Minister and the authorities of the House were obliged to extemporize rules against disorder, I happened to be crossing New Palace Yard in company with Mr. Herbert Gladstone. We met Labouchere, who chirped, in his cheeriest manner. "Well, has the tyrant made any fresh attack on free speech to-day?" Mr. Gladstone passed on, and Labouchere said to me, with genuine concern: "He

can't have thought I meant his father can he? Of course, I was thinking of the Speaker." It was interesting to see that he seemed to shudder at the bare notion of having been unintentionally rude.

I remember Mr. Gladstone, in one of his odd fits of political speculation, asking if I thought that there was even one man in the House of Commons, however radical he might be, who would vote for unwigging the Speaker. I, rather obviously, suggested Labouchere, and Mr. Gladstone replied"Yes, possibly; but that would be from freakishness, not from conviction." No powers of divination could have ascertained what Labouchere really believed; but I think it was easier to know what he really enjoyed. I suppose he enjoyed his wealth-most people who have it do so-but chiefly, I should think, on rather impish grounds. It was an acute delight to him in early days to know that he was bound to inherit the wealth of his uncle, Lord Taunton, a high-dried Whig, who detested his eccentricities. He took pleasure in saying to casual acquaintances, "You know that my sister married the Bishop of Rochester," for he felt the incongruity of the fate which had made him brother-in-law to Bishop Thorold, the primmest, correctest, and most stiffly starched of all the Anglican Episcopate. Litigation always seemed to delight him, less for the objects contested than for the opportunity which it gave him of scoring and surprising; and I am sure that I do him no wrong when I say that he found a peculiar zest in buying a freehold house in Old Palace Yard, and thereby impeding the schemes of Mr. H. Y. Thompson for creating a National Valhalla.

I feel certain that he thoroughly enjoyed the proprietorship of “Truth,” and not less the reputation (which we are now told was erroneous) of being

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His

Labouchere made "Truth," and, in one most important respect, "Truth" made Labouchere. I do not refer to anything in the way of profit or of consideration which it may have brought him: he was placed by the circumstances of his birth in a position where such things neither make nor mar. I refer to his political career. I do not know whether, when, as a young man, he flitted in and out of Parliament, he cherished any serious ambitions. I doubt if he had them even when he became M.P. for Northampton. But the events of the Parliament of 1880 brought him rapidly to the front. valorous championship of Bradlaugh gave him a peculiar position at a moment when the public mind was violently agitated by panic-fears of Atheism. He stood for religious freedom when many of its sworn adherents ran away; and on all the points of oldfashioned Radicalism (before Socialism affected it) he was as sound as a bell. Hence the cry of the London democrat-"Our leader must be Le-bowcher." But before that desirable consummation could be reached, the Liberal majority of Easter, 1880, melted like last year's snow. The Tories took office. The General Election of 1885 did not displace them, and in February 1886 Mr. Gladstone, having squared the Irish members, came back to office.

Labouchere's position was now difficult and tantalizing. His party were in office, and the way seemed clear for some radical reforms on which Liberals had long set their hearts. But Mr. Chamberlain, and some of the Rad

ical group with whom Labouchere had acted, declined to accept Home Rule, left the Government, and created Radical Unionism. If they voted against the second reading of the Home Rule Bill, it would almost certainly be thrown out, and the Government would follow it into retirement. Here was, indeed, a perplexing situation, and it forced Labouchere into action which must certainly have been uncongenial to him. Four days before the vital division, when argument on either side was exhausted and everyone had decided on his course, Labouchere, writing on behalf of a large body of Liberal M.P.'s, addressed to Mr. Chamberlain an earnest appeal, imploring him either to vote for the second reading or at least to abstain. He pointed out that a second General Election within seven months would be a serious matter for Liberals, and he remarked that a General Election without Mr. Chamberlain (then at the height of his popularity) on the Liberal side might lead to a Whig-Tory or ToryWhig Government, which "would relegate to the dim and distant future" those measures which they had so long and so ardently desired. To this appeal Mr. Chamberlain naturally replied that he and his friends would be stultifying themselves if, after all they had said and done, they were at the last moment to abstain from giving effect to their convictions. "I admit," said Mr. Chamberlain, "the dangers of a General Election at the present time; but I think the responsibility must in fairness rest upon those who have. brought in, and forced to a division, a Bill which, in the words of Mr. Bright, 'not twenty members outside the Irish party would support if Mr. Gladstone's great authority were withdrawn from it.'"

I must believe that, when Labouchere penned the appealing document, he had his tongue in his cheek. The simple.

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