remained melancholy and overcast. Fate had already written failure upon it."

The "Life of Pitt" (1891) has been ransacked for obiter dicta. The best known passage is that in which the author speaks of the ill-feeling between Fox and Shelburne. "It does not signify which of the two was to blame for this mutual mistrust; that it existed is sufficient. It would be too much to maintain that all the members of a Cabinet should feel an implicit confidence in each other; humanity-least of all, political humanity-could not stand so severe a test. But between a Prime Minister in the House of Lords and the Leader of the House of Commons such a confidence is indispensable. Responsibility rests so largely with the one, and articulation so greatly with the other, that unity of sentiment is the one necessary link that makes a relation, in any case difficult, in any way possible. The voice of Jacob and the hands of Esau may effect a successful imposture, but can hardly constitute a durable administration."

Another sentence from the same book has a livelier significance for the present Liberal party: "An ex- Premier is usually found, by any Cabinet in which he may serve as an ordinary member, to be a fleeting and dangerous luxury." The Westminster Gazette predicted, not long ago, that if Lord Rosebery returns to politics, it will not be to the second place on either side. In his fascinating review of Mr. Parker's "Sir Robert Peel," Lord Rosebery delights and tantalizes us with a discussion on the text, "What is a Prime Minister?" He merely glances at an aspect of the

question which must be personally interesting to himself Sir Robert's opinion that the Prime Minister should be in the House of Lords. That, he says, "has scarcely more than an historic interest, since the conditions are no longer the same. But it is impossible, even as a matter of historic interest, altogether to ignore any definite opinion on such a a subject pronounced by SO consummate a master of his craft." Readers cannot help thinking, as they ponder the pages in which an ex-Prime Minister dwells on the difficulties and responsibilities of the head of the Cabinet, that at every point his own experiences during the anxious and critical months between March, 1894, and June, 1895, must have been present to his mind. "A First Minister has only the influence with the Cabinet which is given. him by his personal arguments, his personal qualities, and his personal weight. But this is not all. All his colleagues he must convince, some he may have to humour, some even to cajole-a harassing, laborious, and ungracious task. Nor is it only his colleagues that he has to deal with. He has to masticate their pledges, given before they joined him; he has to blend their public utterances, to fuse as well as may be all this into the policy of the Government; for their various records must be reconciled, or glossed, or obliterated. A machinery liable to so many grains of sand requires obviously all the skill and vigilance of the best conceivable engineer. And yet, without the external support of his Cabinet, he is disarmed. The resignation of a colleague, however

The ex-Premier is perhaps a little too confident as to the inviolable good faith with which Cabinet members preserve their secrets. A piece of gossip which has several times appeared in print with regard to himself shows that amongst his colleagues there must have been one loose-tongued chatterer. The story is that he sent round to the Cabinet a memorandum hostile to Sir William Harcourt's Death Duties Budget, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer demanded a Cabinet on the question, and that when the Cabinet met the Premier withdrew his memorandum without a struggle. The rumour has been circulated by Lord Rosebery's enemies in the full knowledge that while Cabinet etiquette would preclude him from contradicting it, many Liberals must be prejudiced against him by the suspicion that he opposed a Budget of which all Liberals approve.

Lord Rosebery, as an ex Prime Minister, and as a member of three Cabinets, assures us that even the subject of discussion in our "Venetian" secret council is unknown to the public, "though enterprising editors make spirited conjectures, which sometimes. take the form of authoritative paragraphs." "During the whole of the Parliamentary recess, at least, we have not the faintest idea of what our rulers are doing, or planning, or negotiating, except in so far as light is afforded by the independent investigations of the Press. This is said in a spirit, not of criticism or depreciation, but rather of meditation."

The essay on Peel from which I have quoted appeared first as an article in Lady Randolph Churchill's magazine,

The Anglo-Saxon Review, and was afterwards re-published by Messrs. Cassell. It is one of Lord Rosebery's very few excursions into the field of journalism. The editors of reviews and magazines tried in vain for years to persuade him to contribute articles to their pages, and the prices they offered might have seemed to many authors very tempting. signed newspaper articles are rare. In an earlier chapter I mentioned his paper on the reform of the House of Lords in the first number of the Scottish Liberal; and he has written at least once for the Westminster Gazette. Like Sir William Harcourt, he occasionally addresses a letter to The Times.

His

He has never edited a newspaper, though he has visited many, printingoffices, and in New York, as a young man, mixed a good deal with journalists. In the early eighties he was proprietor of the Examiner, of which Professor Minto was editor. He was not a contributor to his own paper, for he was too shy to offer articles, and it did not occur to the editor to ask for them.

One point in his Westminster paper was the admission that he did not

know Spanish. He speaks French very well, more correctly, though more deliberately, than Lord Salisbury, but with less perfection of idiom and accent. than the late Earl Granville. With German he is thoroughly conversant.

For a year the public has been expecting his promised work on Chatham. The Scotsman informed us last autumn that the manuscript was in the hands of the typists, but possibly the distin

the 'R' of Rosebery, or sometimes the 'A' and 'R' only are used. The same form may be seen on some of his notepaper, and may also be seen carved

nation, and no initial precedes the name. Lord Rosebery signs in a manner difficult to reproduce in print, for the initial of his Christian name is made to form a monogram with

on stone on

the medal

lions over the

gateway of The Durdans."

In study and writing

Lord Rosebery has found a partial out

let for his energies during the four years of his retirement; but the library can never be the true sphere

for so strenuous and rapid a worker. His speeches show that he has not for a moment become indifferent to

politics. He watches everything, hears every

thing, keeps in touch with foreign statesmen and journalists, thinks out all questions connected with State affairs. It was a great author, not a great politician, who wrote in middle age that "The