overcoats. Our train ran alongside the jetty, and bidding farewell to our god on wheels we went on board the ANGARA, a fine boat with the snout bows necessary for breaking through the heavy ice which forms over this inland sea in the winter, and crossing over in her to Baikal Station, we took a fresh train and came on to Irkutsk where a halt was called, and we all swarmed out of our prison, welcoming any diversion. On the platform I spied a peasant woman carrying a baby and a huge bouquet of the flowers we had lately been passing, and the two Irish ladies at once coveted so much sweetness. How to supply their wishes, however, was another matter. I tried French with no result; I held out some silver on the palm of my hand and pointed to the flowers with the other, but the woman turned coldly away. At last a thought struck me. Snatching up some fruit from a stall close by, for which I flung down its probable value in kopecks, I thrust it into the child's hand, and at this at last the mother smiled and scanned me with interest. Instantly I lifted the bouquet from her hand and smiled at her in turn; and quickly now she seized my meaning and pressed back upon me both flowers and fruit with many bright nods and eager gestures, until it was with difficulty that I prevented the child from being robbed of its spoils.

Irkutsk, like most of the large towns along the line, is well laid out and lighted, with many handsome stone buildings. Its next neighbour, a thousand miles further on, is a shipping centre with great wharves and plenty of river traffic during the summer months, by way of the Arctic Ocean from the White Sea. But exports from Siberia must be a negligible quantity. The peasants raise no more than enough for their

own personal wants, and any army in the Far East must be fed entirely by rail from Europe. It was in this connection that I observed the remarkable dearth of rolling-stock on this strategic Russian line. Everything seemed sacrificed to passenger and troop service; and if in war the Russian army on the Pacific seaboard is to depend for the necessaries of life and strife upon the Siberian railway alone, there must ensue a very serious state of things, compared to which the difficulties of our transport in the Boer war will be as nothing. There is one commodity in which Siberia is wealthy, and that is horseflesh. All over those wonderful steppes herds of ponies browse, stout hardy little beasts, an invaluable asset in time of war. From time to time we came upon fair quantities of stolid cattle, but the ponies were everywhere, now nibbling demurely at the grass, now with a mad flourish of hoofs galloping off to a little distance, there to turn and watch us through their wind-blown manes. Nor can I pass from Siberia's equine riches without mentioning her equally ubiquitous mosquitoes. I have not been in the Klondyke, but I am confident that the venomous midAsian variety of mosquito must be hard to beat. The wayside residents never seemed to stray abroad without enveloping their face and hands in thick green veils, and if by mischance one of these agile pests gained entrance to our carriage, a period of restlessness and activity supervened until our tormentor had paid for its boldness with its life.

Day by day we travelled steadily westward. Troop trains passed us continually on their way to Manchuria; six a day was the average that swung by, while about once a day a convict train, sometimes by itself, sometimes attached to the rear

of an ordinary passenger train, hurried inexorably past. These convicts seemed to be confined in the usual third-class carriages, but the windows were heavily barred, and at every stopping place the Cossack guard formed up on both sides of the train, with drawn swords in their hands, even the women's and children's compartments being hedged about by that barrier of naked steel. As we ran into Penza, we found the whole town en fête, bidding farewell to the 123rd regiment which was entraining for the Far East. The eager crowds and hearty shouts put me irresistibly in mind of the days when we had sent out our soldiers to South Africa with just such confident affection and pride. Here, in the heart of another vast Empire, men of alien blood, who had hardly heard of the Transvaal, were giving way to the self-same emotions and expressing them in the self-same way, and for a moment I shut my eyes and imagined myself in England. My German companion, taking me in tow, crossed the metals and spoke to the soldiers as they hung out of the windows in excited batches. "Where are you going?" he asked, and presently one who understood French struggled to the fore and, with an indescribable grin upon his face, replied grimly, "We are going to evacuate Manchuria !”

On this side of the Urals the scenery was again greatly changed from that of Siberia. The waste steppes gave place to vistas of corn land, though the villages were still few and far between. Nor are the peasants as a rule directly interested in the corn-crop, which is chiefly to the benefit of the landed proprietors who leave the cultivation in the hands of agents, and these frequently import their labour at harvest-time and use machinery to the widest extent possible. Instead of cream and straw

berries, as in Siberia, the peasants here bring wax figures of convicts in chains to the trains to dispose of, and quantities of lace, for lacemaking in these parts attains the rank of an industry. Great works, principally iron works, have sprung up in these towns under M. Witte's encouraging hand, and samples of the manufactures are exhibited on stalls at all the stations where the principal trains pause for breath. But of trustworthy

Rus

news there is an utter dearth. sian posts are sent, not by express but, by slow train, for who, except a mad Englishman, needs to read the news or to know the time? At Tchelabinsk I had the curiosity to buy a halfpenny London paper of a week old for the equivalent of twopence, and found all the information, both of the Near and of the Far East, carefully smudged out.

I was now nearing my journey's end, but I had yet one amusing experience before me ere I left Russia and its fashions. The passport I had received at Niuchwang I had never had occasion to have viséd, as I had been careful not to sleep a single night away from the train, with the purpose of avoiding any encounter, however trivial, with the formidable Russian police. But now that I was at the frontier I found that, by this very circumstance, I had never obtained permission to leave the country. The gendarme at Alexandrovo, who was looking at my passport, evidently thought me a suspicious character, and as he had no words of any language with which I was familiar, and I had no words of Russian, we could not arrive at a diplomatic settlement. At last he gave me to understand by signs that I was free to go about the town for a little, while he looked into the matter, and when I ventured to return after a short walk, he met me with a cleared brow and these words

not an orator in the present House of Commons. The great men of the past are succeeded, as Edmund Burke would say, by 'sophisters, economists and calculators.' So he goes on, growing positively rhetorical, "Oh, for the majestic eloquence of Pitt, the profound reasoning of Burke, the passion and fire of Fox, the brilliant imagery of Sheridan. How impressive, how thrilling, parliamentary debates must have been in the days of those masters of eloquence !"

The fame of Chatham and Pitt, Fox, Burke, and Sheridan, as orators rests mainly upon contemporary opinion. The note of panegyric is indeed highly strung in these eulogiums. "Chatham's eloquence," said Henry Grattan, "resembled sometimes the thunder and sometimes the music of the spheres." We read also that "as a parliamentary orator Pitt had no superior." Burke called Fox, "the most brilliant and accomplished debater that the world ever saw." Of Burke himself we are told that he "soared on the majestic wing of a gorgeous eloquence to every clime where there was a wrong to be redressed." Another piece of contemporary testimony is that, as an orator, Sheridan impressed the House

of Commons more deeply than almost any predecessor. It would seem, indeed, as if each of these orators was superior to all the others, which reminds one of the saying attributed to an Irishman,-" Every man is as good as another, and twenty times. better." The contemporaries of these statesmen, whose opinions have come down to us, seem to have lost their senses (or at least, the sense of proportion) in appraising the nature and the effects of the oratory of the period. Contemporary opinion has little weight, if any, in literature and art. The books and pictures of the past are judged by each age independently, according to its own special standards of taste and criticism. But contemporary opinion of the parlia mentary oratory of the end of the eighteenth century has been accepted as conclusive, and has been repeated from generation to generation, as a sort of pontifical judgment, without being put to the test of an examination of the speeches themselves.

Macaulay is responsible for much of the fame which the parliamentary orators of the end of the eighteenth century now enjoy. As a literary artist he dealt more in glowing periods than in cold and commonplace facts, and in order to construct a striking and vivid picture improved upon even the exaggerations of tradition. How lavish he is with his colours, how prodigal of his inimitable phrases, on the subject of the voice of Chatham! "His voice, even when it sank to a whisper was heard to the remotest benches, and when he strained it to its full extent the

sound rose like the swell of an organ of a great Cathedral, shook the House with its peal and was heard through the lobbies and down staircases to the Court of Requests and the precincts of Westminster Hall." How the imagination is fired, how the mind is impressed, with the might and majesty of the very look of the orator! "His play of countenance was wonderful," writes Macaulay; "he frequently disconcerted a hostile orator by a single glance of indignation and scorn.' Contemporary accounts of the arrogance, impetuosity, and fierceness of the elder Pitt, are, indeed, incredible. Charles Butler in his REMINISCENCES tells some amazing stories, on contemporary authority, of the manner in which that orator overawed his opponents. Chief Justice Moreton once said in the House of Commons, "King, Lords, and Commons, or "-looking at the elder Pitt-" as that right honourable member would term them, Commons, Lords, and King." Pitt called the judge to order, and desired that his words be taken down, which was accordingly done by the clerk.

Bring them to me," said Pitt in his loftiest tone. By this time Moreton, we are told, was frightened out of his "Sir," senses. he stammered out, addressing the Speaker, "I am sorry to have given any offence to the right hon. member or to the House. I meant nothing. I meant nothing. King, Lords, and Commons-Lords, King, and Commons Commons, Lords, and King: tria juncta in uno. I meant nothing; indeed I meant nothing! he piteously pleaded. The awe-inspiring and terrible Pitt arose. "I don't wish to push the matter further," said he with unexpected magnanimity. "The moment a man acknowledges his error, he ceases to be guilty. I have a great regard for the honourable member;

"

and as an instance of that regard I give him this advice:whenever he means nothing I recommend him to say nothing."

Butler also relates that on another occasion Pitt, after finishing a great speech, walked out of the House at his usual slow pace. The House remained still and silent until Pitt opened the door leading to the lobby. Then a member got up and began: "I rise to reply to the honourable member Pitt turned back at once,

and fixed his terrible eye on his opponent, who instantly sat down trembling and dumb. Then placing himself in his seat Pitt exclaimed, "Now let me hear what the honourable member has to say to me!" But the honourable member, intimidated no doubt by Pitt's "glance of indignation and scorn," was tongue-tied. Butler asked the person from whom he obtained this anecdote,-an eye-witness of the scene-if the House did not laugh at the ridiculous figure cut by the poor silence-stricken member. The reply was,-"No, Sir, we were all too amazed to laugh." This is fiction, surely, though good fiction; yet Brougham tells a better story still in his STATESMEN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE III. It is related, he says, that once in the House of Commons the elder Pitt began a speech with the words "Sugar, Mr. Speaker," and then, seeing a smile pervade the assembly, he paused, glared fiercely around, and with a loud voice rising in its notes and swelling into vehement anger, repeated the word sugar three times. "Having thus quelled the House," says Brougham, "and dispelled every appearance of levity or laughter he turned round and scornfully asked:- Who will laugh at sugar now?'" It is, of course, impossible to believe that so grotesque an incident ever happened. The elder Pitt, by all accounts, was a