Now
and then he delivers a speech, in which he declares that rather than see
Home Rule in Ireland, he and his friends will line the ditches with
riflemen. The Pope disturbs his dreams by night and stalks across his
speeches by day; and there is a general impression about him that he is
resolved, some time or other, to walk through a good large stream of
Papist blood. He is also a violent teetotaller; and is so strong on this
point that he is ready to shake hands, even with the deadliest Irish
opponent, across the back of a Sunday Closing Bill. Like most
Parliamentary fire-eaters, he is a mild-mannered man. Time hath dealt
tenderly with him. But still he is well on to the seventies: his hair,
once belligerently red, is thin and streaked with grey; and he walks
somewhat slowly, and not very vigorously. Dr. Rentoul is a man of a
different type. What Johnson feels, Rentoul affects. He is a tall,
common-looking, heavily-built, blustering kind of fellow; great, it is
said, on the abusive Tory platform, almost dumb and utterly impotent in
the House of Commons. These were the vanguard of the Orange army, and
they proceeded to appropriate the first and best seats they could lay
their hands upon.
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