[Sidenote: Jimmy.]
But of all the things which indicate the new state of affairs which has
arisen, nothing is so significant as the change in the position of Jimmy
Lowther. People think that I have attached too much importance to this
extraordinary individual, and that he should be taken simply as the
frank horse-jockey he looks and seems. I have given my reasons for
believing that in a crisis Jimmy would develop a very different side of
his character, and that he has in him--latent and disguised for the
moment--all the terrible passions and possibilities of the aristocrat at
bay. However, let that question rest with history and its future
developments; his position at the present moment is very peculiar. There
is a report that the desire of his heart is to sit on the first seat on
the front bench below the gangway, which for seven years was occupied by
Mr. Labouchere, and which for the five years of Mr. Gladstone's Ministry
of 1880 to 1885 was occupied by Lord Randolph Churchill when he was the
chief of the dead and buried Fourth Party. That seat is the natural
point for a sharpshooter and guerilla warrior. Indeed, the first seat
below the gangway seems just as marked out by fate for such a man as
Jimmy Lowther, as one of the high fortresses on the Rhine for the work
of the bold freebooter of the Middle Ages.
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