Gladstone should desire to forget the
existence of Mr. Lowther. Mr. Lowther's face, with its high cheek-bones,
its heavy underhung lip, like the national bulldog in size, and in its
impression of brutal, dull, heavy tenacity--its grotesque
good-humour--its unrelieved coarseness--brings out into higher contrast
and bolder relief the waxen pallor, the beautifully chiselled features,
the dominant benignity and refinement of the face of Mr. Gladstone. And,
then, think that the one man is fighting to maintain, and the other to
put an end, and for ever, to the hateful, bloody, and, it might almost
be said, bestial struggle of centuries; and you can understand the
feeling of overwhelming loathing which sometimes rises in the breasts of
those who see the two men pitted against each other.
[Sidenote: For Jimmy was leader.]
For this was what it had come to in the House of Commons. It was Jimmy
Lowther against Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Balfour occasionally dropped in a
perfunctory word; now and then even tried to raise the standard of
revolt against Mr. Lowther; and, of course, had finally to accept the
consequences of Mr. Lowther's acts. Joe was there too; much more active
in sympathy with Jimmy than Mr.
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