Mr.
Gladstone, sitting opposite, attentive and watchful, was evidently much
pleased at the heartiness of Mr. MacCarthy's acceptance of his great
measure.
[Sidenote: Sir George Trevelyan.]
The night wound up with the very best speech I have ever heard Sir
George Trevelyan deliver. Sir George had to answer violent, fierce,
almost malignant assault; but he did so without ever uttering a harsh
word--without losing one particle of his courteous and admirable
self-control--he raised the debate of a great issue to the high place of
difference of principles and convictions, instead of personal bickerings
and hideous and revolting personal animosities. It is the vice of Sir
George Trevelyan as a speaker that he over-prepares--writing out, as a
rule, nearly every word he has to utter, and often some of the very best
speeches I have heard him deliver have been spoiled by giving the fatal
sense of being spoken essays. The speech was carefully prepared, and, so
far as I could observe, was even written out; but its grace of diction,
its fine temper, above all, its manly explanation of a change of view
and its close-knit reasoning, made it really one of the very finest
addresses I have heard in the course of many years' debating.
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