However, the fumes of Unionist oratory
seem to have ascended to the heads of all the excitable young men of the
Tory party. Mr. Dunbar Barton, personally, is one of the gentlest of
men; his manners are kind and good-natured enough to make him a
universal favourite--even with his vehement Nationalist foes; and he
speaks with evident sincerity. But he had so worked himself up that he
babbled blithely of spending a portion of his days in penal
servitude--talked big about a mysterious organization which was being
got ready in Ulster, and declared that the day would come when he would
stand by the side of the Orangemen in the streets of Belfast. He was
listened to for the most part in silence, until he tripped into an
unseemly remark about Mr. Gladstone, when the much-tried Liberals burst
into an angry protest.
[Sidenote: Mr. Arnold Forster.]
Very different was Mr. Arnold Forster. I must be pardoned if, as an
Irishman, I always see something genial and not wholly unlovely even in
the most violent Irish enemy. We all like Johnston of Ballykilbeg--most
of us rather like Colonel Saunderson, and Mr. Dunbar Barton is decidedly
popular. But this Arnold Forster--with his dry, self-complacent,
self-sufficient fanaticism--is intolerable and hateful.
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