[Sidenote: Small jealousies and great questions.]

It is one of the delights of Parliamentary life that you can never be
sure of what is going to take place. The strongest of all possible
Governments may be threatened, and even destroyed, in the course of a
sunny afternoon, which has begun in gaiety and brightest hope; a
reputation may grow or be destroyed in an hour; and an intrigue may
burst upon the assembly in a moment, which has been slowly germinating
for many weeks. Mr. Gladstone had a notice upon the paper on Monday,
February 27th, the effect of which was to demand for the Government most
of the time which ordinarily belongs to the private member. There is no
notice which has more hidden or treacherous depths and cross-currents.
For when you interfere with the private member, you suddenly come in
collision with a vast number of personal vanities, and when you touch
anything in the shape of personal vanity in politics you have got into a
hornet's nest, the multitudinousness, the pettiness, the malignity, the
unexpectedness of which you can never appreciate. I sometimes gaze upon
the House of Commons in a certain semi-detached spirit, and I ask myself
if there be any place in the whole world where you can see so much of
the mean as well as of the loftiest passions of human nature as in a
legislative assembly. Look at these men sitting on the same bench and
members of the same party--perhaps even with exactly the same great
purpose to carry out in public policy, and neither really in the least
dishonest nor insincere. They are talking in the most amicable manner,
they pass with all in the world--including themselves--for bosom
friends; and yet at a certain moment--in a given situation--they would
stab each other in the back without compunction or hesitation, to gain a
step in the race for distinction.

[Sidenote: The dearest foes.]