Page:Australian views of England.djvu/62

  I should judge him capable of much hard work and endurance. I have seen Mr. Disraeli on several subsequent occasions, and his habits of attendance In his place and attention to all that passes do not appear to have been overstated by his biographers.

Of course Lord Palmerston followed Mr. Disraeli Your Mr. Cowper might have said all that the Prime Minister of England said, and said it with quite as much oratorical effect. But there was this difference between Lord Palmerston's common-places and Mr. Cowper's: the old English minister knew exactly the limits within which he must confine himself, and seemed perfectly to know the temper of his audience and the state of public feeling outside In the personal aspect of Lord Palmerston there is a strange incongruity of vigour and infirmity. Standing at the table, he looks fresh and hale; but there is a visible tottering in his step as he walks along the floor, and the way in which he seeks repose as he sits seems to be more forced upon him by exhausted nature than by parliamentary habit

Amidst a little storm of impatient "ohs!" Mr.