Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/103



IR JOHN FALSTAFF, in Ms days of rotundity, could recollect a time when he was slim enough to "creep through an alderman's thumb-ring." But there are aldermen and aldermen. The Cockney type, with which Shakespeare was, and we Londoners, alas! are, but too familiar, is an ignorant, obese, pompous being, "who struts and stares and a' that,"—a glutton and a wine-bibber, an inveterate jobber, and a Jingo.

The subject of this sketch. Alderman Chamberlain, M.P., the renowned ex-Mayor of Birmingham, is the exact reverse of this picture. Of all living Englishmen he has deservedly earned the highest reputation as a municipal administrator, and he remains a pre-eminently courteous and cultivated gentleman,—a lover of books, of paintings, and of flowers. Indeed I have heard an excellent judge say of the ex-dictator of Birmingham, with his lithe limbs and classical features, that he is perhaps the best bred man in Parliament; and, if he is not the most learned, he is certainly one of the most studious, members of the House. There is a 89