Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 6).djvu/584

 voice seems to improve, certainly is more skilfully and effectually modulated.

Lord Salisbury has a sonorous, musical voice that makes it a physical pleasure to listen to him. As compared with Mr. Gladstone's vigorously varied tone, his manner of speech is charmingly equable. Mr. Gladstone sometimes orates; Lord Salisbury always converses. The contrast between him and his son and heir is deeply marked. When Lord Cranborne addresses the House of Commons his word come tumbling out after the fashion of the waters at Lodore. He is always at white heat, and conveys to his audience the impression that if they would excuse him he would find it a great relief to scream.

Lord Salisbury, though when making an important speech he is careful to speak up to the Press Gallery, rarely departs from his conversational manner. He never declaims or overwhelms the adversary with indignant denunciation. But he can upon occasion inflect his voice with a vibration conveying a feeling of scorn and contempt much harder to be borne by persons directly concerned than would be any amount of oratorical beating about the head.

Mr. Balfour has a musical voice and a delivery that has vastly improved of late years, even of late months. He does not imitate the cynically unemotional manner of his uncle. He is indeed given to let his voice ring through the crowded House, as, with clenched hand beating the air, he pours contumely and scorn on hon. gentlemen below the gangway or seated on the benches opposite. His voice is admirably fitted to himself and his speech, having a certain note of elegance and distinction which forms the complement of his public performance and his social amenities.

Mr. Chamberlain has a voice so pleasant that its music must do something to soften the asperity of the Irish member who listens to him. It is soft and low—a beautiful thing in a public speaker, especially when there is added the quality of perfect distinctness. When occasion invites, Mr. Chamberlain can throw into his tone a rasping note, suggestive of jagged edges in the dart he is discharging. That happens seldom, and is least effective. The art of saying the very nastiest things in the most mellifluous voice is a rare possession. Mr. Chamberlain has cultivated it to perfection.