Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 6).djvu/68

 humble position he, on a February afternoon in 1877, watched the entrance on a new scene of his illustrious brother. It chanced that on this day the Queen opened Parliament in person, and made her entry with all the ceremony proper to the rare occasion. But for the distinguished and illustrious crowd that peopled the chamber from floor to topmost gallery the most attractive figure in the pageant was that disguised in red cloak tipped with ermine, who bore aloft a sword sheathed in jewelled scabbard, and whom the world thenceforward knew as Benjamin Earl of Beaconsfield.

It is with the Parliamentary fame of his uncle that the young member for Altrincham has to struggle. To be a Disraeli in the House of Commons is to fill a place from the occupant of which much is expected. It is to Mr. Coningsby Disraeli's credit in the past, full of hope for the future, that he has hitherto shown himself so modestly that few members know his personal appearance or where he sits. Before he found a seat in the House he threatened to fall into courses of conduct that alarmed his best friends. He took to writing in the Times on questions of Imperial policy, lucubrations the style of which was plainly founded on his uncle's earliest and worst style. This procedure seemed to portend that when he once took his seat he would be incessantly rising from it and putting things straight generally. Happily he has taken the wiser course, sitting attentive and watchful, endeavouring to learn before he begins to teach. Up to this present time of writing he has interposed only once in the proceedings of the House, and that was to ask a pertinent question, addressed to the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Probably for him also "the time will come when we shall hear him." He is judiciously preparing for it by a reasonable interval of silence.

No one regarding Lord Wolmer would, with whatsoever imaginative fancy, be able to construct out of him the Earl of Selborne as he is known in the House of Lords and in other phases of public life. It is impossible to conceive two men of more widely different temperament, personal appearance, or modes of thought. Lord Selborne might stand as Il Penseroso, whilst Lord Wolmer might dance as L'Allegro. There are few members of the present House of Commons who recollect Sir Roundell Palmer seated on the Treasury Bench as Attorney-General. Lord Palmerston was Prime Minister at the time; Mr. Gladstone. was for the third time Chancellor of the Exchequer; Sir George Grey had lately succeeded Cornewall Lewis at the Home Office; Lord John Russell was Foreign Secretary; Lord Westbury was Lord Chancellor; and Sir Robert Peel was just beginning to tire of the Irish Office, because, as he found to be the case in those halcyon days, there was not enough to keep the Chief Secretary going.

Lord Wolmer is relieved from competition in the House of Commons with the memory of his father. He will possibly never rival his father's fame, but he really means business in the political world. He had an admirable training as Whip to the Dissentient Liberal party when it was led in the Commons by Lord Hartington. When he was returned for Edinburgh in the new Parliament, he thought the time had come when he might better serve his country in the Legislative Chamber than in the bustling Lobby. Early in his new career he received a slight check, having, with the exuberance of comparative youth and extreme conviction, spoken of the Irish members in terms that led to an awkward debate on a question of breach of privilege. But Lord Wolmer has survived that, and though it led to a momentary pause in his public conversation on current affairs, it would not be safe to regard the influence as other than temporary.

Mr. Austen Chamberlain supplies perhaps the most striking example in the present House of the embarrassment of a young member whose father stands in the front rank of House of Commons' debaters. On the Second Reading of the Home Rule Bill the member for East Worcestershire delivered