on a public platform, he can never rise to address a meeting which numbers his father among the audience without faltering tongue and trembling knees. I remember something like ten years ago an interesting scene in which a crowded House took the kindliest interest. At that time Mr. Henry Northcote sat for Exeter, and Mr. Herbert Gladstone had at the General Election been elected for Leeds. Mr. Gladstone was Premier, and Sir Stafford Northcote sat on the Front Bench as Leader of the Opposition, daily striving with the Fourth Party, then in the plenitude of its young life. It was arranged that in some debate the two young scions of the opposing houses should in succession make their maiden speech. I forget what the occasion was, but well remember the crowded House, and on the two Front Benches, facing each other, the fathers, critical, kindly, and on the whole well pleased, each hastening to pay a compliment to the other's son.
Mr. Justin M'Carthy.
MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHY. It is difficult to picture one of the gentle mood and instinctively retiring habits of Mr. Justin M'Carthy hampering anyone with a consciousness of his superiority. His modesty is even more conspicuous than his capacity, which seems an exaggerated form of speech. But undoubtedly the presence of the father, even so gentle a presence as this, operated in the direction of effacing the son. Huntley M'Carthy is a young man who might well have been expected to make a high position for himself in the House of Commons. Of good presence, with pleasant voice, a pretty turn of phrasing, a mind stored with learning, familiar with history and politics, touched with the tender light of poetry, he should have gone straight to the heart of the House of Commons. But he rarely spoke, and took an early opportunity of gracefully retiring from the scene.
MR. COLERIDGE.
Mr. Bernard Coleridge in this, at least, resembles Pitt, that he is not handicapped by the presence in the House of an illustrious father. Still like the younger Pitt, he has the further advantage of his father's disappearance from the scene at a period so remote that there are few of his contemporaries in the present House. It is doubtful, moreover, whether the member for the Attercliffe Division of Sheffield would have been embarrassed had his father still been sitting for Exeter. We must not be misled by the coincidence that he bears the same Christian name as the young gentleman who sat for Frome in the Parliament of 1874. If any movement of the kind then suggested by family devotion had been entered upon, it is not probable that Bernard Coleridge, like Bernhard Samuelson, would have retired from the scene, so that his father might have fuller scope. He is too deeply impressed with the debt he owes his country to permit natural modesty or family affection to draw him into taking a back seat. He is filled with that ambition which distinguished the acceptable youth who figures in Le Nouveau Jeu. "Soyons de notre époque," says Costard. "Je veux même être plus que le jeune homme d'aujourd'hui. Je veux être le jeune homme de demain, d'après-demain si possible." For Mr. Coleridge possibility looms larger even than this, nothing more than the middle of next week bounding his clear, steadfast vision.
Mr. Coningsby Disraeli.
MR. CONINGSBY DISRAELI. Mr. Coningsby Disraeli is not handicapped in the Parliamentary race by overbearing connection with the fame of his father. That gentleman was not unknown at Westminster, he having through many years occupied a useful position in the legislative machinery, serving in wig and gown as one of the clerks at the table of the House of Lords. It was from that comparatively
