obedience to the vote of the Lower House, had resigned, and the Queen had been graciously pleased to accept Lord de Terrier’s resignation.  Mr. Daubeny could only inform the House that her Majesty had signified her pleasure that Mr. Mildmay should wait upon her to-morrow at eleven o’clock.  Mr. Mildmay,—­so Mr. Daubeny understood,—­would be with her Majesty to-morrow at that hour.  Lord de Terrier had found it to be his duty to recommend her Majesty to send for Mr. Mildmay.  Such was the real import of Mr. Daubeny’s speech.  That further portion of it in which he explained with blandest, most beneficent, honey-flowing words that his party would have done everything that the country could require of any party, had the House allowed it to remain on the Treasury benches for a month or two,—­and explained also that his party would never recriminate, would never return evil for evil, would in no wise copy the factious opposition of their adversaries; that his party would now, as it ever had done, carry itself with the meekness of the dove, and the wisdom of the serpent,—­all this, I say, was so generally felt by gentlemen on both sides of the House to be “leather and prunella” that very little attention was paid to it.  The great point was that Lord de Terrier had resigned, and that Mr. Mildmay had been summoned to Windsor.

The Queen had sent for Mr. Mildmay in compliance with advice given to her by Lord de Terrier.  And yet Lord de Terrier and his first lieutenant had used all the most practised efforts of their eloquence for the last three days in endeavouring to make their countrymen believe that no more unfitting Minister than Mr. Mildmay ever attempted to hold the reins of office!  Nothing had been too bad for them to say of Mr. Mildmay,—­and yet, in the very first moment in which they found themselves unable to carry on the Government themselves, they advised the Queen to send for that most incompetent and baneful statesman!  We who are conversant with our own methods of politics, see nothing odd in this, because we are used to it; but surely in the eyes of strangers our practice must be very singular.  There is nothing like it in any other country,—­nothing as yet.  Nowhere else is there the same good-humoured, affectionate, prize-fighting ferocity in politics.  The leaders of our two great parties are to each other exactly as are the two champions of the ring who knock each other about for the belt and for five hundred pounds a side once in every two years.  How they fly at each other, striking as though each blow should carry death if it were but possible!  And yet there is no one whom the Birmingham Bantam respects so highly as he does Bill Burns the Brighton Bully, or with whom he has so much delight in discussing the merits of a pot of half-and-half.  And so it was with Mr. Daubeny and Mr. Mildmay.  In private life Mr. Daubeny almost adulated his elder rival,—­and Mr. Mildmay never omitted an opportunity of taking Mr. Daubeny warmly by the hand.  It is not so