they beat their own wives, are always indignant at a man who dares to lay a little finger on those of anybody else.  Then, too, the subject was Oriental:  it might even be invested with something of romance and poetry; the zenanah, sacred in the eyes of the oppressed natives, had been ruthlessly insulted, under a glaring Indian sun, amid the luxuriance of Indian foliage, these acts had been committed, &c. &c.  It was a fertile theme for a poet; and how little soever Sheridan cared for the Begums and their wrongs—­and that he did care little appears from what he afterwards said of Hastings himself—­he could evidently make a telling speech out of the theme, and he did so.  Walpole says that he turned everybody’s head.  ’One heard everybody in the street raving on the wonders of that speech; for my part, I cannot believe it was so supernatural as they say.’  He affirms that there must be a witchery in Mr. Sheridan, who had no diamonds—­as Hastings had—­to win favour with, and says that the Opposition may be fairly charged with sorcery.  Burke declared the speech to be ’the most astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit united, of which there was any record or tradition.’  Fox affirmed that ’all he had ever heard, all he had ever read, when compared with it, dwindled into nothing, and vanished like vapour before the sun.’  But these were partizans.  Even Pitt acknowledged ’that it surpassed all the eloquence of ancient and modern times, and possessed everything that genius or art could furnish to agitate and control the human mind.’  One member confessed himself so unhinged by it, that he moved an adjournment, because he could not, in his then state of mind, give an unbiassed vote.  But the highest testimony was that of Logan, the defender of Hastings.  At the end of the first hour of the speech, he said to a friend, ‘All this is declamatory assertion without proof.’  Another hour’s speaking, and he muttered, ’This is a most wonderful oration!’ A third, and he confessed ’Mr. Hastings has acted very unjustifiably.’  At the end of the fourth, he exclaimed, ’Mr. Hastings is a most atrocious criminal.’  And before the speaker had sat down, he vehemently protested that ’Of all monsters of iniquity, the most enormous is Warren Hastings.’

Such in those days was the effect of eloquence; an art which has been eschewed in the present House of Commons, and which our newspapers affect to think is much out of place in an assembly met for calm deliberation.  Perhaps they are right; but oh! for the golden words of a Sheridan, a Fox, even a Pitt and Burke.

It is said, though not proved, that on this same night of Sheridan’s glory in the House of Commons, his ‘School for Scandal’ was acted with ‘rapturous applause’ at Covent Garden, and his ‘Duenna’ no less successfully at Drury Lane.  What a pitch of glory for the dunce who had been shamed into learning Greek verbs at Harrow!  Surely Dr. Parr must then have confessed that a man can be great without the classics—­nay,