[Illustration:  Craig (not Ailsa).]

HANBURY been looking into our Army Service, and behold! it is very bad.  Condemns it, lock, stock, and barrel.  Things no better than they were in time of Crimean War.  Our Army costs more, and could do less than any in the world.  Curious to find statement like this gravely made in presence of twenty-eight Members, all told, including the SPEAKER.  Suppose it’s true, Empire on verge of precipice, into which, on slightest impulse, it may totter and disappear.  Hon. Members, in the main, care so little that they busy themselves writing letters, chatting in Lobby, gossipping in Smoke-room; the few present admirably succeed in disguising terror that must possess them as HANBURY, in solemn voice, utters his lamentation.

“HANBURY,” said CRAIG, looking across the House at tall figure below Gangway, “reminds me of the old party that rust LOCHIEL, and told him his prospects in the next war were at least doubtful,—­

  ’LOCHIEL, LOCHIEL, beware of the day
  When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle-array.’”

LOCHIEL STANHOPE recks no more than the Northern Chieftain; makes speech nearly two hours long, proving to empty, but interested Benches, that never since Peninsular War had Great Britain an Army so large or so fully equipped.  When midnight struck, the few Members present shook themselves, yawned, and went home. Business done.—­In Committee on Army Estimates.

[Illustration:  Mr. Swift MacNeill’s little joke.]

Tuesday.—­Never saw in the flesh procession of Russian Convicts starting on their journey to Siberia.  Have read about it, though; have even seen pictures thereof.  The most saddening and soul-depressing of these came back to mind just now, when PULESTON, PELLY and BURDETT-COUTTS forlornly filed forth at command of Chairman of Committees, amid cheers of heartless Opposition.  If they’d only been a little more ragged in appearance, and, above all, if they had been connected by leg-chain, illusion would have been complete.  Members on Front Benches, as they passed them, wearily faring forth, could not have resisted natural impulse to feel in their waistcoat pocket for a kopec or two to bestow upon the unfortunates.

It was the suddenness of the sentence, the swift falling of the blow, that made it so cruelly heavy.  Last Friday these three Members had supported a vote subsidising East Africa Co. in matter of preliminary expenses of railway through their territory.  Someone had discovered they were pecuniarily interested in undertaking.  To-day SWIFT MACNEILL raised the question of parliamentary law in such cases.  Moved Resolution that vote of three Members be disallowed.

Nothing could exceed gentleness of MACNEILL’s demeanour.  Rather in sorrow than in anger he moved in the matter, anxious, as all Irish Members are, for purity of Parliamentary practice and sanctity of constitutional principles.  Almost blubbered in BURDETT-COUTTS’s waistcoat; embraced PELLY and PULESTON in comprehensive smile of amity.