The Irish standard., 1897-07-10

best traditions of piety and honor; he
is sincerely patriotic, and whatever be
the limitations or narrowness Of his
creed, he is essentially an intellectual
and distinguished nature.
The late Lord Denman was very
curious example of the survival of the
name and even the resemblance when
everything else was gone. His father
was great counsel who was able to
withstand all the temptations Of the
between George Nv and his wife, Caro-
line of Brunswick; and afterwards he
was one of the best chief justices the
country ever had. In his son there
was a curious and almost hideous re-
semblance to him. There were the
same strong and finely chiseled Roman
nose, the same height, and the same
f1neness of figure; the voice was also the
same sonorous and melodious organ,
and there was even resemblance
In the very clothes; for the son adhered
rigidly to the style of dress that used
to be the mode in the days of his faith
er's youth; he wore curious necktie
of many folds a long coat which In cut
and color was like survival, and there
was about the whole figure curious
old-world air, not without It's dignity,
but infinitely melancholy. For this out
ward resemblance was but the resem-
blance of the shell; the Lord Denman
was there in externals and in the body,
but the spirit was gone. The Lord Den
man this generation knew would be
harshly described If he were said to be
Insane, for he was not violent, and
never offended any more than he hurt
anybody; but he was certainly of weak,
or at least, eccentric, intellect. He at
tended every sitting of the house of lords
quite conscientiously, and no sitting
passed without his rising to speak. Then
very curious thing would happen.
You, as visitor, would be surprised,
perhaps even little shocked, to OBJ
serve that every peer in the house be-
gan at once to talk to his neighbor, and
to talk in as loud voice as he could,
until the usually sombre and spectrally
silent assembly became positively as
noisy as the grasshoppers in big field.
When you looked at the venerable fig
ure with the hooked nose and heard
the melodious voice, you were positively
shocked that an assembly of nob!emen
should show itself so wanting in the
commonest courtesies of life. But real
ly there was no choice in the matter.
Lord Denman always talked insanities
or imbecilities, and there was no meth
cd by which he could be kept down ex-
cept by the rough-and-ready method
have described He made motions; no.
body took notice of them; the lord
chancellor did not even go through the
formality of putting them to the vote
and having them rejected 1t was as
If nobody had spoken: as If the figure
were a ghost from the grave.
The house of lords has a great ad-
vantage over the house of commons in
dealing with such cases, for 1t is bound
by no standing orders, as the house of
commons is. In the house of commons
the case of lunatics has often given a
good deal of trouble. In the very first
parliament attended there was mem
ber for Scotch constituency who be-
came insane within a few weeks after
his elevation; he never recovered his
senses, and his constituency remained
vacant for the five years of the parlia-
ment's existence. l have heard of an
other and an even more curious case
There was terribly tight division, and
every note counted. The bolder spirits
of one of the parties carried out a
strange plan for gaining a vote. One
as their colleagues was in lunatic asy-
lum; he was taken out for the divis-
ion; one friend stood at one side of him;
another at the other; and in this way
they just managed to get him past the
| turnstiles where the votes were taken.
But the next day the matter was re-
ported, and tn vote was disallowed.
| In the house of lords they have to
resort to no such direct methods. Some
| year or two ago there was a strange
scene in which peer got on the WOOL
sack and put a motion for a bill and
! declared it carried. In the house of
commons this would have meant some
thing terrible, and heaven knows what
machinery would have to be brought
into action. But in the house of lords
they are able to hush these things up,
and to ignore them us II they had never
occurred. The delinquent in this case
was also, heard, the bearer of great
legal name. To see these inheritors
of illustrious titles and names--theBe
! descendants of the men whose swords
or brains helped to build up the splen-
did fabric of the British empire-is an
object lesson in heredity more painful
than anything in Daudet's "Kings in
l?x!le"-sometimes more terrible than
nny' page even in Zola.
Customer-"I don't see how anybody