On the Front Bench opposite was Sir ROBERT PEEL with JAMES GRAHAM at his right elbow. In modest retirement at the end of the Bench sat a young man, of full height, and good figure, with a mass of black hair crowning a large, well-shaped head. Remember noticing how carefully the hair was parted down the middle, in a fashion then unusual with men. His face was pleasant to look upon, even mild in its expression; but from time to time, more particularly when he spoke, there flashed from beneath his dark and bushy eyebrows a pair of eyes that shone like stars. This was the Mr. G. of those days, whose highest Ministerial office, as yet, had been the Under-Secretaryship for the Colonies, held for a few months six years earlier.
Big House on this first night, as Houses were counted then, when the number of Members was considerably less. First business was to choose SPEAKER. SHAW-LEFEVRE (not the Member for Bradford, but a forbear) had been SPEAKER in last Parliament; re-elected now, PEEL, who, by the lifting of a finger, could have put his own nominee in the Chair, graciously consenting.
[Illustration: "The Colossus of Words," 1879.]
Of all who filled the House on that night, only two have seats in the present Parliament--Mr. G., and the humble person who, by favour of the Electors of Barkshire, is permitted to pen these lines. (CHRISTOPHER TALBOT, then represented Glamorganshire, but he just failed to live into this Jubilee time.) Yet, when I look round on the Benches now, I see a score of men who bear the names, and are, in many cases, descendants, of Members who sat in the Parliament that will ever have a place in history, if only because it was born in the same year, almost in the same month, as _Mr. Punch_. There was a THOMAS DYKE ACLAND, representing Devonshire; there were two HENEAGES, one representing Devizes, and the other, EDWARD, sitting for Grimsby, as EDWARD HENEAGE sits to-day for the same borough. There was a BORTHWICK, Member for Evesham. There was a PHILIP STANHOPE, Member for Hertford. STANSFELD sat for Huddersfield, and MARJORIBANKS for Hythe, a LAWSON for Knaresborough, a BECKETT for Leeds, a CHILDERS for Malton, a MANNERS for Newark-upon-Trent, having a certain WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE for colleague. He was the Lord JOHN, well known to students of poetry, who now wears a Ducal coronet.