MEN AND MANNER IN PARLIAMENT.

Thames Star, Volume IIII, Issue 1750, 12 August 1874, Page 3

MEN AND MANNER IN PARLIAMENT.

' Mr. Di«raeli's manner in the House of Commons is one strongly marked, and is, doubtless undesignedly, calculated t» increase the personal interest which has for more than a generation been taken in him by the public. Either because his colleagues do not care to chat with him. or because he discourages private conversation in the House, Mr Disraeli always

sits apart in a sort of grim loneliness, Mr. Gladstone is, except when he sleeps, rarely quiet for a moment, frequently engaging in conversation with tho c. near him. often .laughing heartily himself, and being the cause of laughter in his interlocutors. When Mr. Disraeli enters the House and takes his accustomed seat, he crosses one leg over the other, folds his' '4arms, hangs his head, and io sits for ■fettr s at a time in statuesque silence. he rises to speak he generally rests his hand for a moment on the table, but it is only for a moment. for he inrariably endeavours to pain the ear of his audience by making a point at the outset, and the attitude which he fine's most conducive to the happy delivery of points is to stand balancing hims«lf upon his f< et with his hands in his coat-iail pockets In this position, with his head hung down as if he were mentally debating how best to express a thought that had just, occurred to his mind Mr Disrat-li slowly utters the polished and prisoned sentences orer which he has spent laborious hours in the closet. Mr Bright is a great phraselaaker, and comes down to the House with the gems ready cut and polished to fit in the setting of a speech JBut no one could guess from Mr Bright's manner that the phrases he drops in as he goes •long are fairly written out on a slip of paper carried in his waistco: t pocket as he crossed the bar of the House. He has the art to hide his art, and hi* hearers may well fancy they see the process of the fornntio-i of the sentences actually going on m the mind,of the orator, all aglowas it is with the passion of eloquence. But the meres ■ tyro in the House knows a moment before-hand when Mr. Disraeli is approaching what heregards as a con- . venient place in his speech for dropping in the phrase-gem he pretendi to have just found in an odd corner of his mind. They see him leading up to it; they note the disappearance of his hands in the direction of the coat-tail pockets, sometimes in search of the pocket-handker-chief, which is broug'it out and shaken with.a light and careless air, but most often to extend the cat-tails, whilst with body jtently rocked to and fro, and an affected hesitancy of speech, the speaker produces his hon mot. . For the style of repartee in which Mr. Disraeli indulges —which may be generally described as a sort of solemn chaffing, varied by strokes of polished sarcasm, this manner i» admirable, in proportion it has been seldom observed.—Gentleman's Magazine.