There was no other man among them to whom the lead could be conveniently transferred.

But yet they were uncomfortable,--and perhaps a little ashamed.
It had arisen partly from this cause, that there had been something of a counter-reaction at the last general election.

When the Houses met, the Ministers had indeed a majority, but a much lessened majority.

The old Liberal constituencies had returned to an expression of their real feeling.

This reassertion of the progress of the tide, this recovery from the partial ebb which checks the violence of every flow, is common enough in politics; but at the present moment there were many who said that all this had been accelerated by a feeling in the country that Sir Timothy was hardly all that the country required as the leader of the country party..