CHAPTER I.
OPENING OF A HISTORIC SESSION.
[Sidenote: Memories.] There is always something that depresses, as well as something that exhilarates, in the first day of a Session of Parliament.

In the months which have elapsed, there have been plenty of events to emphasize the mutability and the everlasting tragedy of human life.

Some men have died; figures that seemed almost the immortal portion of the life of Parliament have disappeared into night, and their place knows them no more; others have met the fate, more sinister and melancholy, of changing a life of dignity and honour for one of ignominy and shame.
[Sidenote: The irony of the seats.] But no such thought disturbed the cheerful souls of some of the Irish Members; in the worst of times there is something exuberant in the Celt that rises superior to circumstance.

This was to be an Irish Session; and the great fight of Ireland's future government was to be fought--perhaps finally.

But there was another circumstance which distinguished this Session from its predecessors.