You say a thing which has the remotest approach to an absurdity in it, and the whole House laughs consumedly and immediately.

You utter a phrase which excites party feeling, and at once--quick as lightning falls--comes back the retort of anger or approval; your way is studded and punctuated with some response or other, that signifies the readiness and the depth and amplitude of emotion in one of the most emotional, and noisy, and responsive assemblies in the world.

It is a curious change from all this to look on all these crowded benches sitting in a silence that is unbroken more than once in the course of half an hour.
[Sidenote: Spencer's serene courage.] I have often had to admire Lord Spencer--to admire him when he was a political foe as well as when he has been a political friend; but I don't think I ever admired him so much as when he stood up on September 4th to address this strange assembly.

Hours he has passed through of all-pervading and all-surrounding gloom, danger, and assassination; but I do not suppose his nerve was ever put to a test more trying than when he confronted those large battalions of uncompromising and irresponsive foes.

There were foes on all sides of him.