RADICALISM: A FAMILIAR COLLOQUY.

MRS. HERVEY was a lady of some importance in London, and of great importance at Cannes. At this latter place she was possessed of the largest villa, and the one best arranged for receiving in; and her gardens, further, were so exceptional in their beauty that though countless notices proclaimed them to be strictly private, there were few genuine tourists who did not make a point of visiting them. Mrs. Hervey had two lawn-tennis courts, the delight of the young and active; and some unique brown sherry, the delight of the wise of every age. She had personal charms, moreover, which almost equalled her adventitious ones; it was therefore only in the nature of things that all her parties were excellent, and composed exclusively of the pick of Cannes society. Nor was social selection always the only thing she embodied in them. Herself the daughter of a staunch Conservative peer, and the wife of a Conservative ex-minister, her smaller gatherings had a delicate party flavour; and though fashionable Radicals even might recruit their popular energies on her tenniscourts, they were kept like weeds out of her luncheon and her dinnerlists. These contained none but such as were on the right side in politics, with the exception of a few distinguished Whigs, who appeared there like rare exotics.

To-day there was wanting even this alien element. As pure a Conservative clique as ever broke bread together had just risen from an early lunch or breakfast, and had settled in easy chairs under the shade of the broad verandah. The glow, though, and the glare of the sun was warming everything; the air of January was soft as the air of June; fountains splashed hard by amongst tall and slender eucalyptus trees, and through spiked palm-leaves showed the blue depths of the sky. Cigarettes, coffee, and liqueurs were being handed round; and when, under this new dispensation of comfort, conversation again developed itself, our friends began deploring the shattered state of their party, and the imminent ruin of their own country in consequence. Their views, as is usual upon such occasions, were gloomy in an extreme degree. One brighter remark only, like a solitary star, had twinkled through the clouds for a moment, and was again lost in them. This proceeded from a newly-created peer, who had received his

honours from the dying hands of the late Government, and who was heard in one period of the conversation assuring Mrs. Hervey that England, through all its changes, was still beneath the surface thoroughly aristocratic in its sentiments.

'My dear lady,' he said, 'you may talk as you will, but it's a feeling that goes through all classes. Your own butler has as much of it as you or I. He makes each one of those powdered fellows call him sir; and they, too, when they come to be butlers, will exact just the same deference from their own subordinates.'

'So they do now,' replied Mrs. Hervey, 'for matter of that. I overheard John, one day, abusing the hall-boy; and I can tell you,' she said laughing, that he swore like any lord at him.'

'Exactly,' said my lord approvingly; it's exactly what I say. And it always will be so-at least in England-always will be so.' That is,' said Mrs. Hervey, if Mr. Gladstone leaves us any footmen or any hall-boys at all.'

'Ah,' replied his lordship, relapsing again into pessimism, 'the situation is certainly very serious.' And with that the bright gleam faded. The grounds for Conservative confidence disappeared from the conversation; and Conservative forebodings again became uppermost.

'My goodness! when will they stop?' exclaimed a young man in a very impatient undertone. He was speaking to a handsome girl next him, who seemed to lose no pretext for raising her eyes to his. 'Croak, croak, croak,' he said. There they go; it's the true Conservative chorus. If this doesn't stop soon, I shall have to get up and go.'

'No, don't go,' said his fair companion winningly. Why should this fidget you? You are not a Radical, are you?'

They are simply

'If I were it would delight me, not fidget me. It is because they are my friends that I can't bear to hear them exposing themselves. All these gloomy predictions really mean nothing. They neither warn any one, instruct any one, nor frighten any one. an annoying form of small-talk. I beg your pardon, though; I must eat my own words again. They do warn, they do instruct, and they do frighten me; not, however, because they throw much light on the troubles that are to come in the future, but because they throw much light on the weakness of our own party in the present. This querulous despondency of Conservative conversation shows how little our average Conservatives understand the strength of their cause; and it may really tend for a certain time to reduce it. Idiots! since their last defeat they have done little but complain how complete it was. It has been, for all the world, as though they were crying, "Come, kick me." And, on my word, were I a Radical, I should like to go and do it.'

'Well,' said the young lady, there is no use shirking facts. Last year we were beaten, and beaten terribly. Five of our family were in the last Parliament, and only two in this.'

'That may well be; but that does not alter what I was saying. Every cause at times suffers repulses, and it is for its own good that it does so. But no cause deserves to win that cannot endure defeat. Now our noble friend over there made one very sane remark just now, but the strange thing was that he dropped it as soon as made.'

'And what remark was that?-that the Conservative cause had a sure future before it, because Mrs. Hervey's footman was heard to swear at the hall-boy?'

'Precisely; and I shall remind him again of it, when he has done whispering about me to Mrs. Hervey; for that's what he is doing now-I know it is by the look of him.'

Nor was this conjecture wrong. Who's that young man?' his lordship was just then asking. You told me his name at luncheon, but I couldn't quite distinguish it.'

6

'Ob,' said Mrs. Hervey, that is young Mr. Seacorts, who contested Southshire at the last election, and who was only beaten by six votes. I think you must have heard of him.'

'Heard of him! God bless my soul, of course I have! How are you, my dear fellow-how are you? I'm a trifle deaf, and I didn't catch your name just now. Why, your father and I were at school together, at college together, and in the House of Commons together. I wonder what he'd have thought of the present state of affairs, eh? You ought to be in the House of Commons too, if the people had only known their duty.'

6

'H'm,' sighed the other, these are bad times for waiting. The real fact is you're a great deal too gentlemanly for the electors. They don't want a gentleman now if they can help it.'

'I should be sorry to think that myself; and I am surprised that you should think it. You said, but a few moments ago, that the country was still, under the surface, thoroughly aristocratic in sentiment.'

'Ah,' said his lordship, not without some surprise, 'I was thinking of social matters then, not of politics. So far as politics go, I believe the masses to be profoundly Radical; and where it will all end, Heaven only knows. Isn't that your opinion? Hasn't your experience told you that?'

'No,' said Seacorts, I can really not say that it has. The masses themselves I do not believe to be Radical.'

'Then where,' interposed Mrs. Hervey, 'would you say the Radical power came from?"

'I should say that it acted through the masses, but that it does not originate in the masses. Its origin is higher in the social scale. It springs from a certain section of the middle class, and it is really a middle-class cause, and not a popular one.'

'This is just,' said Mrs. Hervey,' what you spoke to me about

yesterday; and there was a conversation you had had with some Radical acquaintance of yours, which you promised to repeat to me. But you know my opinion is, that the middle classes are exceedingly un-Radical. They may be safe steady-going Liberals, if you like; but there is nothing in their creed that is in the least Radical or alarming.'

'Radicalism,' said Seacorts, 'is not a creed; it is simply a piece of temper.'

'There,' said Mrs. Hervey, again we differ. I should have thought the middle classes the most phlegmatic part of the community.'

'The middle classes,' said Seacorts, are a miscellaneous body; and certain sections are doubtless as you describe them. But the section that I allude to is at once small and peculiar. I shall describe it by a somewhat vague, and yet very suggestive term, as the disaffected section. The disaffection I ascribe to it is a highly complex thing; a variety of causes go to the production of it: and it is only when we study the causes, that we can really understand the effect. What I mean is, in other words, this: if we would understand Radicalism, we should study the biography of Radicals; and I mean now by Radicals, not the rank and file of the party, but the leaders more or less prominent, who, either in public or in private, have zeal to spread their opinions.'

I thought,' replied Mrs. Hervey, that you said they had no opinions—nothing but a piece of temper.'

'Yes; but a piece of temper, when it gets beyond ejaculations, always expresses itself in the form of certain opinions. Indeed, developed ill-temper is a set of opinions; that is the analysis of it; and these often seem to have an extreme coherency, and are assented to by the persons holding them with a vigour and fierceness of faith which it is hard elsewhere to parallel. But their special peculiarity lies in the ground they are held upon; and this is simply the imagination in a certain excited state. It was De Quincey, I think, who observed that of all forms of imagination, the imagination of illtemper is the strongest. It is stronger than the poet's; it is stronger even than the lover's, except in those frequent cases where the two are identical. You know, Mrs. Hervey--at least, I hope you don't know-how bitterly two lovers, when they quarrel, will accuse each other; how they will draw up in an instant hateful, wanton indictments, tissues each of them of circumstantial falsehoods; and how these falsehoods for the moment will seem to have all the venom of truth in them, and will curse equally both those who give and take them. Well, social ill-temper is the same sort of thing as the lover's, except that it lasts longer, and is more easy to communicate.'

'Give us an instance,' said his lordship gravely. 'I confess that at this moment I don't quite follow you.'

1

'I can give you an extremely simple one. An engaged couple go together to a ball. The man meets a fair friend of former days, and, with a purely brotherly feeling, says a few friendly words to her. The fiancée thinks he is flirting, takes sudden offence, and for the rest of the evening site out on the back-stairs with a guardsman. The entertainment comes to an end, and the happy couple drive home together. What do they say to each other? The man is sullen; the lady begins the battle. "Well," she exclaims, "and a pretty way you behaved to-night. But it's always the same. I quite knew what to expect. You can never see a single pretty girlalways provided that you are not engaged to marry her-but you sit in her pocket the whole evening long. And you always choose the person that you know I should most object to. It's not that you care for her, or admire her, or think her the least bit pretty; but that you long and desire to slight and irritate me." There's the lover's temper. The Radical's is just the same; only what excites the Radical is a condition of society in which he must always have superiors; and it is with these superiors that his imagination busies itself. Rank, birth, breeding, and any riches that are in excess of his own, are distorted by his imagination into hateful or absurd abuses; and he attacks them as such with the diseased ingenuity of a lifetime.'

Mrs. Hervey was a true woman, even in the way in which her thoughts would wander. 'I've been wondering, Mr. Seacorts,' she said, all this time, what is the exact class of people you are speaking about. Are they people one would meet, do you mean? or what?'

'I don't know whether you personally would meet them, Mrs. Hervey. I should think very likely not; but I can't define the class very accurately, because it is, as it were, a kind of secret society, and the points of agreement between its members are often far below the surface. One thing, however, we may say, I think, quite safely. Radicals, as a rule, are people without land, and have but slight social connection with the landed interest.'

But

6 'I wish,' said his lordship, I could believe that were so. there were actually sixty peers who voted for Mr. Gladstone's Disturbance Bill.'

'But they did that,' said Seacorts, as Liberals, not as Radicals; and though I think that as Liberals they acted on this occasion wrongly, yet a true Liberal is, at least in will and intention, as antiRadical as any true Conservative. If you want to know what a real Radical is-I had last week a long discussion with one; and I promised Mrs. Hervey to give her some account of it. Indeed, if I hadn't found such a party assembled here, I meant to have told her about it this morning.'

Tell us now,' said Mrs. Hervey; we should all like to hear, and I'm longing to know what you think a real Radical is.'

'Of course,' said Seacorts, a Radical is a vague word, and many