to a Liberal Government unprepared for such a responsibility to make the best they could of the conditions bequeathed to them, or to fail utterly in the attempt, and thus mar their chances for the future. The Liberal Government, however, very wisely determined to throw upon their Tory predecessors the full responsibility for their ten years of office, and to appeal at once to the constituencies of all Great Britain and Ireland for their deciding choice between the two political parties. The choice declared itself, I need hardly say, in a majority for the Liberals the like of which has never been known in the history of that party, or of any other party here since the great Reform Bill of 1832. In all recent generations a Ministry has been held safe and strong which could count on a majority of 100 in a party division-the Liberal Ministry under Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman has already on several occasions defeated the Conservatives by majorities of more than 300.

Under these auspicious conditions Lord Aberdeen occupies for the second time the Irish Viceroyalty. Nearly twenty years have passed since Lord Aberdeen's first appointment to the place which he now holds. The first appointment was given to him by Mr. Gladstone at the time when Gladstone brought out in the House of Commons his earlier measure for the granting of Home Rule to Ireland. At that time, however, there were no such prospects open to a Viceroy of Lord Aberdeen's principles as those which welcome him now. When he first came to Ireland as Viceroy, the great mass of the Irish people were ready to give him their most cordial welcome because he came as the representative of a Home Rule policy, but few indeed had any real hope just then that Gladstone's great reform was destined to success. Yet it must be said that no Irish Viceroy had ever before been sent to Dublin who endeared himself more to the people he was commissioned to govern than did Lord Aberdeen during the short time allowed to him by adverse political fate for his maintenance of the office. He would, of course, have been welcome in any case

were it only because he came as the representative of the Home Rule policy, but he soon showed personal gifts and graces, a generous heart, a sympathetic spirit, and an intellectual capacity which must have won for him the admiration and the affection of the Irish people. He now returns to Ireland the same man, to hold the same position, but under very different conditions. He is now in Ireland as the representative of the strongest Liberal Government we have had for many generations. The present Prime Minister has long been a proclaimed Home Ruler, and in his Government leading places are held by men like John Morley, James Bryce, and many others who have always in the darkest times for Home Rule held firmly to its principle.

The Irish Nationalist party is stronger now in numbers than it ever was before, and is thoroughly united in political purpose and has even won some seats from that Orange province of Ulster which at one time made itself the camping-ground of every anti-Irish faction. Then it has to be added that the Labor party, which is now for the first time a numerous and powerful party in the House of Commons, is prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Irish Nationalists on the question of Home Rule for Ireland. Within the last few years, also, some of the British colonies have in their local parliaments passed strong resolutions calling upon the Parliament at Westminster to grant Ireland's demand for the right of governing her own domestic affairs while remaining under these altered conditions a contented and loyal partner in the British Empire. My American readers will readily understand what a difference these changes make between the conditions of Lord Aberdeen's former mission to Ireland and the conditions which welcome his second Viceroyalty there. The present Liberal Government have not thus far delivered any formal announcement of their resolve to bring in a Home Rule measure at any definite time. But it has been clearly made known by Sir Henry CampbellBannerman and by other leading members of his administration that the principle is accepted, and that when the

huge burden of unfinished work left upon their hands by their predecessors shall have been dealt with to some reasonable extent, and when the errors of their predecessors shall have been as far as possible corrected, the Government will begin the movement to give to Ireland her right and her system of selfgovernment.

Lord Aberdeen was not trained to political life in the House of Commons, because he succeeded too early to his family title, which gave him at once a place in the House of Lords. A man of ability, devoted to a political life, loses much by having no training in the stirring and vivid debates of the House of Commons. The House of Lords is for the most part a rather dull assembly; its meetings do not usually occupy more than an hour or two; it very seldom becomes the scene of any great parliamentary struggle, and only on rare occasions listens to a really important and thrilling debate. There are always some powerful speakers and eloquent debaters in the House of Lords, but most of these have come from the representative chamber by the succession to or gift of a title, and some of these have already accomplished the great political work of their lives and do not feel called upon to trouble themselves much about making a display in the unstimulating atmosphere of the House of Lords. Lord Aberdeen, however, soon gave evidence in the Peers' chamber that nature had given him some of the best qualities of a parliamentary debater. He had a fine voice, had been a devoted student of literature and art as well as of history and politics, had a ready and fluent utterance, and a remarkable power of sustained argument; and these qualifications were enhanced by his fine figure and handsome face. Lord Aberdeen soon discovered that the old-fashioned Conservative political principles were not suited to his progressive mind, and he became before long an advanced Liberal and a devoted follower of Gladstone. The result was that Gladstone soon saw in him a man who could render high service to the State if only the State allowed him opportunity; and when he brought in his Home Rule measure,

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he made Lord Aberdeen Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. I have often wondered whether Gladstone did not at the time take account of some other advantages possessed by Lord Aberdeen which must help to make him especially welcome to a susceptible and enthusiastic people like those of Ireland. Lord Aberdeen was the husband of one of the most gifted and charming women that it has ever been my good fortune to meet. Lady Aberdeen was the daughter of a noble house, and she always appeared to me as if nature had especially designed her to be the wife of the man whom she had accepted as her husband. a handsome and singularly interesting woman, endowed with a remarkably fine intellect, a most attractive manner, and a generous love and devotion for every noble cause and enterprise. Her whole life seems to have been guided by a love for humanity and a sympathy with human suffering, and she had a certain instinctive originality of perception which made her an invaluable companion, and often, I should think, an invaluable guide to a husband with such a career before him as that which was assigned to Lord Aberdeen. She had been in a certain sense a ruling power among some sections of the aristocratic and fashionable society of London, and she had won that position, not by making herself an exponent of fashion or a light of aristocracy, but by devoting herself to the cause of the poor and suffering. Lady Aberdeen was a true and energetic champion of the genuine emancipation of woman, and she accomplished her work with such grace and such sympathetic charm that the humorists of the time, who loved to describe the advocates of women's rights as unsexed declaimers and termagants, could not but feel that Lady Aberdeen was in herself a living refutation of their satirical arguments and illustrations. For all her high intellect and her practical activity in the cause of progress and human welfare, she was the very type of gentle and graceful womanhood. who were interested in the cause of Ireland could not but feel that the career of Lord Aberdeen as Lord Lieutenant must be sustained and advanced in every way by the companionship of such a wife

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