Mr. Herbert Gladstone has failed in Middlesex, and failed by
so large a number that it is obvious Middlesex must have its constituency enlarged before it would be of much use con- testing the county again. But in the course of his canvas and his forty speeches,—speeches of extraordinary mark and ability, to the force and liveliness of which veteran orators like Mr. Lowe have borne generous witness,—he gained a reputation as a politician which the country will not easily forget in a man of his name. Probably Leeds will instal him in the seat which it. so generously secured to his father in case of the failure in Mid- lothian. But whether through Leeds or through some other constituency, Mr. Herbert Gladstone has a future before him. He is not only a strong, calm, and lucid reasoner, but has that gaiety and playfulness in him which a British audience most loves. In one of his most stormy meetings, he got a cordial hearing by telling an admirable story of a kitten offered for sale by a boy who tried the temper of the market first by labelling it a Tory kitten, but found no purchaser, and who, when he sold it the next day under Liberal colours, as a Liberal kitten, de- fended himself, when taxed with his open recantation of the kitten's politics, by declaring, in Lord Beaconsfield's phrase, that a good deal had happened since then, for since then "the kitten had opened its eyes."
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