In his other speech Mr. Roebuck was less happy. Irritated
by a brilliant article in last Saturday's Times, in which the egotism of his speech at the Master Cutler's feast was very happily quizzed, Mr. Roebuck begged his audience to "allow him for a moment to think of himself,"—a kind of liberty, we suspect, which they would have found it very futile to deny him,—where- upon he began an attack on a certain local assailant of his, Mr. Leader, and on the Times. The Times, he said, had no moral courage, because it takes moral courage to praise, and the Times never praises ; but it takes none to find fault, and the Times is always finding fault. That, if it be true, which seems very doubtful, hits Mr. Roebuck, who has been one of the greatest political revilers of his day,—did he not, for instance, three years ago, on no evidence at all, scream the most furious accusations against Mr. Gladstone of a flagrant personal ambition which tempted him to absorb all power in this country into his own hands ?—harder than it hits the Times. But when Mr. Roebuck gets upon himself, his head always goes ; it is a subject which acts upon him like new wine, and this occasion was no exception. He became dithyrambic ; and identifying England and its House of Commons with himself, soared, like Wordsworth's "daring warbler," beyond the last paint of his astonished audience's vision.
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