Sir Wilfrid Lawson, too, at Carlisle, on Monday, gave a
most graphic description of the triumph of Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury, after the conclusion of the Berlin Treaty :—" Our wonderful diplomatists had made confusion worse confounded. They had set everybody by the ears with their meddling. They had incited Austria to war, they had betrayed Greece, irritated Italy, alarmed France, annoyed Russia, partitioned Turkey, bullied Bulgaria, and bamboozled Great Britain ; and having per- formed these great exploits, the chief meddlers and muddlers, Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury, returned in triumph to Charing Cross Station. What a day for England that was ! They heard rowdydom roaring its noisy rejoicing, and more than that, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen taking up the parable, 'the voice of the turtle was heard in the land ;' and afterwards the nobility and gentry put their necks under Lord Beaconsfield's feet, and amidst a rain of stars and garters poured on the heads of the principal actors, the most screaming farce which Europe had ever seen was brought to a conclusion." That de- scription of the applause of the City on the occasion of our supposed diplomatic triumph, as " the voice of the turtle," was a happy satire, as well as a happy pun. The City does coo to Lord Beaconsfield, as a turtle-dove coos to its mate. There is something in Lord Beaconsfield which really satisfies the City's ideal of grandeur,—that ideal of statesmanship which blends the glitter of a scimitar with a gleam of mosaic gold,—that ideal of a statesman which has some elements in it of Lord Chatham, and others of a sort of political edition of " flash Toby Crackit."
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