Lord Elcho's superciliousstyle of-course gotlim into .a squabble. He charged
Mr. Robertson, M.P. for Berwickshire, with enter- taining so blind an admiration for his leader as to have sunk into a "moral molluscous" state, in which he was ready to shut his eyes and open his mouth, and take whatever the Prime Minister chose to put into it. Mr. Robertson, as a Scotchman, seemed to object to being called a moral mollusk, and protested vigorously ; whereon Mr. B. Osborne deprecated Scotch rows on Ireland, remarked on the anomaly of having Irish measures and Scotch reviewers, and seemed reluctant to hear chapters from "Robert- son's History of Scotland." Mr. Osborne further reproached Mr. Gladstone with intervening too often in the debate, and not leav- ing the work more completely to Mr. Fortescue. We suppose that if it were not for Lord Elcho and Mr. Osborne, and that pleasurable conceit which bubbles up in their speeches, the House might sm...cumb to the fatigue of such debates as these. But that receptive opening of the mouth which Lord Elcho and Mr. Osborne seem to regard as specially molluscous, (why not also human %) to take something down into it, consumes at least less time, and is more subservient to nutrition, than that other opening of the mouth for the copious distribution of words and smiles, in which Lord Elcho and Mr. Osborne chiefly excel.
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