Nottingham has been holding a Liberal banquet, at which Mr.
Bernal Osborne,—once the great Parliamentary jester, whose *place is now filled with far greater originality by Sir Wil- frid Lawson,—was one of the chief speakers ; and oddly 'enough, while exhorting the Liberals to close up their ranks and abandon their crotchets, he offered, as his own contribu- tion to that result, the very original suggestion that they should abandon their resistance to this Afghan war, join in a Russo- phobist policy, replace Mr. Gladstone at the head of their party, but not adopt his policy. That is just like Mr. Bernal Osborne, who always was a Liberal in all things in which Liberalism was of no particular importance, but always liked to trip up the Liberal party whenever it had laid hold of a great and noble conviction. Fortunately, the Nottingham Liberals do not seem to be much guided by Mr. Bernal 'Osborne. The Duke of St. Alban's and Mr. S. Morley con- curred heartily in Mr. Gladstone's policy, and did not approve of using the man only so far as he could be induced to suppress the 'highest articles of his own creed.
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