Mr. Serjeant Dowse is almost eclipsing Mr. Bernal Osborne. For
a Solicitor-General, even though Irish, to furnish the House
with its best fun is quite a new function of a law officer of the Crown. In replying to Colonel Wilson Patten on Monday, he was at his best. "The right honourable gentleman," he said, " had talked,—and some of the old leaven crept out there,—of appointing a Catholic sheriff for Protestant Ulster,"—whereon Colonel Wilson Patten explained that he had withdrawn the expression. "Very well," said the Solicitor-General, amidst roars of laughter, "then I will also withdraw what I was going to say." A happier Irish bull was never made. It indicated so vividly the annihilating character of the reply already upon his lips, that Colonel Wilson Patten's light was far more completely eclipsed by this penumbra, as it were, of the Solicitor-General's mind, as it travelled over him, than he would have been by the very shadow itself.
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