The great demonstration at Birmingham on Thursday seems to have
been a most wonderful and unique affair. Fifty thousand people followed Mr. Gladstone through the streets, and half that number, at the very least, were crowded together to hear him in the great Bingley Hall, in which he spoke. The tall houses on both sides were alive with faces intent on seeing and cheering him, and even on the roofs were parties of spectators, as if the procession had been a royal one. The roaring cheers of the crowd, the wild waving of hats, and the tremendous clapping frightened the horses, which are said to have been continually rearing through a great part of the two miles' procession, and only in the last half- mile did the density of the crowd at all decrease. It is estimated that the number of the spectators on the route through which Mr. Gladstone passed must have been at least a quarter of a million, the artisans with paper caps on their heads, and their shirt-sleeves rolled up, constituting a very large proportion of the sight-seers. Probably no mere statesman has ever before met such a reception.
