NEWS OF THE WEEK • M R. GLADSTONE has carried Midlothian,
by more than two hundred votes, and throughout the United Kingdom the Liberal victory is more than complete,—it is almost overwhelming. It may, indeed, well prove to be considerably greater than the vic- tory of 1868, and is as much greater than the Tory victory of 1874 as the victory of the English at Waterloo was greater than the victory of the French at Ligny. Scotland may well send up the whole of her Conservative party to Westminster, not only in a single compartment, but, as some Scotchman said, with plenty of room to put up all the feet of the party—which, bipeds as we are, may not exceed eight— on the opposite seat. Wales has, as yet, returned but two Conservatives,—Sir Watkin Wynn in Denbighshire, and Lord Emlyn in Carmarthenshire. In Ireland, the gains have been fewer, though generally of the best kind,—gains of Liberalism from the Home-rulers. In England, the victory has been singu- larly widespread, covering many counties, and leaving hardly a single great borough, except London, Westminster, Greenwich, Liverpool, Birkenhead, Preston, Wigan, and Portsmouth, in the hands of the Tories. Lord Beaconsfield's trenchant appeal has been trenchantly answered, and seems likely to bring upon himself what, in an invective against the late Sir Robert Peel, he once termed, with more literary skill than moral appropriate- ness, "the catastrophe of a sinister career."
