Sir William Harcourt is in great force. More and more,
we fear, he is ousting Mr. John Morley from the prospect of the succession to Mr. Gladstone. There is no limit to his energy, his elephantine pomp, his elaborate and calculated hilarity, his overflowing contempt for the Liberal Unionists, and his virtuous indignation against the Tories. He wrote a most ponderously jocose letter to Monday's Times, attacking the plea for a Winter Session, and likening the Government to a bad rider, a bad helmsman, a bad angler, and a bad lover, the House of Commons being the horse it rides so badly, the ship it steers so badly, the fish it cannot land, and the lady it can- not win. This portentous literary effusion was followed on Wednesday by a speech of welcome to Mr. Schnadhorst at the National Liberal Club, in which Sir William Harcourt treated the Unionist party as utterly defeated in a pitched battle, and wholly demoralised. All this is, of course, more or less simulated triumph.
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