When the Fourth Party was in the plenitude of its power, it pleased its members to assume all the customs of those larger political factions of which it was the microcosm. Since Ministers and the Leaders of the regular Opposition were in the habit of meeting together on the eve of a new Session, dining, and thereafter reviewing the situation and settling their policy, the Fourth Party had their pre-Sessional dinner. Lord Randolph Churchill tells me of a charming incident connected with this custom. Meeting on the eve of the Session of 1881, they solemnly agreed that they, as a Party, were at a disadvantage inasmuch as they had not before them a copy of the Queen's Speech. Lord Randolph accordingly wrote a formal letter, addressed to Lord Richard Grosvenor, then Ministerial Whip, asking him to be so good as to favour him and his colleagues with a copy of Her Majesty's gracious Speech, in accordance with custom when the Leaders of Her Majesty's Opposition were in conference on the eve of a Session. I do not know whether Lord Richard, in the fashion of his reply, rose to the sublime height of this joke. But the copy of the Speech was not forthcoming.

The Fourth Party at the beginning of their career went a step further than the regular Leaders of the Opposition whom they, only half in jest, affected to supersede. Her Majesty's Ministers, in accordance with custom, went down to Greenwich for a whitebait dinner at the end of the Session, the Leaders of the Opposition being content with a festive gathering on the eve of the opening of Parliament. The Fourth Party, equal to both occasions, not only convivially foregathered at the opening of the Session, but had their whitebait dinner at the end. In 1880, the year of their birth, they, never afraid of creating a precedent, invited an outsider to join the feast. This was Mr. Labouchere, Mr. Bradlaugh's standard-bearer, whom they had been fighting hand to hand all through the turbulent Session.

But it is a poor heart that never rejoices, and in their young days the Fourth Party were merry grigs.

COUNTY GUY.

Some time ago inquiry was made in the columns of a country paper as to the origin of the cognomen "County Guy," as attached to Lord Hartington. I happen to know that the phrase, much in vogue seventeen or eighteen years ago, appeared in the series of papers entitled "Under the Clock," published weekly in the World. It was suggested by Sir Walter Scott's well-known lines:—

Bird, breeze, and flower proclaim the hour:
But where is County Guy?

Lord Hartington was at the time Leader of the Opposition, vice Mr. Gladstone, convinced that "at my time of life"—he was sixty-five when he wrote—his public work was finished, and he had earned the right to spend his declining years in the comparative leisure of his library. Even the eminence of the position, and the hitherto unbroken habit of the Leader of a party being in his place when questions began, did not overcome Lord Hartington's constitutional inability to come up to time. It was characteristic of him that he scorned the opportunity provided for quietly dropping into his place, without fixing attention upon his delayed arrival. He might have entered from behind the Speaker's Chair and taken his seat without any but those in the immediate neighbourhood noting the moment of his appearance on the scene. He always walked in from the doorway under the clock, in full view of the House, usually with one hand in his pocket, his hat swinging in the other hand, lounging towards his seat as if he were rather five minutes too soon than half an hour too late. When, in the last Parliament, he returned to the Front Opposition Bench as Leader of the Liberal Unionists, he observed precisely the same custom. He was invariably late, even at critical epochs, and always walked in by the front door.

On one occasion he arrived very early in the morning, but that was an accident due to misunderstanding. It was during the passage of the Coercion Act of the Salisbury Parliament. The Irish members had kept things going all night. At five o'clock in the morning, Lord Hartington, in common with other absentees of his party, received a telegram to the following effect:—

"Been on duty all night. Only us two here. Come down to relieve us.

(Signed) "Chamberlain,
"Russell."