MR. BRIGHT.

N the noble hall of the Reform Club,

IN

on any afternoon during the session of Parliament, there may generally be seen a figure which is certain to attract attention even on the part of the stranger. It is that of a man of middle height, bowed not so much with age as with work and trial, on whose thickset shoulders there is poised a massive head, the pure white locks of which are scantier now than of yore. The lines of the figure itself are sufficiently characteristic to deserve notice, even from the chance passer-by; but when the face, with

its marked features, clear but tender eyes, and clean-chiseled mobile lips, are seen, no one can doubt that this sturdy Englishman, who has passed the prime of manhood, and upon whom the weight of years and of labours manifold have begun to tell so heavily, is no ordinary person.

To every one in the Reform Club, nay, to most people acquainted with the streets of the West End, the face and the figure of John Bright are sufficiently familiar. But to those who do not know the great oratorstatesman, to those who have never heard him as he thrilled the House of Commons with his stately speech, or played upon the sympathies of a great assemblage of his fellow-countrymen, like the skilful musician who draws a hundred different tones and harmonies from the strings of the harp; to those, in short, to whom the name of John Bright is a name and nothing more, I should

like to offer one word of counsel. Go and look upon him once before he passes from the world; go and take your children with you, so that when at last age has overtaken them, and they recount to their own children's children their memories of a bygone time, they may be able to say something of the outward aspect of the greatest of popular leaders, the man whose name is associated with so many of the grandest movements of our century, and whose genius and virtues must for ever adorn one of the brightest pages of our history!

The flames of life which once burnt so brightly, one might almost say so fiercely, in the breast of John Bright, have now died down into the serene and mellow glow of an autumn sunset. There are few traces about the man of the heat and the passion and the perfervid enthusiasm which twenty years ago were such important factors in

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our English politics. Mr. Bright has ceased to be the foremost warrior in the field; he is no longer to be found wherever the fight is the thickest, exulting in the tempestuous passions of the battle.

The privileges of age have come to him. along with its disadvantages; and the man who was once the most ardent political controversialist of his time, the man who was ready to assail, single-handed, the strongest fortress of class interest or public corruption that his keen eyes could discover, the man who never hesitated to measure swords with the most powerful of the Parliamentary giants of the great Reform era, is now to no small extent a mere spectator of the fight, with his heart still in the right place, it is true, but with his sword in his sheath, and the armour he once bore so stoutly laid aside. To most men there comes with the advance of years this release from the burden

of the strife; but to few men can it come more happily than it has done to Mr. Bright. He rests from his labours; but in very truth, his works do follow him.

No man in England, perhaps no man living, can look back upon so many hard battles which have ended in complete and permanent victory. The repose now is perfect. It can only be likened to that wondrous period of triumphant calm which the Duke of Wellington enjoyed after he had fought the last of his hundred fights, and secured not for England only, but for a whole continent, forty years of peace and safety. Yet, just as in those old days one could never look at the great Duke, as he rode slowly down Constitution-Hill on his way from Apsley House to the Horse Guards, without seeing in the feeble old gentleman, who swayed from side to side as he sat in his saddle, the lion-hearted victor of Torres