Another figure which the new House of Commons is gradually beginning to understand is Sir Charles Dilke. He is one of the men who seem to have no interest in life outside politics. When one thinks that he has wealth, an immense number of subjects in which he can find instruction and occupation, that he is familiar with the languages, literature, and life of several countries, it is hard to understand how he could have had the endurance to go through the hurricane of abuse and persecution which he has had to encounter in the last seven years. There are traces in his face of the intense mental suffering through which he has passed; there are more lines about the eyes than should be in the case of a man who is just fifty. But, otherwise, he positively looks younger than he did when he was a Cabinet Minister. There is colour where there used to be nothing but deadly pallor--freshness where the long and terrible drudgery of official life had left a permanent look of fag and weariness. Sir Charles Dilke has taken up the broken thread of his life just as if nothing had occurred in that long period of exile and suffering. He is never out of his place: attends every sitting as conscientiously as if he were in office and responsible for everything that is going on; and has his eye on subjects as wide apart as the parish councils and Newfoundland, army reform and the occupation of Uganda. It is curious to see, too, how he is regaining that ascendancy over the House of Commons which he exercised formerly. It is an ascendancy not due in the least to oratorical power. Sir Charles Dilke never made a fine sentence or a sonorous peroration in his whole life. It is that power of acquiring all the facts of the case--of being thoroughly up in all its merits--in short, of knowing his business--which impresses the House of Commons, which, after all, though it may cheer the gibes of a smart and pert debater like Mr. Chamberlain, is most happy when it hears a man talking of something which he understands thoroughly.
Mr. Chamberlain spoke, as I have said, in the debate. It was a very characteristic speech. I know people think I am prejudiced about this gentleman. Not in the least. I recognize that he has many splendid qualities for political life. They are not qualities which I think highest either in the oratorical or the intellectual sense. He also has staying power, and has gone through seven terrible years. There is the trace of all the bitterness of that struggle in his face--which has lost in these years the almost boyish freshness of expression and outline, which bears in every deep line a mark of the ferocity of the passions by which his breast has been torn. He is one of the many men in the House of Commons that give one the impression of being hunted by the worst and most pitiless of all furies--violent personal passion--especially for power, for triumph, for revenge. But still, there he is--ready as ever to take part in the struggle--still holding the position he held seven years ago--with no sign of weakening or repentance, though there be plenty of the hunger of baulked revenge.