are terraced and set with houses of pine and ivory, the Gulf of

Liguria gleaming sapphire blue, and cloud-like baseless mountains

hanging in the sky, and Ithink of lank and coaly steamships heaving

on the grey rollers of the English Channel and darkling streets wet

with rain, I recall as if I were back there the busy exit from

Charing Cross, the cross and the money-changers' offices, the

splendid grime of giant London and the crowds going perpetually to

and fro, the lights by night and the urgency and eventfulness of

that great rain-swept heart of the modern world.

It is difficult tothink we have left that-for many years if not

for ever. Inthought I walk once more in Palace Yard andhear the

clink and clatter of hansoms and the quickquiet whirr of motors; I

go in vivid recentmemories through the stir in the lobbies, I sit

again at eventful dinners in those old dining-rooms like cellars

below the House-dinners that ended with shrill division bells, I

think of huge clubs swarming and excited by the bulletins of that

electoral battle that was for me the opening opportunity. Isee the

stencilled names and numbers go up on the green baize, constituency

after constituency, amidst murmurs or loud shouting…

It is over for me now and vanished. That opportunity will come no

more. Very probably you haveheard already some crude inaccurate

version of our story and why I did not take office, and have formed

your partial judgement on me. And so it is I sit now at my stone

table, half out of life already, in a warm, large, shadowy leisure,

splashed with sunlight and hung with vine tendrils, with paper

before me to distil suchwisdom as I can, as Machiavelli in his

<<BackPagesTo menuForward>>