APPRECIATIONS AND ADDRESSES DELIVERED BY LORD ROSEBERY, EDITED BY CHARLES GEAKE JOHN LANE LONDON AND NEW YORK MDCCCXCIX EDITOR'S NOTE Lord Rosebery has said that “there were a hundred Mr. Gladstones." If there are not quite so many Lord Roseberys, it is at all events undeniable that there are a very considerable number. To decide how many might provoke discussion, and even excite controversy; it is happily only necessary here to state that from this volume one Lord Rosebery, and one only, has been excluded-Lord Rosebery the politician. This is not, it should at once be added, in censure of his politics, but in explanation of the principle deliberately adopted in selecting the speeches which constitute these “ Appreciations and Addresses." All the speeches, too, are of comparatively recent date, and all except two have been delivered since the memorable Liberal meeting at Edinburgh when Lord Rosebery shook the dust of leadership off his feet. They have been made under very different conditions, and in very varying circumstances. There is the funeral oration in which Lord Rosebery paid fitting tribute to his great leader, colleague, and friend, Mr. Gladstone; the commemorative address, such as the two Appreciations of Burns; the chairman's running commentary on the delivered lecture, as is to be found in "London" and "Parliamentary Oratory"; the public function speech, such as inevitably accompanies the opening of a meeting, a public library, or even a golf-club house; and the purely post-prandial utterance such as the eulogy of "Sport" uttered to the Gimcracks. But all have been included, as parts of the whole, and as illustrating and elucidating their author's many-sidedness. In one of them he speaks of the "miracle called Burns"; there are critics of his own who talk of the cc mystery called Rosebery." There is, however, very little that is mysterious about these " Appreciations and Addresses," unless, indeed, it be the fact that they are all so uniformly interesting. This is not in immodest praise of the Editor's discrimination in selecting these particular speeches, but a recognition of the fact that whatever Lord Rosebery says or does always is of profound interest. It is said that a politician measures his place in popular esteem by the category into which |