carried them against Mr. Disraeli's Government, and at the dissolution was rewarded by a majority so sweeping that resistance was impossible. Disraeli resigned without waiting for the meeting of Parliament—a sensible example which has been since followed. With his usual calmness he rallied his distracted followers and waited patiently while the two great branches of the upas-tree were being hacked off, well aware that the hot stage would be followed by a cold one when the effects of this new departure began to show themselves. The Irish Church was reduced to a voluntary communion. Tenants and landlords were made joint owners of their lands-ill-mated companions set to sleep in a single bed, from which one or other before long was likely to be ejected. Ireland made its usual response ; and within two years the state of Westmeath became so serious that the Cabinet which was to have won the Irish heart was obliged to move for a secret committee to consider how the administration was to be carried on. Disraeli on leaving office might if he had chosen have retired to the Upper House. He pleased himself better by prevailing on the Queen to confer a coronet on his faithful companion, and no act of his life gave him greater pride or pleasure. Mrs. Disraeli1 became Viscountess Beaconsfield, and he himself remained in the House of Commons, where he could watch and criticise.

A secret committee is only moved for on grave occasions. An evidence so rapid and so palpable of the results of Mr. Gladstone's operations was an opportunity for the exercise of Mr. Disraeli's peculiar powers. Of late years he had been sparing in his sarcasms. His speeches had been

1 Lady Beaconsfield enjoyed her honours only for four years. She died December 15, 1872.

serious and argumentative, and the rapier and the whip lash had been laid aside. But they were lying ready for him, and he had not forgotten his old art. He did not again object as he had objected in Peel's case to granting extraordinary powers to a Government which he distrusted. He was willing to assist the Cabinet, since they needed assistance, in maintaining order in Ireland; Lord Hartington had reminded him that he had himself made a similar application in another Parliament. But he confessed his astonishment that such an application should be necessary. 'The noble lord,' he said, 'has made some reference, from that richness of precedent with which he has been crammed on this occasion, to what occurred in 1852; and in the midst of the distress of this regenerating Government of Ireland supported by a hundred legions and elected by an enthusiastic people in order to terminate the grievances of that country and secure its contentment and tranquillity, he must needs dig up our poor weak Government of 1852 and say, "There was Mr. Napier, your attorney-general: he moved for a committee, and you were a member of his Cabinet." If I had had a majority of a hundred behind my back I would not have moved for that committee. I did the best I could. But was the situation in which I was placed similar to the situation of her Majesty's present Ministers? Look for a moment to the relations which this Government bears to the House of Commons with regard to the administration of Ireland. The right hon. gentleman opposite (Mr. Gladstone) was elected for a specific purpose. He was the Minister who alone was able to cope with these long-enduring and mysterious evils that had tortured and tormented the civilisation of England. The right hon. gentleman persuaded the people of England that with regard to Irish

politics he was in possession of the philosopher's stone. Well, sir, he has been returned to this House with an immense majority, with the object of securing the tranquillity and content of Ireland. Has anything been grudged himtime, labour, devotion? Whatever has been proposed has been carried. Under his influence, and at his instance, we have legalised confiscation, we have consecrated sacrilege, we have condoned treason, we have destroyed Churches, we have shaken property to its foundations, and we have emptied gaols; and now he cannot govern one county without coming to a Parliamentary committee. The right hon. gentleman, after all his heroic exploits, and at the head of his great majority, is making government ridiculous.'

'We have legalised confiscation, we have consecrated sacrilege, we have condoned treason,' pronounced with drawling alliteration, was worth a whole Parliamentary campaign. Everyone recollected the words from the neatness of the combination; everyone felt and acknowledged their biting justice. No one was a match for Disraeli in the use of the rapier. The composition of such sentences was an intellectual pleasure to him. A few years later, when the Prince Imperial was killed in South Africa, he observed, on hearing of it, 'A very remarkable people the Zulus: they defeat our generals, they convert our bishops, they have settled the fate of a great European dynasty.'

No Government was ever started on an ambitious career with louder pretensions or brighter promises than Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet in 1868. In less than three years their glory was gone, the aureole had faded from their brows. The bubble of oratory, which had glowed with all the colours of the rainbow, had burst when in contact with fact, and the poor English people had awoke to the dreary

conviction that it was but vapour after all. In April, 1872, the end was visibly coming, and Disraeli could indulge again, at their expense, in his malicious mockery. In a speech at Manchester he said:

'The stimulus is subsiding. The paroxysms ended in prostration. Some took refuge in melancholy, and their eminent chief alternated between a menace and a sigh. As I sat opposite the Treasury bench, the Ministers reminded me of those marine landscapes not unusual on the coasts of South America. You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest. But the situation is still dangerous. There are occasional earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumbling of the

sea.

CHAPTER XV

The calm of satisfied ambition-A new novel- 'Lothair '- Survey of English society-The modern aristocracy-Forces working on the surface and below it-Worship of rank-Cardinal Grandison-Revolutionary socialism-Romeward drift of the higher classes— 'Lothair' by far the most remarkable of all Disraeli's writings.

ONCE again in Opposition, Disraeli found leisure to return to his early occupations. As a politician, and at the head of a minority for the time hopelessly weak, he had merely to look on and assist, by opportune sarcasms, the ebb of Liberal popularity.

In this comparative calm he resumed his profession as a novelist, which he had laid aside for more than twenty years, and delivered himself of a work immeasurably superior to anything of the kind which he had hitherto produced. 'Vivian Grey' and 'Contarini Fleming' were portraits of himself, drawn at an age of vanity and selfconsciousness. 'Henrietta Temple' and 'Venetia' were clever stories-written, probably, because he wanted money -but without the merit or the interest which would have given them a permanent place in English literature. The famous trilogy, 'Coningsby,' 'Sybil,' and 'Tancred,' though of far greater value, have the fatal defect, as works of art, that they were avowedly written for a purpose. 'Lothair' has none of these faults-Disraeli himself is imperceptible; the inner meaning of the book does not lie upon the