“I met Gladstone at breakfast.  He seems quite awed with the diabolical cleverness of Dizzy, ‘who,’ he says, ’is gradually driving all ideas of political honor out of the House, and accustoming it to the most revolting cynicism,’ There is no doubt that a sense of humor has always been conspicuously absent from Mr. Gladstone’s character.”

Sometimes one of these rival leaders was on the verge of victory and sometimes the other, and both equally gained the applause of the spectators.  Two such combatants had not been seen since the days of Pitt and Fox,—­one, the champion of the people; the other, of the aristocracy.  What each said was read the next day by every family in the land.  Both were probably greatest in opposition, since more unconstrained.  Of the two, Disraeli was superior in the control of his temper and in geniality of disposition, making members roar with laughter by his off-hand vituperation and ingenuity in inventing nicknames.  Gladstone was superior in sustained reasoning, in lofty sentiments, and in the music of his voice, accompanied by that solemnity of manner which usually passes for profundity and the index of deep convictions.  As for rhetorical power, it would be difficult to say which was the superior,—­though the sentences of both were too long.  It would also be difficult to tell which of the two was the more ambitious and more tenacious of office.  Both, it is said, bade for popularity in the measures they proposed.  Both were politicians.  There is, indeed, a great difference between politicians and statesmen; but a man may be politic without ceasing to be a lover of his country, like Lord Palmerston himself; and a man may advocate large and comprehensive views of statesmanship which are neither popular nor appreciated.

The new Conservative ministry was a short one.  Coming into power on the defeat of the Liberal reform bill introduced by Mr. Gladstone, the Tory government recognized the popular demand on which that bill had been based; and though Mr. Disraeli coolly introduced a reform bill of their own which was really more radical than the Liberal bill had been, and although at the hands of the opposition it was so modified that the Duke of Buccleuch declared that the only word unaltered was the initial “whereas,” its passage was claimed as a great Conservative victory.  Shortly after this, the Earl of Derby retired on account of ill-health, and was succeeded by Mr. Disraeli as premier; but the current of Liberalism set in so strongly in the ensuing elections that he was forced to resign in 1868, and Mr. Gladstone now for the first time became prime minister.