Premier on the resignation of his colleague Lord Derby, who had displaced Earl Russell in that office, to bring this strange potentate to reason by force of arms.  Under Sir Robert Napier’s management the work was done with remarkable precision; no English life was lost; and but few of our soldiers were wounded; Magdala, the mountain eyrie of King Theodore, was stormed and destroyed, and the captives, having been surrendered under dread of the British arms, were restored to freedom and safety.  The honour of our land, imperilled by the oppression of our subjects was triumphantly vindicated; other good was not achieved.  Theodore, unwilling to survive defeat, was found dead by his own hand when Magdala was carried, and he was afterwards succeeded on the Abyssinian throne by a chief who had more than all his predecessor’s vices and none of his virtues.  For this well-managed campaign Sir Robert Napier was raised to the peerage as Lord Napier of Magdala.  The swift success, the brilliant promptitude, of his achievement are almost painful to recall to-day, in face of another enterprise for the rescue of a British subject, conducted by a commander not less able and resolute, at the head of troops as daring and as enthusiastic, which was turned into a conspicuous failure by unhappy delayings on the part of the civil authorities, in the fatal winter of 1884-5.

[Illustration:  Mr. Gladstone.]

Turning our eyes from foreign matters to the internal affairs of the United Kingdom, we see two great leaders, Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone—­whose “long Parliamentary duel” had begun early in the fifties of this century—­outbidding each other by turns for the public favour, and each in his different way ministering to the popular craving for reform.  With Mr. Disraeli’s first appearance as leader of the house of Commons, this rivalry entered on its most noticeable stage; it only really ceased with the life of the brilliant, versatile, and daring litterateur and statesman who died as Earl Beaconsfield, not very long after his last tenure of office expired in 1880.  In 1867 Mr. Disraeli, as Leader of the Lower House, carried a measure for the reform of the franchise in England, and the year following similar measures with regard to Ireland and Scotland.  In 1869 it was Mr. Gladstone’s turn, and he introduced and carried two remarkable Bills—­one for the disestablishment of the Irish Church, and one for the amendment of land tenure in Ireland, the latter passing into law in August, 1870.  It had long been felt as a bitter grievance by the mass of Irishmen that the Church established in their country should be one which did not command the allegiance of one-sixth of its people and though opinion in England was sharply divided as to the question of Irish disestablishment, the majority of Englishmen undoubtedly considered the grievance to be something more than a sentimental one, and deserving of removal.  Another startling measure of reform was the abolition