say that had he not been the son of a great Whig duke no human being would ever have thought of him as leader of the Liberal party. But it is only right to add that he proved much better than his promise. He had a robust, straightforward nature, and by constant practice he made himself an effective debater. Men liked the courage and the candid admission of his own deficiencies, with which he braced himself up to his most difficult task-to take the place of Gladstone in debate and to confront Disraeli.

CHAPTER LXIV.

THE EASTERN QUESTION AGAIN.

A CHANGE Soon came over the spirit of the Administration. It began to be seen more and more clearly that Mr. Disraeli had not come into office merely to consider the claims of agricultural tenants, and to pass measures for the pulling down of what Mr. Cross, the Home Secretary, called "rookeries" in the back slums of great cities. The Primeminister was well known to cherish loftier ambitions. He was not supposed to have any warm personal interest in prosaic measures of domestic legislation. If a great Reform Bill were brought forward he could fight against it first, and adopt it and enlarge it afterward. If any question of picturesque theology were under discussion, he was the man to sustain religion with epigram, and array himself on the side of the angels in panoply of paradox. But his inclinations were all for the broader and more brilliant fields of foreign politics. The poetic young notary in Richter's story was found with his eyes among the stars and his soul in the blue ether. Mr. Disraeli's eyes were among the stars of imperialist ambition; his soul was in the blue ether of high policy. Since his early years he had not travelled. He had hardly ever left England even for a few days. knew personally next to nothing of any foreign country. Perhaps for this very reason foreign affairs had all the more magical fascination for him. The prosaic dulness of Downing Street may have sent his fancy straying over the regions of Alexander's conquests; the shortness of the daily

He

walks between the Treasury and the House of Commons may have filled him with dreams of far-extended frontiers and a new Empire of the East.

The marked contrast between the political aptitudes and tastes of Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone came in to influence still further the difference between the policy of the new Government and that of its predecessor. Mr. Gladstone delighted in the actual work and business of administration. As Dr. Johnson could grapple with whole libraries, so Mr. Gladstone could grapple with whole budgets. He could assimilate almost in a moment vast masses of figures which other men would have found bewildering even to look at. He could get into his mind almost in a flash all the details of the most intricate piece of legislation. During the long, involved, and complicated discussions of the Irish Church Bill and the Irish Land Bill, he had conducted the controversy chiefly himself, and argued the legal details of perplexed clauses with lawyers like Cairns and Ball and Butt. He could, indeed, do anything but rest. Now Mr. Disraeli had neither taste nor aptitude for the details of administration. He could not keep his mind to the dry details. of a bill. He could not construct a complicated measure, nor could he even argue it clause by clause when other men had constructed it for him and explained it to him. He enjoyed administration on the large scale; he loved political debate; he liked to make a great speech. But when he was not engaged in his favorite work he preferred to be doing nothing. It was natural, therefore, that Mr. Gladstone's Administration should be one of practical work; that it should introduce bills to deal with perplexed and complicated grievances; that it should take care to keep the finances of the country in good condition. Mr. Disraeli had no personal interest in such things. He loved to feed his mind on gorgeous imperial fancies. It pleased him to think that England was, what he would persist in calling her, an Asiatic Power, and that he was administering the affairs of a great Oriental Empire. He was fond of legislation on a vague and liberal scale; legislation which gave opportunity for swelling praise and exalted rhetoric. was not without justice that his opponents constantly insisted that he was not an Englishman but a foreigner, a de

reer.

scendant of an Oriental race. There was, indeed, something singularly narrow and ungenerous in the constant taunts thrown out against Mr. Disraeli on the score of his Jewish ancestry. Every one who was at all within the limits of the actual political world knew that these taunts came from Mr. Disraeli's political supporters as well as from his political opponents. Every discontented Conservative was ready to whisper something about his chief's Jewish descent. But although there was an inexcusable want of generosity in thus making Mr. Disraeli's extraction and ancestral faith a source of objection, it must be owned that as a matter of historical fact his foreign extraction has had a very distinct influence on his political tendencies and his ministerial caMr. Disraeli had never until now had an opportunity of showing what his own style of statesmanship would be. He had always been in office only, but not in power. Now he had for the first time a strong majority behind him. Не could do as he liked. He had the full confidence of the Sovereign. His party were now wholly devoted to him. They could not but know that it was he whose patience and sagacity had kept them together, and had organized victory for them. They began to regard him as infallible. A great many on the other side admired him as much as they disliked his policy, and believed in his profound sagacity as devoutly as any of his most humble followers. He had come to occupy in the eyes of Englishmen of all parties something of the position once accorded to Napoleon III. by the public opinion of Europe. Even those who detested still feared; men believed in his power none the less because they had no faith in his policy. That Mr. Disraeli could not be mistaken in anything began to be the right sort of thing to say. He was, therefore, now in a position to indulge freely in his own personal predilections with regard to the way of governing England. In the House of Commons he had no longer any rival to dread in debate. Mr. Gladstone had withdrawn from the active business of politics; Mr. Bright was not strong enough in physical health to care much for controversy; there was no one else who could by any possibility be regarded as a proper adversary for Mr. Disraeli. The new Prime - minister, therefore, had everything his own way. He soon showed what sort of

statesmanship he liked best. He soon turned away from the dusty and plodding paths of domestic legislation. He ceased even to pretend to have any interest in such commonplace and homely work. He showed that he was resolved to play on a vaster stage, and to seek the applauses of a more cosmopolitan audience. Napoleon invited Talma to Erfurt, that he might play to a pitful of Kings. Disraeli was evidently determined to play to an audience of Kings and Emperors.

Mr.

In politics as in art the weaknesses of the master of a school are most clearly seen in the performances of his imitators and admirers. Mr. Disraeli's admirers began to manifest his tendencies more emphatically than he allowed himself to do. At all public meetings and dinners where Conservative orators declaimed, there was much talk about imperial instincts, imperial missions and destinies, and so forth. A distinguished member of Mr. Disraeli's Cabinet proclaimed that since the Conservatives came into office there had been something stirring in the very air which spoke of imperial enterprise. The Elizabethan days were to be restored, it was proudly declared. England was to resume her high place among the nations. She was to make her influence felt all over the world, but more especially on the European continent. The Cabinets and Chancelleries of Europe were to learn that nothing was to be done any more without the authority of England. "A spirited foreign policy" was to be inaugurated, a new era was to begin. Enthusiastic Conservatives seemed almost literally to swell with pride when they talked of the things to be done under the administration of Mr. Disraeli. The long ignoble reign of peace and non-intervention was at an end. Every man who did not proclaim that British influence was to reign paramount over Europe and Asia was anti-English, was cosmopolitan, was a member of the Peace Society, was a devotee of Cobden, a defender of the Alabama Treaty, a disciple of non-intervention, and, generally speaking, a disgrace to his country and a traitor to his Sovereign.

Thoughtful men who were not in any sense political partisans, men who were not engaged in politics on either side, began to shake their heads at these new political manifestations. There was an ominous self-consciousness about

them. Empires are not made, or are not made great, they said, by persons who go about proclaiming an imperial mission. The statesmen who proved themselves truly imperial did not parade in heroic attitudes beforehand, and say in pompous tones," Behold us-we have it for our task to be the makers of Empires." Such utterances were not happy prologues to the swelling act of the imperial theme. The greatness of the age of Elizabeth is not to be revived by talking of an Elizabethan revival. Such attempts seemed insincere and shallow. They resembled some of the aesthetic pretences and follies of the day; the sham mediævalism, the affectation of the affectations of the Queen Anne age. There was too much posturing about the new state-craft to give comfort to plain and thoughtful minds. Goethe has said very well of a certain kind of affectation, that it is a pleasant and harmless thing to dress up as a Turk once-in-a-way when going to a masked ball, but that it is unpardonable waste of time for an honest Western to try to make himself believe all day long that he is a Turk. Now England saw a few middle-aged or ancient gentlemen gravely trying to persuade themselves and their friends that they were Elizabethan conquerors of new worlds, Heaven-ordained makers of new Empires. The ordinary English mind was not imaginative enough for this sort of thing. Sensible and sober men would be certain to get tired of it soon.

Perhaps the first indication of the new foreign policy was given by the purchase of the shares which the Khedive of Egypt held in the Suez Canal. English Governments had in the first instance opposed the scheme for the construction of the Suez Canal, and English scientific men had endeavored to prove that the scheme could never be carried out. Now, however, that the Canal was open and was a success, some alarmists began to find a danger to England in the fact that it made the approach to India more easy for other European Powers as well as for her. The Khedive of Egypt held nearly half the 400,000 original shares in the Canal, and the Khedive was going every day faster and faster on the road to ruin. He was on the brink of bankruptcy. He had been living in the true fashion of an Eastern prince, gratifying every expensive whim as it crossed his listless mind; stimulating himself by the invention of new ways of spending