could engage in a quarrel with which their interests and honour had absolutely nothing to do, for the sake of a mere family possession of their ruling house.

Lord Melbourne was the first Minister of the Crown when the Queen succeeded to the throne. He was a man who then and always after made himself particularly dear to the Queen, and for whom she had the strongest regard. He was of kindly, somewhat indolent nature; fair and even generous towards his political opponents; of the most genial disposition towards his friends. He was emphatically not a strong man. He was not a man to make good grow where it was not already growing. He was a kindly counsellor to a young Queen; and happily for herself the young Queen in this case had strong clear sense enough of her own not to be absolutely dependent on any counsel. Lord Melbourne was not a statesman. His best qualities, personal kindness and good nature apart, were purely negative. He was unfortunately not content even with the reputation for a sort of indolent good nature which he might have well deserved. He strove to make himself appear hopelessly idle, trivial, and careless. When he really was serious and earnest he seemed to make it his business to look like one in whom no human affairs could call up a gleam of interest. We have amusing pictures of him as he occupied himself in blowing a feather or nursing a sofa-cushion while receiving an important and perhaps highly sensitive deputation from this or that commercial interest.' Those who knew him insisted that he really was listening with all his might and main; that he had sat up the whole night before studying the question which he seemed to think so unworthy of any attention; and that so far from being wholly absorbed in his trifles, he was at very great pains to keep up the appearance of a trifler.

Such a masquerading might perhaps have been excusable, or even attractive, in the case of a man of really brilliant and commanding talents. But in Lord Melbourne's case the affectation had no such excuse or happy effect. He was a poor speaker, only fitted to rule in the quietest times. Debates were then conducted with a bitterness of personality unknown, or at all events very rarely known, in our days. Even in the House of Lords language was often interchanged of the most virulent hostility.

Lord Melbourne's constant attendance on the young Queen was regarded with keen jealousy and dissatisfaction. According to some critics the Prime Minister was endeavouring to

inspire her with all his own gay heedlessness of character and temperament. According to others, Lord Melbourne's purpose was to make himself agreeable and indispensable to the Queen; to surround her with his friends, relations, and creatures, and thus to get a lifelong hold of power in England, in defiance of political changes and parties. But he does not appear to have been greedy of power, or to have used any unfair means of getting or keeping it. The character of the young Sovereign seems to have impressed him deeply. His real or affected levity gave way to a genuine and lasting desire to make her life as happy and her reign as successful as he could. The Queen always felt the warmest affection and gratitude for him. Still, it is certain that the Queen's Prime Minister was by no means a popular man at the time of her accession. When the new reign began, the Ministry had two enemies or critics in the House of Lords of the most formidable character. Either alone would have been a trouble to a minister of far stronger mould than Lord Melbourne; but circumstances threw them both for the moment into a chance alliance against him.

One of these was Lord Brougham. No character stronger and stranger than his is described in the modern history of England. He was gifted with the most varied and striking talents, and with a capacity for labour which sometimes seemed almost superhuman. Not merely had he the capacity for labour, but he appeared to have a positive passion for work. His restless energy seemed as if it must stretch itself out on every side seeking new fields of conquest. The study that was enough to occupy the whole time and wear out the frame of other men was only recreation to him. His physical strength never gave way. His high spirits never deserted him. His self-confidence was boundless. He thought he knew everything and could do everything better than any other man. His vanity was overweening, and made him ridiculous almost as often and as much as his genius made him admired. Brougham knew a little of law,' said O'Connell, when the former became Lord Chancellor, he would know a little of everything.' The anecdote is told in another way too, which perhaps makes it even more piquant. The new Lord Chancellor knows a little of everything in the world-even of law.' He was beyond doubt a great Parliamentary orator, although not an orator of the highest class. Brougham's action was wild, and sometimes even furious; his gestures were

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singularly ungraceful; his manners were grotesque; but of his power over his hearers there could be no doubt. That power remained with him until a far later date; and long after the years when men usually continue to take part in political debate, Lord Brougham could be impassioned, impressive, and even overwhelming. If his talents were great, if his personal vanity was immense, let it be said that his services to the cause of human freedom and education were simply inestimable. As an opponent of slavery in the colonies, as an advocate of political reform at home, of law reform, of popular education, of religious equality, he had worked with indomitable zeal, with resistless passion, and with splendid success. He was left out of office on the reconstruction of the Whig Ministry in April 1835, and he passed for the remainder of his life into the position of an independent or unattached critic of the measures and policy of other men. It has never been clearly known why the Whigs so suddenly threw over Brougham. The common belief is that his eccentricities and his almost savage temper made him intolerable in a cabinet. It has been darkly hinted that for a while his intellect was actually under a cloud, as people said that of Chatham was during a momentous season. Lord Brougham was not a man likely to forget or forgive the wrong which he must have believed that he had sustained at the hands of the Whigs. He became the fiercest and most formidable of Lord Melbourne's hostile critics.

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The other great opponent was Lord Lyndhurst. was one of the most effective Parliamentary debaters of his time. His style was singularly and even severely clear, direct and pure; his manner was easy and graceful; his voice remarkably sweet and strong. Nothing could have been in greater contrast than his clear, correct, nervous argument, and the impassioned invectives and overwhelming strength of Brougham. Lyndhurst had an immense capacity for work, when the work had to be done; but his natural tendency was as distinctly towards indolence as Brougham's was towards unresting activity. Nor were Lyndhurst's political convictions ever very clear. By the habitude of associating with the Tories, and receiving office from them, and speaking for them, and attacking their enemies with argument and sarcasm, Lyndhurst finally settled down into all the ways of Toryism. But nothing in his varied history showed that he had any particular preference that way; and there were many passages in his career when it would seem

as if a turn of chance decided what part of political life he was to follow. As a keen debater he was perhaps hardly ever excelled in Parliament; but he had neither the passion nor the genius of the orator; and his capacity was narrow indeed in its range when compared with the astonishing versatility and omnivorous mental activity of Brougham. As a speaker he was always equal. He seemed to know no varying moods or fits of mental lassitude. Whenever he spoke he reached at once the same high level as a debater. The very fact may in itself perhaps be taken as conclusive evidence that he was not an orator. The higher qualities of the orator are no more to be summoned at will than those of the poet.

These two men were without any comparison the two leading debaters in the House of Lords. Lord Melbourne had not at that time in the Upper House a single man of first class or even of second class debating power on the bench of the ministry. An able writer has well remarked that the position of the Ministry in the House of Lords might be compared to that of a water-logged wreck into which enemies from all quarters are pouring their broadsides.

The law at that time made it necessary that a new Parliament should be summoned on the accession of the new Sovereign. The result was not a very marked alteration in the condition of parties; but on the whole the a vantage was with the Tories. Somewhere about this time, it may be remarked, the use of the word 'Conservative to describe the latter political party first came into fashion. During the elections for the new Parliament, Lord John Russell, speaking at a public dinner at Stroud, made allusion to the new name which his opponents were beginning to affect for their party. If that,' he said, 'is the name that pleases them, if they say that the old distinction of Whig and Tory should no longer be kept up, I am ready, in opposition to their name of Conservative, to take the name of Reformer, and to stand by that opposition.'

The new Parliament on its assembling seems to have gathered in the Commons an unusually large number of gifted and promising men. Mr. Grote, the historian of Greece, sat for the City of London. The late Lord Lytton. then Mr. Edward Lytton Bulwer, had a seat, an advanced Radical at that day. Mr. Disraeli came then into Parliament for the first time. Charles Buller, full of high spirits, brilliant humour, and the very inspiration of keen good sense, seemed on the sure

way to that career of renown which a premature death cut short. Sir William Molesworth was an excellent type of the school which in later days was called the Philosophical Radical. Another distinguished member of the same school, Mr. Roebuck, had lost his seat, and was for the moment an outsider. Mr. Gladstone had been already five years in Parliament. The late Lord Carlisle, then Lord Morpeth, was looked upon as a graceful specimen of the literary and artistic young nobleman, who also cultivates a little politics for his intellectual amusement. Lord John Russell had but lately begun his career as leader of the House of Commons. Lord Palmerston was Foreign Secretary, but had not even then got the credit of the great ability which he possessed. Only those who knew him very well had any idea of the capacity for governing Parliament and the country which he was soon afterwards to display. Sir Robert Peel was leader of the Conservative party. Lord Stanley, the late Lord Derby, was still in the House of Commons. He had not long before broken definitely with the Whigs on the question of the Irish ecclesiastical establishment, and had passed over to that Conservative party of which he afterwards became the most influential leader, and the most powerful Parliamentary orator.

The ministry was not very strong in the House of Commons. Its adherents were but loosely held together. Sir Robert Peel, the leader of the Opposition, was by far the most powerful man in the House. Added to his great qualities as an administrator and a Parliamentary debater, he had the virtue, then very rare among Conservative statesmen, of being a sound and clear financier, with a good grasp of the fundamental principles of political economy. His high austere character made him respected by opponents as well as by friends. He had not perhaps many intimate friends. His temperament was cold, or at least its heat was self-contained; he threw out no genial glow to those around him. He was by nature a reserved and shy man, in whose manners shyness took the form of pompousness and coldness. It is certain that he had warm and generous feelings, but his very sensitiveness only led him to disguise them. The contrast between his emotions and his lack of demonstrativeness created in him a constant artificiality which often seemed mere awkwardness. It was in the House of Commons that his real genius and character displayed themselves. Peel was a perfect master of the House of Commons. He was as great an orator as any man could be who addresses himselt