new one under Lord John Russell, which failed; and Sir Robert Peel resumed direction of a government pledged to repeal the corn laws of 1815. As the Duke of Newcastle was a zealous protectionist, under whose influence Mr. Gladstone had been elected member of Parliament, the latter now resigned his seat as member for Newark, and consequently remained without a seat in that memorable session of 1846 which repealed the corn laws. The ministry of Sir Robert Peel, though successful in passing the most important bill since that of Parliamentary reform in 1832, was doomed; as we have already noted in the Lecture on that great leader, it fell on the Irish question, and Lord John Russell became the head of the government. In the meantime, Mr. Gladstone was chosen to represent the University of Oxford in Parliament,--one of the most distinguished honors which he ever received, and which he duly prized. As the champion of the English Church represented by the University, and as one of its greatest scholars, he richly deserved the coveted prize. On the accidental death of Sir Robert Peel in 1850 the conservative party became disintegrated, and Mr. Gladstone held himself aloof both from Whigs and Tories, learning wisdom from Sir James Graham (one of the best educated and most accomplished statesman of the day), and devoting himself to the study of parliamentary tactics, and of all great political questions. It was then that in the interval of public business he again visited Italy, in the winter of 1850-51; this time not for mere amusement and recreation, but for the health of a beloved daughter. While in Naples he was led to examine its prisons (with philanthropic aim), and to study the general policy and condition of the Neapolitan government. The result was his famous letters to Lord Aberdeen on the awful despotism under which the kingdom of the Two Sicilies groaned, where over twenty thousand political prisoners were incarcerated, and one-half of the Deputies were driven into exile in defiance of all law; where the prisons were dens of filth and horror, and all sorts of unjust charges were fabricated in order to get rid of inconvenient persons. I have read nothing from the pen of Mr. Gladstone superior in the way of style to these letters,--earnest and straightforward, almost fierce in their invective, reminding one in many respects of Brougham's defence of Queen Caroline, but with a greater array of facts, so clearly and forcibly put as not only to produce conviction but to kindle wrath. The government of Naples had sworn to maintain a free constitution, but had disgracefully and without compunction violated every one of its conditions, and perpetrated cruelties and injustices which would have appalled the judges of imperial Rome, and defended them by a casuistry which surpassed in its insult to the human understanding that of the priests of the Spanish Inquisition.