Meantime, his great rival Disraeli led his party with consummate skill. He was a perfect master of tactics, wary, vigilant, courteous, good-natured, seizing every opportunity to gain a party triumph. He was also judicious in his selection of ministers, nor did he attempt to lord it over them. He showed extraordinary tact in everything, and in nothing more than in giving a new title to the Queen as Empress of India. But no measures of engrossing interest were adopted during his administration. He was content to be a ruler rather than a reformer. He was careful to nurse his popularity, and make no parliamentary mistakes. At the end of two years, however, his labors and cares told seriously on his health. He had been in Parliament since 1837; he was seventy-one years of age, and he found it expedient to accept the gracious favor of his sovereign, and to retire to the House of Lords, with the title of Earl of Beaconsfield, yet retaining the office of prime minister. During the five years that Mr. Gladstone remained in retirement, he was by no means idle, or a silent spectator of political events. He was indefatigable with his pen, and ever ready with speeches for the platform and with addresses to public bodies. During this period three new Reviews were successfuly started,--the "Fortnightly," the "Contemporary," and the "Nineteenth Century,"--to all of which he was a frequent contributor, on a great variety of subjects. His articles were marked by characteristic learning and ability, and vastly increased his literary reputation. I doubt, however, if they will be much noticed by posterity. Nothing is more ephemeral than periodical essays, unless marked by extraordinary power both in style and matter, like the essays of Macaulay and Carlyle. Gladstone's articles would make the fortune of ordinary writers, but they do not stand out, as we should naturally expect, as brilliant masterpieces, which everybody reads and glows while reading them. Indeed, most persons find them rather dry, whether from the subject or the style I will not undertake to say. But a great man cannot be uniformly great or even always interesting. How few men at seventy will give themselves the trouble to write at all, when there is no necessity, just to relieve their own minds, or to instruct without adequate reward! Michael Angelo labored till eighty-seven, and Titian till over ninety; but they were artists who worked from the love of art, restless without new creations. Perhaps it might also be said of Gladstone that he wrote because he could not help writing, since he knew almost everything worth knowing, and was fond of telling what he knew.