The first two Georges had reigned over the towns, but not over the country. After the Reform Bill it seemed as though the great cities themselves would swamp the land. How was Sir Robert to save the situation in 1834? Speaking with respect for Sir Robert, but with contempt for his “Tamworth Manifesto,” Disraeli, in his discussion of that famous document, repeats his message once more: “... There was indeed considerable shouting about what they called Conservative principles; but the awkward question naturally arose, ‘What will you conserve?’ The prerogatives of a Crown, provided they are not exercised; the independence of the House of Lords, provided it is not asserted; the ecclesiastical estate, provided it is regulated by a commission of laymen. Everything, in short, that is established, as long as it is a phrase and not a fact.”[4] It is thus that the man of ideas is, in the long run, eminently practical; and it is thus, too, that in the realm of art ideas are the surest realities. But here also the immediate appeal constantly falls to the lot of what is called “realism,” and few feel what they cannot touch until the popular voice tells them that it is “real.” “Madame,” says Heine in his “Buch Legrand,” “have you the ghost of an idea what an idea is? ‘I have put my best ideas into this coat,’ says my tailor. My washerwoman says the parson has filled her daughter’s head with ideas, and unfitted her for anything sensible; and coachman Pattensen mumbles on every occasion, ‘That is an idea.’ But yesterday, when I inquired what he meant, he snarled out, ‘An idea is just an idea; it is any silly stuff that comes into one’s head.’”