Now, this was a capital argument to influence a man like Lord Stanley himself--calm, cold-blooded, utterly rational. But human ingenuity could hardly have devised an appeal less likely to influence Prussia in the way of peace. Prussia, flushed with her splendid victories over Austria, and deeply offended by the arrogant and dictatorial conduct of France, was much more likely to be stung by such an argument, if it affected her at all, into flinging down the gauntlet at once, and inviting France to come if she dared. The use of such a mode of persuasion is, indeed, an adequate illustration of the whole character of Lord Stanley. Cool, prudent, and rational, he is capable enough of weighing things fairly when they are presented to him; but he can neither create an opportunity nor run a risk. Therefore, he remains officially a Tory, mentally a Liberal, politically neither the one nor the other. His bones are marrowless, his blood is cold. He can forfeit his own career, and hazard his reputation for his party; but that is all. He cannot give his mind to it, and he cannot redeem himself from his futile bondage to it. He is a respectable speaker, despite his defective articulation and his lifeless manner; he will be a respectable politician, despite his want of faith in, or zeal for the cause he tries to follow. That is his career; that is the doom to which he voluntarily condemns himself. I do not know that there are any other Tory chiefs worth talking about. Sir Stafford Northcote looks like a Bonn or Heidelberg professor, and has a fair average intellect, fit for commonplace finance and elementary politics; there is not a ghost of an idea in him. Walpole is a pompous, well-meaning, gentlemanlike imbecile. Gathorne Hardy is fluent, as the sand in an hourglass is fluent--he can pour out words and serve to mark the passing of time. Sir John Pakington is an educated Dogberry, a respectable Justice Shallow. Not upon men like these do the political fortunes of the Tory party of our day depend, although Walpole and Pakington fairly represent the sincerity, the manhood, and the respectability of Toryism. I come back to the point from which I started--that Toryism, in itself, is only another word for stupidity, and that any triumphs the party have won or may win are secured by the surrender of the principle they profess to be fighting for, and by the skilful management of men whose conscience permits them to adapt the means unscrupulously to the end. Were the Tory party led by genuine Tories it would have been extinct long ago. It lives and looks upon the earth, it has its triumphs and its gains, its present and its future, only because by very virtue of its own dulness it has allowed itself to be led by men whom it ought to detest, whom it sometimes does distrust, but who have the wit to sell principle in the dearest market, and buy reputation in the cheapest. "GEORGE ELIOT" AND GEORGE LEWES.