He held on, however, to emerge victorious at last. The Queen was pacified; Lord Derby was replaced by Lord Salisbury; and at the Congress of Berlin _der alte Jude_ carried all before him. He returned to England in triumph, and assured the delighted Victoria that she would very soon be, if she was not already, the 'Dictatress of Europe.'[57] But soon there was an unexpected reverse. At the General Election of 1880 the country, mistrustful of the forward policy of the Conservatives, and carried away by Mr. Gladstone's oratory, returned the Liberals to power. Victoria was horrified, but within a year she was to be yet more nearly hit. The grand romance had come to its conclusion. Lord Beaconsfield, worn out with age and maladies, but moving still, an assiduous mummy, from dinner-party to dinner-party, suddenly moved no longer. When she knew that the end was inevitable, she seemed, by a pathetic instinct, to divest herself of her royalty, and to shrink, with hushed gentleness, beside him, a woman and nothing more. 'I send some Osborne primroses,' she wrote to him with touching simplicity, 'and I meant to pay you a little {268} visit this week but I thought it better you should be quite quiet and not speak. And I beg you will be very good and obey the doctors.' She would see him, she said, 'when we come back from Osborne, which won't be long.' 'Everyone is so distressed at your not being well,' she added; and she was, 'Ever yours very aff'ly, V.R.I.' When the royal letter was given him, the strange old comedian, stretched on his bed of death, poised it in his hand, appeared to consider deeply, and then whispered to those about him: 'This ought to be read to me by a Privy Councillor.'[58] [1] Adams, 135. [2] Clarendon, II, 342. [3] Buckle, IV, 385. [4] Buckle, IV, 382-95. [5] _Ibid._, IV, 592. [6] Clarendon, II, 346. [7] Buckle, V, 49. [8] _Ibid._, V, 48. [9] _Ibid._, V, 28. [10] Morley, II, 252, 256. [11] Martin, _Queen Victoria_, 50-1. [12] Tait, II, chap. i. [13] Childers, I, 175-7. [14] Morley, II, 360-5. [15] Morley, II, 423-8; Crawford, 356, 370-1. [16] Private information. [17] In 1889 it was officially stated that the Queen's total savings from the Civil List amounted to £824,025, but that out of this sum much had been spent on special entertainments to foreign visitors (Lee, 499). Taking into consideration the proceeds from the Duchy of Lancaster, which were more than £60,000 a year (Lee, 79), the savings of the Prince Consort, and Mr. Neild's legacy, it seems probable that, at the time of her death, Victoria's private fortune approached two million pounds. [18] Morley, II, 425-6; Lee, 410-2, 415-8; Jerrold, _Widowhood_, 153-7, 162-3, 169-71. [19] Martin, _Queen Victoria_, 41-2. [20] Buckle, VI, 463. [21] _Ibid._, VI, 226. [22] _Ibid._, VI, 445,7. [23] _Ibid._, VI, 254-5. [24] Buckle, VI, 430. [25] Buckle, V, 286. [26] _Ibid._, V, 321. [27] _Ibid._, V, 448-9. [28] _Ibid._, II, 246.