Soon after his return in 1838 an election to Parliament by the important constituency of Edinburgh once more brought him into legislative activity. He supported Lord Melbourne till the downfall of his ministry, in 1841, and then became an opponent of Sir Robert Peel, in opposition to whose policy he delivered some of his ablest speeches. When a candidate for reëlection in 1847, he was defeated on account of some offence he had given in advocating a policy of liberality toward the means of educating Catholics in Ireland. But this defeat, though deeply mortifying to him at the time, was not without compensating advantages. He now had leisure to devote himself to the great literary work which for a considerable time had already been under his pen. In 1848 appeared the first two volumes of the “History of England from the Time of James the Second.” The work sprang at once into that phenomenal popularity which has scarcely yet abated, for it still enjoys the high distinction of having been more read than any other historical work in the language. The third and fourth volumes were given to the world in 1855, just as he was beginning to feel the approaches of that irresistible disease which was soon to bring his labors to an untimely end. Two years after the appearance of the fourth volume his services in behalf of history and letters were rewarded with the peerage. The numerous essays flowing from his pen still showed that the splendor of his faculties was undimmed, and it was therefore with surprise as well as sorrow that, late in December of 1859, the English-speaking world learned of his death from disease of the heart. With the unanimous concurrence of a mourning nation, he was given the highest literary honor of a burial in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey.