Meanwhile, the Eastern Question had burst out again. Insurrections in the Turkish provinces of Bulgaria, Servia, and Montenegro had been suppressed by the Porte with that ferocity so characteristic of Turkish misrule; Russia had begun moving troops towards the Danube, and a large section of the English public avowed sympathy with her, or with any other Power that would put an end to the sickening brutalities in Bulgaria. Mr. Gladstone threw Homer and theology to the winds, and the country rang with his denunciations of "the unspeakable Turk." Those who accuse Disraeli of undue solicitude for popularity should study the course he steered in the storm that was raging round him. But before it came to its height, he had spoken his last words in the House of Commons. On August 11, 1876, Mr. Evelyn Ashley charged the Government with negligence and the British Ambassador at Constantinople with mischievous and dilatory tactics, in their dealings with the Porte and their toleration of massacres. Disraeli replied in one of the most effective speeches he ever delivered, concluding with the words: "What our duty is at this critical moment is to maintain the Empire of England. Nor will we ever agree to any step, though it may obtain for a moment comparative quiet and a false prosperity, that hazards the existence of that Empire." Next morning the Prime Minister's place on the Treasury Bench was filled by Sir Stafford Northcote; a well-kept secret was revealed; Mr. Disraeli, on whose health the stress of forty years of active Parliamentary life had told with serious effect, had accepted a peerage, and gone to the House of Lords as Earl of Beaconsfield. Not, however, to escape responsibility. Throughout that autumn and winter the Government was vehemently denounced in the country for their toleration of Turkish misdeeds, but Lord Beaconsfield remained firm in his resolution to refrain from embarrassing the Porte or countenancing the designs of Russia. Before Parliament met, cooler counsels had begun to prevail, and when the Czar declared war against the Sultan, on April 24, the Bulgarian atrocities faded out of sight, and British sympathy flowed out towards the weaker combatant. The gallantry of Osman Pasha's troops, his double victory over the Russians at Plevna in July, and the heroic defence of the Shipka Pass, brought our old Crimean allies into high favour; but it was when the tide of victory had turned, when the Turkish armies had been crushed under the resistless preponderance of the Northern Power, when Russia was at the gates of Constantinople, and the Porte forced to accept an armistice, sent a Circular Note to the Great Powers, and a special appeal to Great Britain, praying for help in her extremity, that the policy of Beaconsfield was brought to the test. [Illustration: _Val. C. Prinsep, R.A._} {_From the Royal Collection. Reproduced from Photographs by Mr. Hollyer, by permission of the Artist._