If anybody should say that he cannot see any accuracy in the above version of the national history, and that there is no real applicability to our affairs in such a system, or, as such an one would perhaps style it, pretended system of politics, I can only reply that if he is under the impression that he is an admirer of Lord Beaconsfield, then this is very sad. For these are certainly Lord Beaconsfield's views of our history and the scheme of his politics. Neither of them, I will venture to add, surprises me. It seems to me that if a political Will-o'-the-Wisp, such as the Liberals for so long a time would make out Lord Beaconsfield to be, got into the top-boots and heavy coat of an English squire, these are just the historical conclusions and political generalizations which he would make, when he began trying to think like a country gentleman; and, for anything I can say, he would make them with a certain sincerity, that kind of ratiocinative working being natural to the Will-o'-the-Wisp intellect, when smitten with a passion for Parliamentary life and an aspiration for counterfeiting philosophy. Moreover, both the home politics and the foreign policy seem to me exactly to fit; they really each display like qualities of mind, and I can see no reason for any one who can accept the latter stickling at the former. If what is really at the bottom of the objection is, as I suspect it is, a feeling that there is something flimsy, artificial, flashy about either, or both, the politics and the policy, is not that asking too much from the light glittering source I have described? The Liberals have always done Lord Beaconsfield the justice of never expecting more than this from him, and he, on his side, has never disappointed their expectations. If they had not previously thought much of him in connection with foreign policy, never in fact believing that he would actually preside at a critical juncture long enough for that question much to signify, there is not a person in our party who would not have known beforehand that any foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield, if the occasion for one ever came, would be one of dazzle--Jack-o'-Lantern diplomacy and Will-o'-the-Wisp home politics rightly belonging to one another. The bright and bewildering flashes have now for a long time been ceaselessly playing here and there all over Europe from the direction of London; now hitting St. Petersburg; now gilding Berlin; then flickering over Constantinople; flaming terribly at Cabul; quivering at the Cape; striking Egypt at short intervals; and shimmering their mildest at Paris. The activity, as was likely in such a case, has been unprecedented. My own conviction is that Lord Beaconsfield has amazed, perplexed, it may be astounded, foreign diplomatists throughout Europe quite as much as he has done any of his opponents at home.