Such is 'Lothair,' perhaps the first novel ever written by a man who had previously been Prime Minister of England. Every page glitters with wit or shines with humour. Special scenes and sentences are never to be forgotten: the Tournament of Doves at the Putney Villa, where the ladies gather to see their lords at their favourite summer amusement; the wounded blue rock, which was contented to die by the hand of a duke, but rose and fluttered over a paling, disdaining to be worried by a terrier; the artist who hesitates over a mission to Egypt, but reflects that no one has ever drawn a camel, and that, if he went, a camel would at last be drawn; the definition of critics--as those who had failed in literature and art. But the true value of the book is the perfect representation of patrician society in England in the year which was then passing over; the full appreciation of all that was good and noble in it; yet the recognition, also, that it was a society without a purpose, and with no claim to endurance. It was then in its most brilliant period, like the full bloom of a flower which opens fully only to fade. CHAPTER XVI The exhausted volcanoes--Mr. Gladstone's failure and unpopularity--Ireland worse than before--Loss of influence in Europe--The Election of 1874--Great Conservative majority--Disraeli again Prime Minister with real power--His general position as a politician--Problems waiting to be dealt with--The relations between the Colonies and the Empire--The restoration of the authority of the law in Ireland--Disraeli's strength and Disraeli's weakness--Prefers an ambitious foreign policy--Russia and Turkey--The Eastern Question--Two possible policies and the effects of each--Disraeli's choice--Threatened war with Russia--The Berlin Conference--Peace with honour--Jingoism and fall of the Conservative party--Other features of his administration--Goes to the House of Lords as Earl of Beaconsfield and receives the Garter--Public Worship Act--Admirable distribution of patronage--Disraeli and Carlyle--Judgment of a conductor of an omnibus. [Sidenote: CONSERVATIVE REACTION]