Reply of the Liberals to the Tory Reform Bill--State of Ireland--The Protestant Establishment--Resolutions proposed by Mr. Gladstone--Decay of Protestant feeling in England--Protestant character of the Irish Church--The Upas Tree--Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy--General effect on Ireland of the Protestant Establishment--Voltaire's opinion--Imperfect results--The character of the Protestant gentry--Nature of the proposed change--Sprung on England as a surprise--Mr. Gladstone's resolutions carried--Fall of Disraeli's Government 199 CHAPTER XV The calm of satisfied ambition--A new novel--'Lothair'--Survey of English society--The modern aristocracy--Forces working on the surface and below it--Worship of rank--Cardinal Grandison--Revolutionary Socialism--Romeward drift of the higher classes--'Lothair' by far the most remarkable of all Disraeli's writings 215 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 232 CHAPTER XVII Retirement from office--Dignity in retreat--Hughenden--Lord Beaconsfield as a landlord--Fondness for country life--'Endymion'--Illness and death--Attempted estimate of Lord Beaconsfield--A great man? or not a great man?--Those only great who can forget themselves--Never completely an Englishman--Relatively great, not absolutely--Gulliver among Lilliputians--Signs in 'Sybil' of a higher purpose, but a purpose incapable of realisation--Simplicity and blamelessness in private life--Indifference to fortune--Integrity as a statesman and administrator 254 INDEX 263 LORD BEACONSFIELD CHAPTER I Carlyle on Lord Beaconsfield--Judgment of the House of Commons--Family History--The Jews in Spain--Migration to Venice--Benjamin D'Israeli the Elder--Boyhood of Isaac Disraeli. [Sidenote: CARLYLE'S OPINION OF HIM]