tragedy, but an ignominious farce as well.' The consequences of the precipitation over the cataract not being immediate, and Government still continuing, over which a juggler of some kind must necessarily preside, Carlyle, though hope had forsaken him, retained his preference for the conscious over the unconscious. He had a faint pleasure in Disraeli's accession to power in 1874. He was even anxious that I should myself accept a proposal of a seat in Parliament which had been made to me, as a _quasi_ follower of Disraeli--not that he trusted him any better, but he thought him preferable to a worse alternative. He was touched with some compunction for what he had written when Disraeli acknowledged Carlyle's supremacy as a man of letters--offered him rank and honours and money, and offered them in terms as flattering as his own proudest estimate of himself could have dictated. Accept such offers Carlyle could not; but he was affected by the recognition that of all English ministers the Hebrew conjuror should have been the only one who had acknowledged his services to his country, and although he disapproved and denounced Disraeli's policy in the East he did perceive that there might be qualities in the man to which he had not done perfect justice. However that may be, Disraeli was a child of Parliament. It was Parliament and the confidence of Parliament which gave him his place in the State. For forty years he was in the front of all the battles which were fought in the House of Commons, in opposition or in office, in adversity or in success, in conflict and competition with the most famous debaters of the age. In the teeth of prejudice, without support save in his own force of character, without the advantage of being the representative of any popular cause which appealed to the imagination, he fought his way till the consent of Parliament and country raised him to the Premiership. Extraordinary qualities of some kind he must have possessed. No horse could win in such a race who had not blood and bone and sinew. Whether he was fit or unfit to govern England, the House of Commons chose him as their best; and if he was the charlatan which in some quarters he is supposed to have been, the Parliament which in so many years failed to detect his unworthiness is itself unfit to be trusted with the nation's welfare. He was not borne into power on the tide of any outside movement. He was not the advocate of any favourite measure with which his name was identified. He rose by his personal qualifications alone, and in studying what those qualifications were we are studying the character of Parliament itself. [Sidenote: THE JEWS IN SPAIN]