The rancour exhibited by a large portion of his own party, in opposing the increased grant to Maynooth, was so excessive that the Queen felt a great desire to bestow some special favour on Sir Robert Peel, as a mark of her confidence and esteem. She wished to confer on him the Order of the Garter, but, feeling doubtful how far this would meet the wishes of the Premier himself, requested Lord Aberdeen to sound him on the topic. Peel questioned, and wisely so, whether this honour would be of any service to him as a public man. Indeed, he considered that it would probably have the contrary effect; and he therefore declined the perilous distinction. In thanking her Majesty for the offer, he observed that he sprang from the people, was essentially a man of the people, and felt that in his case such an honour would be misapplied. His heart, he said, was not set upon titles of honour, or social distinctions; and the only reward he desired on quitting the service of her Majesty was that she should say to him, “You have been a faithful servant, and have done your duty to your country and to myself.” Sir Robert Peel was the son of a Lancashire manufacturer who, being also a member of the House of Commons, and a politician not wholly undistinguished in his day, had been created a Baronet in 1800. The mother of the future Premier was the daughter of another manufacturer; so that the second Sir Robert Peel had every reason to describe himself as essentially a plebeian. There would have been no harm in his accepting the Garter, but it was certainly more in accordance with the simplicity and genuineness of his nature to decline it. It is not improbable that something of the merely external coldness of Peel’s nature (for in the recesses of that nature he was not cold) may have been due to what Dr. Johnson admirably called “defensive pride.” The slightest compromise of his own dignity might possibly have drawn down upon him the supercilious taunts of the aristocratic party which he led. [Illustration: VIEW IN MALINES.]