natural history collections from the British Museum, and for a National Portrait Gallery. Then he asked the House of Commons to vote £120,000 for the purchase of another “lot” of seventeen acres belonging to the Commissioners adjacent to the Exhibition site, and, finally, he desired it to vote £80,000 for the building itself. Very artfully he had the votes put separately, and Mr. Gladstone aided him by positively assuring the House that the project of buying the building--which was universally unpopular--was one quite apart from the other projects. By a vote of 267 to 135 the House agreed, but grudgingly, to the purchase of the ground, intending to fight the taxpayers’ battle on the question of buying the building. When, however, they came to the vote for the building, Mr. Gladstone informed them they had no option but to purchase it, for the contractors were under no obligation to remove it--a fact which Lord Palmerston had carefully concealed from the House. Members were thus in possession of a site burdened with a useless building which it was nobody’s business to remove. If the Government pulled it down, and then put up another structure in its place, the operation would cost much more than the £105,000 which were needed to buy and adapt it to public uses. The House was furious at finding itself trapped by Lord Palmerston and Mr. Gladstone. Bitter complaints of Courtly jobbery were heard on all sides, and a Ministerial defeat was the result. Lord Malmesbury, writing on the 5th of July in his “Diary,” says:--“Several people called, who told me that the scene in the House of Commons when the division took place on the vote for the purchase of the Exhibition Building was extraordinary. Sir Stafford Northcote’s speech[172] was the signal for a storm, and he was forced to sit down. Disraeli had canvassed his supporters, telling them that he had a letter in his pocket from the Queen. This had a disastrous effect, and when he got up the hooting was so terrific that he could not be heard. Gladstone’s speech had already excited great indignation, for it showed how completely the Government had deceived the House when Lord Palmerston had induced them to vote for the purchase of the land, leaving them under the delusion that the contractors for the Exhibition were bound to remove the building if it was not sold within a certain time. Gladstone had told them that there was no engagement of the sort, and that he believed they were not obliged to remove it at all. This, whether true or not, was taken as a menace to force them to buy the building, and infuriated the House of Commons the more, as Lord Elcho proved that the purchase would be a most disadvantageous one, entailing an enormous expense. So the House rose _en masse_, and, after a scene of the utmost confusion and excitement, defeated the Government by more than two to one, Gladstone and Disraeli looking equally angry.”[173] It need hardly be said that Mr.