Mr. Disraeli met defeat with manliness and dignity. Mr. Gathorne-Hardy advised him to resign, but Lord Derby, on the other hand, urged him to hold on to office. On the 28th of November a Cabinet Meeting was held, and Ministers decided to resign rather than wait to be ejected from their places by a vote of the House of Commons. The Prime Minister went down to Windsor on the 2nd of December, and not only tendered the resignation of the Cabinet to the Queen, but advised her to send for Mr. Gladstone. In fact, Mr. Disraeli, like a highbred player, having lost his game paid the stakes without a grudge or a murmur. Mr. Gladstone was summoned by telegraph to Windsor on the 3rd, and was commissioned to form a Government. Mr. Disraeli refused all honours for himself, though he was offered a peerage, but Mrs. Disraeli was created Viscountess Beaconsfield in her own right. On the 18th of December Parliament met, and the Ministry was complete. It consisted of fifteen members, of whom six were peers, one an eldest son of a peer, and eight were Commoners. The only Radical appointed was Mr. Bright--unless Mr. Gladstone could be counted a Radical--and in all questions between the middle-class and the masses Mr. Bright was already a Conservative. It was a Ministry of All the Talents--formidable in debate, great in administrative capacity, and strong in intellectual power--but it was unmistakably Whiggish. It was the Whigs who were first consulted about the disposal of the offices, and the spirit of Palmerston, who gave Mr. Milner Gibson a seat in his Cabinet “just to keep the Radicals quiet,” still prevailed. In forming the Ministry, Mr. Gladstone thus ignored the fact that his Cabinet inaugurated a new democratic era, in which the relative importance of Whigs and Radicals had been reversed. By admitting Radicals merely to minor offices he disappointed the combative wing of his party, whose unbought zeal had really carried him to power.[286] Some Tories of the “baser sort” put about the report that the Queen would refuse to receive Mr. Bright as a Minister. The Queen, however, as if to mark her disapproval of such insinuations, went out of her way to pay Mr. Bright special attention when he was presented to her. With delicate tact she sent word to him that in deference to his hereditary scruples as a Quaker, she would not expect him to kneel before her when he came to “kiss hands” on taking office.