"I, as you know, think Hartington the best man for us--the Radicals-- because he is quite fearless, always goes with us when he thinks it safe for the party, and generally judges rightly--or takes the soundest advice on this point. In fact, I don't think he's ever made a mistake at all--as yet; but Chamberlain seems, by a sort of quasi- hereditary Birmingham position, to look at him as Bright used to look at Palmerston. This is serious, because Chamberlain is a strong man and does not easily change, unlike the other member of our triumvirate, Cowen, who is as fickle as the wind, one day Hartington, one day you, one day Gladstone, and never seeming to know even his own mind." Mr. Gladstone's return to leadership was more and more assured, but he would not find his old antagonist face to face with him in the House of Commons. At the close of the Session of 1876 Sir Charles had unknowingly witnessed a great withdrawal. 'On the night of August 11th I had listened to Mr. Disraeli's last speech as a Commoner, and had noticed that on leaving the House in a long white overcoat and dandified lavender kid gloves, leaning on his secretary's arm, he had shaken hands with a good many people, none of whom knew that he was bidding farewell to the House of Commons.' This withdrawal marked no lessening of power. As Sir Charles had perceived, Disraeli was his own Foreign Secretary, and a Foreign Minister's influence gained by being exercised in the House of Lords. Meanwhile, in Gladstone's absence the Liberal party seemed broken and divided beyond hope of recovery. In the country, though the campaign launched by the Bulgarian pamphlet had seemed so immediately effective that a Tory county member said to Mr. Gladstone, "If there were a dissolution now, I should not get a vote," yet the reaction, spoken of in Harcourt's letter to Dilke on October 10th, very quickly developed. Those who supported Mr. Gladstone identified themselves unreservedly with the Slav as against the Turk. But by others the demand for ejection of the Turk, "bag and baggage," from Bulgaria was construed as an invitation for Russia to seize Constantinople, and thus as a direct infringement of British interests in Egypt and the Mediterranean. Lord Beaconsfield skilfully played upon this feeling, and there ensued a condition of affairs in which Mr. Gladstone made triumphal progresses through the north of England, and was hooted weekly in the streets of London.