ns and silks
of his youth, but he was as careful of effect as he had ever been,
and had prepared himself in a elaborately negligent. He lounged into
the assembly in a black velvet shooting-coat and a wide-awake hat,
as if he had been accidentally passing through the town. It was the
fashion with University intellect to despise Disraeli as a man with
neither sweetness nor light; but he was famous, or at least
notorious, and when he rose to speak there was a general curiosity.
He began in his usual affected manner, slowly and rather pompously,
as if he had nothing to say beyond perfunctory platitudes. The
Oxford wits began to compare themselves favourably the dullness of
Parliamentary orators; when first one sentence and then another
startled them into attention. They were told that the Church was not
likely to be disestablished. It would remain, but would remain
subject to a Parliament which would not allow an imperium in
imperio. It must exert itself and reassert its authority, but within
the limits which the law laid down. The interest grew deeper when he
came to touch on the parties to one or other of which all his
listeners belonged. High Church and Low Church were historical and
intelligible, but there had arisen lately, the speaker said, a party
called the Broad, never before heard of. He went on to explain what
Broad Churchmen were."

Disraeli's gibes at Colenso and Maurice are too well known to need
repetition here. The equally famous reference to Darwin will bear to
be quoted once more, at least as an introduction for Froude's
incisive comment.

"What is the question now placed before society with a glibness the
most astounding? The question is this: Is man an ape or an angel? I,
my lord, am on the side of the angels."

"Mr. Disraeli," so Froude continues, "is on the side of the angels.
Pit and gallery echoed with laughter. Fellows and tutors repeated
the phrase over their port in the common room with shaking sides.
The newspapers carried the announcement the next morning over the
length and breadth of the island, and the leading article writers
struggled in their comments to maintain a decent gravity. Did
Disraeli mean it, or was it but an idle jest? and what must a man be
who could exercise his wit on such a subject? Disraeli was at least
as much in earnest as his audience. The phrase answered its purpose.
It has lived and become historical when the decorous protests of
professional divines have been forg