The conjuncture is very critical, and if prudently yet boldly
managed, may rally this country. To be inactive now is, on your
part, a great responsibility. If you join Lord Derby's cabinet, you
will meet there some warm personal friends; all its members are
your admirers. You may place me in neither category, but in that, I
assure you, you have ever been sadly mistaken. The vacant post is,
at this season, the most commanding in the commonwealth; if it were
not, whatever office you filled, your shining qualities would
always render you supreme; and if party necessities retain me
formally in the chief post, the sincere and delicate respect which
I should always offer you, and the unbounded confidence, which on
my part, if you choose you could command, would prevent your
feeling my position as anything but a form.

Think of all this in a kindly spirit. These are hurried lines, but
they are heartfelt. I was in the country yesterday, and must return
there to-day for a county dinner. My direction is Langley Park,
Slough. But on Wednesday evening I shall be in town.--B. DISRAELI.
_Grosvenor Gate_, _May_ 25, 1858.

None of us, I believe, were ever able to persuade Mr. Gladstone to do
justice to Disraeli's novels,--the spirit of whim in them, the ironic
solemnity, the historical paradoxes, the fantastic glitter of dubious
gems, the grace of high comedy, all in union with a social vision that
often pierced deep below the surface. In the comparative stiffness of
Mr. Gladstone's reply on this occasion, I seem to hear the same accents
of guarded reprobation:--

_Mr. Gladstone to Mr. Disraeli._

11 _Carlton House Terrace_, _May_ 25, '58.--MY DEAR SIR,--The
letter you have been so kind as to address to me will enable me, I
trust, to remove from your mind some impressions with which you
will not be sorry to part.

You have given me a narrative of your conduct since 1850 with
reference to your position as leader of your party. But I have
never thought your retention of that office matter of reproach to
you, and on Saturday last I acknowledged to Mr. Walpole the
handsomeness of your conduct in offering to resign it to Sir James
Graham.

You consider that the relations between yourself and me have proved
the main difficulty in the way of certain political arrangem