. Disraeli to the first place in the counsels of the crown. In February
1868 Lord Derby's health compelled him to retire from his position as head
of the government. Mr. Gladstone found fault with the translator of
Stockmar's _Memoirs_ for rendering "leichtsinnig" applied to Lord Derby as
"frivolous." He preferred "light-minded":--

The difference between frivolous and light-minded is not a broad
one. But in my opinion a man is frivolous by disposition, or as
people say by nature, whereas he is light-minded by defect or
perversity of will; further he is frivolous all over, he may be
light-minded on one side of his character. So it was in an eminent
degree with Lord Derby. Not only were his natural gifts
unsurpassed in the present age, but he had a serious and earnest
side to his character. Politics are at once a game and a high art;
he allowed the excitements of the game to draw him off from the
sustained and exhausting efforts of the high art. But this was the
occasional deviation of an honourable man, not the fixed mental
habit of an unprincipled one.

(M72) Mr. Disraeli became prime minister. For the moment, the incident was
more dramatic than important; it was plain that his tenure of office could
not last long. He was five years older (perhaps more) than Mr. Gladstone;
his parliamentary existence had been four or five years shorter. During
the thirty-one years of his life in the House of Commons, up to now he had
enjoyed three short spells of office (from 1852 to 1868), covering little
more than as many years. He had chosen finance for his department, but his
budgets made no mark. In foreign affairs he had no policy of his own
beyond being Austrian and papal rather than Italian, and his criticisms on
the foreign policy of Palmerston and Russell followed the debating needs
of the hour. For legislation in the constructive sense in which it
interested and attracted Mr. Gladstone, he had no taste and little
capacity. In two achievements only had he succeeded, but in importance
they were supreme. Out of the wreckage left by Sir Robert Peel twenty-two
years before he had built up a party. In the name of that party, called
conservative, he had revolutionised the base of our parliamentary
constitution. These two extraordinary feats he had performed without
possessing the full confidence of his adherents, or any real confidence at
all on the part of the country. That was t