is our will, and our will
is nature." At another time he said, "The critics--they are those who
have failed in literature and in art." When Prince Napoleon was slain
he exclaimed, "A very remarkable people the Zulus: they defeat our
generals, they convert our bishops, they have settled the fate of a
great European dynasty." Every one remembers the startling sentence in
which he condemned Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy of 1868: "We have
legalized confiscation; we have consecrated sacrilege; we have condoned
treason." And his power of picturesque mockery appears in a speech made,
in 1872, immediately before the downfall of the Gladstone ministry: "As
I sat opposite the Treasury bench the ministers reminded me of those
marine landscapes not unusual on the coasts of South America. You behold
a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers on a single pallid
crest. But the situation is still dangerous. There are occasional
earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumbling of the sea." His
attacks on Peel have been pronounced to be among the most remarkable
speeches in the annals of the British Legislature. In 1849, at which
period also he wrote the biography of his father and the memoir of his
friend Lord George Bentinck, he was the recognized leader of the
Conservatives. When Peel was overthrown, Disraeli, who had overthrown
him, after a brief period, succeeded to his place.

It was not with cordiality that the Conservatives submitted to
Disraeli's direction. He had carried himself in relation to them with an
unsurpassed independence. He was of a people whom they held in contempt,
and whose admission to Parliament he had enforced. In his speeches he
had spared none of them. He had no friend at court, and he was still
very young. But there was no help for it--he was master of the
situation, and master of them. He was now thrice Chancellor of the
Exchequer; and for a quarter of a century he led the opposition in the
House of Commons, except in the brief intervals when he was identified
with the Government. In leading the opposition he was never an
obstructionist; and he lent his aid to every generous measure, such as
the reduction of the hours of labor, the protection of factory children,
the improvement of the homes of the poor, the extension of the suffrage.
He refused English interference on the side of the South during the
Civil War in the United States of America; he hindered disastrous
hostilities with France at the t