that of the judge?

The year 1848 was a period of agitation and revolution in every country
in Europe; and most governments, being unpopular, were compelled to
suppress riots and insurrections, and to maintain order under exceeding
difficulties. England was no exception; and public discontents had some
justification in the great deficiency in the national treasury, the
distress of Ireland, and the friction which new laws, however
beneficent, have to pass through.

About this time Mr. Disraeli was making himself prominent as an orator,
and as a foe to the administration. He was clever in nicknames and witty
expressions,--as when he dubbed the Blue Book of the Import Duties
Committee "the greatest work of imagination that the nineteenth century
had produced." Mr. Gladstone was no match for this great parliamentary
fencer in irony, in wit, in sarcasm, and in bold attacks; but even in a
House so fond of jokes as that of the Commons he commanded equal if not
greater attention by his luminous statements of fact and the earnest
solemnity of his manner. Benjamin Disraeli entered Parliament in 1837,
as a sort of democratic Tory, when the death of King William IV.
necessitated a general election. His maiden speech as member for
Maidstone was a failure; not because he could not speak well, but
because a certain set determined to crush him, and made such a noise
that he was obliged to sit down, declaring in a loud voice that the time
would come when they should hear him. He was already famous for his
novels, and for a remarkable command of language; the pet of
aristocratic women, and admired generally for his wit and brilliant
conversation, although he provoked criticism for the vulgar finery of
his dress and the affectation of his manners. Already he was intimate
with Lord Lyndhurst, a lion in the highest aristocratic circles, and
universally conceded to be a man of genius. Why should not such a man,
at the age of thirty-three, aspire to a seat in Parliament? His future
rival, Gladstone, though five years his junior, had already been in
Parliament three years, and was distinguished as an orator before
Disraeli had a chance to enter the House of Commons as a supporter of
Sir Robert Peel; but his extraordinary power was not felt until he
attacked his master on the repeal of the corn laws, nor was he the rival
of Mr. Gladstone until the Tory party was disintegrated and broken into
sections. In 1847, however, he became the acknowled