every class of society, and from all quarters of the kingdom, came ever-increasing demonstrations of his deep and widespread popularity. All his errors were forgotten, and men thought only of the wit that had so long delighted them, of the eloquence which had so often thrilled them, and of those lofty conceptions of public duty which, if sometimes mistaken in particulars, were always instinct with the proudest traditions of English statesmanship. The unanimous voice of the English nation confessed in a moment the great genius and the true patriot who was about to be taken from them; and when the fatal termination of his illness on 19 April was made known to the nation it was followed by a general burst of sorrow, such as was scarcely elicited even by the death of the Duke of Wellington.
He does not sleep among the heroes and the statesmen by whose side he was worthy to be laid. He had left express directions that his last resting-place should be next to Lady Beaconsfield's at Hughenden, and there, accordingly, on 26 April, he was lowered to his grave in the presence of an illustrious group of mourners of all ranks and parties. A few days afterwards the queen in person, accompanied by the Princess Beatrice, placed a wreath of flowers on the tomb of her deceased servant, and with that ceremony the vault was finally closed, and the name of Beaconsfield passed into the possession of history.
That he was a great man who scaled the heights of fortune and won the battle of life against odds which seemed to be irresistible, and who at the gloomiest moments of his career never lost heart or hope, can no longer be a matter of controversy. A combination of genius, patience, intrepidity, and strength of will, such as occurs only at intervals of centuries, could alone have enabled him to succeed, and that combination is greatness. Of the means by which he rose to power, and the extent to which he was favoured by chance, different opinions will probably long be entertained, but as far as we can judge at present, his errors seem rather to have sprung from a reliance upon false analogies than from any deliberate design to make a tool of party, or rise by the profession of principles which he was prepared at any moment to abandon. It is most probable that he really believed in the popular toryism which he preached, and that he did not make sufficient allowance for the force of modern radicalism which was already in possession of the field. At the same time it is necessary to remember that the democratic Reform Bill, which Disraeli carried twenty years ago, has proved the existence of a conservative spirit among the working classes, in which it may be said, perhaps, that he alone of all his contemporaries believed; that under that franchise we had the first tory majority which had been returned for a whole generation; and that under a still more enlarged franchise we have seen a tory party returned to parliament numbering nearly half the House of Commons. These are facts to which their due weight must be allowed in estimating the political foresight which proclaimed that tory principles would, if properly explained, be supported by the English masses.
To the foreign policy of which Beaconsfield was the exponent justice could hardly be done, except under a system of government more stable than our own has now become. Beaconsfield no doubt carried popular opinion with him on the Eastern question, and it is possible that if he had been allowed his own way he might have obtained such a hold upon the working classes as to have averted the defeat which overtook him in 1880. But all this is matter of conjecture. We only see that, notwithstanding the enthusiasm which his foreign policy had inspired, the people were ready on very slight provocation to depose him in favour of a statesman by whom it was sure to be reversed. It is enough to affirm that Beaconsfield was a great statesman, though history may still decide that his policy, both foreign and domestic, was founded on a miscalculation of the forces at his command, as well as of those that were opposed to him.
Beaconsfield has been described as rather a debater than an orator. If concise and luminous argument, felicitous imagery, satire unequalled both for its wit and its severity, and the power of holding an audience enchained for many hours at a time, do not constitute an orator, the description may be just. But it is one that will exclude from the list of orators a multitude of great names which the common consent of mankind has enrolled in it; nor can the quality of moral earnestness, resulting from a sincere belief in the justice of his own cause, very well be denied to that eloquent vindication of a suffering interest which won the assent of Mr. Gladstone. His great speeches on the monarchy and the empire breathe the ripened conviction of a lifetime.
That Beaconsfield, had he not forsaken literature for politics, might have equalled the fame of some of our greatest English writers, is an opinion which has been expressed by very competent and impartial critics. And we doubt, as it is, whether the non-political parts of 'Coningsby' and 'Sybil' are either as well
