little
reform will be carried, and want to discredit Gladstone. 3. A large body
who care for nothing except to avoid a dissolution." "There is a fresh
intrigue," he adds, "every twelve hours."

The trenchant and sardonic mind of the leader of the revolt that had
destroyed the bill of 1866, soon found food for bitter rumination. On the
eve of the session Lowe admitted that he had very little hope of a
successful end to his efforts, and made dismal protests that the reign of
reason was over. In other words, he had found out that the men whom he had
placed in power, were going to fling him overboard in what he called this
miserable auction between two parties, at which the country was put up for
sale, and then knocked down to those who could produce the readiest and
swiftest measure for its destruction.

The liberal cave of the previous year was broken up, Lowe and the ablest
of its old denizens now voting with Mr. Gladstone, but the great majority
going with the government. The place of the empty cave was taken by a new
group of dissidents, named from their habitat the party of the Tea-Room.
Many, both whigs above the gangway and even radicals below, were averse to
bringing Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone back again; they thought a bill
would have a better chance with the tories than with the old leaders.
Insubordination and disorganisation were complete. "I have never seen
anything like it," says the new Lord Halifax;(154) "but the state of
things this year enables me to understand what was very inexplicable in
all I heard of last year." We can hardly wonder that the strain was often
difficult to bear. A friend, meeting Mr. Gladstone at dinner about this
time (March 25), thought that he saw signs of irritated nerve. "What an
invaluable gift," he reflects, "a present of phlegm from the gods would
be! If we could roll up Thompson [master of Trinity] or Bishop Thirlwall
with him and then bisect the compound, we should get a pair as invincible
as the Dioscuri." An accomplished observer told his constituents that one
saw the humour of the great parliamentary chess tournament, looking at the
pieces on the board and the face of Disraeli; its tragic side in a glimpse
of the face of Gladstone; in the mephistophelian nonchalance of one, the
melancholy earnestness of the other.(155)

(M67) Everybody knew that Disraeli, as he watched the scene from behind
his mask, now and again launching a well-devised retort, was neither liked
no