statesman was a member of the House of Commons, They were recognized to
be the heads of their respective parties,--two giants in debate; two
great parliamentary gladiators, on whom the eyes of the nation rested.
Mr. Gladstone was the more earnest, the more learned, and the more solid
in his blows. Mr. Disraeli was the more adroit, the more witty, and the
more brilliant in his thrusts. Both were equally experienced. The one
appealed to justice and truth; the other to the prejudices of the House
and the pride of a nation of classes. One was armed with a heavy dragoon
sword; the other with a light rapier, which he used with extraordinary
skill. Mr. G.W.E. Russell, in his recent "Life of Gladstone," quotes the
following passage from a letter of Lord Houghton, May, 1867:--

"I met Gladstone at breakfast. He seems quite awed with the diabolical
cleverness of Dizzy, 'who,' he says, 'is gradually driving all ideas of
political honor out of the House, and accustoming it to the most
revolting cynicism,' There is no doubt that a sense of humor has always
been conspicuously absent from Mr. Gladstone's character."

Sometimes one of these rival leaders was on the verge of victory and
sometimes the other, and both equally gained the applause of the
spectators. Two such combatants had not been seen since the days of Pitt
and Fox,--one, the champion of the people; the other, of the
aristocracy. What each said was read the next day by every family in the
land. Both were probably greatest in opposition, since more
unconstrained. Of the two, Disraeli was superior in the control of his
temper and in geniality of disposition, making members roar with
laughter by his off-hand vituperation and ingenuity in inventing
nicknames. Gladstone was superior in sustained reasoning, in lofty
sentiments, and in the music of his voice, accompanied by that solemnity
of manner which usually passes for profundity and the index of deep
convictions. As for rhetorical power, it would be difficult to say which
was the superior,--though the sentences of both were too long. It would
also be difficult to tell which of the two was the more ambitious and
more tenacious of office. Both, it is said, bade for popularity in the
measures they proposed. Both were politicians. There is, indeed, a great
difference between politicians and statesmen; but a man may be politic
without ceasing to be a lover of his country, like Lord Palmerston
himself; and a man may advocate larg