hich some observers were disposed to
connect with the plot of Orsini--a rough reminder to the Emperor,
they said, that he was trifling with the cause of Italian unity, to
which he was secretly pledged. But Englishmen were slow to believe in
such designs on the part of the French ruler. "How should a despot
set men free?" was their thought, interpreted for them vigorously
enough by an anonymous poet of the day; and they enrolled themselves
in great numbers for national defence. With this movement there might
be some evils mixed, but its purely defensive and manly character
entitles it on the whole to be reckoned among the better influences
of the day.

[Illustration: Lord Palmerston.]

Palmerston's discredit with his countrymen was of short duration, as
was his exile from office; he was Premier again in the June of 1859,
and was thenceforth "Prime Minister for life." His popularity, which
had been for some time increasing, remained now quite unshaken until
his death in 1865. Before Lord Derby's Government fell, however, a
reform had been carried which could not but have been extremely
grateful to Mr. Disraeli, then the Ministerial leader of the House of
Commons. The last trace of the disabilities under which the Jews in
England had laboured for many generations was now removed, and the
Baron Lionel de Rothschild was able quietly to take his seat as one
of the members for the City of London. The disabilities in question
had never interfered with the ambition or the success of Mr.
Disraeli, who at a very early age had become a member of the
Christian Church. But his sympathies had never been alienated from
the own people, with whom indeed he had always proudly identified
himself by bold assertion of their manifold superiority. There are
still, undoubtedly, persons in this country whose convictions lead
them to think it anything but a wholesome change which has admitted
among our legislators men, however able and worthy, who disclaim the
name of _Christian_. But the change was brought about by the
conviction, which has steadily deepened among us, that oppression of
those of a different faith from our own, either by direct severities
or by the withholding of civil rights, is a singularly poor weapon of
conversion, and that the adversaries of Christianity are more likely
to be conciliated by being dealt with in a Christlike spirit;
further, that religious opinion may not be treated as a crime,
without violation of God's ju