The last revelation has come just recently in the letters of Lord and Lady Wolseley. Take on the one hand some illustrations of her relationship with Disraeli—'the old Jew,". as many called him, "the id actor" as Strachey says he was, the champion of the infamous Turk, the exponent of everything that English Toryism stands for. In flattering Victoria, Disraeli (to use his own expression) "laid it on with a trowel," and she swallowed the flattery with gusto. For her he was "The Faery." He wrote to her that her confidence in him was more precious in his eyes than rubies. It seemed to him that the primroses- sent to him by the Queen must have been sent by the fairy queen Titania. In one of his latiters to the Queen he says of himself, he "lives only for Her and works only for Her and without Her all is lost." And in reply the Queen wrote this sort of thing to him, "Would he not accept a Marquisate or Dukedom in addition te the Blue Ribbon -(the Garter)? And will he not allow the Queen to settle a Barony or Viscounty on his brother and nephew? Such a name should be perpetuated!" On one occasion he surpassed himself with a letter to one of the ladies-in-waiting which was intended to be shown to Victoria and which said:—"I love the Queen—perbaps the only person in this world left to me that I do Her attitude towards Gladstone was astonishing. She accepted Disraeli's spiteful references to him as a matter of course. She stigmatized the action of the country in returning him to power instead of her own favourite as. "unnatural," "mad and unreasoning" and "disgraceful," so that she, was "shocked and ashamed." She~ declared (in writing to the defeated Pre mier) that "of course I shall not take any notice of Mr. Gladstone, who has done so much mischief' and she affirmed positively that she would not send for Gladstone to form a Ministry, although she was ultimately compelled to do so because it was he and he alone that had won the election for the Liberals and he alone that had a majority in Parliament. Not only, however, did* Victoria cherish the most violent dislike for Gladstone but she displayed it openly both to her intimates and to guests at the Court.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.