But University reform, divorce reform, the management of the metropolis, the resettlement ...

But University reform, divorce reform, the management of the metropolis, the resettlement of India, colonial self-government, the creation of the Public Accounts Committee, the Post Office Savings

Bank, the Atlantic

cable, that generation took in its stride, and the conversion of the vast and shapeless city which Dickens knew-fog-bound and fever-haunted, brooding over its dark, mysterious river-into the imperial capital, of Whitehall, the Thames Embankment and South Kensington, is the still visible symbol of the mid-Victorian transition.' Parties were changing; the strong and steady currents of Whig and Tory opinion were splitting into eddies. The friends of the late Sir Billy Peel, as they move to and fro across the stage, make Conservatism a little less Tory, and Liberalism a little less Whig.

A new and popular Liberalism is forming of definite grievance and redress, Church rates and University tests, Army Purchase and Irish Disestablishment, and a humane and frugal distrust of Empire, aristocracy, adventure, and war.

The re-education of the Conservatives, paralysed by the Free Trade schism, has begun, and the field is setting for the encounter of Gladstone and Disraeli when once Palmerston has departed.

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