though he had stuck a wafer on every place in the United Kingdom where he has consented to appoint an agent. If you like to taste port you can do so-young wine that arrived as it were but yesterdayand old mellow nectar that has been in hiding somewhere for these fifty years. If you want to peep at Spain, however, the lift is waiting to belie its name by sinking with you again to another great area just like the last, with pump and fining-vat and bottlers busily engaged in extracting streams of dark gold and pale amber from casks that exude a subtle vinous perfume. Here, at all events, some of the natural sherry is to be found, if it exists at all, for it is pale as chablis and dry as the driest hock; and here, too, is that noted Vino Fino, the very perfection of a fish wine, but requiring an even temperature and delicate appreciation before it will reward the unaccustomed palate. In the office which is on this floor there is some of the quaint medieval-fashioned furniture from the old house at Crosby Hall; but you must keep your seat

on the champagne case if you mean to finish your tour, for we are bound to the first cellar leading from the external courtyard and platform by a flight of steps, and still below that to the real subterranean, to which the intelligent visitor from Champagne and Bordeaux renders himself with effusion.' In fact, there is nothing like it in any private establishment between this and the wine country, for it is the depôt for millions of bottles of light wine. The great champagne cellars where the choice vintages are stored by the million bottles may be of course compared with it'; but they, like this, are representatives of a branch of national commerce, and the lofty gas-lighted and well-aired arches-without a vestige of cobweb; the clean, sawdusted level asphalte flooring; the great stacks and walls with faces composed of thousands of cylindrical shapes; the cases and casks, the tramways and the easy conveyance into free air and daylight, are all significant of the new truth that has come to us with the restoration of cheap wine.

said to possess that entire confidence of her Majesty which he considered necessary for the stability of his ministry. Her Majesty declined to take the course he suggested, and which she declared to be repugnant to her feelings. A good deal of misapprehension existed on the subject of those ladies of the bedchamber. It was imagined that the Queen was called upon to part with the beloved companions of her youth, whereas those ladies had hardly been in office above a twelvemonth. Neither did Sir Robert desire to make a general revolution in the domestic department of the palace, for he only desired two alterations in that department.

This was especially the era of critical parliamentary divisions. At no other period during the reign were these divisions so close, so frequent, and so exciting. The real power lay with the Opposition. They could check, and they could almost carry any measure that they chose. The majority in the upper house was altogether with them. In the lower house they were only nominally in a minority, a minority which any day might be converted into a majority. The sympathies of the Crown were supposed to be with ministers, but this hardly helped them in the popular estimation. Still, on the resignation of Mr. Abercrombie, the Whigs carried the appointment of Mr. Shaw Lefevre as the new Speaker, in opposition to Mr. Goulburn, who was supported by Sir Robert and his friends. The Tories afterwards abundantly acquiesced in the great merits of this appointment. The following year the subject of the Queen's marriage came before the House of Commons. The ministry proposed to settle fifty thousand a-year on the Prince. Colonel Sibthorp, famous for proposing utterly abortive motions, proposed that the grant should be reduced to thirty thousand a-year. To his huge delight Sir Robert Peel supported him. At first sight it certainly looked as if Sir Robert Peel was resenting the slight passed upon him in the previous year and making his power felt in a very practical way. But Sir Robert

Although the majority was so great, more than a hundred, it was not considered decisive against the ministry, inasmuch as it was chiefly effected by the support of the large Radical section who sought to reduce the national expenditure as far as possible. Before long the Ministry retrieved their position by a favourable division. Sir John Yarde Buller brought forward his motion of want of confidence. On this occasion Mr. Macaulay made his first speech in the house after his return from India, and becoming a cabinet minister. The close parliamentary divisions of the period were of the most exciting nature, and had a truly dramatic interest. On this occasion the numbers were:

election. It was known that the Melbourne Ministry were in a hopeless minority, but it did not occur to them to resign until an adverse vote was challenged and accepted from the house.

With a critical majority of ninety in favour of Peel, the era of close parliamentary divisions was closed for some years. Sir Robert was at the head of a strong Government, the strongest that had for many years been known. He had his difficulties; he had that special difficulty of Ireland, that rock a-head on which he made shipwreck at last; and the Opposition repeatedly measured its strength against him. But it cannot be said that there was a single division which in any degree imperilled his tenure of power. It was now known that his relations with the Queen and the Prince were of the most cordial description. His own party felt some dissatisfaction with him, and there was a section of them which would have preferred the leadership of Lord Lyndhurst. The Young England party, with its Coryphæus, Mr. Disraeli, looked upon him with dislike and suspicion. But the Minister maintained a position of unassailable strength. The augmentation of the Maynooth Grant shook his popularity, but here he was sure of the assistance of the bulk of the Liberals. Finally the convictions, slowly and painfully arrived at by Sir Robert, brought to an issue by the Irish famine, determined him to propose the repeal of the Corn Laws. It was, perhaps, unfortunate for his fame, that he remained in office to carry those measures which he had resisted in opposition. It was the story of the Catholic claims repeated over again. There was now an utter separation between the Conservative leaders and their rank and file. There was no doubt but Sir Robert, with the assistance of the Whigs, would triumphantly be able to carry the Repeal of the Corn Laws. Still there were memorable debates, in which Mr. Disraeli exhausted every weapon of scathing irony against the Premier, Sir Robert Peel. Perhaps he learned to regret that through ill advice he had neglected

Mr. Disraeli's claims for office, and he could little have foreseen in him a future Prime Minister. There can be no doubt but Sir Robert's course was dictated by motives of the purest patriotism. But that course was so tortuous, that he left behind him only a chequered and ambiguous fame. It cannot be said that the papers published by his executors, Lord Stanhope and Mr. Cardwell, have effectually cleared his name. With the amplest sympathy and allowance for him, he still remains a political enigma.

From that time to this the Conservative party have never recovered that proud position of political predominance to which they had attained during the premiership of Sir Robert. A memorable division on the protection of life on the Irish Coercion Bill, in which Protectionists and Whigs coalesced, placed him in a minority of seventy-three, and ejected him from office. During the remaining years of his life, Sir Robert gave an effectual support to the Whigs. It seemed, indeed, not improbable, on one occasion, that he might yet effect a reconciliation with his former friends. This was on the debate on Lord Palmerston's foreign policy, a debate famous for three great speeches: the speech of Lord Palmerston, which was his greatest parliamentary effort; the grand speech of Mr. Cockburn, which virtually made him Chief Justice; and the speech of Sir Robert Peel, once more drawing near to his old friends, and made in the unconscious, imminent shadow of approaching death. He died; and for weary years the betrayed Conservative party, slowly electing its generals and disciplining its rank and file, continued in gallant ineffectual opposition, never able to make head directly against the Government, but with the chance of profiting by occasional combination with disaffected elements of that great Liberal party which, like the Matterhorn, is always undergoing a process of disintegration.

The critical divisions of late years have been pretty uniformly effected by a junction of the Conservatives with some portion of the Liberal host. The Whigs had so far im