of 1830, that he would never again accept a secondary position in office.
But the Duke of Wellington was too old a tactician to lose so valuable an
ally. So his Grace declared after the Reform Bill was passed, as its
inevitable result, that thenceforth the Prime Minister must be a member of
the House of Commons; and this aphorism, cited as usual by the Duke's
parasites as demonstration of his supreme sagacity, was a graceful mode of
resigning the preeminence which had been productive of such great party
disasters. It is remarkable that the party who devised and passed the
Reform Bill, and who, in consequence, governed the nation for ten years,
never once had their Prime Minister in the House of Commons: but that does
not signify; the Duke's maxim is still quoted as an oracle almost equal in
prescience to his famous query, 'How is the King's government to be
carried on?' a question to which his Grace by this time has contrived to
give a tolerably practical answer.

Sir Robert Peel, who had escaped from Lord Liverpool, escaped from Mr.
Canning, escaped even from the Duke of Wellington in 1832, was at length
caught in 1834; the victim of ceaseless intriguers, who neither
comprehended his position, nor that of their country.




CHAPTER II.


Beaumanoir was one of those Palladian palaces, vast and ornate, such as
the genius of Kent and Campbell delighted in at the beginning of the
eighteenth century. Placed on a noble elevation, yet screened from the
northern blast, its sumptuous front, connected with its far-spreading