statesman in whom the great conservative body has any confidence, and can have any hope.’ It was therefore a terrible shock to Croker's lifelong belief in Peel when he announced his adherence to the policy of Cobden on resuming office in 1845, after Lord John Russell's failure to form a government. Croker felt this the more bitterly that he had been used by Peel and Sir James Graham to express views antagonistic to the abolition of the corn laws in an article in the ‘Quarterly Review’ in December 1842, which Peel in returning the proofs had pronounced to be excellent. In a correspondence which passed between Croker and the Duke of Wellington at the time Croker tells the duke that his articles ‘on the corn laws and on the league were written under Peel's eye,’ and under the direct inspiration of Peel and Graham. When the duke urged that a refusal by Peel to abolish the corn laws would have placed the government ‘in the hands of the league and the radicals,’ Croker replied that this was just what Peel's action would do. But what he chiefly regretted was that Peel, by deserting the specific principle upon which he was brought into office, had ‘ruined the character of public men, and dissolved by dividing the great landed interest’ (Letter to Sir H. Hardinge, 24 April 1846). His letters show what pain it cost him to separate from the friend of a lifetime. He would fain have abstained from giving public expression to his opinions. But when appealed to by the proprietor and editor of the ‘Quarterly Review’ ‘as a man of honour to maintain the principle to which he had, in December 1842, pledged’ that journal, he felt he could not refuse. In the articles which he then wrote there is nothing, according to Mr. Jennings, the editor of the ‘Croker Papers,’ ‘which was aimed at the man as distinguished from the statesman.’ They were not so regarded by Peel. In the letters which passed between them Croker writes with manly pathos. He subscribed his last letter to Peel ‘very sincerely and affectionately yours, Up to the Altar.’ Peel opens his reply with a cold ‘Sir,’ and ends ‘I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant.’ They never met again. Very different was the case with the Duke of Wellington. No cloud passed over his friendship towards Croker, which remained unbroken to the last. In 1847 Lord George Bentinck appears among Croker's correspondents, and in March 1848 Croker asks him as to Disraeli's manner of speaking and effectiveness in debate. Four years previously Disraeli was supposed to have drawn the character of Rigby, in the novel of ‘Coningsby,’ after Croker. The character is one of the most hateful and contemptible in modern fiction; and knowing the relation in which Croker stood to the Marquis of Hertford as the commissioner and manager of his estates and intimate personal friend, Disraeli abused the license of the novelist in drawing his Rigby in a way that could scarcely fail to raise the surmise, that in the agent and panderer to the vices of Lord Monmouth he had Croker in view. Of Croker personally he knew almost nothing, having met him only thrice. The correspondence between Croker and the Marquis of Hertford published by Mr. Jennings shows the grievous injustice done by Disraeli if he had Croker in view. In that correspondence no trace of that contemptible personage is to be found. Lord Hertford found in Croker not only a lively correspondent, but an invaluable guide in the management of his vast property, which seems to have been wholly under Croker's direction. For this service he refused to be paid; and so well understood was his position that, when Lord Hertford died, Peel, who as well as the Duke of Wellington had been one of his lordship's intimate friends, wrote to Croker (3 March 1842): ‘My chief interest in respect to Lord Hertford's will was the hope that out of his enormous wealth he would mark his sense of your unvarying and real friendship for him.’ Lord Hertford had always said that he would leave Croker 80,000l. The sum he actually received was 20,000l., an informality in a codicil having deprived him of a much larger sum. It now appears that Croker never had the curiosity even to look into ‘Coningsby,’ and that it was only after he had published a ‘Review of Mr. Disraeli's Budget Speech of 1853’ that his attention was called to the book by hearing that the review was regarded as retaliation for what Disraeli had said of him in his ‘Vivian Grey’ and ‘Coningsby.’ It was Croker's rule through life to take no notice of libellous attacks; and to take public notice of any of the characters in ‘Coningsby’ would have shown an utter want of tact. But he would have been more than human if, when the two first volumes of Macaulay's ‘History’ appeared, he had refrained from showing that the man who had assailed him for ‘gross and scandalous inaccuracy’ was not himself free from reproach. This he did in an elaborate article in the ‘Quarterly Review’ (March 1849). It is written with admirable temper, and, while giving to the work full credit for the brilliant and fascinating qualities, it points out upon incontrovertible evidence its grave faults of inaccurate and overcharged statement. Not till this has been done does it conclude with the
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