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A.D. 1865.] CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR DISRAELI. 127

Smith's reply to this was as follows:

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1 HYDE PARK ST., July 12, 1865.

DEAR SIR, I am grateful to you for the expression of your sympathy with me under my defeat. Seeing that I had not identified myself with the party, I confess I felt surprise at the warmth and earnestness with which the Westminster Conservatives supported me, and the ready response to our united efforts caused me to be sanguine as to the result.

But I am amply repaid for any labour or vexation through which I have passed by the confidence of the friends I have made in this contest, and the expression of your own kindly feeling.-I have the honor to be, Dear Sir, yours very faithfully, WILLIAM H. SMITH.

Thus ended in decisive repulse the assault on the Liberal stronghold of the Metropolis. But it was not to be long before the attack was renewed. The contest had revealed Conservative feeling in a London constituency to an extent which few could have suspected. No doubt it would have been even more manifest but for the confidence which the middle classes felt in Lord Palmerston. It is true that Smith repeatedly disclaimed any wish to see that statesman dislodged from office; but the Liberals had the advantage of claiming Palmerston as the head of their party, while Smith was a follower of Lord Derby, whose name, though in high repute with landed gentry and farmers, was not one with which to conjure in the towns.

128

CHAPTER V.

1865-1868.

DEATH OF LORD PALMERSTON AND OF THE ELDER SMITHEARL RUSSELL'S REFORM BILL AND MR DISRAELI'S-DISSOLUTION OF PARLIAMENT SMITH IS ELECTED FOR WESTMINSTER THE REVIVALIST MOVEMENT.

LORD PALMERSTON died in the autumn of 1865. The night of his death-October 18 — was marked by a phenomenon to which, in a prescientific or more superstitious age, there would undoubtedly have been attributed special significance, as accompanying the removal of one of great influence in the guidance of a great nation. Many persons, especially in the northern part of the island, as they watched the brilliant display of aurora borealis, called to mind the belief of the Scottish peasantry referred to by Aytoun in

the stanza

"All night long the northern streamers

Shot across the trembling sky:
Fearful lights that never beckon

Save when kings or heroes die."

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