CHAPTERS FROM TURF HISTORY 



submitting to a degree. Forty years later his 

 eminence in public life justified his candidature 

 for the high office of Chancellor of the University. 

 He took his seat in the House of Lords, and there- 

 after assisted both at the councils of the nation 

 and of his party. The deciding epoch in his career 

 was in 1878. In that year he married the heiress 

 of the house of Rothschild, who was led to the altar 

 by a Prime Minister of her own race before an 

 assembly of brilliant society. In the political field 

 he made steady progress. He became a finished 

 speaker and an accomplished writer. He was 

 responsible for the invitation to Mr. Gladstone to 

 contest Midlothian, and at the election played the 

 host to the great protean actor, who on the hustings 

 only anticipated the imaginative performance, a 

 generation later, of Chinese Slavery. Lord Rose- 

 bery, henceforth, was under the spell of his hero. 

 He obliged him by accepting a subordinate post 

 in the Home Department and the appointment of 

 First Commissioner of Works. In 1886 and 1892 

 he filled the important office of Foreign Secretary 

 with fair distinction. Mr. Gladstone retired in 

 1894, and went down to Windsor intent on pressing 

 the Queen to send for Lord Spencer, but the 

 experienced and adroit Sovereign allowed her old 

 servant no opportunity of recommendation, and, 

 greatly mortified, he departed from the presence. 

 To the disastrous heritage Lord Rosebery succeeded. 

 There was no unity and little zeal in his party, 

 and disappointment bred a contemptuous disloyalty 

 in his chief colleague. The Administration tottered 

 to its fall in the following year, and in 1896 Lord 

 Rosebery resigned the titular leadership of the 



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