Note (return) — Chapter I

The greatest of Bolingbroke's disciples was Disraeli, who wrote, 'We are not indebted to the Reason of man for any of the great achievements which are the landmarks of human action and human progress.... Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination. Even Mormon accounts more votaries than Bentham.'[54] It was Disraeli who treated Queen Victoria 'like a woman,' and Gladstone, with the Oxford training from which he never fully recovered, who treated her 'like a public meeting.'