of property I consider as altogether impossible’ (ib.). His advice was not to fight with phantoms, but to hasten and pass on; ‘let us suppress every desire for crusades against principles and elements which are only those of anarchy and madness’ (ib.)
On 28 June 1850 he spoke for the last time in the House of Commons, on the affairs of Greece and the foreign policy of Lord Palmerston. His voice, as usual, was raised for peace and good will among the nations: ‘What is this diplomacy? It is a costly engine for maintaining peace. It is a remarkable instrument used by civilised nations for the purpose of preventing war.’ Next day, as he was riding up Constitution Hill, his horse grew restive, and he fell, sustaining mortal injuries. He was carried home to his house in Whitehall Gardens. The dying statesman asked to see Sir James Graham and Lord Hardinge; and these tried and true companions attended him. Dr. Tomlinson, the bishop of Gibraltar, performed the services of the church of England. He died on the night of Tuesday, 2 July 1850. He was buried in the church of Drayton-Bassett. The queen wrote that the nation mourned for him as for a father.
In June 1820 Peel married Julia, youngest daughter of General Sir John Floyd, bart. Though in her own phrase ‘no politician,’ she became in time the closest or the only companion of the statesman in his inmost thoughts. She survived her husband till 27 Oct. 1859. They had two daughters and five sons. The eldest son, Sir Robert Peel, G.C.B. [q. v.], the third baronet, and the third son, Sir William Peel, K.C.B. [q. v.], are separately noticed; the second son, Sir Frederick Peel, K.C.M.G. (1823–1906), was chief railway commissioner; the fifth son, Arthur Wellesley, was speaker of the House of Commons from 1884 to 1895, and was created Viscount Peel on his retirement. About the date of his marriage Peel began to form a famous collection of pictures, a large portion of which is now in the National Gallery. It consisted in its final shape of some seventy specimens, each a masterpiece, of the Dutch school of the middle of the seventeenth century, together with a few of the Flemish school. Besides these were nearly sixty pictures of the best English masters, the most notable being portraits of statesmen, such as Canning, or of authors, such as Johnson. The third portion consisted of eighteen original drawings by Rubens and Vandyck, from the collection of Sir Thomas Lawrence. Peel did not spare money, giving three thousand five hundred guineas for the ‘Chapeau de Poil’ by Rubens, 1,100l. for the ‘Triumph of Silenus’ by the same, 1,270l. for the ‘Poulterer's Shop’ by Dow, and nine hundred and twenty guineas for the ‘Music Lesson’ by Terburg.
The best portraits of Peel are: (1) by Sir Thomas Lawrence in 1826; (2) Peel in the queen's first council, 1837, by Wilkie; (3) by Linnel in 1838; (4) by Partridge, date unknown. There are miniatures by Ross, Thorburn, and A. E. Chalon, and busts by Noble, Sir John Steell, and Gibson. Many monuments were erected to his memory; among the chief is a statue by Gibson in Westminster Abbey; another stands at the head of Cheapside.
Sir Robert Peel had a tall commanding figure, and a frame so strong as to endure the labours of prime minister at the rate of sixteen hours a day. Deliberation and public care were at the close of his life deeply engraven upon a countenance that in its prime had worn a radiant expression, as may be seen in the portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence, painted in 1826. His nervous organisation was highly strung, so that he felt physical pain acutely, and was keenly sensitive to the insolence of an opponent. The fire of his spirit was backed by a cool and prompt courage, and a readiness to run all risks in defence of honour. But as a rule his emotions and purposes lay hid under an exterior that was cold even to a proverb, and this was largely due to the guard that he had deliberately put upon himself in early life, when he was cast into the boisterous uncongenial society of Dublin, or was associated with the proud and vehement tories of the older school. Yet in his hours of ease he could charm his companions with the endowment of a vast and ready memory, a fine sense of humour, and a dramatic power in the narration of anecdote. And again the sense of authority or of success would warm him singularly, so that with the accomplishment of each great reform his spirits rose, as though the good of his country were the measure of his private happiness.
But his native place, so to speak, was the House of Commons. It was there that his reserve would change into ease and expansion, since he had in a strong degree the quality of a statesman which sympathises more naturally with the character of great assemblies than with that of private individuals. Hence the references to his own views and feelings which recur in his speeches, and which his enemies affected to ascribe to egoism, are more rightly attributable to an opposite cause—the open terms on which he stood with the House of Commons. Not that there was no trace of the art whereby an
