The Compound Householder, who rallied slightly on Thursday week, under
the illusive hope, which Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Childers, and Mr. Hodgkinson had held out, that he might be permitted to survive, if he really preferred to abdicate all political privileges, ander special agreements to this effect with his landlord, sank rapidly again and finally expired, so far at least as he is a resident in any parliamentary borough, on Monday. We pointed out last week that Mr. Disraeli's proposed clauses, sparing him under certain provisoes, were entirely in accordance with Mr. Gladstone's expressed views, and not an attempt to break faith with the Liberals. In that light they were seen on Monday night, but the general disgust expressed towards leaving him even a permissive existence in Parliamentary boroughs was so profound, that Mr. Disraeli was compelled to bid him vanish altogether out of the field of political contests. So he is gone down into the land where all things are forgotten, and Parliament, we trust, will know his place (if Parliament ever knew it) no more. He will scarcely be regretted. The intensity of his brief, meteoric, and disastrous splendour was always shrouded in a certain haze of mystery to the popular eye. It is more than doubtful if Mr. Disraeli has ever been really acquainted with him, and the Compounder is believed to have been more of a hidden wisdom than of an exoteric doctrine even to Mr. Gladstone. It is said, indeed, that a drunken man, interrogated by the police as to his name, announced himself the other day as "The compound householder," which, if true, would imply real fame. But, on the whole, he has been caviare to the million, and he will go down to the dust of politics "unwept, anhonoured, and unsung."
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