In the summer of 1880, following Gladstone's tireless campaigning for the 1880 election (the famous 'Midlothian campaign') and subsequent appointment as Prime Minister, William Ewart Gladstone suffered a serious bout of pneumonia. Whilst he survived this illness IOTL, his full health never recovered and he was plagued by a variety of health problems until his death in 1898.
But, what if the pneumonia that debilitated him in 1880 had actually killed him? The most likely immediate consequence would be Spencer Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington taking over from Gladstone. His appointment would not fill Queen Victoria with dread, as Gladstone's had done, and this less combative figure would have been greeted with respect by his Conservative opponents.
Cavendish, a man of the gentry and moderate Whig, would have opposed Home Rule (as he did even before his brother's murder in 1882 by the "Irish National Invincibles") and there likely wouldn't have been a split over the issue as there was IOTL in the form of the anti-Home Rule "Liberal Unionists".
Aside from the change of policy with regards of Home Rule, what would Cavendish's premiership have looked like and how would the Liberal Party have fared come an election in 1886 (or thereabouts)?