welcome relief from the dulness of ordinary politics.

To a boy of fourteen thus reared, the Disraeli of 1867 was an
astonishment and a revelation--as the modern world would say, an
eye-opener. The House of Commons was full of distinguished men--Lord
Cranborne, afterwards Lord Salisbury; John Bright and Robert Lowe,
Gathorne Hardy, Bernal-Osborne, Goschen, Mill, Kinglake, Renley,
Horsman, Coleridge. The list might be greatly prolonged, but of
course it culminates in Gladstone, then in the full vigour of his
powers. All these people I saw and heard during that memorable
summer; but high above them all towers, in my recollection, the
strange and sinister figure of the great Disraeli. The Whigs had
laughed at him for thirty years; but now, to use a phrase of the
nursery, they laughed on the wrong side of their mouths. There
was nothing ludicrous about him now, nothing to provoke a smile,
except when he wished to provoke it, and gaily unhorsed his opponents
of every type--Gladstone, or Lowe, or Beresford-Hope. He seemed,
for the moment, to dominate the House of Commons, to pervade it
with his presence, and to guide it where he would. At every turn
he displayed his reckless audacity, his swiftness in transition,
his readiness to throw overboard a stupid colleague, his alacrity
to take a hint from an opponent and make it appear his own. The
Bill underwent all sorts of changes in Committee; but still it
seemed to be Disraeli's Bill, and no one else's. And, indeed, he
is entitled to all the credit which he got, for it was his genius
that first saw the possibilities hidden in a Tory democracy.

To a boy of fourteen, details of rating, registration, and residential
qualification make no strong appeal; but the personality of this
strange magician, un-English, inscrutable, irresistible, was profoundly