ronchial asthma of
gouty origin, against which he fought with tenacious and uncomplaining
courage. The last six weeks of his life, described all too graphically
by Dr. Kidd in an article in the _Nineteenth Century_, were a
hand-to-hand struggle with death. Every day the end was expected, and
his compatriot, companion, and so-called friend, Bernal Osborne, found
it in his heart to remark, "Ah, overdoing it--as he always overdid
everything."

For my own part, I never was numbered among Lord Beaconsfield's
friends, and I regarded the Imperialistic and pro-Turkish policy of his
latter days with an equal measure of indignation and contempt. But I
place his political novels among the masterpieces of Victorian
literature, and I have a sneaking affection for the man who wrote the
following passage: "We live in an age when to be young and to be
indifferent can be no longer synonymous. We must prepare for the coming
hour. The claims of the Future are represented by suffering millions,
and the Youth of a Nation are the Trustees of Posterity."

FOOTNOTES:

[28] June 1897.

XXIV.

FLATTERERS AND BORES.

Can a flatterer be flattered? Does he instinctively recognize the
commodity in which he deals? And if he does so recognize it, does he
enjoy or dislike the application of it to his own case? These questions
are suggested to my mind by the ungrudging tributes paid in my last
chapter to Lord Beaconsfield's pre-eminence in the art of flattery.

"Supreme of heroes, bravest, noblest, best!"

No one else ever flattered so long and so much, so boldly and so
persistently, so skilfully and with such success. And it so happened
that at the very crisis of his romantic career he became the subject of
an act of flattery quite as daring as any of his own performances in the
same line, and one which was attended with diplomatic consequences of
great pith and moment.

It fell out on this wise. When the Congress of the Powers assembled at
Berlin in the summer of 1878, our Ambassador in that city of stucco
palaces was the loved and lamented Lord Odo Russell, afterwards Lord
Ampthill, a born diplomatist if ever there was one, with a suavity and
affectionateness of manner and a charm of voice which would have enabled
him, in homely phrase, to whistle the bird off the bough. On the evening
before the formal opening of the Congress Lord Beaconsfield arrived in
all his plenipotentiary glory, and was received with high honours at
the Brit