a manner that has been described as
extraordinary, but which was the manner of the young men of the period,
of D'Orsay and of Bulwer, at the time when Tennyson called the latter a
band-box. Later his dress was more negligent, although always neat and
fine.

He was on pleasant terms with the distinguished people whom he met at
his father's table, and was everywhere sought in society, when, at
twenty, he began his career by the publication of "Vivian Grey," a
novel, unlike anything that had been written, bristling with point and
sally, and full of daring portraiture, and which made him immediately
famous.

His health, however, now gave way, a trouble in his head making it
necessary to suspend work; and after a tour of Europe he remained for
two or three years at Bradenham, near High Wycombe, his father's
country-house, happy in the companionship of his father and mother, and
his thoroughly congenial sister Sarah; passionately fond of country
life, and during the time producing a novel, "The Young Duke," and three
shorter works, "Popanilla," "The Infernal Marriage," and "Ixion in
Heaven," gay and brilliant satires, sparkling with epigram and with
beauty, and destined to live with the English language and English
history.

In company with Mr. Meredith, to whom his sister was promised in
marriage, he journeyed for the next two years through the south of
Europe and the East. Spain was among the first of his objective points,
in the proud memory of his descent from the Spanish nobles who, driven
out of Spain in the fifteenth century, went over to Venice, and changed
the name belonging to the House of Dara to that of D'Israeli, the sons
of Israel--a cognomen never borne by any other family--and remained
there for two hundred years, going to England only when, Venice falling
into decay, it was necessary to go where they could live in safety. He
wrote the account of his travels to his sister in a series of
affectionate and light-hearted letters, which charmingly betray his own
personality, and which are full of the most vivid pictures of Malta,
Corfu, Albania, the Plains of Troy, Turkey--which was kind to his race
when a cruel and unreasoning world showed it only malignant hate, and
which he regarded with the gratitude that never forsakes a Jew; Cyprus,
the advantage of whose possession he early recognized; Egypt, whose
destinies were afterward in his hand; and Jerusalem, the holy city of
his people, his impressions of which