s and ten. My official life
is entirely closed; my political life is nearly so; and, in the
course of nature, my natural life cannot now be long. That natural
life commenced with the bloody suppression of a formidable rebellion
in Ireland, which immediately preceded the union between the two
countries. And may God grant that its close may not witness a renewal
of the one and a dissolution of the other."

This speech was delivered on the 17th of June, 1869, and the speaker
died on the 23rd of the following October.

IV

_BENJAMIN DISRAEI_

I always count it among the happy accidents of my life that I happened
to be in London during the summer of 1867. I was going to Harrow
in the following September, and for the next five years my chance
of hearing Parliamentary debates was small. In the summer of 1866,
when the Russell-Gladstone Reform Bill was thrown out, I was in the
country, and therefore I had missed the excitement caused by the
demolition of the Hyde Park railings, the tears of the terrified
Home Secretary, and the litanies chanted by the Reform League under
Gladstone's window in Carlton House Terrace. But in 1867 I was in
the thick of the fun. My father was the Sergeant-at-Arms attending
the House of Commons, and could always admit me to the privileged
seats "under the Gallery," then more numerous than now. So it came
about that I heard all the most famous debates in Committee on
the Tory Reform Bill, and thereby learned for the first time the
fascination of Disraeli's genius. The Whigs, among whom I was reared,
did not dislike "Dizzy" as they disliked Lord Derby, or as Dizzy
himself was disliked by the older school of Tories. But they absolutely
miscalculated and misconceived him, treating him as merely an amusing
charlatan, whose rococo oratory and fantastic tricks afforded a
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,