I said in an earlier paragraph that Lord Beaconsfield's flattery was sometimes misplaced. An instance recurs to my recollection. He was staying in a country house where the whole party was Conservative with the exception of one rather plain, elderly lady, who belonged to a great Whig family. The Tory leader was holding forth on politics to an admiring circle when the Whig lady came into the room. Pausing in his conversation, Lord Beaconsfield exclaimed, in his most histrionic manner, "But hush! We must not continue these Tory heresies until those pretty little ears have been covered up with those pretty little hands"--a strange remark under any circumstances, and stranger still if, as his friends believed, it was honestly intended as an acceptable compliment. Mr. Brett, who shows a curious sympathy with the personal character of Lord Beaconsfield, acquits him of the charge of flattery, and quotes his own description of his method: "I never contradict; I never deny; but I sometimes forget." On the other hand, it has always been asserted by those who had the best opportunities of personal observation that Lord Beaconsfield succeeded in converting the dislike with which he had once been regarded in the highest quarters into admiration and even affection, by his elaborate and studied acquiescence in every claim, social or political, of Royalty, and by his unflagging perseverance in the art of flattery. He was a courtier, not by descent or breeding, but by genius. What could be more skilful than the inclusion of _Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands_ with _Coningsby_ and _Sybil_ in the phrase "We authors"?--than his grave declaration, "Your Majesty is the head of the literary profession"?--than his announcement at the dinner-table at Windsor, with reference to some disputed point of regal genealogy, "We are in the presence of probably the only Person in Europe who could tell us"? In the last year of his life he said to Mr. Matthew Arnold, in a strange burst of confidence which showed how completely he realized that his fall from power was final, "You have heard me accused of being a flatterer. It is true. I am a flatterer. I have found it useful. Every one likes flattery: and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel." In this business Lord Beaconsfield excelled. Once, sitting at dinner by the Princess of Wales, he was trying to cut a hard dinner-roll. The knife slipped and cut his finger, which the Princess, with her natural grace, instantly wrapped up in her handkerchief. The old gentleman gave a dramatic groan, and exclaimed, "When I asked for bread they gave me a stone; but I had a Princess to bind my wounds."