“... When the Emperor appeared, instead of conquering, he converted them. How were they converted? In battalions; the old chronicler informs us they were converted in battalions, and baptised in platoons. It was utterly impossible to bring these individuals from a state of reprobation to one of grace with sufficient celerity.” In his speeches again there is the _locus classicus_ of “the range of exhausted volcanoes”--“not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest.” There are the wonderful political pictures of the “Calabrian Earthquake,” the “ragged regiment that would not march through Coventry--that’s flat;” “Melbourne with his Reform Ministry and Ducrow still professing to ride on three sullen jackasses at once, but sprawling in the sawdust of the arena;” of Peel as the profligate deserting his mistress and “sending down his valet to say, ‘I will have no whining here,’” and a hundred others as good.[174] Perhaps “Gamaliel, with all the broad ‘phylacteries on his forehead,’ who ‘comes down to tell us that he is not as other men are,’ in reference to the ‘Cabal’ of 1859, should also be included. This is the ‘parliamentary wit’ which Gladstone avowed unrivalled, and these, the vivid illustrations and metaphors, which he declared supreme in power of ‘summing up characters and situations,’ and fraught with the gift of ‘appealing to the ear and the fancy.’” But there is also one from _The Press_ of 1853 which is unknown, and claims a memorial. He is referring to the “Coalition” Ministry of 1853--one, as he calls it, of “suspended opinions,” and “resembling the ark into which creatures of the most opposite species walked two by two.” It singles out a magnificent “over-educated mediocrity” among the strait sect of the “Peelites”--those who in Lady Clanricarde’s epigram “were always putting themselves up to auction and buying themselves in again.” It satirises that leader’s protest that he was still a “Conservative,” his announced “regret at the rupture of ancient ties,” his “hope of some future reunion”-- “... Amiable regret! Honourable hope! reminding us of those inhabitants of the South Sea Islands, who never devour their enemies--that would be paying them too great a compliment. They eat up only their own friends and relations with an appetite proportioned to the love that they bear to them. And then they hasten to deck themselves in the feathers and trappings of those thus tenderly devoured in memorial of their regret at the ‘rupture of ancient ties,’ and their ‘hope of some future reunion.’ Do you feel quite safe with your new ally? Do you not dread that the same affectionate tooth will some day be fastened upon your own shoulders?’” No wonder that Lord Granville--“un radical qui aime la bonne societé”--described Disraeli as a “master” in the literary expression of “praise and blame.” Last, though not least, should be mentioned Pinto’s dictum on English--