Every one remembers the story of his meeting with Lord Melbourne, and his answer, true or not, as to what the premier could “do for him.” “I wish to be Prime Minister.” At any rate, Mrs. Austin, in extreme old age, recalled a party at her house about this period, when the young Disraeli explained his plans for England, “when I am Prime Minister,” amid laughter and surprise. “You will see,” he said, bringing his fist down on the mantelpiece, “I _shall_ be Prime Minister.” He felt, as he wrote to his sister after attending a great debate, that “he could floor them all.” His confidence in himself, like his sister’s in him, was colossal. So I read his earliest years from his earliest books. Thenceforward he marched from strength to strength, and he employed power when he obtained it conscientiously according to his best lights for the improvement of the people and the glory of the Empire. And yet how strange it is, that at the annual gatherings on his death-day, celebrated by the romance of his memory and his flower, the successors who, faltering from his footsteps, honour the good will of his enduring popularity, have never breathed his name! I can see him smile in the shades; for he found his party a quagmire, and he left it a township. At all times he toiled hard and long, though sometimes by fits and starts; and a study was reserved ready for his visits at Bradenham. Although in his later years he would sometimes play at indolence, it was really against the grain. The occasional air of listlessness which society remarked in his latter days was the attendant of failing health, and only filmed an activity that neither age nor illness could overcome. In the long recess of 1848 he was working over ten hours a day, rising at five and retiring at nine. In the long session of 1852 he was working considerably more. To the last he read the classics while he dined. As he lay dying he corrected his speeches. He never relaxed that infinite interest in everything and everybody of purport and meaning, which the French well style “la grande curiosité.”