that the principle of the Revolution had never been perfected by the due development of popular institutions. He agreed with Pym that “the best form of government is that which doth dispose and actuate _every_ part and member of a State to the common good.” Disraeli owned, of course, his foibles, though he was too proud ever to be very vain. As we shall find later on, when I come to his faults of temperament, his grasp of ideas occasionally pressed them too literally both on life and letters. He tended to overstrain his lights and shadows. His imagination sometimes ran riot in its colours, and throughout tended to exaggerate the forms of events, though hardly ever their significance, which he was often the first to divine. He is said to have cherished some superstitions about lucky days and unlucky colours, but for these I cannot vouch. I can, however, for the fact that he was once seen by intimates to wear a green velvet smoking-coat, though one of the few occasions on which he troubled the newspapers was to refute the slander of having, when young, appeared in green trousers.[40] And here I may perhaps be pardoned for inserting a slight story about Mrs. Disraeli, which comes from the same source as the last. Dr. Guthrie was once staying at Grosvenor Gate, and invited his hostess to visit him at Glasgow. “I will,” she smiled, “if you will promise to wear your kilt in the streets.” “Perhaps I will,” he replied, with hesitation. “You had better be careful, Guthrie,” interposed Disraeli, “for that woman, I assure you, means what she says.” In taste and in phrase he was naturally extravagant, but his epigrams were never for the sake of paradox, and were always the summaries of wisdom and reflection. They were light, not frivolous; they were imaginative proverbs. There never was a wittier man, and his wit lent itself to his ironic humour. He loved effects that struck imagination, but ever for a crucial purpose. It was said of him by an intimate that one of his sentences--and in conversation he was sparing--left more behind than a long talk with others of consummate talent. As for the scathing sarcasm--his weapon of self-defence during his earlier stages--at times over-savage and belying his normal cheeriness--sobriety of judgment is compatible with-- “The stinging of a heart the world hath stung.” But, undoubtedly, the too quick transitions of a susceptible fancy from-- “Grave to gay, from lively to severe,” often irritated and even offended not only the dull, but the serious. And yet in life, as in literature, is there more than one step in the descent from the sublime to the ridiculous?