His genius, with its many interesting characteristics, was perceived long before his abilities in international statesmanship and diplomacy became known. But as a man of letters, no less than as a statesman, he was first of all a son of his race (Appendix lx) and a Zionist. His speeches and writings were never those of a renegade anxious to vilify the faith he had forsaken, or to condemn the ancestry from which he had sprung. There never was a Jew who wrote in more glowing terms of the greatness of the Jewish race. No Jew has borne more fervid testimony to the sublimity of the religion by which the Jewish people has been sustained through all persecutions. No one could have used more persuasive arguments, or adopted wiser measures to remove restrictions from which the Jews were suffering. He had a deeply-rooted respect and love for his ancient people and for its ancient land. To restore the Jews to their rightful place in the esteem of the world, he wrote and spoke and toiled (Appendix lxi). For this he imperilled the prospects of his own career. For this he was content to expose himself to the scoffs and gibes of opponents who almost to his last hour never forgave him the “crime” of being a Jew. He held the firm belief that “the Lord still fights for _Israel_.” Unlike those degenerate sons of _Israel_, who are ever eager to conceal what should be a source of honour to them, he was never ashamed of his origin: and when taunted with being of common extraction he would maintain that his ancestors were already noble when those of the proudest aristocracy in the world were still barbarians, roaming helplessly about the woods. Although he was educated in the bosom of the Christian Church, his heart never ceased to beat for the greatness and to feel for the sufferings of the Jewish nation, to which he belonged by the blood in his veins and the honoured name he bore. Wherever there was a struggle for the rights of Jews in matters that concerned their honour and well-being, wherever there was a fight for truth and uprightness, there we see him stand――a conqueror. While so many authors made it their business to depict the dark side of the Jewish character or history, he used his gifted pen to show the worthier traits of the Jewish character and the influence of the Jews in the world. As a writer Lord Beaconsfield was essentially an Oriental. Even the tales in which he describes the clubs and drawing-rooms of London are like an Arabian Nights’ entertainment transplanted to St. James’. Over persons and scenes he casts an Oriental magnificence. His Oriental tales are, to our mind, the most natural that he wrote.