Disraeli was thirty-five, his wife was fifty, but it was a happy mating. They thought alike, and their ambitions were the same. Disraeli treated his wife with all the courtly grace and deference in which he was an adept, and her princely fortune was absolutely his. "There was much cause for gratitude on both sides," said O'Connell. And there is no doubt that Disraeli's wife proved the firmest friend he ever had. For many years she was his sole confidante and best adviser. She attended him everywhere and relieved him of many burdens. That true incident of her fingers being crushed by the careless slamming of the carriage-door, and her hiding the bleeding members in her muff, and attending her husband to the House of Commons, where he was to speak, refusing to disturb him by her pain—this symbols the moral quality of the woman. She was the fit mate of a great man, and it is pleasant to know that she was honored and appreciated. To tell the story of Disraeli's thirty years in Parliament would be to write the political history of the time. He was in the front of every fight; he expressed himself on every subject; he crossed swords with the strongest men of his age. That he had no great and overpowering convictions on any subject is fully admitted now, even by his most ardent admirers—it was always a question of policy; that is to say, he was a politician. He gave a point here and there when he had to, and when he did, always managed to do it gracefully. When he ambled over from one party to another he affected a fine wrath and gave excellent reasons. Three times he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and twice was he Prime Minister, and for a time actual Dictator. But he took good care not to exercise his power too severely. When his word was supreme, the safety of the nation lay, as it always does, in a strong opposition. In one notable instance was Disraeli wrong in his prophecies—he declared again and again that Free Trade meant commercial bankruptcy. Yet Free Trade came about, and the fires were started in ten thousand factories, and such prosperity came to England as she had never known before. Political economy as a science was a constant butt for his wit, and in physical science he was dense to a point where his ignorance calls for pity. He believed in the literal Mosaic account of creation, and said in his paradoxical way on one occasion, that in belief he was not only a Christian, but a Jew. And this in spite of his most famous mot: "All sensible men are of one religion." "And what is that?" "Sensible men never tell." Had Disraeli been truly sensible he would not have attempted to hold Charles Darwin up to ridicule, by declaring in a speech at Oxford that "it is a choice between apes and angels." He had neither the ability, patience, nor inclination to read the "Origin of Species," and yet was so absurd as to answer it.