One day when he was in the House of Lords he was attacked by the Duke of Argyll upon an Indian question, as to which he was only partially instructed, and in his reply he made some hideous blunder which fortunately nobody detected. Monty Corry, who had been listening on tenterhooks, was waiting for him outside, and they walked away together, as usual. “How could you make such a mistake?” asked Monty, “it was uncommonly lucky that nobody found you out.” Lord Beaconsfield stopped dead short, reflected for a second or two, and then said gravely and solemnly: “My dear Monty, God is great! And upon my word I think He grows greater and greater every day!” I don’t think that he had much love for the Duke of Argyll. When Lord Grey de Wilton (I think it was) spoke upon the address to the Queen at an opening of Parliament he alluded to the Prime Minister as the “man at the helm not to be spoken to.” The Duke presently got up and delivered one of his slashing party speeches, in which his noble voice rang out like a trumpet: “The noble lord has spoken of the man at the helm. My Lords, there is _no_ man at the helm.” Lord Beaconsfield sat sphinx-like, immovable, unreadable—but I do not think he liked it. When it was expected that he would make a great speech in the House of Lords the red benches were crowded. I once was present at the bar of the House when an Indian question was raised by the Duke of Argyll in a very powerful oration. Dizzy got up and answered the Duke, saying that the papers would shortly be laid, and that he hoped the Duke would read them “with pleasure and profit.” That was all—there was no speech, and great disappointment. That time I don’t think the Duke liked it. [Illustration: LORD BEACONSFIELD AND LORD ROWTON. _From the “Vanity Fair” cartoon by Leslie Ward (“Spy”), by permission of the Editor._] One evening—it must have been in 1880, or very early in 1881—I met Lord Beaconsfield at a dinner-party at Lady Airlie’s. He was in high good humour, and when he had greeted the hostess came up to me and said, “We have been having great fun in the House of Lords—a first-rate set-to between the Duke of Argyll and Lytton.” I asked who got the best of it. “Lytton! He gave the Duke two black eyes and a bloody nose.” Then Matthew Arnold came up, and he changed the subject. I wondered if he was thinking of the day when he acted as bottleholder to James Clay[40] in his great fight with the skipper at Constantinople. He was very proud of “Bob” Lytton, the son of his old friend—the man whom he made Governor-General of India—recognizing in him a certain Oriental colouring and poetic mysticism in which there was a kinship to his own genius.