His memory was prodigious. I remember one remarkable instance of it. I was dining one night at his house in George Street, Hanover Square, when there were two or three racing grandees present—among them Baron Meyer de Rothschild (Lady Rosebery’s father), Sir Robert Peel, and Lord Coventry. Baron Meyer had at that time a mare called Tomyris about which there was some excitement among Turfites. “Baron, what made you call that mare of yours Tomȳris?” asked Sir Robert, with a strong accent on the second syllable. “I’m sure I don’t know,” answered the Baron, “I suppose because she’s by King Tom.” But the old Lord had caught Sir Robert’s false quantity. “Tomȳris! who said Tomȳris?” he asked. “Don’t you remember the story of Tomȳris the Queen of the Massagetæ who conquered and killed Cyrus?” and then he went off at score telling the gruesome legend of how, to avenge the death of her son, she caused the dead King’s head to be cut off and put into a skin filled with human blood, saying: “You wanted to drink blood, now drink your fill of it!” And then the old Lord added: “You will find the whole story at the end of the first book of Herodotus.” When I got home I looked up the passage. Surely a marvellous example of memory. Immersed as he had been in law and politics for seventy years—a life-time—how many years must have passed since he could have had leisure to read Herodotus? Outside his own house I never met him but once. There was a great ball at Apsley House, and the grand old Chancellor had himself carried upstairs and wheeled into the ballroom to see the young folk dance. I was standing by his chair when the Duke of Wellington came up to bid him welcome. There was a touch of pathos in the handsome old man’s voice as he said, “Ah! time was when I used to skip up those stairs gaily enough, when I came to see your dear father.” The great Duke was but three years older than Lord Lyndhurst, but he had already been dead some ten years. The two had not only been political allies when Lord Lyndhurst was Chancellor in the Duke’s Administration, but they were firm friends, and the affection lived in the survivor when the friendship had ceased to be aught but a happy memory. To us who loved him, Lord Beaconsfield remains a brilliant and an inspiring memory; of those who did not love him I believe that none would now even listen to the malignity with which he was once assailed. Though they disapprove of his principles, they admit that he was actuated by no selfish motives and that under his rule England was governed in a spirit of true patriotism. That verdict would have been the realization of all his ambition. CHAPTER XXXVI THE OFFICE OF WORKS