On another popular favourite he was even harder. Writing again to Lady Bradford, he says:—“Except at Wycombe Fair, in my youth, I have never seen anything so bad as _Pinafore_. It was not even a burlesque, a sort of provincial _Black-eyed Susan_. Princess Mary’s face spoke volumes of disgust and disappointment, but who cd. have told her to go there?” Staying later at Hatfield, however, he found all the Cecil youngsters singing the _Pinafore_ music. A few years earlier he tells Lady Bradford a story he had just heard from a friend of a visit paid by a distinguished Opposition party to _The Heir at Law_ at the old Haymarket. “Into one of the stalls came Ld. Granville; then in a little time, Gladstone; then, at last, Harty-Tarty! Gladstone laughed very much at the performance; H.-T. never even smiled. 3 conspirators....” Another remarkable trio figures in another story. Disraeli had been to the Aquarium to see a famous ape and the lady who used to be shot out of a cannon. “Chaffed” (if the word is not improper) about this by the Queen at the Royal dinner table, Disraeli said, “There were three sights, madam; Zazel, Pongo, and myself.” It will be seen that there are few records of Disraeli’s playgoing or show-going in his old age. Gladstone, we know, was to the last a frequent playgoer—and, I believe, an enthusiastic admirer of Irving. Disraeli, I take it, had become rather the book-lover than the playgoer. The humblest of us may share that taste with the great man, and even take refuge in his illustrious example for the habit, denounced by the austere, of reading over solitary meals. Mr. Buckle tells us that “over his solitary and simple dinner he would read one of his favourite authors, mostly classics of either Latin, Italian Renaissance, or English eighteenth century literature, pausing for ten minutes between each course.” That passage will endear Disraeli to many of us, simple, home-keeping people, unacquainted with Courts and Parliaments, who feel, perhaps, a little bewildered amid the processional “drums and tramplings” and the gorgeous triumphs of his public career. HENRY JAMES AND THE THEATRE