I may conclude these remarks by some recollections of a personal character. My father, who died in 1848, was a Peelite and an intimate friend of Sir Robert Peel, who was frequently his guest at Cromer. I used, therefore, in my childhood to hear a good deal of the subjects treated in Mr. Monypenny's brilliant volumes. I well remember--I think it must have been in 1847--being present on one occasion when a relative of my own, who was a broad-acred Nottinghamshire squire, thumped the table and declared his opinion that "Sir Robert Peel ought to be hanged on the highest tree in England." Since that time I have heard a good many statesmen accused of ruining their country, but, so far as my recollection serves me, the denunciations launched against John Bright, Gladstone, and even the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, may be considered as sweetly reasonable by comparison with the language employed about Sir Robert Peel by those who were opposed to his policy. I was only once brought into personal communication with Disraeli. Happening to call on my old friend, Lord Rowton, in the summer of 1879, when I was about to return to Egypt as Controller-General, he expressed a wish that I should see Lord Beaconsfield, as he then was. The interview was very short; neither has anything Lord Beaconsfield said about Egyptian affairs remained in my memory. But I remember that he appeared much interested to learn whether "there were many pelicans on the banks of the Nile." The late Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff was a repository of numerous very amusing _Beaconsfieldiana_. [Footnote 69: This passage occurs in _Coningsby_, and Mr. Monypenny warns us that "his version of the quarrel between Charles I. and the Parliament is too fanciful to be quite serious; we may believe that he was here consciously paying tribute to the historical caprices of Manners and Smythe."] [Footnote 70: Mr. Monypenny says in a note that a hostile newspaper gave the following translation of Disraeli's motto: "The impudence of some men sticks at nothing."] [Footnote 71: What Buffon really wrote was: "Le style est l'homme même."] [Footnote 72: Iratusque Chremes tumido delitigat ore; Et tragicus plerumque dolet sermone pedestri Telephus et Peleus. _Ars Poetica_, 94-96.] [Footnote 73: _Sir Robert Peel_. Charles Stuart Parker. Vol. iii. 425.] [Footnote 74: _Sat._ iv, 101.] [Footnote 75: _Life of Lord Goschen_, Arthur D. Elliot, p. 163.] IX RUSSIAN ROMANCE _"The Spectator," March 15, 1913_