Mr. W. P. Frith, in his _Autobiography_, more than once alludes to the devotion of Mrs. Disraeli to her husband, and he quotes John Phillips as describing the painting of Disraeli’s portrait. After the subject and his wife had seen the sketch, during the first sitting, the colors being necessarily crude, the lady returned hastily to the studio, and said to the painter: “Remember that his pallor is his beauty!” Dr. Wilde, afterwards Sir William Wilde, published in Dublin, in 1849, a volume entitled _The Closing Years of Dean Swift’s Life_, a very interesting book now long out of print. It is an elaborate defence of Swift’s sanity, and it contains a full account of the plaster mask taken from the Dean’s face “after the _post-mortem_ examination.” From this, he said, “a bust was made and placed in the museum of the University, which, notwithstanding its possessing much of the cadaverous appearance, is, we are strongly inclined to believe, the best likeness of Swift—during, at least, the last few years of his life—now in existence.” Speaking of this mask, Sir Walter Scott wrote: “The expression of countenance is most unequivocally maniacal, and one side of the mouth (the left) horribly contorted downwards, as if convulsed by pain.” Dr. Wilde, on the other hand, said: “The expression is remarkably placid; but there is an evident drag in the left side of the mouth, exhibiting a paralysis of the facial muscles of the right side, which, we have reason to believe, existed for some years before his death.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: JONATHAN SWIFT] ------------------------------------------------------------------------