impatient nervousness; and when he has burst forth as he does constantly with a particularly successful cataract of expression, it assumes a curl of triumphant scorn that would be worthy of Mephistopheles. His hair is as extraordinary as his taste in waistcoats. A thick, heavy mass of jet-black ringlets falls on his left cheek almost to his collarless stock, which on the right temple is parted and put away with the smooth carefulness of a girl." A lady who met him at dinner described him as appareled in a black velvet coat lined with satin, purple trousers with a gold stripe on the outside seam, a scarlet waistcoat, lace wristbands to his finger tips, white gloves with flashy rings worn outside. Add to these the flowing black ringlets, and do not wonder that his hostess told the young man that he was making a fool of himself. Froude says he dressed in this fantastic guise to give the impression of folly so that his sudden displays of brilliancy might have the more striking effect coming from such an unlikely source. Self-esteem was abounding in the young Hebrew, and he did not hesitate to compare himself with others to his own advantage. At twenty-nine he wrote his sister after an evening in the gallery of the House of Commons, "Heard Macaulay's best speech.....but between ourselves I could floor them all!" Egotism it doubtless was, but it sprang from no empty confidence in himself. The time was not distant when he was the acknowledged master of the House which looked so tempting from the galleries. He had offered himself as a Tory with Radical ideas--a combination as unusual as his style of apparel--to the electors of High Wycombe in June, 1832, but was beaten, as he was again in the autumn. It was said that in one of his early candidacies he replied to an elector, who had asked him on what he intended to stand, in the sententious phrase "on my head!" In 1834 he stood for Taunton, only to be defeated a third time. O'Connell, who had helped him in his first campaign, was mortally offended by Disraeli's allusion to his "bloody hand" in the Taunton canvass. The Irish orator, in a bitter rejoinder at Dublin, denounced Disraeli as a Jewish traitor, "the heir at law of the blasphemous thief that died upon the cross." After many fruitless struggles the coveted seat was won, and in 1837 Benjamin Disraeli entered the House of Commons for Maidstone, his colleague being Wyndham Lewis, the friend whose good offices had gained him the nomination. Not long after the death of Mr. Lewis, in 1838, Mr. Disraeli married his lively widow, a woman to whose devotion not less than to her ample fortune he owed a debt of gratitude which he never failed to acknowledge.