In the neighbourhood of the square in which the Disraelis now resided there lived a family named Austen, with whom the young Benjamin became closely intimate. Mr. Austen was a solicitor in large practice; his wife was the daughter of a Northamptonshire country gentleman--still beautiful, though she had been for some years married, a brilliant conversationalist, a fine musician, and an amateur artist of considerable power. The house of this lady was the gathering-place of the young men of talent of the age. She early recognised the unusual character of her friend's boy. She invited him to her salons, talked to him, advised and helped him. A writer in the 'Quarterly Review' (January 1889), apparently a connection of the Austens, remembers having been taken by them as a child to call on the Disraelis. 'Ben, then perhaps a school-boy returned for the holidays, was sent for, and appeared in his shirt-sleeves with boxing gloves.' His future destination was still uncertain. Isaac Disraeli, who had no great belief in youthful genius, disencouraged his literary ambition, and was anxious to see him travelling along one of the beaten roads. Mr. Austen was probably of the same opinion. 'Ben's' own views on this momentous subject are not likely to have been much caricatured in the meditations of Vivian Grey. 'The Bar!--pooh! Law and bad jokes till we are forty, and then with the most brilliant success the prospect of gout and a coronet. Besides, to succeed as an advocate I must be a great lawyer, and to be a great lawyer I must give up my chances of being a great man. The "services" in war time are fit only for desperadoes (and that truly am I), and in peace are fit only for fools. The Church is more rational. I should certainly like to act Wolsey, but the thousand and one chances are against me, and my destiny should not be a chance.' Practical always Disraeli was, bent simply on making his way, and his way to a great position. No _ignes fatui_ were likely to mislead him into spiritual morasses, no love-sick dreams to send him wandering after imaginary Paradises. He was as shrewd as he was ambitious, and he took an early measure of his special capabilities. 'Beware,' his father had said to him, 'of trying to be a great man in a hurry.' His weakness was impatience. He could not bear to wait. Byron had blazed like a new star at five-and-twenty; why not he? Pitt had been Prime Minister at a still earlier age, and of all young Disraeli's studies political history had been the most interesting to him. But to rise in politics he must get into Parliament, and the aristocrats who condescended to dine in Bloomsbury Square, and to laugh at his impertinence, were not likely to promise him a pocket borough. His father could not afford to buy him one, nor would have consented to squander money on so wild a prospect. He saw that to advance he must depend upon himself and must make his way into some financially independent position. While chafing at the