The Abbey was offered, and a public funeral; and if honour there be in such interments he had an ample right to it. By his own desire he was buried at Hughenden, by the side of his wife and the romantic friend who had conceived so singular an attachment to him. There those three rest side by side, Disraeli and his faithful companion disguised as Earl and Viscountess, but thought of only by the present generation under their own familiar name, and the eccentric and passionate widow who had devoted her fortune to him. In life there had been a peculiar bond between these three. Disraeli had innumerable admirers, but there were not many to whom he trusted his inmost confidence. Gratitude was stronger in him even than ambition, and as to his wife and to Mrs. Willyams he owed the most, to them, perhaps, he was most completely attached. It was a strange union, but they had strange natures, and they lie fitly and well together--far away from the world, for which neither of them cared, in a quiet parish church in Buckinghamshire. [Sidenote: CONDITIONS OF HUMAN GREATNESS] A biography, however brief, must close with a general estimate. What estimate is to be formed of Disraeli? We have a standard by which to measure the bodily stature of a man; we have none by which to measure his character; neither need we at any time ask how great any man is, or whether great at all, but rather what he is. Those whom the world agrees to call great are those who have done or produced something of permanent value to humanity. We call Hipparchus great, or Newton, or Kepler, because we owe to them our knowledge of the motion of the earth and the stars. Poets and artists have been great men; philosophers have been great men. The mind of Socrates governs our minds at the present day. Founders of religion have been great men; reformers have been great men: we measure their worth by the work which they achieved. So in society and politics we call those great who have devoted their energies to some noble cause, or have influenced the course of things in some extraordinary way. But in every instance, whether in art, science, religion, or public life, there is an universal condition, that a man shall have forgotten himself in his work. If any fraction of his attention is given to the honours or rewards which success will bring him there will be a taint of weakness in what he does. He cannot produce a great poem, he cannot paint a great picture, he cannot discover secrets of science, because these achievements require a whole mind and not a divided mind. The prophet will be a prophet of half-truths, because the whole truth will not be popular. The statesman who has not purified himself of personal motives will never purify a disordered Constitution. Even kings and conquerors who are credited with nothing but ambition--the Alexanders and the Cæsars, the Cromwells and Napoleons--have been a cause in themselves, have been the representatives of some principle or idea.