'My grandfather,' wrote Lord Beaconsfield, 'was a man of ardent character, sanguine, courageous, speculative, and fortunate; with a temper which no disappointment could disturb and a brain full of resources.' He made a fortune, he married a beautiful woman of the same religion as his own and whose family had suffered equally from persecution. The lady was ambitious of social distinction, and she resented upon her unfortunate race the slights and disappointments to which it exposed her. Her husband took it more easily. He was rich. He had a country house at Enfield, where he entertained his friends, played whist, and enjoyed himself, 'notwithstanding a wife who never pardoned him his name.' So successful he had been that he saw his way to founding a house which might have been a power in Europe. But the more splendid his position the more bitter would have been his wife's feelings. He retired therefore early from the field, contented with the wealth which he had acquired. Perhaps his resolution was precipitated by the character of the son who was the only issue of his marriage. Isaac Disraeli was intended for the heir of business, and Isaac showed from the first a determined disinclination for business of any sort or kind. 'Nature had disqualified the child from his cradle for the busy pursuits of men.' 'He grew up beneath a roof of worldly energy and enjoyment, indicating that he was of a different order from those with whom he lived.' Neither his father nor his mother understood him. To one he was 'an enigma,' to the other 'a provocation.' His dreamy, wandering eyes were hopelessly unpractical. His mother was irritated because she could not rouse him into energy. He grew on 'to the mournful period of boyhood, when eccentricities excite attention and command no sympathy.' Mrs. Disraeli was exasperated when she ought to have been gentle. Her Isaac was the last drop in her cup of bitterness, and 'only served to swell the aggregate of many humiliating particulars.' She grew so embittered over her grievances that Lord Beaconsfield says 'she lived till eighty without indulging a tender expression;' and must have been an unpleasant figure in her grandson's childish recollections. The father did his best to keep the peace, but had nothing to offer but good-natured commonplaces. Isaac at last ran away from home, and was brought back after being found lying on a tombstone in Hackney Churchyard. His father 'embraced him, gave him a pony,' and sent him to a day school, where he had temporary peace. But the reproaches and upbraidings recommenced when he returned in the evenings. To crown all, Isaac was delivered of a poem, and for the first time the head of the family was seriously alarmed. Hitherto he had supposed that boys would be boys, and their follies ought not to be too seriously noticed; but a poem was a more dangerous symptom; 'the loss of his argosies could not have filled him with a more blank dismay.'