ought and lessen his
power in the approaching debate, and endured her agony without blenching
till he had left her. He rewarded such devotion in kind, his happiest
hours were those spent in her society, and perhaps the proudest moment
of his life was that when, the Queen having offered him a peerage, he
declined it for himself but accepted it for his wife, and made her
Viscountess Beaconsfield in her own right.

Immediately upon their marriage Mr. Disraeli travelled with his wife for
a couple of months on the continent; and returning to London he received
the congratulations of Peel, Wellington, and others, and began to
entertain the party chiefs; he dined privately with Louis Philippe in
Paris, shook hands with the King of Hanover in London, and in every way
took his social and personal position firmly. In Parliament he crossed
swords with Palmerston, refused his support to Peel's Coercion Bill in
relation to Ireland, characterizing it as one of those measures which to
introduce was degrading, and to oppose disgraceful; later he maintained
that as revolution was the only remedy for the wrongs of Ireland, and as
her connection with England prevented revolution, therefore it was the
duty of England to effect by policy what revolution would effect by
force, and as he had defended the Chartist petition, so in turn, when
the Eastern Question came up, he defended Turkey; in all this making it
supremely plain that he never was the one to truckle to rank or
authority. He was the head of the small party of Young Englanders; he
was feared and respected by both the larger parties; and the Commons,
whose assemblage he had scornfully proclaimed a thing of past history,
if they did not choose, had presently to accept him for their leader.

Henry Hope, entertaining a number of their friends at Deepdene, urged
Disraeli to treat the questions of common interest in a literary form,
and the powerful works--rather treatises than novels--"Coningsby" and
"Sybil," appeared; and these were followed by "Tancred," in which the
curious reader will find much of Disraeli's Eastern policy indicated.
These three books the author regarded as a trilogy upon English
politics, principles, and possibilities.

As a debater, then and always, Disraeli was keen, ready, and
unanswerable; as a satirist, swift, subtle, and finished. His epigrams
were among the "jewels that on the stretched forefinger of all time
sparkle forever." It was he that said "Destiny