uthorised" life of Lord Beaconsfield, nor indeed any life
commensurate with the part he played in English politics, has
yet appeared.

[2] Disraeli's family claimed to be of Spanish origin, but had come
from Italy to England shortly before 1748.

[3] There are few legal allusions in his novels, fewer in proportion
than in Shakespeare's plays, but an ingenious travesty of the
English use of legal fictions may be found in the _Voyage of
Captain Popanilla_, a satire on the English constitution and
government. Popanilla, who is to be tried for treason, is, to
his astonishment, indicted for killing a camelopard.

[4] That historical interest he did feel deeply. One might almost say
of him that he was a Christian because he was a Jew, for
Christianity was to him the proper development of the ancient
religion of Israel. "The Jews," he observes in the _Life of
Lord George Bentinck_, "represent the Semitic principle, all
that is most spiritual in our nature.... It is deplorable that
several millions of Jews still persist in believing only a part
of their religion."

[5] Though it has been maintained that in the Dark and Middle Ages a
considerable number of Gentiles found their way into Jewish
communities and became Judaised.

The high average of intellectual power among the Jews need
not be attributed to purity of race; it is sufficiently
explained by their history. Nor is it clear that where two
of the more advanced races are mixed by intermarriage, the
product is inferior to either of the parent stocks. On the
contrary, such a mixture, _e.g._ of Teutonic and Slavonic
blood, or of Celtic and Teutonic, gives a result at least
equal in capacity to either of the pure-blooded races which
have been so commingled.

[6] He had an intellectual arrogance, which made him dislike what may
be called the Radical conception of human equality. In the
_Life of Lord George Bentinck_ he remarks, "The Jews are a
living and the most striking evidence of the falsity of that
pernicious doctrine of modern times, the natural equality of
man.... All the tendencies of the Jewish race are conservative.
Their bias is to religion, property, and natural aristocracy."

[7] On one occasion he went so far as to den