whose example most
affected him, was, with all his splendid gifts, conspicuously wanting
in political principle. Add to this the isolation in which the young
man found himself, standing outside the common stream of English life,
not sharing its sentiments, perceiving the hollowness of much that
passed for virtue and patriotism, and it is easy to understand how he
should have been as perfect a cynic at twenty-five as their experience
of the world makes many at sixty. If he had loved truth or mankind, he
might have quickly worked through his youthful cynicism. But pride and
ambition, the pride of race and the pride of genius, left no room for
these sentiments. Nor was his cynicism the fruit merely of a keen and
sceptical intelligence. It came from a cold heart.

The pursuit of fame and power, to which he gave all his efforts, is
presented in his writings as the only alternative ideal to a life of
pleasure; and he probably regarded those who pursued some other as
either fools or weaklings. Early in his political life he said one
night to Mr. Bright (from whom I heard the anecdote), as they took
their umbrellas in the cloak-room of the House of Commons: "After all,
what is it that brings you and me here? Fame! This is the true arena.
I might have occupied a literary throne; but I have renounced it for
this career." The external pomps and trappings of life, titles,
stately houses and far-spreading parks, all those gauds and vanities
with which sumptuous wealth surrounds itself, had throughout his life
a singular fascination for him. He liked to mock at them in his
novels, but they fascinated him none the less. One can understand how
they might fire the imagination of an ambitious youth who saw them
from a distance--might even retain their charm for one who was just
struggling into the society which possessed them, and who desired to
feel himself the equal of the possessors. It is stranger that, when he
had harnessed the English aristocracy to his chariot, and was driving
them where he pleased, he should have continued to admire such things.
So, however, it was. There was even in him a vein of inordinate
deference to rank and wealth which would in a less eminent person have
been called snobbishness. In his will he directs that his estate of
Hughenden Manor, in Buckinghamshire, shall pass under an entail as
strict as he could devise, that the person who succeeds to it shall
always bear the name of Disraeli. His ambition is th