him, I compared his character unfavorably with that of his liberal adversary Gladstone and with that of his Tory leader Lord Derby. I distrusted him. Yet all the while I was amused, astonished, delighted, mystified, impressed, and never wearied by him. And I read straight through the six volumes of the Life—interspersing the novels at suitable points—with only a little flagging in the middle, with vivid interest in the final volume, to the victorious and triumphant end. And now I strangely sympathize with the English lady who was asked which she would prefer as a husband, Disraeli or Gladstone. With feelings mixed but not altogether muddled, she replied that she would prefer to be married to Gladstone but in the first year to elope with Disraeli.
To say, as has been said, that Gladstone possessed all the virtues and Disraeli all the charms, may account for the duplicity of the English lady's feelings; but it is too simple to explain, for example, the immense vogue of Disraeli's novels in America at a period when the type of society which they exhibited and the political party which they seemed to support were peculiarly obnoxious to the main current of American sentiment. Disraeli, delighted by the splendor of a life in the historic grand style and dreaming of a theocratic polity and an aristocratic renascence, despised the American scene
