Wood himself, a more unwearied searcher into the history of our literature." Thus the course of Isaac D'Israeli was fitly described by Fraser as "prosperous and quiet, from agreeable youth to respectable old age." He attained to patriarchal years; dying at the age of 81, at his seat, Bradenham House, Bucks, Jan. 19th, 1848. He had lost his wife, to whom he had been united more than forty years, in the spring of the previous year; and he left behind him four children,—a daughter, alluded to above,—and three sons, of whom the eldest, the late Lord Beaconsfield, the celebrated novelist and statesman, is known as an author wherever the English language has penetrated, and as a diplomatist wherever English politics are a matter of importance or interest.
There is a portrait of Isaac D'Israeli by Drummond, in the Monthly Mirror, for January, 1797; another by Denning in Bentley's Miscellany, and prefixed to Moxon's edition of the Curiosities; and a sketch by Count D'Orsay, in 1848, a woodcut from which illustrates the notice of the original in the Illustrated London News, Jan. 29th, 1848. Madden, in his Life of Lady Blessington (iii. 78), speaks of this as "one of the best likenesses"; but he falls into the natural error, in which he is followed by the writer of the obituary notice of D'Israeli, in the Gentleman's Magazine (vol. xxx. p. 99), of attributing the sketch before us from Fraser by "Alfred Croquis," the signature of Maclise, to "Alfred Crowquill," the recognized pseudonym of the well-known comic draughtsman, Alfred Henry Forrester, who died in May, 1872, in the sixty-seventh year of his age.
XXIV.—THE ANTIQUARIES.
This cartoon requires a "key," and I borrow one, for the nonce, from the original exhibitor of the "Gallery."
"Behold," says he, "a selection of no unfair specimens of the component parts of 'The Antiquaries,' from its noble president, 'Athenian Aberdeen,' to the 'Atlas of the Society,' as the facetious Sir Harris Nicholas, the ex-fellow, justly styled that energetic pourer-out of coffee, its broad-shouldered, and square-built clerk, Mr. Martin! Vice-presidents, secretaries and members, are here also displayed, not 'tricked out,' as the heralds say, with their holiday faces, but as they actually look and talk, and congregate into groups, at three-quarters past eight of the clock upon the evenings of Thursday in each week respectively, between the months of November and May inclusive. Here stand and sit 'the A.S.S.es, great and small, long and short; in witness whereof behold the lengthy Jerdan, peering through his glass at every person and thing around him; while the five-feet nothingness of Crofty Croker has taken up a position under Jerdan's elbow, sipping his coffee in the blessed unconsciousness of the fairyhood of his situation. Behind this size-ace of our species we think we recognize Mr. John Bowyer Nichols, to whom Mr. Secretary Ellis is explaining some passage which his want of articulation, and breathless and sputtering haste to close the reading punctually at the half-hour, has rendered doubtful to Mr. Nichols—in order that it may be satisfactorily reported by Sylvanus Urban. Next to Ellis we have no difficulty in identifying his coadjutor, the ingenious Nicholas
