or has ever looked upon his portrait, can conceive of a "plebeian appearance" in that massive head and those powerful though rugged features.

There is one amusing episode in Macaulay's career, however, related in Trevelyan's life that I have often wondered has not been made more of, and that is the duel he came near having with William Wallace.

The latter was a London barrister who edited an edition of the works of Sir James Mackintosh, and the readers of Macaulay's essays will remember the unsparing castigation Mr. Wallace received for the manner in which he performed that task.

It was written by Macaulay when he was in India, and made Mr. Wallace fighting mad. He tried in vain to obtain "the satisfaction customary among gentlemen" from Macvey Napier, the editor of the Review, but that wily Scot had no notion of standing up to be shot at, as his predecessor, Jeffrey, had once been willing to do, so Wallace nursed his wrath until Macaulay returned to England, three years later.

One of the first things to meet Macaulay's astonished gaze was a challenge from Wallace, which he at once confided to Lord Strafford, a warm personal friend, and a thorough man of the

world. Fortunately Mr. Wallace's second was also a man of good sense. The idea of permitting two such men as Macaulay and Wallace to go out and shoot at each other with blundering pistols all on account of a few sharp sentences in a Review must have struck these gentlemen as the height of folly. They at once hit upon Touchstone's expedient of an "If" that great composer of quarrels. It was proposed that Mr. Wallace should make a preliminary declaration that he meant by his memoir nothing disrespectful or unkind to Mackintosh, and then Macaulay was to express his regret that he had used language in his article that could be deemed personally offensive. In this way the affair was settled.

The idea of Macaulay's fighting a duel is certainly very funny. He is described in his biography as having been one of the unhandiest of boys and men, disinclined to all kinds of outdoor sports. He could neither shoot nor drive nor skate nor row nor swim. He never rode on horseback. He could no more have shot off a pistol than he could have jumped the Thames, and if he had attempted it on the dueling ground one of the seconds would have been in far greater peril than his opponent. And yet so strong were the dueling customs of the day that he fully intended

to accept the challenge. In a letter to Napier he said, "I had, to tell you the truth, no notion that a meeting could be avoided."

Your "If "is a great peacemaker. There is much virtue in "if."

BENJAMIN DISRAELI,

EARL OF BEACONSFIELD.

(1804-1881.)

DISRAELI's career was scarcely less marvelous than that of Napoleon. The poverty-oppressed Corsican's rise to the Empire of France and the domination of Europe was fairly parelleled by the slower, yet certain, ascent of the Christian Jew from a humble station in middle life to be the ruler of an empire on which the sun never sets. And this he accomplished by the sheer force of will and intellectual power, aided by an oratorical gift that made him the spokesman of a party.

His rank as a statesman may still be in dispute, but no one questions his superb and brilliant qualities as a party leader and orator in the House of Commons, and his mastery over that body. When he died no tribute of praise was more eloquent or more just than that pronounced by Mr. Gladstone. And what he singled out for par

ticular encomium was Disraeli's courage as a leader of party, and his pride in and faithfulness to his own race.

But he was not only a Jew; he was a great Englishman who extended and enlarged the empire of the Queen, ever ready to maintain its honor and integrity against all Europe. In none of her prime ministers had Queen Victoria such faith and trust, during her long reign under so many administrations, as in the Earl of Beaconsfield.

From

He achieved his first successes in life as a novelist, and "Vivian Grey" and the "Young Duke" gave him the entrée of London society. Here with D'Orsay, Bulwer and the young aristocracy he posed as a dandy of the dandies, and outshone them all in peculiarities of dress and manner. "Vivian Grey" was the was the prophecy of his own career, and he meant it to be. his boyhood he had his eyes on parliament, and made several attempts to gain an election before he succeeded. Five years before he entered parliament, when he was known only as a youthful novelist and a society butterfly, Lord Melbourne asked him one evening what he wanted to be. "Prime minister of England," replied the audacious youth, much to the amusement of the peer,