administration and sought in this way to strengthen his own party. By 1867 his party was well organized and began to contest supremacy with the Whigs. Finally, in 1874, the Tories were overwhelmingly successful. Disraeli became Prime Minister and for several years held almost supreme power. During these years the estate was guided by a firm, able hand. At Berlin, where he measured swords with such noted statesmen as Bismarck, his negotiations mark the zenith of modern diplomacy. His return from Berlin was the most memorable incident of his career. In 1880 Disraeli, now Lord Beaconsfield, found his party again in a minority and resigned. The next year he died. Here is a wonderful career, A man with not even the' ad vantage of a University education and the positive disadvantage of Jewish birth presses forward step by step through slights and disappointments, assumes the leadership of a great aristocratic party, and becomes at last in old age master of the country and one of the great arbiters of Europe. And now we ask ourselves what was the character olsuch a man ? Let us attempt briefly to consider life as nearly as possible from his standpoint. He belongs to the proud, exclusive Jew ish race. He is a man of strong will and brilliant intellect, and at the same time he is proud, ambitious, self-confident. His lot is cast among the English people for whose ideas and habits he has little sympathy. Yet wealth and power attract him, and he determines to triumph over a people for whom he has no kindled feeling. Ambition urges him to enter on a political career as the surest passport to the wealth and rank. This is the man we see entering Parliament in 1837. He is actuated by no mere patriotic desire to serve his county, but looks on politics in the cold, calculating light of the profes sional gambler. Party cries never move him. Every action is weighed beforehand to see what it will contribute to his advancement. One great advantage Disraeli gained from his greatest dis advantage was his Hebrew intensity. He had this race's attri bute of throwing the whole stress of his nature into the pursuit Benjamin Disraeli.
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers