HIS DISREGARD OF MONEY. 329 



the Turf because there it was the test of success. 

 He counted his thousands after a great race as 

 a victorious general counts his cannon and his 

 prisoners." Mr Disraeli adds in another passage 

 of his ' Political Biography of Lord George Ben- 

 tinck,' that if certain letters written by the lat- 

 ter, which Mr Disraeli had seen, were to meet 

 the public eye, they would cause their author to 

 be regarded as a far more amiable and tender 

 character than those who knew him but slightly 

 gave him credit for being. " Not," says Mr Dis- 

 raeli, " that it must for one moment be supposed 

 that Lord George was blind to what was occur- 

 ring on all sides. He was the most sensitive 

 as well as the proudest of men." 



When Mr Disraeli called at Harcourt House just 

 before the Christmas holidays in 1846, his Lord- 

 ship remarked to him with great emotion, " In this 

 cause I have greatly shaken my health, shattered 

 my constitution, and shortened my days, but in it 

 I will succeed or die." The words were prophetic, 

 and to me it will ever be a painful thought that 

 my dear and honoured master wore himself out 

 while still in the very prime of life for politicians 

 who were too selfish to bear any portion of the 

 immense burden which he voluntarily took upon 

 his own shoulders. That he was aware of this 

 would, I feel sure, have been made apparent if his 

 political correspondence had been preserved. But 

 in a note appended to Mr Louis J. Jennings's 



