942.081 B362 m Vil c. 2 COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY THE TIMES PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED. Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1910. Reprinted June, 1911; January, 1913; September, 1914. Norwood Press J. 8. Cushing Co. - Berwick & Smith Co. PREFACE THE main source of the biography of which this is the first volume is the great mass of papers bequeathed by Lord Beaconsfield to the late Lord Rowton and now in the keeping of the trustees of the Beaconsfield estate; and my first duty is a grateful recognition of the unfailing kindness and confidence which Lord Rothschild and the other trustees have bestowed upon me since I began my long and arduous enterprise. For this volume, the most difficult and laborious portion of the whole work, it has not been possible to derive much assistance from extraneous sources other than those which are accessible to all my principal obligations are to Lady Layard for Disraeli's correspondence with the Austens; to Sir Herbert Thompson for the letters to William Pyne; and to Captain C. L. Lindsay for some of the original material which formed the basis of the published volume Lord Beaconsfield's Letters. To the King I owe my dutiful acknowledgment of the permission which his Majesty has been graciously pleased to accord me to print the letter to Queen Victoria in Appendix A; and I have to thank Lord Grey, Lord Tennyson, and Constance Lady Haldon for access to, or permission to publish, other single documents. I have also to thank Mr. Coningsby Disraeli for much assistance with the illustrations, in particular for allowing the V |