A SKETCH OF DISRAELI.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3121, 29 June 1881, Page 4

A SKETCH OF DISRAELI.

Entering fashionable life in his youth as one of the " curled darlings " of Mayfair, young Disraeli risked any amount of derision at the outset by his extravagance of mannei and costume. The oval face, crowned and fringed with his jet-black ringlets, has beei preserved for us by the delicate pencil o' Chalon. His languid airs as a Fribble who was only, to all appearances thrn, idly saun taring through existence, have b( j en perpetuated in like manner to the very life by the dexterous ptehing-needle of Maclise. Here is Herr George Brande's sketch of him at this period :—" He was handsome, and he knew it, with a wil 1, melancholy, poetic expression in the Syron style. His beautiful thick hair, parted on one side so that the long, glossy locks hung down low ; with n broad, limp shirt-collar falling over, the careless necktie ; a velvet coat of unusual cut, lined with white silk; a waistcoat embroidered with flowers in gold; his hand? half coi-.aled with embroidered ruffles; the fingers covered with rings ; the breast adornM with an armour of gold chains, and "dancing-shoes on his feet; in his hand aifiVory cane, the handle inlaid with gold, carried by a silken tassel, voild Disraeli the younger as, to an amused and astonished world, he exhibited himself in London society, of which he was then the latest and brightest ornament. . For the most part noticeable at that time- as a silent lounger in the gilded saloons of Mayfair, it was remarked in those earlier years that whenever roused into animation his conversational gifts were as marvellous as his sarcastic powers were unapproached. His appearance in manhood still lives on the canvas of Sir Francis Grant, the late pi'esident of the Royal Academy, while another gifted Royal Aoademician, Mr Millais, has but just now completed, with a wonderful verisimilitude, his likeness as hi was at the very last, as the veteran Earl of Beaconsfield."