a much better one than the author of the drawing, had smiled a little
queerly on being allowed a sight of it.

However, she was no less excited by the batch of letters her husband had
allowed her to open than he by his. Her bundle included, so it appeared,
letters from several leading politicians: one, discussing in a most
animated and friendly tone the lecture of the week before, on "Lord
George Bentinck"; and two others dealing with the first lecture of the
series, the brilliant pen-portrait of Disraeli, which--partly owing to
feminine influence behind the scenes--had been given _verbatim_ and with
much preliminary trumpeting in two or three Tory newspapers, and had
produced a real sensation, of that mild sort which alone the British
public--that does not love lectures--is capable of receiving from the
report of one. Persons in the political world had relished its plain
speaking; dames and counsellors of the Primrose League had read the
praise with avidity, and skipped the criticism; while the mere men and
women of letters had appreciated a style crisp, unhackneyed, and alive.
The second lecture on "Lord George Bentinck" had been crowded, and the
crowd had included several Cabinet Ministers, and those great ladies of
the moment who gather like vultures to the feast on any similar
occasion. The third lecture, on "Palmerston and Lord John"--had been not
only crowded, but crowded out, and London was by now fully aware that it
possessed in Arthur Meadows a person capable of painting a series of La
Bruyère-like portraits of modern men, as vivid, biting, and
"topical"--_mutatis mutandis_--as the great French series were in their
day.

Applications for the coming lecture on "Lord Randolph" were arriving by
every post, and those to follow after--on men just dead, and others
still alive--would probably have to be given in a much larger hall than