It was Rhodes who first conceived the thought of turning all these riches
into a political instrument and of using it to the advantage of his
country--the England to which he remained so profoundly attached amid all
the vicissitudes of his life, and to whose possessions he was so eager to
add.

Cecil Rhodes was ambitious in a grand, strange manner which made a
complete abstraction of his own personality under certain conditions, but
which in other circumstances made him violent, brutal in manner, thereby
procuring enemies without number and detractors without end. His nature
was something akin to that of the Roman Emperors in its insensate desire
to exercise unchallenged an unlimited power. Impatient of restraint, no
matter in what shape it presented itself, he brooked no resistance to his
schemes; his rage against contradiction, and his opposition to any
independence of thought or action on the part of those who were around
him, brought about a result of which he would have been the first to
complain, had he suspected it--that of allowing him to execute all his
fancies and of giving way to all his resentments. Herein lies the reason
why so many of his schemes fell through. This unfortunate trait also
thrust him very often into the hands of those who were clever enough to
exploit it, and who, more often than proved good to Rhodes' renown,
suggested to him their own schemes and encouraged him to appropriate them
as his own. He had a very quick way of catching hold of any suggestions
that tallied with his sympathies or echoed any of his secret thoughts or
aspirations.

Yet withal Rhodes was a great soul, and had he only been left to himself,
or made longer sojourns in England, had he understood English political
life more clearly, had he had to grapple with the difficulties which
confront public existence in his Mother Country, he would most certainly