St. Mary Axe, and Bloomsbury Square, and it is even said that Lord Beaconsfield himself once told a friend that he was born in a library in the Adelphi. It would seem, however, that Islington has the strongest claim to the distinction; and Dr. John B. Jeaffreson, in a letter to the London 'Standard,' in 1881, says that the D'Israelis were living in 1803 behind Canonbury Tower (see GOLDSMITH), that while this house was undergoing repairs they lived for a twelvemonth next door to Dr. Jeaffreson (grandfather of this writer), in Trinity Row, and that Benjamin Disraeli was unexpectedly born there, Dr. Jeaffreson being the medical attendant.

Dr. B. E. Martin, who has in many ways shown his interest in this work, and who has been of the greatest assistance in its production, has learned by personal inquiry that the members of the Jeaffreson family who were contemporaries of Benjamin Disraeli, and who were his playmates in infancy, always believed him to have been the child born in Trinity Row while his father was their immediate neighbor, although there is no absolute proof that such was the case. The name of D'Israeli does not appear in the London directories of 1804.

This Trinity Row house, still standing in 1885, but known as No. 215 Upper Street, Islington, and occupied on its lower floor by shops, is remembered as having been 'a well looking dwelling' in the early part of this century, its front windows commanding a view of Canonbury Fields, and its back windows overlooking its own moderately extensive grounds.

Benjamin Disraeli was baptized in the Church of St. Andrew, Holborn, July 13, 1817, and in the registry there is described as 'From King's Road, and said to be about twelve years of age.' The elder D'Israeli is known to have occupied, at that time, the house in King's Road, next to the corner of John Street, and left unchanged in 1885 except

that it was then known as No. 22 Theobald's Road. King's Road ran from Gray's Inn Road to Bedford Row, north of Gray's Inn Gardens. Dr. Martin discovered from the ratebooks that Isaac D'Israeli paid rates from 1817 to 1829 on the house -on the corner of Hart Street and Bloomsbury Square, numbered then 6 Bloomsbury Square, but since changed to No. 5. The house now No. 6 Bloomsbury Square, and generally supposed to have been the home of the D'Israelis, was then No. 6 A or 62. All this is proved by the records of the Bedford Estate, in which Bloomsbury Square lies, as well as by statements of residents of the house for many years. Benjamin, therefore, was at least twelve years of age when his father went to Bloomsbury Square; and the following account of his 'visit to the room in which he was born' must be considered in the light of The house was left unaltered in 1885.

romance.

S. C. Hall's

Montagu Corry (Lord Rowton) told me that not long ago Lord Beaconsfield visited the house [in Bloomsbury Square] and asked leave to go over it, which was granted, although Retrospect the attendant had no idea that the courtesy was exof a Long Life Beatended to the Prime Minister. He sat for some time consfield. pondering and reflecting a grand past and a great future opening before his mental vision in the room in which he was born. Once I met the two, great father and greater son, at one of the receptions of Lady Blessington. It is certain that from the first to the last no parent ever received more grateful respect or more enduring affection from a child; and I well remember that on the evening to which I refer, the devotion of Benjamin Disraeli to Isaac D'Israeli, specially noticed by all who were present, was classed among the admirable traits of the after Prime Minister.

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6

A writer in Punch' shortly after the death of Lord Beaconsfield says that he went to a dame's school in Colebrook Row, Islington, kept by a Miss Palmer; and he is known to have been a pupil of an academy since called Essex Hall

on Higham Hill, Walthamstow, Essex, six miles from town, where his desk and room were carefully preserved many years later. When a very young man, Disraeli spent a year or two as a clerk in a solicitor's office in the City, somewhere in the neighborhood of the Old Jewry; but his home was generally in his father's family, in town or in Buckinghamshire, until his marriage with Mrs. Lewis in 1839, when he took possession of her house, No. 1 Grosvenor Gate, corner of Park Lane and Upper Grosvenor Street. Here he lived until her death in 1872. This house was still standing in 1885.

In 1873 Disraeli moved to No. 2 Whitehall Gardens; and in 1881 he died at No. 19 Curzon Street, Mayfair, facing South Audley Street.

ISAAC D'ISRAELI.

1766-1848.

THE only home of Isaac D'Israeli's youth was his father's

house at Enfield, where he was born, and where he remained until his marriage. The site of this house. is unknown to the local historians; but Ford, in his ‘Enfield,' believes it to have been on the ground since occupied by the terminus of the Great Eastern Railway.

As a young man D'Israeli came now and then to London to read the newspapers in the St. James's Coffee House in St. James's Street (see ADDISON, p. 7); and he spent many hours in the Reading Room of the British Museum. the 'Memoirs of the Elder D'Israeli by his Son' the following story is told

In

My father, who had lost the timidity of his childhood, who by nature was very impulsive, and indeed endowed with a degree