And then came one of the most remarkable speeches the House of Lords has heard for some time.

From the Treasury Bench there stood a tall, slight, and rather delicate figure.

The face, long, large-featured, hatchet-shaped, was surmounted with a mass of curling-hair; altogether, there was a suggestion of what Disraeli looks like in that picture of him as a youth which contrasts so strangely and sadly with the figure and the face we all knew in his later days.

This was Lord Ribblesdale.

Lord Ribblesdale holds an office in the Royal Household in the present Administration.