CHAPTER V.
LORD NORTHCLIFFE _" ...

We cannot say that they have a great nature, or strong, or weak, or light; it is a swift and imperious imagination which reigns with sovereign power over all their beings, which subjugates their genius, and which prescribes for them in turn those fine actions and those faults, those heights and those littlenesses, those flights of enthusiasm and those fits of disgust, which we are wrong in charging either with hypocrisy or madness."_--VAUVENARGUES.
A great surgeon tells me he has no doubt that Carlyle suffered all his life from a duodenal ulcer.

"One may speculate," he says, "on the difference there would have been in his writings if he had undergone the operation which to-day is quite common." This remark occurs to me when I think about Lord Northcliffe.
There is something wrong with his health.

For a season he is almost boyish in high spirits, not only a charming and a most considerate host, but a spirit animated by the kindliest, broadest, and cheerfullest sympathies.

Then comes a period of darkness.