Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield, 1804-1881 / 2008-08-01 00:00:00

EBOOK THE YOUNG DUKE ***


Produced by David Widger


THE YOUNG DUKE
By Benjamin Disraeli
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BOOK I.


CHAPTER I.
_Fortune's Favourite_
GEORGE AUGUSTUS FREDERICK, DUKE OF ST. JAMES, completed his twenty-first
year, an event which created almost as great a sensation among the
aristocracy of England as the Norman Conquest. A minority of twenty
years had converted a family always amongst the wealthiest of Great
Britain into one of the richest in Europe. The Duke of St. James
possessed estates in the north and in the west of England, besides a
whole province in Ireland. In London there were a very handsome square
and several streets, all made of bricks, which brought him in yearly
more cash than all the palaces of Vicenza are worth in fee-simple, with
those of the Grand Canal of Venice to boot. As if this were not enough,
he was an hereditary patron of internal navigation; and although perhaps
in his two palaces, three castles, four halls, and lodges _ad libitum_,
there were more fires burnt than in any other establishment in the
empire, this was of no consequence, because the coals were his own.
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