no Minister was ever more fertile in expedients, more buoyant under defeat, more imperious over his followers, or more ready for every emergency. And, when it comes to principle and consistency, his record is far better than that of Peel, who betrayed the party which trusted him; of Gladstone, who began as a High-Church reactionist; or of Lord John Russell, whose career has been a series of expedients. No duke of clear Norman lineage was ever more passionately attached to all of the traditions--social, political, and religious —which make up what we may term the sentimentalism of Toryism.

But his Toryism has not made him blind to the facts of the situation-an all-powerful middle class; successful democracy across the Atlantic; revolutionary elements all over Europe; Chartism; Ritualism; Roman Catholic aggressions; Irish insurrections; the growth of free trade, and a general unsettling of all existing ideas and institutions. He has furnished the country gentlemen of England with an inexhaustible arsenal of arguments against all of these internal and external elements of destruction to the status quo, and taught them how to temporize with, to conciliate, and to mould these elements, otherwise irresistible, so as to preserve a tolerably consistent development, in place of the radical changes that were otherwise inevitable. He accurately defined his own position in 1859, when he said that "the House of Commons was made up of two classes of reformers-one consisting of those who would adapt the Constitution of 1832-the date of Earl Grey's Reform Bill-to the England of 1859, and who would act in the spirit and according to the genius of existing institutions; the other consisting of those who held that the chief, if not the sole object of representation, was to realize the opinion of the majority." Long before this avowal, in 1848, he said, in Parliament, while speaking to Mr. Hume's motion for household suffrage, triennial parliaments, and the ballot: "I am prepared to support the system of 1832, until I see that the cir

cumstances of the country require a change; but I am convinced that, when that change comes, it will be one which will have more regard for other sentiments, qualities, and conditions, than the mere possession of property as a qualification for the exercise of the political franchise." And in 1865, in the appeal on which he gained power for the last time, he held that the Constitution "secured our popular rights by entrusting power, not to an indiscriminate multitude, but to the Estate, or Order, of the Commons," and urged that, "when the time comes for action, we may legislate in the spirit of the English Constitution, which would absorb the best of every class, and not fall into a democracy, which is the tyranny of one class, and that the one the least enlightened."

How he carried out this policy in his last short term of office, and how far his Reform Bill was inherently wise, or the reverse, it is not our province here to discuss. We simply think that he acted consistently, and with a broad comprehension of existing circumstances. That he was so soon hurled from power, shows that the historical Constitution of England is doomed to crumble away under the continuous and growing pressure of democratic influences-a fact which we, as Americans, cannot lament, but which we should bear in mind, when we judge the bravest, most ingenious, most successful, and most misunderstood defender of the ancient order of things in England.

During the period of his political leadership, he has often availed himself of periods of comparative leisure to express the better part of his nature in books. Between 1844 and 1847, he published "Coningsby," "Sybil,” and "Tancred," the first of which has been so often quoted from to show the author's ambitions and his views of social, religious, and political topics, while all of them show more or less the impressions made on him during his earlier life, when mere externals had all the charms of freshness and brilliancy. They are not, however, destitute of

earnestness, of conviction, or of shrewd insight, although the author undoubtedly" worked off," through their creation, the crudities, follies, and superficial passions of his forming manhood.

The book in which we get nearest to the serious, purposeful, and reflective Disraeli, is undoubtedly his Life of Lord George Bentinck, his immediate predecessor in the leadership of the Tories, his ideal of an English gentleman, and his most intimate friend. There can be no question of the sincerity of the deep feeling which pervades this labor of love, and it reveals the strength of Disraeli's attachment to the class of which Lord Bentinck was so worthy a representative. We see in him the heir to an ancient name and vast estates, who, after silent attendance at eight Parliaments, was fairly dragged into leadership, because of a sudden necessity which made his sincerity, earnestness, laborious mastery of dry details, and unaffected devotion to the ancient order of things, conspicuous and respected. It was of such representatives of the aristocracy, and with Lord Bentinck in his mind, that Disraeli probably wrote, when he said that

an aristocracy is rather apt to exaggerate the qualities and magnify the importance of a plebeian leader. They are prompted to do this, both by a natural feeling of self-love and by a sentiment of generosity." In this Life of Bentinck, Disraeli devotes a chapter to the defence of his race-and it is the most terse, logical, complete, and sweeping defence ever made of the Jews. Every sentence is an epigram, and every paragraph is an argument. New facts are presented with telling force, and old facts are shown in strikingly new relations. No man can read it without feeling a new reverence for the mysterious race which ages of persecution and obloquy have failed to repress, or without a new respect for the man who stands up so valiantly for the faith and historical greatness of his fathers, while yielding a frank and full assent to the Divine humanity of the Lord, and regretting that a great portion of the Jewish

race "should not believe in the most important part of the Jewish religion."

Coming down to "Lothair," we find it, as we said at the outset, the ripe fruit of Disraeli's whole lifetime-the expression of the sentiments which have inspired and consoled him during a career full of desperate conflicts, bitter reverses, and unparalleled successes. Its plot is simple, although full enough of variety and incident. The hero is an orphan-heir to vast estates and a great name; early left in charge of two guardians, of most opposite characters. One of these was a Scotch uncle, Lord Culloden-a Presbyterian, a Whig, and a staunch hater of popery and of all ritualistic tendencies. Under his guidance, Lothair grows up to his fifteenth year; educated partly at his uncle's home and partly in the High School of Edinburgh. The other guardian was a clergyman of the High-Church order, who culminated in outright Roman Catholicism, while his orphan-ward was still under Scotch Presbyterian auspices. This guardian was the most intimate and trusted friend of Lothair's father, and was a man of shining talent and abounding knowledge, brilliant and profound." Of course, there could be no coöperation between two such guardians, and it was only at the end of a suit in chancery that the Roman Catholic guardian, now Cardinal Grandison, could secure the enforcement of the clause in the will of Lothair's father, which directed that Lothair be educated at Oxford. At Oxford the Cardinal thought that Lothair would get into a current of influences which might lead him insensibly to Romanism-a conclusion which came very near proving cor- . rect.

We thus find our young hero fairly launched in life at the University, fortunate in every worldly sense; the bosom friend and comrade of another young heir to greatness, Bertram, the son of a powerful Duke; under the remote influence of two opposing systems of faith, as represented by his guardians, and under the immediate in

fluence of ultra High-Church doctrines and practices. In his vacations he becomes rapidly domesticated in the splendid rural palaces of the proudest yet simplest of the aristocracy of his country. At Brentham, the country-place of his ducal friend, he is admitted, as the comrade of Bertram and in right of his own expectancies, into the closest intimacy with a large family circle which may be taken as an ideal type of the best to be found in England. Without any undue exaggerations of material grandeurs, such as we find in Disraeli's earlier novels, we see portray`ed a condition which is seen nowhere so perfectly as in England—a rural paradise, in which the charms of nature and the embellishments of art, the recollections and souvenirs of centuries of grandeur and state, the perfect realization of all that the fancy of man could desire in a place of residence—are combined and enjoyed by people of inherited and inbred refinement, courtesy, and high spirit. By a few masterly outlines, the whole sketch is made vivid and complete, and we realize the charms which environ one aspect-the brightest one-of aristocratic life in England, the flowering of the order whose battles the author has fought through a lifetime.

Amid such delightful surroundings, an ingenuous, susceptible, and sentimental youth like Lothair, naturally falls in love with the sister of his friend Bertram, Lady Corisande, and, with manly directness and simplicity, asks her mother to be allowed to pay his addresses. Lady Corisande was, like Lothair, an ardent devotee of the Anglican Church, and entered with quick sympathy into his grand plans for building churches and establishing religious schools. But she was young, had not yet come out," and, in the judgment of her prudent mother, ought not to be addressed on the subject of marriage until considerably more mature. So the natural consequences of the intimacies between congenial natures are deferred, and a world of troubles for both is left in store.

Soon Lothair is thrown into intimate relations with another ancient country family, the St. Jeromes, who had for centuries maintained their devotion to the Roman Catholic faith under all manner of trials. Here the daughter of the house, Miss Clare Arundel, a sincere and natural devotee and a young woman of rare elevation and beauty of character, almost wins the heart of Lothair, while simply trying, indirectly, to lead him from Ritualism to Roman Catholicism. Amid the beautiful ceremonials of the private chapel of the St. Jeromes, and under the social influences of a highly-cultured, noble, and intelligent family, Lothair yields almost passively to the new current in which he has drifted, and is on the high road to Rome and to a complete surrender to the fair devotee, Miss Arundel. He even goes so far as to consult a brilliant young convert to Romanism, Monsigneur Catesby, on the project of building a grand cathedral, which he proposed to give to his country, hardly knowing whether it should be used for Ritualistic or Romanist services.

Thus, besides the opposing influences of two hostile guardians, our plastic hero is also subject to the rival charms of two princely households, and of two beautiful, accomplished, and winsome young women, each representing rival religious tendencies. At this point is introduced the really most important character in the novel, and the one whose star was destined to guide the bewildered Lothair through a sea of troubles into a haven of rest. This character is an Italian woman by birth; a revolutionist by choice; a cosmopolite in her sympathies; a mover of mysterious conspiracies reaching all over Europe; the counsellor of Mazzini and Garibaldi, and the wife of an American, Colonel Campian, a Southerner, who had lost great landed estates through our civil war, and a courteous and amiable gentleman, but showing no positive traits of his own.

Theodora, as Mrs. Campian is generally called, is a rarely-drawn character; in fact, by far the strongest in the novel.

A sort of Margaret Fuller in accomplishments, philosophical tendencies, devotion to an ideal humanity, and sympathy with strong masculine minds, she is, also, a model of classic beauty. She has "the serenity, not of humbleness, nor of merely conscious innocence; it was not devoid of a degree of majesty-what one pictures of Olympian repose. And the countenance was Olympian: a Phidian face, with large gray eyes and dark lashes; wonderful hair, abounding without art, and gathered together by Grecian fillets." Under the magic influence of this remarkable woman, Lothair finds himself floated into a far different atmosphere from that which seemed so delicious at the country-seats of his aristocratic friends. In presence of this High-Priestess of humanity, his dream of building a cathedral vanishes like the mist before the strong light of the morning. He does not love her as he thought he loved the Lady Corisande, but yields his soul to her control as to that of a serene, superior, and benignant goddess. It is one of the finest touches of Mr. Disraeli's art-the delicate manner in which he suggests the intimate relations sustained by Mrs. Campian-with the full knowledge and assent of her husband-with Lothair, and other characters. The handling is so masterly that no thought of the impropriety of such relations, or of any danger therefrom, is suggested.

Thus Lothair is environed and distracted by opposing influences. We think his character has been made purposely negative and plastic, that he might show the more perfectly the religious conflicts which centre in him. The rest of the story is simply a development of the struggle for the control of a great lord in prospective, in which the wily Cardinal Grandison, with his able accomplices, are arrayed on one side, and the goddess-like Theodora on the other, with the Corisande family as assisting forces, on a different line of operations; while the St. Jeromes, and especially the devotee, Miss Arundel, use all the resources at their command to assist the Cardinal.

The various stages of this contest introduce us to a series of brilliant pictures of a splendid phase of feudal celebrations, when Lothair, at his legal maturity, is invested with all his prerogatives and privileges; to romantic interviews with Theodora in her country retreat, where Lothair meets Mr. Phoebus, an artist who worships nature and revels in pure heathenism; to picturesque phases of the ill-fated rising of the Italians against the papal sway over Rome; to a sick-bed, where the wounded and captured Lothair owes his gradual recovery to the solicitous nursing of Miss Arundel; through a long series of insidious but constant wiles, which finally land him in the net of Romanism; through a period of semi-insanity, when Lothair discovers how he has been tricked; through an adventurous escape from his watchful keepers, and wanderings in Holy Land; through his return to England, to his right reason, and, finally, to his first love, Lady Corisande, just as she is on the point of marriage to a man whom she disliked.

Throughout the whole of this wellmanaged plot there is a clear and welldefined purpose, but the situations are scarcely ever strained, and the characters are consistently drawn. Mr. Disraeli may blame his earlier reputation that he has been so freely charged with drawing portraits from the life, but we suspect that the charge is this time unfounded, save that, in a novel so intensely real and pervaded by the spirit of the present, there must be many re semblances to prominent and representative men and women. So, also, there is chance for the slur that there is too much "high life" in the novel. But it is-we are certain-genuine high life, as much so as that which Goethe so masterly portrayed in parts of "Wilhelm Meister." And we may say, in this connection, that in the thoroughly high-bred tone which pervades "Lothair;" its strength, simplicity, and purity of style; its graceful delineations of typical characters; the ease with which the weightiest and most pro