honest portrait of reality, and it is pervaded by a charming sentiment. Observe how well the girl is posed-how frank and actual her aspect. It is one of the gems of Mr. Johnston's gallery, and by an artist that, next to Millet, has best understood the grave and strong poetry of the country, and rendered the peasant an actuality in modern paint ing. And is it not due to Geoge Sand to say, that she first introduced the peasant in modern art, in a humane and poetic, in a picturesque and tender form? Before her stories, was not the tiller of the soil understood, by French painters and writers, as a brute too coarse for art? And did they not mock labor with the immorality and artificiality of Boucher's fanciful and meretricious work? George Sand, Millet, and Breton, have understood and rendered the peasant in a noble manner and sometimes with a religious sentiment-always in a natural, humane, and poetic fashion. They make you venerate or love the subject of their work.

We will now briefly enumerate the most remarkable pictures,-not yet mentioned,-in Mr. Johnston's gallery. First, he has Gerome's "Death of Cæsar;" a beautiful and celebrated picture by Bouguereau-a young girl carrying a little boy to the bath. He has Brion's "Brittany Peasants at Prayer "-a very fine picture. He has a spirited Schreyer; two Meissoniers; two Freres; a strong piece of expression and a most painful story in a picture by Hubner; the famous "Wine-Tasters," by Hasenclever; an Achenbach; a fine cattle-picture by Troyon; one by Van Marke; a beautiful Bauguiet, called "Improving the Eyelids;" a Venice by Zeim; a large picture by Muller, after the original in the Luxembourg Gallery; two Trayers; an interior of a church by Madrazo, a sketchy but good picture; a Zamacoïs from the salon of '69; and a little picture of a nude figure by Delaroche. He has a specimen by Blaise Desgoff; a Plassan; a fine picture by Duverger; a specimen of Daubigny; a pretty example of Landelle-an Oriental girl with

a beautiful, placid countenance; a striking marine by Isabey; a Willems; two elaborate landscapes by Herzog; a landscape by Helbreth, and a delightfully quaint figure by Worms.

Most of our New York painters are represented in Mr. Johnston's gallery. First and best of the American figurepictures is Winslow Homer's "Prisoners at the Front." Lambdin, W. Hart, Hazeltine, Huntington, Grey, Leutze, McEntee, E. Johnson, Boughton, Beard, Baker, Guy, Gifford, Kensett, Church, and Hennessy, are represented by characteristic pictures. But the representation of American art may be said to be most satisfactory, in Mr. Johnston's gallery, in Allston's "Spalatro," Church's "Niagara" and "Twilight," Kensett's "Brook," and Homer's "Prisoners at the Front." A thoroughly satisfactory gallery of American art, perhaps, could only be composed of the best pictures of our annual Academy exhibitions. It certainly cannot be made to order; it must be sought for incessantly. A gallery furnished with adequate examples of American art, would be a source of just pride to its owner, and of national interest to all of us. But such a gallery can only be made by a man wholly interested in art, and capable of discriminating between the fashionable and the meritorious, between the popular and the good.

In conclusion, let us repeat, the remark, that Mr. Johnston's gallery is second to none in New York. It represents many of the strongest and latest European artists; it has been selected with as much discrimination, and reaches as high a level of art-appreciation, as Mr. Belmont's gallery; while, on the side of American art, it is creditable, if not liberal, and it is certainly superior to either of the galleries which have been made the subject of comment in this magazine. No gallery in New York offers us any thing more interesting, any thing more genuine and significant, than Mr. Johnston's, in Winslow Homer's "Prisoners at the Front "-the best record, the most striking characterization in art of the elements in our

abused, and even calumniated, than any other public man of England. Through whatever English source of information as to his character and career we look, we are almost certain to find some obstructing prejudice, which prevents us from seeing the man as he undoubtedly strives to appear to himself, and as, perhaps, posterity will see him. Besides this inherent difficulty of obtaining a fair statement from English authorities, we labor under natural prejudices of our own. We comprehend and do justice to such a man as John Bright, for he is a firm believer in American ideas, and he is steadily introducing them, under practical modifications, into English politics. But Disraeli believes that the fundamental principles of the English Constitution are sound, and ought to be immutable. He accepts the concrete realities of the English form of government as finalities, or as only to be changed in the way of adapting its spirit and traditions to the changed conditions of the present. He thinks that our experiment of government owes all its success to the peculiar circumstances under which it was formed and has been developed, and that no analogies can be safely drawn between our policies and those of England. Moreover, it is no secret that he believed in the success of our late Rebellion; but, as many eminent and patriotic Americans shared the same opinion at various times during the war, we ought not to feel hardly toward him for this error of judgment, and, perhaps, of sympathy, in which he stood on common ground with Gladstone, Lord Russell, and nearly all the other leading English states

men.

Let us, however, for our own sakes, endeavor to get some real insight into the history and characteristics of this wonderful man, who, at the age of sixty-five, signalizes his retirement from the rulership of an Empire by producing the most admirable novel of the year, to say the least. Let us try to get clear of all prejudices-from the vulgar and pitiable prejudice against a great race, to that which noble minds may

feel against a stalwart foe to Democratic ideas. For our own complete self-satisfaction and enlightenment, we must study him amid his surroundings and from his own standpoint. This we propose to do with the greatest possible brevity.

He has been called "a son of the people," and so he was, in one sense, but not in others and more important. The son of Isaac Disraeli was born into the aristocracy which is directly ordained of God. A Jew and a foreigner, the elder Disraeli nevertheless needed no act of naturalization or letters of nobility to enable him to assume a position of equality among the best of England, or to introduce his son among the surroundings most favorable to the quickening of a noble ambition, of all his latent thirst for acquisition, or of all his aptitudes for culture. Moreover, the young Disraeli enjoyed the rare advantage, for a member of a race outlawed by provincial bigotry, of being born in cosmopolitan London-of being educated by his wise, catholic, and learned father, instead of submitting to the humiliations of a young Jew at a public school, until he was mature enough to enter a private academy near London, and of entering into society at an age when the instant favor he won would have addled the brains of an ordinary youth; but endowed with a stock of self-reliance, ambition, and purpose which enabled him to acquire an address, a knowledge of men and women, and a self-poise which he could have cultivated so well nowhere else. It is very likely that, amid the dazzle and glare of the brilliant society which we comed him so flatteringly, the young Disraeli learned other lessons of more doubtful value-that he imbibed an un due admiration for a social order which blossomed so splendidly, which had such romantic and noble traditions, and which was upheld by such stable foundations. At all events, it stimulated, developed, and enlarged him.

In 1824-5-that is, in his twentieth year-the young student, attorney's clerk, and man of fashion, went to Ger

many-not a bad place for getting over the mere frivolities of his immediate past-and, in 1825 and 1826, showed his creative activity by writing a story which made him famous, in a way, as rapidly as "Childe Harold " did Byron. Of "Vivian Grey"—the first flowering of Disraeli's genius-it is unnecessary now to speak, for almost every one has read it. As the work of a young man who had just reached legal maturity, it is a marvel, and was so regarded at the time when it first startled and delighted the world of novel-readers, nearly half a century ago. Like all of his other novels, it was written from his own life, and was, therefore, a genuine and powerful production. Its very excess of costume, of superficial characters, and of improbabilities, came from a too crowded and premature experience of fashionable life, and from the teeming fancies and wild dreams of youth.

That, just after "Vivian Grey " made him a literary lion, so shrewd a publisher as John Murray should have selected so young a man to edit and build up a daily political paper, on which were spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, shows that Disraeli must, even then, have impressed himself quite remarkably on his elders as a man of rare knowledge of politics and of affairs. The reasons for the failure of this costly enterprise, under such brilliant auspices, we never saw wholly explained; but the pathway of newspaper history is so rich in wrecks, that no particular explanation is necessary. We can imagine, however, how a proud, ambitious, and successful young man like Disraeli must have felt, when, after a fortune had been swallowed up in the vain enterprise, he had to stand before the world for the first time a failure, and that on a most magnificent scale. How few young men of the finest talent and firmest resolve but would have given up the struggle after such a rebuff?

But he came of a race which Goethe says was specially chosen by God as His peculiar people, for its persistence. And he was not merely possessed of a dogged determination, but had that cheerful, VOL. VI.-6

inventive, aggressive spirit which genius alone can give. He began, the next year, another novel, the "Young Duke," and refreshed himself by travel in the lands which the traditions of his race made sacred-in Syria, Turkey, Egypt, and the more westerly countries on the Mediterranean. The impressions he then formed must have deepened in him that reverence for the Jews as "the trustees of tradition and the conservators of the religious element," which he has so often and so eloquently expressed. In these travels, made when he was most sensitive to the influences of the Oriental world, his traditional faith was strengthened, and the young Tory, by force of early associations, became doubly a Tory as he became more thoroughly a Jew. To him then, as now, the Hebrews represented "the Semitic principle "—that is, to use his own definition, "all that is spiritual in its nature." It was doubtless with these associations in his mind, that he wrote his masterly defence of the Jews in his Life of Lord Bentinck, in which he said: "The Jewish race connects the modern populations with the early ages of the world, when the relations of the Creator with the created were more intimate than in these days; when angels visited the earth, and God himself even spoke with They are a living and the most striking evidence of the falsity of that pernicious doctrine of modern times the natural equality of man.'

man.

"The Young Duke," which was published after his return to England, in 1831, was followed by "Contarini Fleming," a novel showing a growing depth of thought, as well as the results of his foreign wanderings, and was followed, in 1833, by "Alroy," a historical romance, in which the period of the Jewish captivity, under the Caliphs, was vividly and picturesquely sketched. In the very next year, his fertility and resources were shown in the now almost forgotten novel of "Henrietta Temple;" and, in 1837, the story of "Venetia " betrayed his continuing tendency to introduce real characters, the incidents of the do

mestic troubles of Byron and Shelley figuring quite largely, in masquerades easily penetrated.

Successful as a novelist, and the idol of the most brilliant society in England, he began, at the age of thirty-two, the career of a politician. Three times he ran for Parliament, and was defeated -the beginning of a long series of trials and rebuffs. But there was no killing such a man. Reverse not only failed to crush him; it scarcely dampened his spirits. It was during this dark period, when the road to political eminence seemed completely barricaded against him, that O'Connell uttered the famous epigram that would have snuffed out all of Disraeli's courage, had it been of the flickering sort. The great agitator said: "For aught I know, Mr. Disracli may be the heir-at-law of the impenitent thief who died on the cross." Neither this cruel sarcasm from a great man, nor its manifold repetitions by lesser foes, nor even an utter breakdown, when he at last attempted his maiden speech in Parliament in 1838, availed to suppress or dispirit this terribly earnest and determined young politician. And, in 1839, Disraeli at last did make Parliament listen to him, applaud him, and acknowledge in him a possible master. For the ten years förlowing, he was steadily working, and fighting, and growing in power and influence. All of the instincts of his nature, the traditions of his race, and the associations of his youth and early manhood, drew him into the ranks of the party which represented the aristocratic and feudal elements of English society. But the favorite of lords and country gentlemen never advanced himself in their good graces by any act of sycophancy. His bitterest enemies admit that he always maintained his self-respect, and that his sarcasms were pointed as readily at a duke as åt a com

moner.

His fight, up to the time when he succeeded Robert Peel as the accepted leader of the Tory party, was one which has extorted the admiration of his most jealous detractors. He represented and

was assisted by no faction or family connection. He was shunned, caricatured, despised, and almost proscribed. But he could not be kept down. There was no relaxation in his energy or in his efforts. He bore insults and rebuffs with patience, until crowded too far, and then scattered his enemies by retorts which fairly burned. But his more constant warfare, while the Tories were out, was against the party in power, and no man in the opposition ever wielded so many or such various weapons of offence. Unsuccessful in one direction, he turned in another, and if there was a weak point, he was sure to find and pierce it.

When he took the lead of the Tories, he found them an undisciplined, heterogeneous, impractical, and reactionary set. They were united only by their hatred of the democratizing tendencies of the age. How much tact, knowledge of human nature, firmness, courage, and fertility of resources were displayed by him in organizing them into a coherent party, in persuading them to abandon antediluvian notions of political economy, and in getting them to agree on measures and doctrines that would bear discussion, we can but faintly comprehend. Although he has always and consistently opposed the Democratic theory of government, it is due to him, more than to any other man, that the Tory party has been made to assume the strange position of a rival to the Liberals in the extension of the suffrage.

The restricted limits imposed on this article prevent us from taking more than a rapid glance at the political and literary career of Disraeli since he became the chosen leader of English conservatism. Four times he has led his party to power, and, whether in the Ministry or as leader of the opposition, he has wielded an influence such as no other man could have exercised, with such a following and in behalf of such a cause. In debate, the sole antagonist who has been able to measure swords with him successfully for any long period, has been Mr. Gladstone. In administration,