deeply in love with knowledge, that for knowledge's sake he could do violence to his better nature, while he sought to calm his conscience by the subtle reasoning that was powerless to silence subsequent remorse. Yet, much as he loves knowledge, he has room in his heart for a mortal mistress as well, and the conflict of these twin passions with the slow expiation of his crime by him and the woman he adores, while he has crushed her, is one of the finest efforts of modern fiction. Very different is the "Pilgrims of the Rhine," although it, too, is a gloomy tale of unhappy love. Perhaps the most genuinely pathetic work of its author, with its melancholy burden and its numberless delicate touches of tenderness, it is brightened by a sparkling mélange of tales and legends, all exquisitely tinted with appropriate local colour. The adventures of Reincke Fuchs were never better told in German or English than by Bulwer; and we are sure that, whether the story of the ineffable love that thought a moment's relief from purgatory to comfort his love cheaply bought by a thousand years of torture be original or not, it gains unspeakably in Bulwer's touching way of telling it.

If the " Pilgrims of the Rhine" are tinted with local colour, the Italian historical romances are steeped in it. No wonder that a scholar, a poet, and a romancist like Lord Lytton, could not tread the dust of mouldering Rome, or muse among the disinterred memories of the old city of Campania, without dreaming of making their past live again. It was a bold conception, and there must be the magic of genius in the pen that revives a forgotten world for you, and makes you thrillingly follow the fortunes of its personages as if you had known them in flesh and blood. The sound archæology of the "Last Days of Pompeii" is so thickly strewn with the flowers of fiction that visitors assume as a matter of course the genuine identity of the houses of Diomed and Glaucus, and give themselves up to the received illusion when the guide points out the rich form of Julia impressed on the lava walls of the cellar where she had sought for refuge. It needs little romance to conjure up the litter of Sallust carrying the good-natured epicure through the showers of falling ashes, or to look out pensively on the blue waters of the bay, as if the unhappy Nydia had really buried herself there with her unhappy lover. There was a whole epitome of a departed world in the "Last Days of Pompeii," while "Rienzi" was but an episode in the long vicissitudes of Rome. Yet the episode was admirably selected for the author's purpose, and the proof of his power is that, as we suspect, he has permanently swayed the opinion of history as to the character of the tribune. Great as Rienzi was, Bulwer has raised him higher than he deserved in the cosmopolitan Valhalla. We have no time to linger over

"Harold" and the "Last of the Barons." The former was a feat of rapid writing only rendered possible by the closeness with which its author followed the early chroniclers and Thierry, but bearing in every dramatic scene down to the crowning and tragic dénouement the unmistakable stamp of his special genius. The latter we like less. We cannot help sus pecting that his pride in a long historical descent had its part in inducing him to pitch upon times when the Knight of Lytton played a conspicuous part. The barons of the Wars of the Roses were as unpromising subjects for poetical fiction as Colonnas and Orsinis, with their savage feuds; while, great as the Kingmaker was, he did not contain the elements of contrast to them like the greater and nobler tribune, while for once there is tedious sideplay that drags on the action of the plot, and the story of Adam Warner's mechanical studies is almost as rude and cumbrous as his infant printing-press.

"

Lord Lytton stood scarcely as high as he had done, when, in 1849, the novel of "The Cax. tons made its appearance in Blackwood's Magazine. If his fame had been waning, "The Caxtons" retrieved it, as Scott's "Waverley" avenged his "Waterloo." Followed by "My Novel," and "What Will He Do With It?" it seemed as if it was only then that he had made his way into the sphere the most congenial to his powers. Undoubtedly, for him and for us, it was as well that he had waited. In his rare pictures of English life he found a competent critic in every one of his readers, yet all of them owned that he threw novel and striking lights on the most hackneyed and familiar scenes. Long and elaborate as was "My Novel,” there were few who would have wished it shorter or who condemned it as over-laboured. It was in it he gave the freest play to his long and extensive knowledge of life, that he practically developed in their widest range his ripened and varied experiences. Yet, while eminently a study of character, it was equally a triumph of construction; each seemingly unconsidered circumstance was seen to fit into the plot with a marvellous precision, and while its personages grew older, better, or worse, no one of them was ever suffered to contradict himself. The wit and humour were as bright as ever, but they were more subdued and more English. Sensation there was in abundance, although it was never suffered to predominate; the style, without losing polish, had been growing purer and simpler. In short, in all its aspects there was a harmony of something approaching perfection that, to our mind, as we have said, made one of his latest works his best one.

We have not even attempted to name all his books, and we have omitted those that, dipping into mysticism, were doomed from their birth to an ephemeral reputation. We have left our

DISRAELI IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

A man of middle height, of spare but wellproportioned frame, of scrupulous neatness of dress, and possessed of a countenance which no one can forget who has once looked upon itthis is Mr Disraeli, as we see him now quietly walking up the floor of the House to his place on the front Opposition bench. Arrived at his seat he removes his hat-he alone amongst the gentlemen upon that bench-and sits down, folding his arms, and stretching out his legs in a fashion which recalls bygone days, when out of every twenty honourable gentlemen in the House, nineteen of them stretched out their legs in exactly the same way.

Over the high arched forehead-surely the forehead of a poet?-there hangs from the crown of the head a single curl of dark hair, a curl which you cannot look at without feeling a touch of pathos in your inmost heart, for it is the only thing about the worn and silent man reminding you of the brilliant youth of "Vivian Grey." The face below this solitary lock is deeply marked with the furrows left by care's ploughshare; the fine dark eyes look downwards, the mouth is closed with a firmness that says more for this man's tenacity of will than pages of eulogy would do; but what strikes you more than anything else is the utter lack of expression upon the countenance. No one looking at the face, though but for a moment, could fall into the error of supposing that expression and intelligence are not there; they are there, but in concealment.

Much is said of the power possessed by Napoleon III. of hiding his thoughts from the keenest scrutiny; but more than once even his power over his countenance has been sorely taxed, and he has been glad of the grateful shelter of the curling moustache that shades his inouth. Without any such help, however, Mr Disraeli has a face that is simply inscrutable., Again and again have hundreds of keen eyes been turned at critical moments towards that face, to read, if it might be possible, something of the thoughts of the man himself; but never once, not even in the most exciting crisis of personal or political conflict, has the face unwittingly relaxed, or friend or foe been able to read aught there. It is the face of a sphinx, inscrutable and unfathomable; it is, as men of every party will admit, the most remarkable face in England.

We have dwelt thus long upon it, because by its very absence of outward expression, it gives a clue to the general character of the man himself. It is not for us to attempt to sound the depths of his soul. They are beyond the reach

From "Cabinet Portraits: Sketches of Statesmen," by T. Wemyss Reid. London: H. S. King

and Co.

of our plummet, nay, of any plummet that has yet been dropped into them. There have been many men-a few friends, a vast number of foes-who have imagined that they have dived down into the innermost recesses of Mr Disraeli's nature, and who have come to the surface again, to tell us about everything that they saw there, to explain every hidden motive, each smothered passion, and to reduce the man himself to a mere piece of mechanism-an automaton chessplayer-whose motive power, and springs, and wheels, and wires, are to be discovered by any one who will take the trouble to look for them. We intend to be guilty of no such folly.

He is

Mr Disraeli's mind is no more to be analysed than his countenance is to be fathomed. here; we know what he has done, we have seen his labours, we acknowledge his genius, we believe him to be intellectually one of the greatest men not of his own time only but of all English history. Beyond that we cannot go, and we must leave to future critics, who will see him through a clearer medium than that through which it is possible for us to behold him, and who may have new lights thrown upon his character which are withheld from us, to decide what he is, and what precisely is the motive power of his life. All that we know at present is that he is an intellectual prodigy, and like other prodigies he must be tried by exceptional rules and standards.

He is a great party-leader. That is beyond dispute. To him belongs the honour of having, with an exquisite tact and skill, led the House of Commons, when he had only a minority of supporters at his back, and of having led it in such a way that the most watchful of foes were unable to trip him up, or even to change the secretly-formed purpose of his mind. Those who saw him first as Chancellor of the Exchequer, then as Prime Minister during the last Conservative administration, leading his party and the House of Commons at the same time, witnessed a spectacle, the like of which has perhaps never been seen before; for we have no previous record of such generalship as that which Mr Disraeli then displayed.

The writer, when watching him during that eventful period, was curiously enough constantly reminded of a line in Cowper's well-known hymn, for if ever a man seemed to "ride upon the storm" of party politics, to be above it, and superior to its fury, it was Mr Disraeli. Once and again there was mutiny in the ranks of his own party: as a minister he could have cried with the Psalmist against his own familiar friend in whom he trusted; opposite to him was a foe bent upon mischief, superior in numbers, and led by a man who, with many great and noble qualities of his own, has never once during a long career been betrayed into the weakness of an act savouring of tenderness towards his brilliant rival. From this man

Mr Disraeli had to look for nothing but the most uncompromising and relentless opposition -and he knew it. He was himself engaged in a task which, to the most sanguine of his own followers, had but a short time before seemed an utterly helpless one, and which, to those of them who were unable to see as far as he did, seemed worse than hopeless-suicidal.

But he went on, in spite of difficulties and discouragements which would have broken the spirit and destroyed the strength of any other party-leader of modern times. And he went on with wonderful success. Past rocks and shoals, and quicksands, without number, and by a channel on which it had never before entered, he steered the vessel of the State; he faced obstacles which seemed insurmountable, and which to any other man would have been what they seemed, and lo! they vanished away under his marvellous manipulation; with a party sorely reduced in strength, he kept at bay the overwhelming numbers of the enemy; nay, he even used them as instruments of his own, and it was by their aid that he passed the great measure which will henceforth be associated with his name, and balked his eager rivals. This is what Mr Disraeli has accomplished within the last few years; and no impartial man will deny that it is one of the greatest political achievements recorded in the history of Parliament.

sincerest flattery Mr Disraeli has apparently striven to emulate the conduct of Burke outside the senate even more than to follow his style of oratory within, though perhaps with less success. The home life of Burke at Beaconsfield was animated by a love of rural pursuits, and an intimate knowledge of the details of agriculture which not only enabled him to hold his own among the squires of the neighbourhood, but won him a reputation as one of the most practical farmers in Buckinghamshire. Mr Disraeli has conspicuously failed to achieve the same measure of this particular variety of fame. Burke was equally at home in the theory and the practice of economical cattle-breeding and the profitable cultivation of the soil; Lord Beaconsfield, though he has never failed to speak with much learned authority on these topics at bucolic gatherings, has seldom been known to put his theories to the test of practice. By diligent use of the experience of others he has amassed much interesting information that has enabled him to play the rôle of the country gentleman for a brief hour at many county gatherings, and to sustain the character with some distinction when away from home; but in the retirement of Hughenden he has never attempted it.

Countrymen-perhaps because they know comparatively little about other matters-are severely critical on all who aspire to distinction in their own walk of life; and Lord Beaconsfield is hardly endowed with the temperament proper to a country squire. A lenient landlord and

An admirer of Edmund Burke, Mr Disraeli could not have paid a more delicate tribute to the memory of the great statesman than by selecting as a title, first for his wife, and afterwards for himself, the name of the spot where the illustrious accuser of Warren Hastings spent so much of his leisure, but with which the lord of Hughenden has absolutely no territorial connection. This is not the only way in which the Tory chief has given expression to his admiration-a sentiment which may have its source in a certain congeniality of taste and similarity of genius--for the orator and author whose periods he has so profoundly studied. In a spirit of the

• "English Celebrities at Home," No. vi., from the World. By permission.

with his friendship, he is hardly looked upon by his people as the ruler of the little community over which he holds territorial dominion, or by the county magnates about him as one of themselves. With the fox-hunting squires and game preservers he has no community of tastes. Living in the midst of pleasant woodlands, he has none of the ordinary attractions of country life to offer his visitors. No cheery cackle of pheasants is ever heard in his coverts, and the sound of breechloaders never wakes the echoes over the many acres of his upland stubble. At his country house his life is one of almost complete seclusion, to which only a few select guests are admitted who care more for brilliant literary companionship and the attractions of a wellordered table than for the relaxation of rural pleasures. The rest and retirement which he finds here are welcome and pleasant after protracted labour; but they are enjoyed at long intervals, and then somewhat sadly. The Premier when in retreat is much given to solitary wandering among the woodland paths, which the taste of the late Lady Beaconsfield did so much to beautify; and probably he is not far wrong in preferring this communion with nature to an interchange of thoughts with his neighbours on parochial politics. In the