Where oft is heard through mingled bristle,
Of yielding rush and angry thistle,

The snipe's shrill shriek-the plover's whistle.

Where, while the smiling showeret fills
The mouths of eager-drinking rills,
God lays His bow upon the hills.

This wild, that common footsteps shun,
Will echo oft the sportsman's gun,
Beneath the fervid August sun.

And oft, knce-deep in heather, he,
From yonder mountain-top will see
Land-maps of lovely mystery.

Nor, seldom the sun, sinking slow,
Linger to touch with golden glow
The lonely cairn upon its brow.

MOTLEY.

THE EARL OF BEACONSFIELD.

PART I.-NOVELIST.

"SOMEBODY once said, 'Thank God we have a House of Lords;' I say, 'Thank God we have the Earl of Beaconsfield at the head of affairs.'"-Such was the remark we overheard made by a member of that class which Mr. Bright styles "the residuum," on the day that it was announced to the world that Mr. Disraeli had been created a peer, and had left the arena of his life-long battles and triumphs, to take his seat in that "hereditary and august chamber," the grandeur and importance of which he has never failed to recognise. We were at once struck and charmed by the remark, because it seemed a powerful corroboration of the opinion we have always entertained, that notwithstanding the persistent and profligate efforts of the Radical press, combined with Radical politicians, "Spargere ambiguas voces in vulgum,"—that popular instinct, which lies deeper than mere education and which cannot long remain blinded, had pierced through sophistries and misleading influences, and clearly recognised the man under whose guidance the destinies of the nation were safe. For our own part, while sharing in the pride which the whole country feels at the dignity which Mr. Disraeli's Sovereign has conferred upon him, we cannot echo too heartily the observation of the artisan, "Thank God that Lord Beaconsfield still remains at the head of affairs." We cannot, as some of the Liberal press do-the wish, we fear, is father to the thought-look upon the fact of Mr. Disraeli becoming a peer as the closing act and consummation of the drama; for we are persuaded that much yet lies in the future that will add both to Lord Beaconsfield's usefulness and renown; but at the same time we feel that what has happened is, so to speak, the placing of the top stone on one portion of the edifice of his fame, and that it is a peculiarly seasonable moment in which to bring before the public some passages in a career perhaps the most marvellous, and certainly the most unique of the century. As probably everybody knows by this time, Mr. Disraeli (as he was then) became known to the public first of all as a brilliant novelist. His first production, "Vivian Grey," though, as he himself intimates, "written by a boy," was devoured and talked about in fashionable circles. In one of his prefaces, Mr. Disraeli speaks in the most disparaging tones of "the first heir of his invention," and actually declares that he used every effort to prevent its being

reprinted. This, we confess, has always astonishel us; and with deference to the author, we think, that in spite of the affectations and exaggerations which seem to irritate him, "Vivian Grey" is a work of which any one might be proud, and the suppression of which would be a decided calamity. We have lately been re-reading it, and it is astonishing the combination of youthful vitality and ripe wisdom that it displays. There are touches of satire worthy of Thackeray, and philosophical comments which indicate a profounder knowledge of human nature than Thackeray ever attained to. We need scarcely allude to the many romances, at once sparkling and thoughtful, which followed "Vivian Grey," and which Mr. Disraeli made the vehicle ef conveying his opinions upon politics and other questions to the public. So late as 1870 he was a novelist, for in that year appeared "Lothair," which we hold to be one of his most important, and certainly not the least masterly of his works. It is a pity that those persons who are so fond of echoing the stale cant about Mr. Disraeli's political inconsistency, unscrupulousness, and all the rest of that dismal jargon, would have the candour and take the trouble to study him in his writings, and compare the portrait which they will there find with the original as exhibited in his realised career. It is, however, the fashion so much in certain quarters systematically to disparage and depreciate Mr. Disraeli that we suppose it is hopeless to expect from those who do so either, on the one hand, the ingenuousness of confessing themselves willing to have their eyes opened, and of doing tardy justice to a great reputation, or, on the other hand, of bringing themselves to the exertion of examining things with their own eyes instead of lazily depending upon the stupid hearsays which float around them.

In a merely literary sense the novels of Mr. Disracli must always maintain the highest reputation, and we have confidence that the verdict of posterity will not reverse this dictum. They fulfil all the conditions which go to constitute genuine works of art. Their plots have unity; their characters are vividly portrayed and subtilly discriminated; they are filled with happy descriptions of scenery, they abound with wit, with humour, with tender sentiment, with true pathos, with those "snatched graces" which are almost "beyond the reach of art," those magical touches of nature which "make the whole world 'kin," and which are never revealed but to the insight of the true poet, whether he write in verse or in prose, whether his creations move in the drama or in the novel. By way of example, what finer natural touch could there be than that in "Trancred?"-where two ancient retainers of Tancred's English home are sitting together discussing the queer customs and food of that land of Palestine to which their young lord has brought them,

and one of them remarks with a sigh, "Well, I do long for the family prayers and the home-brewed!" In "Vivian Grey," again, there is a tender little scene of genuine nature, where Cleveland's children rush up to greet the sorrow-stricken hero of the Carabas conspiracy; and in "Contarini Fleming," what can be prettier than the episode of the two gipsy girls making Contarini travel between them in their caravan? Mr. Disraeli has entitled this particular novel a "a psychological romance," and mentions with very natural pride that Göethe and Heine were anxious to learn the name of its author. In all Mr. Disraeli's novels there is this to be specially remarked-they are pervaded by the healthiest and most bracing of atmospheres. This is a characteristic which they share in common with Fielding, Sir Walter Scott, Thackeray, and the whole order of robust geniuses. Mr. Disraeli is the determined enemy of shams of every kind; he detests false sentiment, milk-and-water pathos, mock heroism, cant, flabby humanitarianism, goody-goody philanthropy ("the bray of Exeter Hall," par example), cheap piety, and, in fine, every specious development of quackery, on the surface of which the divinely-gifted eye of genius discerns the "trail of the serpent." Even in what have been held by some critics as the vagaries and exaggerations of a flaming imagination there is a full-pulsed vitality, a healthy vigour that associates itself with the wanton gambols of a high-spirited colt in its field, or the beautiful unthinking madness of a generous schoolboy in the playground. The writing of the word "schoolboy" recalls to our minds an exquisite passage in "Coningsby," which we will quote as illustrating that wide and finely-wrought sympathy which is one of the chief features of Mr. Disraeli's mind, and without doubt the main secret of his power, not only as a novelist, but also as a public man. "At school friendship is a passion. It entrances the being; it tears the soul. All loves of after-life can never bring its rapture or its wretchedness; no bliss so absorbing, no pangs of jealousy or despair so crushing and so keen. What tenderness, and what devotion! illimitable confidence, infinite revolution of inmost thought! ecstatic present and romantic future! What bitter estrangements, and what melting reconciliations! What scenes of wild recrimination, agitating explanations, passionate correspondence! What insane sensitiveness, and what frantic sensi. bility What earthquakes of the heart, and what whirl. winds of the soul, are confined in that simple phrase-a schoolboy's friendship! 'Tis some infinite recollection of those mystic passages of their young emotion that makes grey-haired men mourn over the memory of their schoolboy-days. It is a spell that can soften the acerbity of political warfare, and with its witchery can call forth a sigh even amid the callous bustle of fashionable saloons."

Another salient characteristic of Mr. Disraeli's genius, looking at it, as we are now doing, from a purely literary point of view, is its amazing variety and versatility. In reviewing the long array of his romances one cannot help being struck with the number of paths which his footsteps have trodden. In "Popanilla" we have a satire in the manner of Swift; in "Ixion" a brilliant classical burlesque; in "Contarini Fleming" a profound psychological study; in "Venetia" a story founded on certain passages in the lives of two of the most refined spirits of the age; in "Coningsby," "Sybil," and "Tancred" what the author designates "a complete trilogy," dealing in turn with the political, social and religious sentiment of the day; and again, in "Henrietta Temple ""a love story," than which there is probably nothing more graceful and perfect in the whole of English fiction. Lastly, at an age and at a period of his public life when, in all probability, a fresh romance from the hand of the veteran novelist was about the farthest thing from the expectations of his countrymen, Mr. Disraeli pro duces "Lothair," at once a genial satire on the British aristocracy and a masterly exposure of the practices of the Church of the Vatican. A well-known but fallen statesman has, as everybody knows, been occupying his retirement in the composition of theological pamphlets chiefly in the form of attacks on the Romish system. We candidly confess that we were quite unable to read any of these productions word for word; for the arguments are so terribly spun out, the style is so melancholy, and the author's habitual method of dividing his theme into, God knows! how many divisions and sub-divisions, so uncomfortably reminded us of those long-tailed Presbyterian discourses with which the Sabbaths of our childhood were blasted, that we were forced to wrench out the pith of the essays with the utmost despatch possible, and let the letter shift for itself as best it might. Of this, at least, we feel convinced, that an epigram or a sacerdotal portrait in "Lothair" has done more to shake the arrogant and vaunting church of St. Peter than all the laboured and woe-begone "Vatican Decrees" that have ever been printed. There was one thing in "Lothair" which attracted universal attention that is to say, on the part of those who had either the curiosity or the wisdom to read the book. This was the incomparable and amusing portrait of "the Professor;" that excessively clever young man, who yet, "with overweening vanity," professed to represent in himself the opinions of " venerable Oxford." Most people identified this picture with Professor Goldwin Smith, a gentleman who at one time. "professed" political economy in the University of Oxford, but who has since crossed the broad Atlantic to find a wider field for his talents in one of the colleges of the New World. We are not ourselves personally