no longer young, for his age must range and disappointment may have had the efsomewhere between forty-five and forty- fect of whetting the unappeasable desire of seven (having been born according to one Mr. D'Israeli to be distinguished-though account in 1798, and according to another his ambition may have become somewhat in 1800)—when, we say, a man in mature more vaulting since he has encountered the middle age, wears, with settled and wrin- neglect of the person estimated as the most kled brow, the guise of an eager and too mediocre statesman that ever guided the believing boyhood, it is fitting that facts destinies of England, yet what have the and dates should be laid before the public, public to do with that private passage in and that a system of spurious enthusiasm and Mr. D'Israeli's history, further than to concounterfeit juvenility should be reprehended gratulate themselves that this disrelish of and exposed. To borrow the language of Sir Robert Peel has furnished them with the French Theatre, Mr. Benjamin D'Isra- two novels, Coningsby and Sybil, blending eli is far too faded and fané, too hackneyed together politics, personality and fiction, in the ways of the world, to play the parts and possibly preserved them from an indifof the jeunes amoureux; indeed, he is suffi- ferent official man, having neither the tact ciently senile to be promoted to the pères of Tadpole, nor the tenacity of Taper, nor nobles; and airs and gestures, and modes the routine of Rigby, nor the decorous of thought and feeling, which may be pardoned in his younger friends, are in him misplaced, not to say ridiculous. Nearly, if not fully, twenty busy years have passed since Vivian Grey at once startled and of the number of those who think that there amazed the town; and though the fancies that now flit across Mr. D'Israeli's brain might have been pardoned him then, yet they cannot be so easily overlooked in a person, who, commencing his political career at an age beyond thirty, has now been thirteen years more or less prominently before the public, either as an Ultra-Radical, seeking to be a joint of O'Connel's tail-as a Liberal, seeking to be elected for an English constituency, under the auspices of Sir E. L. Bulwer,- —or as an Ultra-Tory, or Tory-Radical, seeking to represent, if we remember rightly, Aylesbury or Buckingham, and actually representing Shrewsbury.

Of the member for Evesham, the less that is spoken at any time the better. But of Mr. D'Israeli it was absolutely necessary that we should speak personally as a man, as a legislator, and as the leader of a politico-literary party, consisting of three, four, or five individuals; inasmuch as he puts himself ostentatiously forward as an actor and a politician-as at once an historian, a painter of manners, a witness, and a propounder of new theories,-social, political, economical, and religious. For all this, we do not in the least find fault with him, nor are we disposed, like others, too nicely to scan or question his motives. Mankind are almost in every case guided and governed by mixed motives; and though pique

In the French Theatre, old and young parts are thus technically distinguished.

dullness, called discretion, possessed in so eminent a degree by the Sandons, and Clerks, and Rosses, and such small deer,' of the conservative majority. We are not

·

is an absolute incompatibility between a man of genius and a man of business; but the finer edge of the mind is not always well set against the every-day business of human life. Swift tells us a blunt knife cuts paper better than the keenest edged razor; and, from the days of Addison down to the times of Canning and Macaulay, we have seen that the initiation into state-craft of literary men and men of genius, has in no degree contributed to their personal happiness, and not always either to their character or renown. That Mr. D'Israeli is excluded from the favor of the sublime of mediocrity' is with us rather a matter to his honor. If he were good enough to march through Coventry with the right honorable Premier, the member for Tamworth or ready to act on the volti subito principle of that prop and pillar of our estate ecclesiastical, the author of that misty, incomprehensible work called The Church in its Relations to the State'-he would be good in our minds for nothing else, and we should leave him to his lot with a slavish majority;--but with all his conceit, mannerism, and saucy affectations, there is much serviceable stuff in him, and his tales, his theories, and his portraits of classes and individuals, may be turned to excellent popular account. From whatever cause or motive, he has done much to break the spell that hung around the name of Peel, and has painted that politician to the life, in unfading colors. Cold, cautious, incommunicative-utterly without fixed princi

ples or opinions-every accurate observer observation, or evidence given before parknew Sir R. Peel to be; but little did the liamentary commissioners.' The object world think the voice which was once is undoubtedly praiseworthy; and the voraised in his praise, would so soon discover lumes bear internal evidence that the authat the sublimity of his state-craft was to thor has been at no inconsiderable pains to be found in an ever-ready recurrence to accomplish his purpose. Mr. D'Israeli is Hansard, and the profundity of his wisdom evidently a great observer of external manto be disclosed in an argumentum ad homi- ners, dress, air, and modes of expression; nem reference to the Mirror of Parliament. and we are disposed generally to recognize Though backed by a great party, every the truthfulness of his characteristics. His well-informed person knew the minister to sketches, more especially the characters be without personal friends, destitute as he drawn from the mill and the mine, are real is of qualities to attach and fascinate the beings of flesh and blood; and merit, so minds of men; but no one expected the ad- far as we are capable of judging, the praise mirable kit-cat sketches of his servile flat- of perfect fidelity of outline. Nor is our terers, with which we are presented in the artist less faithful in the coloring and fillstriking likenesses of Tadpole, Taper, and ing up. The dialogues are, we doubt not, Rigby, would follow so speedily. The either the undefiled transcript of notes silly stuff in Coningsby, about the 'pure made on the spot, or the result of careful Caucasian breed--the Venetian origin of and accurate observation. This faithfulthe British constitution,' and the purity ness and truth to nature is a great merit; and perfection of the Hebrew race, would and in reading the account of the Tommy be an insufferable impertinence if it were shop, the scenes at the Temple, with the not for these personal sketches, shadowing conversations of Dandy Mike, Devil's-dust, forth the politician Peel, with his paltry in- and Chaffing Jack, with the observations of struments. The dissertations--the strange Julia, Mrs. Mullens, Dame Toddles, Liza and whimsical fancies-nay, even the pup- Gray, Stephen Hatton, and Master Nixon, pyism and offensive priggishness of the we at once perceive that Mr. D'Israeli ideas and opinions, may be pardoned for writes like a person qui connait bien son those sparkling sketches, so true, charac- monde. His dialogue is as accurate as his teristic, and evidently the result of minute setting forth of air, manner, and dress. personal observation. It is said there is a This genuine truthfulness in describing the spice of malice and malignity ill disguised inhabitants of a terra incognita to our in the well-drawn characters of Rigby, summer tourists and travellers, is of such Tadpole, and Monmouth. Perhaps there importance that we forgive the absurd theomay be, but Mr. D'Israeli is not the first ries-the apologies for the Stuart family, among English novelists who has, by means learned under the paternal roof of D'Israeli of personal satire, given a zest and cur- the elder-the abuse of the Reformation rency to wholesome truths. De Foe, Swift, and the Revolution-of the great Whig faFielding, Smollet, and Henry Brooke, have milies-of the Stadtholder of Holland, and all preceded him in this walk; and though of Dutch finance. his manner of handling his subject, and enforcing his views, has been gravely objected to, we see no reason to concur in this hypercriticism.

No doubt there was much which might have been softened and improved in the character of Luther-no doubt there was much plunder of religious houses at the The volumes at present before us begin Reformation, which went to enrich the miwith a most preposterous dedication, con- nions of a selfish and remorseless debauchee ceived in the worst taste, and expressed in-no doubt the Revolution was produced the most affected manner. They are in- in a degree by intrigue, social and political scribed to the most severe of critics, but no doubt there was nothing more amiaa perfect wife'-qualities which we had heretofore considered wholly incompatible; but on this point we suppose we must yield to the happy or unhappy experience of Mr. D'Israeli.

The volumes, we are told, aim to illustrate the condition of the people; and there is not a trait in them for which the author has not the authority of his own

ble and attaching in the personal character of William III. than in the character of Sir Robert Peel; but the Reformation and the Revolution are great events, which are not at this time of day to be written down by any pen, however bold, confident, or aspiring; and as little is it in the power of Mr. D'Israeli to change the general and fixed opinion of the people of England as

to the character of William III. As a pri- shallow, and conventional; and as it is on vate individual, William was cold, taciturn, a race which is to come off on the followand unsocial-in his domestic life he was ing day, each man, of course, tries to cheat somewhat of a tyrant; but as a public man his neighbor. Before, however, the race he achieved great objects, and was distin- is delineated, we have the history of the guished by that cool, calm courage, that Greymount family, from which the Egrefixed tenacity of purpose, without which no monts descend, which is evidently meant great measures or objects are ever fully ef- for a sly hit at the ducal house of Russell. fected. Nothing but a desire to be singu- In 1668, this family became friends of civil lar, and to take views different from all and religious liberty, and not being in anyother men, could have induced Mr. D'Is- wise distinguished, furnish Lord Presidents, raeli to put forth such crude trash as these Privy Seals, and Lord Lieutenants of Irehistoric fancies. Indeed, his gentlemanly land. We are told, in an antithetical pedissertations on history are about the most riod, that they plundered the church to gain monstrous fictions in his volumes; hut the property of the people, and changed whether he deals in paradox or politics, or the dynasty to gain the power of the Crown. in the trick of unduly running down some The people, meanwhile, had lavished their reputations, or unduly elevating others, he blood and treasure to maintain a dignity always exhibits great skill, occasionally that had neither ancient memories to soften, great vigor and picturesqueness of diction, nor present sciences to justify their unpreand not unfrequently an impudence and cedented usurpation.' These truths are, flippancy, zestful and amusing. His recent however, hardly enunciated, when the startapprenticeship to diurnal journalism has ling theory is propounded that some of the made him master of that craft and mystery. most influential personages in our history He has learned the knack--and it is, after are not mentioned by any of our historians. all, a knack of stimulating curiosity and Not one man in a thousand, it appears, has seizing the attention by a coup-de-main. ever heard of Major Wildman, yet he was The ready, off-hand manner, the applica- the soul of English politics from 1640 to tion of strong epithets, and the use of start- 1638. So that, on the faith of this new ling contrasts, are had recourse to in the theory, men must give up Cromwell, Ludmode which he practises in the great jour- low, Pym, Hampden, Monk, Harry Martin, nal which in its turn bestows its praise on John Milton, and a host of others, and folhis Philippics. Vivid and animating are low the D'Israeli idea of deifying Major his words and phrases, but they are often Wildman! used recklessly, and sometimes they only suggest or half express the dark and wicked meaning which lurks behind.

To return, however, to the story, the Derby is rapidly and vigorously described. Much is expressed in a few words, and the animal excitement of the race, with its train of titled and untitled thimbleriggers

-now in the elation of hope, now in the jaws of disappointment-is artfully and artistically dressed up. It was about three years before this famous race, in 1833, that Charles Egremont, a younger son, with extravagant tastes and expensive hab.

Sybil is meant as a sequel to Coningsby, and it opens with a scene at Crockford's, preparatory to the Derby of 1837. The interior of that luxurious resort of fashion and folly, with its vast and golden saloon, is accurately described. There are Lord Milford and Mr. Latour, Lord Eugene de Vere and Alfred Mountchesney, and Egremont, the younger brother of an English Earl, its, had left Oxford and entered on the who has just completed the termination of his fifth lustre. His patent of nobility, indeed, is not an old affair; nay, the arms on the panels of his coach are hardly yet dry, for his nobility, saith our author, only dates three centuries. The founder of the family had been a confidential domestic of one of the favorites of Henry VIII. The elder brother of Egremont, the Earl of Marney, is a hard-hearted New Poor Law politician; but he does not appear till we get somewhat into the marrow of the story. The conversation at Crockford's is silly,

great world. His mother, Lady Marney, was, in the language of Mr. D'Israeli, a distinguished stateswoman-i. e. a female politician, and his elder brother is a hardhearted, cold-headed member of the Upper House. For a couple of years, Charles hovers about town till his heart becomes entangled; but the mother of the Lady Arabella cannot permit her daughter to marry a younger son, and it is a hopeless passion, at all events, for the lady marries an elder one. Charles goes abroad in melancholy mood, vowing never to return,

6

but returns nevertheless, in the spring of and of the state, rotten boroughs; while to 1837, and re-enters the world, where he do nothing and to get something, formed a once sparkled. He again bets on the Der-boy's idea of a manly career. But if a spiby, contests the borough of Marney, and is rit of rapacious covetousness has been the returned to parliament. It is during a besetting sin of England for a century and visit which he pays to his brother, at Mar- a half, we do not know that the worship of ney Abbey, after his election, that he sees Mammon has been much mitigated by the in the cemetery two men, one of lofty stat-passing of the Reform Act. We will not ure, whose appearance interests him. An go the length of saying, with Mr. D'Israeli, incendiary fire had taken place but a few that we are startled from our voracious days before, at one of the Abbey farms-strife by the wail of intolerable serfage,' but instead of first talking of the condition but we very much fear, that to acquire and of England question,' one of the strangers to accumulate has been too much of late bemoans the hard fate of the monks, who the heartless business of England. Wealth were driven out of this their resting-place. and toil are no doubt necessary to our exThis stranger is Walter Gerard, the over-istence, as much as to our well-being; but looker at Trafford's factory-Mr. Trafford they are not the only things necessary. being a Catholic-while in the veins of And in the hot and hasty pursuit after gain, this overlooker flows gentle blood, whose we too often overlook other things equally neancestor indeed had been the last abbot of cessary, which ought to be inseparably inciMarney. He is accompanied by his friend, dent to wealth and labor. We feel the full Stephen Morley, the editor of the Mow- force of Mr. D'Israeli's observation, that bray Phalanx,' and his daughter, Sybil we are an aggregation, but no communiGerard, who is not at first seen by Egre- ty;' but it will not do, by way of bettermont; but at the close of an interesting ing our condition, to roll back the tide of conversation, Egremont hears in the grey civilization, and leave us as we were in the twilight in the interior of the ruined thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. church, the evening hymn to the Virgin. rious insurrections, frightful famines, begThe hour-the scene-the solemn sound gary, and rapine, plague, and pestilence, and the stillness of the evening, repress then desolated the land; and men's minds controversy, and induce silence. The mel- were subdued by the sword, or swayed by ody ceases; the elder stranger now rises superstition, into a temporary tranquillity from his knees on which he had dropped, which was not contentment. We even and then, within the vacant and star-lit arch, prefer colonels without regiments, and on which his glance was fixed, Egremont housekeepers of royal palaces that exist but beholds a female form, apparently in the in name, to monks and nuns; and had inhabit of a religieuse, yet scarcely could finitely rather have the New Poor Law, she be a nun, for her veil had fallen on and Union workhouses, and the law of sether shoulders, and revealed her thick tress-tlement, with all their vices, than go back es of long fair hair. Egremont believed to begging from convent door to convent her a seraph, or the fair phantom of some door with a huge wallet. The principle of saint haunting the sacred ruins. This is modern English society may be a dissociatno saint or seraph, however, but Sybil Ge-ing rather than an uniting principle; men rard, who gives the name to the story, may be careless of neighbors, and live in a and a new destiny to Charles Egremont; state of isolation to make fortunes now-aand the Two Nations,' on which the days; but this isolation, with its accompastrangers discoursed with the brother of niment of vitality, activity, and eager spirit Lord Marney in the Abbey precincts, are of inquiry, is preferable to the community not England and Ireland, as one might be and aggregation, accompanied by that utled to suppose, but rich and poor. ter stagnancy of mind, and that complete stifling of all inquiry which distinguished the monastic system with which Mr. D'Israeli is so much in love.

Fu

Now our readers have a key to the story; but ere we resume the narrative, let us stop to state that the situation of Marney Abbey is well described. There are many pasBut to return to the story. We had sages of picturesque word-painting and stated that the last abbot of Marney was a really beautiful writing, mingled with much Walter Gerard; and it appears that another shrewd observation and solid common of the overlooker's ancestors fought at A school-boy's ideas of the church, Agincourt. Walter, therefore, though he in those days, we are told, were fat-livings; wends his way back to Mowbray, to his

sense.

But early in October, his

A new scene now opens on Egremont: he becomes a working member of parliament, and has crotchets about the people.' A new scene also opens on Walter Gerard: he comes a delegate to the national convention, sent up to London by the chartists to contend for the five points. He is accompanied by Sybil. It is one of the duties of Walter to wait on certain members of parliament, and among others on the Honorable Charles Egremont. Ushered into the

daily task of overlooking the factory of Mr. | week-nay, months thus passed on in com Trafford, is of old family and of the ancient pany with Sybil. Her beauty, the earnestfaith. To Mowbray also journeys shortly ness of her intellect, the repose and dignity after, on a visit to its lord, the peer, Lord of her manner charmed and captivated de Mowbray, Lord and Lady Marney, and Egremont. Charles Egremont, his brother, whom Lord mother, who communicated with him de Marney would talk into a marriage with through a faithful servant admitted to the Lady Joan Mowbray, a person who, from secret of his residence, entreated Egremont the death of an only brother, is to possess, in urgent terms to repair to her without a in the slang of inheritance, an elder son's moment's delay. He was now to quit Mowportion. But Charles likes her not. While bray and Mowedale. He took his leave in alstaying in the house he became intimate most silent sorrow; but ere he parted from with a Puseyite clergyman of the name Sybil, he offered her an English translation of St. Lys, who visits the sick and the poor of Thomas-a-Kempis. There was one who of the parish of Mowbray. In this Chris- appeared pleased with his departure, and tian duty, he is accompanied by Charles that was Stephen Morley. Egremont; and, again, unexpectedly, in the sick chamber of a 'harrassed Saxon' weaver of the name of Warner, does he meet Sybil, and is again enchanted. The form of Sybil Gerard was now stamped in his brain; it blended with all his thoughts, it haunted every object. He could not resist the conviction that from the time he had met the strangers in the abbey ruins, his sympathies had become more lively and more extended, and, while pondering on these things, in returning from a fishing ex-room in the Albany in which Charles Egrecursion, he encounters Sybil's father, is invited to his cottage, where Gerard tells him his own history, discourses of his daughter, and relates, too, the history of his friend Stephen Morley, the editor and journalist. Confidence ought to beget confidence, but Charles Egremont, instead of revealing his name, passes as a person connected with the press, and tells his host his name is Franklin. As Franklin, he becomes domiciled at Mowbray, and frequently passes his evenings at Gerard's cottage. There he sees more and more of Sybil, and exclaims to himself, in a reverie which betokens the state of his feelings, Were it not for my mother, I would remain Mr. Franklin for ever!' He feels there is something sublime, yet strangely sweet withal, about this Sybil. He seeks her company, walks with her, talks with her, and dreams of her. Father and daughter present him to The third commences with the outbreak their friend Stephen Morley, on Stephen's of riots at Birmingham, which render Syreturn to Mowbray. He had been absent bil feverish and uneasy, principally on her on a journey to Woodgate, to seek one father's account. Soon after this event, Stephen Hatton, through whom he hoped Egremont recognizes her in the park, as he to obtain some tidings of another Hatton, is proceeding to attend a committee of the an antiquary, pedigree-maker, and genealo- House. He had, a few nights before, made gist, who had been entrusted with certain a beautiful speech' in favor of the people, papers touching the family history of Wal- for which he is gratefully thanked by Sybil. ter Gerard, and affecting his right to an es- Egremont, aware from his position that the tate and title. Day after day, week after Government are about to lay a heavy hand

mont lives, Walter Gerard and Stephen Morley see before them the reporter of Mowbray and Mowedale, Mr. Franklin. On the following day, Charles, in passing through Westminster Abbey, encounters Sybil. He accompanies her to her temporary abode in Smith's square, Westminster; and at the door they meet her father. Egremont asks to enter. The permission is granted, with some reserve, by Gerard; and then an explanation follows, in which Sybil learns, for the first time, that Mr. Franklin the reporter, is none other than the brother of Lord Marney. On the following day, Egremont again calls, and, finding Sybil alone, discloses his affection, and proffershis hand; but the daughter of the chartist delegate reminds him that the gulf between rich. and poor is utterly impassable, and rejects his offer; and thus ends the second volume.

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