never be hers again;- happiness A character as dauntless as hers mixed with pain, that draws her may overthrow every obstacle, yet closer to the husband for save one. She might have triwhom such a heavy ransom has umphed over the Czar, but she been paid. could not triumph over Death.

FROUDE'S LORD BEACONSFIELD.

WE need hardly say that this is not the life of Lord Beaconsfield

"He was a man, take him for all in all,

again."

which the world has been waiting We shall not look upon his like for. It is a short biography of him by Mr Froude, the commencement of a series which is to include the whole list of nine Prime Ministers of Queen Victoria, whether living or dead. There is very little in it which is new, and that little is of no great interest or importance as affecting the life of Disraeli. At the same time, we do not wish to undervalue this sketch. It is ably and conscientiously done, and its author, with his devotion to all things Carlylese, has evidently taken the Life of Sterling for his model. We should say it is the work of a man who has had considerable and lifelong prejudices, derived from Carlyle, against the subject of his memoir, but who, as he warmed to his work, has gained greater insight into Disraeli's marvellous career, and into the finer points of his character, and has striven in a spirit of posthumous justice to do honour to his memory. It is satisfactory to see how, as the clouds of contemporary detraction and vituperation roll away, his career and character during his long parliamentary leadership vindicate to the eyes of posterity the confidence which the sovereign, Parliament, and the nation eventually reposed in him, and the devotion which his colleagues uniformly paid to him.

The key-note of Mr Froude's sketch is on his title-page

But marvellous as was Disraeli's
career, no public man ever had
less right to complain that he was
the subject of so much unfounded
prejudice and unreasoning ani-
mosity. His genius from the first
took the form of unlimited daring,
careless of, or even delighting in,
the accumulation of obstacles in his
way, which he seems to have done
his best to increase, confident in his
power to surmount them. He was
determined to fix the public eye
upon himself, to cut his way to the
greatness which he felt that, once
won, he could maintain. Though
he never stooped to anything mean
or underhand, he could face with-
out a shudder positions which, to
a more sensitive self-consciousness,
would be overwhelming from sheer
absurdity and even grotesqueness
of failure. He had never roughed
it at a public school.
His only
taste of the discipline of life had
been at a Unitarian place of edu-
cation, where he was unpopular,
and asserted his position with his
fists. He seems to have "detested
school more than he ever abhorred
the world in the darkest moment
of experienced manhood." The
qualities of patience and self-disci-
pline, which were the source of his
strength as a public man, are not
traceable in the fiery impatient
youth who regarded the world as
"mine oyster which I with sword
will open."

The Earl of Beaconsfield, K.G. By J. A. Froude. London: Sampson Low & Co., Limited.

1890.

72

"In all

Law was tried and abandoned; is thus described by those who but at twenty-one Disraeli awoke witnessed it :and found himself famous. He was the author of 'Vivian Grey,' which he followed up with satires that were always pleasant, laughing, and good-humoured. his life," says Mr Froude, "he never hated anybody or anything, never bore a grudge or remembered a libel against himself." Mr Gladstone himself said something equivalent to this in his speech proposing to him a parliamentary memorial. Foreign travel to Spain, and to the East as far as Jerusalem and Thebes, was portant feature of his early life. His correspondence from abroad survives him, and was recently published. He shows himself in the freedom of letters home in his true colours affectation, lightheartedness, and warm home feel ings--"a character genuine and affectionate, whose fine gifts were veiled in foppery, which itself was more than half assumed."

6 an im

This foreign travel resulted in an episode which throws more light on Disraeli's character in youth than many much better known incidents. The future lay all undetermined before him. Conscious of great powers, as well as resolute to achieve greatness of some sort, the thought passed through his mind as he surveyed the plain of Troy, that as the heroic age had produced its Homer, the Augustan era its Virgil, the Reformation its Milton, why should not the revolutionary epoch produce its representative poet by name Disraeli? Nothing would do but the experiment must be tried. He wrote three cantos on his return, and resolved to submit them to his friends. He accordingly recited them to his friends at a party at Mrs Austen's, and the "never to be forgotten scene

"There was something irresistibly comic in the young man, dressed in the fantastic coxcombical costume

that he then affected-velvet coat
thrown wide open, ruffles on the
sleeves, shirt-collars turned down in
Byronic fashion, an elaborate em-
broidered waistcoat from which is-
sued voluminous folds of frill, shoes
adorned with red rosettes, his black
hair pomatumed and elaborately
curled, and his person redolent with
the fire, he explained the purpose of
perfume. Standing with his back to
his poem. It was to be to the rev-
olutionary age what the 'Iliad,' the
Eneid,' and 'Paradise Lost' had
been to their respective epochs."
He then recited his first canto,
with the result that the audience
was favourably disposed; but after
the poet had left the room, a
gentleman present declaimed an
impromptu burlesque of the open-
ing lines. Infinite merriment re-
sulted, and Disraeli's dream of
becoming a great poet was broken;
but at the same time the literary
world allowed that in prose, at
all events, a new star had arisen,
and Disraeli was welcomed every-
where as a celebrity.

In that character he got into debt, and when election bills were added to social extravagance he became seriously involved-partly also from standing surety for his friends. Confident in his future and in his powers, he treated his embarrassments easily. So, too, with regard to his appearance in society. "In the days of the dandies" he was fantastic till his friends told him he was a fool. Mr Froude says it was purposed affectation. It led the listener to look for only folly from him, and when a brilliant flash broke out it was the more startling as being so utterly unlooked for from such a figure. One sketch of his conversational energy, the effect of which