1. WHY WE FOLLOW HIM.-BY A TORY.

A WRITER in the last number of this Review, when giving a portraiture of Mr. Gladstone, pointed out that that right honorable gentleman was a bundle of persons rather than one. It will not, I hope, be thought a very gross plagiarism if I say that Lord Beaconsfield's fame may be divided into four or five distinct reputations, any one of which, in the case of a smaller man, would be thought enough for enduring celebrity. If Mr. Disraeli had never succeeded in making his way into Parliament, he would still, without needing to add another volume to the books he has written, have had to be taken account of as one of our foremost men of letters. Supposing that, having entered the House of Commons, he had not attained office, he would yet have always been remembered as the keenest Parliamentary debater of his time. If his public life had ended in 1852-that is, more than a quarter of a

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century ago-without his having become a Minister, he would have stood recorded as the most skilful leader of an Opposition which our history has known. Had he never passed a measure through Parliament, he must have been referred to by all political thinkers as a strikingly original critic of our Constitution. Such trifles as that, being born in the days of dandyism, he ranked among the leaders of fashion directly after he was out of his teens, and that he has been a leading social wit his whole life through, may be thrown in without counting. But add the above items together, and fill in the necessary details, and what a startling result we have!

It is very obvious that I cannot here trace Lord Beaconsfield's career in detail. The chronicle is much too rich for that. The better plan will be to make the subject group itself around three or four chief topics-say these: His public consistency; his personal relations with Peel and other leaders; his political and

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social views regarded as a system; and his recent foreign policy.

A single paragraph may, however, be interposed, just to bring the principal dates together in a way of prospective summary. Within four years' time from his entering the House of Commons, which, after vain attempts at High Wycombe, Marylebone, and Taunton, he did in 1837 for the borough of Maidstone, Mr. Disraeli was at the head of a party—" The New England Party." The group, if not very numerous, drew as much public attention as if it had been of any size we like to name. Lord John Manners and Mr. G. S. Smythe had the generosity of heart and the keenness of insight to be the first won over by him, and that against the prejudices of their families. Who has not heard of their courageous pilgrimage to the Manchester Athenæum to explain to Cottonopolis how they proposed to remake the nation? Then came the "Young England" novels, with which all Europe was shortly ringing-" Coningsby" in 1844, "Sybil" in 1845, "Tancred" in 1847. In the mean time Mr. Disraeli had associated himself heart and soul with Lord George Bentinck, attacked Peel, and done far more than any other in reorganizing the shattered Conservative party within the House as well as outside it. By the last-named year, too, Mr. Disraeli had, after a voluntary exchanging of Maidstone for Shrewsbury, become member for Buckinghamshire, a seat which he was to keep so long as he remained in the House of Commons. Suddenly Lord George Bentinck died (much too early for his country), and very soon after that event, owing to the generous standing aside of Lord Granby and Mr. Herries, Mr. Disraeli, within a dozen years of his first entry into Parliament, stood forth as the recognized leader of the Conservatives. The publication of the famous "Biography of Lord George Bentinck" was at once his noble tribute to the memory of his friend and a valuable help to the party. Five years later, when Lord Russell fell, and the first Derby Administration was formed, Mr. Disraeli-never having held an inferior post-became Chancellor of the Exchequer. Shortly followed Lord Palmerston's triumphant reign, to be succeeded, after a further resignation of

Lord Russell, by the second Derby Ministry, in which Mr. Disraeli, once more Chancellor of the Exchequer, found time, in addition to his Budget-making, to dish the Whigs by a final Reform Bill. By and by the nation lost the Earl of Derby, and the last promotion of official dignity fell naturally to Mr. Disraeli, who became Prime Minister of England. Mr. Gladstone succeeded in preventing the Cabinet from having a very long life, and Mr. Disraeli kept mental self-composúre enough, after losing office, to sit down and write " Lothair.' By and by his political turn again came: 1874 saw him Premier for the second time, and this present year of grace still beholds him in the post, only in the Upper House, instead of the Lower, as Lord Beaconsfield, and with a Parliamentary majority scarcely diminished by five years of an imperial rule which brings back memories of England's most majestic days. He has visited Berlin, and more than held his own in a council of the greatest modern diplomatists; has received a welcome back in London city such as no living minister can boast; and has had the high honor of entertaining his Queen as a guest under his own roof.

Now I may go back to the first of the texts I have chosen.

It is certain that Lord Beaconsfield has always most tenaciously insisted that he has from first to last been politically consistent. His opponents, for very good reasons of their own, have unceasingly affirmed that this assertion is his chiefest, in fact his culminating audacity. But all the facts favor Lord Beaconsfield's view. In the first place, he has never held office but on one side, and he is the only Prime Minister during the last half century who could plead that circumstance. Earl Russell could not say it; certainly Lord Palmerston could not; it is quite out of Mr. Gladstone's power to urge it; even the late Earl of Derby could not make the claim. Next, it is now about thirty-two years since Mr. Disraeli was formally recognized as the leader of the Tory party, and he is still at the head of them, without their confidence having been for a moment shaken or withdrawn. Men, in fact, have been born and have grown up to middle life with Mr. Dis