gusto. He attacks Mrs. Lorraine in what he knows to be her tenderest points with an ingenuity that is almost terrible; and thus the effect is described :

"She threw herself on the sofa; her voice was choked with the convulsions of her passion, and she writhed in fearful agony. Vivian Grey lounging in an arm-chair in the easiest of postures, and with a face brilliant with smiles, watched his victim with the eye of a Mephistopheles. One large vein protruded nearly a quarter of an inch from her forehead. And the dank light which gleamed in her tearful eye was like an unwholesome meteor quivering in a marsh. When he ended she sprang from the sofa, and, looking up and extending her arms with unmeaning wildness, she gave one loud shriek and dropped like a bird shot on the wing; she had burst a blood-vessel. Vivian Grey left the boudoir a pledged bridegroom his countenance could not have been more triumphant."

666

... •

Had

A scene by moonlight between these two beings, before they have finally quarrelled, is worth quoting. Superior spirits! say you?"" and here they paced the gallery. When Valerian, first Lord Carabas, raised this fair castle; when, profuse for his posterity, all the genius of Italian art and Italian artists was lavished on this English palace; when the stuffs and statues, the marbles and mirrors, the tapestry, and the carvings, and the paintings of Genoa, and Florence, and Venice, and Padua, and Vicenza, were obtained by him at miraculous cost, and with

Ibid. 153-4.

still more miraculous toil; what think you would have been his sensations if, while his soul was revelling in the futurity of his descendants keeping their state in this splendid pile, some wizard had foretold to him that, ere three centuries could elapse, the fortunes of his mighty family would be the sport of two individuals; one of them a foreigner, unconnected in blood, or connected only in hatred; and the other, a young adventurer alike unconnected with his race, in blood or in love; a being ruling all things by the power of his own genius, and reckless of all consequences save his own prosperity? If the future had been revealed to my great ancestor, the Lord Valerian, think you, Vivian Grey, that you and I should be walking in this long gallery?'

"And here she grasped Vivian with a feverish hand. Omnipotent and ineffable essence! Miserable mocker! It is not true, Vivian Grey; you are but echoing the world's deceit, and even at this hour of the night you dare not speak as you do think. You worship no omnipotent and ineffable essence; you believe in no omnipotent and ineffable essence. Shrined in the secret chamber of your soul there is an image before which you bow down in adoration, and that image is YOURSELF. And truly, when I do gaze upon your radiant eyes,' and here the lady's tone became more terrestrial; and truly, when I do look upon your luxuriant curls,'* and here the

* Is not Mr. Disraeli's description of Vivian Grey very like Mr. Willis's description of Mr. Disraeli?

lady's small white hand played like lightning through Vivian's dark hair; and truly, when I do remember the beauty of your all-perfect form, I cannot deem your self-worship a false idolatry,' and here the lady's arms were locked round Vivian's neck, and her head rested on his bosom."

Vivian Grey is, in the end, defeated by Mrs. Lorraine. The Marquess of Carabas, foiled in his schemes, turns him from his doors, and he is challenged by Cleveland. In the duel, Cleveland is killed, and Vivian Grey rushes away on a foreign tour to drown his grief. The second part of the book describes the hero's adventures on the Continent, but that part of the story I have not time to notice.

Such, then, is Vivian Grey.†

Now, at the very outset of this work, I frankly tell the reader the thesis I attempt to prove. My

*Ibid. 112-13.

I must dismiss briefly, and in the obscurity of a note, some of Lord Beaconsfield's earlier productions. The "Rise of Iskander" describes the revolt of a Christian against Mohammedan rule with as much apparent sympathy at that of the Jew "Alroy" against the same oppression. It is a short, picturesque, brisk narrative. "Ixion in Heaven," and the "Infernal Marriage," are burlesques, in which, after a fashion novel in Lord Beaconsfield's youth, but commonplace in ours, the heathen divinities are introduced, and, in professing to describe celestial manners, the author lashes modern foibles. These two sketches are little known; but they are among the best things Lord Beaconsfield has written. The wit is effective, and often brilliant; and the more ambitious passages are picturesque without being tawdry. The simple and chaste style of some of Lord Beaconsfield's earlier works, indeed, curiously enough, contrast favourably with the pretentiousness and bathos of some of his maturer creations.

view of Lord Beaconsfield's character is that it is essentially a counterpart of that of Vivian Grey; and my view of Lord Beaconsfield's political career is that it has been conducted upon the same arts as are practised by the hero of his earliest story. I shall give the reader abundant opportunity of seeing whether this estimate be correct or not. I will endeavour to maintain, so far as possible, throughout my narrative, the parallel between the two careers. The reader has just traced the life of Vivian Grey. Let us now resume our record of the life of Lord Beaconsfield.

CHAPTER III.

THE FIRST ELECTION.

Up to this time we find the young Disraeli still wavering between a political and a literary career, though unmistakably prepossessed in favour of the former mode of life. The events of 1832, however, brought these doubts to an end. The agitation for Reform swept like a storm over the land: the Crown, the House of Lords, the House of Commons as it was then constituted,—all existing institutions seemed for a while endangered, and there was that uneasiness and excitement in the public mind which presage and sometimes prepare a revolution. In such moments, politics become, of course, the paramount subject of interest. Amid exciting realities, people turn away with impatience from the tamer sensations of the romance; and the public have no ears for any poet's lute, save only when it gives voice to their passions. The hour was not favourable to literature; and young Disraeli-as he has so often told us already-was not the man to play to an inattentive audience.